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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14885-8.txt b/14885-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2ae1271 --- /dev/null +++ b/14885-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14220 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Pottage, by Mary Cholmondeley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Red Pottage + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: February 2, 2005 [EBook #14885] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED POTTAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +Red Pottage + +By + +Mary Cholmondeley + +AUTHOR OF + +"THE DANVERS JEWELS" + +"After the Red Pottage comes the exceeding bitter cry" + +NEW YORK AND LONDON + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + +1900 + + + + + TO + + VICTORIA + + Good things have not kept aloof, + + * * * * * + + I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, + Nor golden largesse of thy praise. + + + + +RED POTTAGE + + + + +CHAPTER I + + In tragic life, God wot, + No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: + We are betray'd by what is false within. + --GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +"I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of +his cage. + +"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but +half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom +took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been +dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, whither his +thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing the +_trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop_ of the horse. + +It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, and the +throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared to see, "the +glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and shirt front, +surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their owner, leaning back +with his hat tilted over his eyes. + +_Trip-clip-clop_ went the horse. + +A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an hour, +especially if it has been long eluded. + +"I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient movement. +It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue which had been +so new and alluring a year ago. He did not own it to himself, but he +was tired of it. Perhaps the reason why good resolutions have earned for +themselves such an evil repute as paving-stones is because they are +often the result, not of repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs +an evaporating pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and +his shame for many months. But now it was becoming something more--which +it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till lately--a +fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off and pushed out of +sight. Decidedly the moment for the good resolution had arrived. + +"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever +guessed it." + +How could any one have guessed it? + +He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and had +looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other days, and +the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He had added a +stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it became--a prison. Had +he been tempter or tempted? He did not know. He did not care. He wanted +only to be out of it. His better feelings and his conscience had been +awakened by the first touch of weariness. His brief infatuation had run +its course. His judgment had been whirled--he told himself it had been +whirled, but it had really only been tweaked--from its centre, had +performed its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back +to the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was merely a +pretty woman. + +"I will break with her gradually," he said, like the tyro he was, and he +pictured to himself the wretched scenes in which she would abuse him, +reproach him, probably compromise herself, the letters she would write +to him. At any rate, he need not read them. Oh! how tired he was of the +whole thing beforehand. Why had he been such a fool? He looked at the +termination of the liaison as a bad sailor looks at an inevitable sea +passage at the end of a journey. It must be gone through, but the +prospect of undergoing it filled him with disgust. + +A brougham passed him swiftly on noiseless wheels, and the woman in it +caught a glimpse of the high-bred, clean-shaved face, half savage, half +sullen, in the hansom. + +"Anger, impatience, and remorse," she said to herself, and finished +buttoning her gloves. + +"Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever guessed it," repeated Hugh, +fervently, as the hansom came suddenly to a stand-still. + +In another moment he was taking Lady Newhaven's hand as she stood at the +entrance of her amber drawing-room beside a grove of pink orchids. + +He chatted a moment, greeted Lord Newhaven, and passed on into the +crowded rooms. How could any one have guessed it? No breath of scandal +had ever touched Lady Newhaven. She stood beside her pink orchids, near +her fatigued-looking, gentle-mannered husband, a very pretty woman in +white satin and diamonds. Perhaps her blond hair was a shade darker at +the roots than in its waved coils; perhaps her blue eyes did not look +quite in harmony with their blue-black lashes; but the whole effect had +the delicate, conventional perfection of a cleverly touched-up +chromo-lithograph. Of course, tastes differ. Some people like +chromo-lithographs, others don't. But even those who do are apt to +become estranged. They may inspire love, admiration, but never fidelity. +Most of us have in our time hammered nails into our walls which, though +they now decorously support the engravings and etchings of our maturer +years, were nevertheless originally driven in to uphold the cherished, +the long since discarded chromos of our foolish youth. + +The diamond sun upon Lady Newhaven's breast quivered a little, a very +little, as Hugh greeted her, and she turned to offer the same small +smile and gloved hand to the next comer, whose name was leaping before +him from one footman to another. + +"Mr. Richard Vernon." + +Lady Newhaven's wide blue eyes looked vague. Her hand hesitated. This +strongly built, ill-dressed man, with his keen, brown, deeply scarred +face and crooked mouth, was unknown to her. + +Lord Newhaven darted forward. + +"Dick!" he exclaimed, and Dick shot forth an immense mahogany hand and +shook Lord Newhaven's warmly. + +"Well," he said, after Lord Newhaven had introduced him to his wife, +"I'm dashed if I knew who either of you were. But I found your +invitation at my club when I landed yesterday, so I decided to come and +have a look at you. And so it is only you, Cackles, after all"--(Lord +Newhaven's habit of silence had earned for him the sobriquet of +"Cackles")--"I quite thought I was going into--well, ahem!--into +society. I did not know you had got a handle to your name. How did you +find out I was in England?" + +"My dear fellow, I didn't," said Lord Newhaven, gently drawing Dick +aside, whose back was serenely blocking a stream of new arrivals. "I +fancy--in fact, I'm simply delighted to see you. How is the wine getting +on? But I suppose there must be other Dick Vernons on my wife's list. +Have you the card with you?" + +"Rather," said Dick; "always take the card with me since I was kicked +out of a miner's hop at Broken Hill because I forgot it. 'No gentleman +will be admitted in a paper shirt' was mentioned on it, I remember. A +concertina, and candles in bottles. Ripping while it lasted. I wish you +had been there." + +"I wish I had." Lord Newhaven's tired, half-closed eye opened a little. +"But the end seems to have been unfortunate." + +"Not at all," said Dick, watching the new arrivals with his head thrown +back. "Fine girl that; I'll take a look at the whole mob of them +directly. They came round next day to say it had been a mistake, but +there were four or five cripples who found that out the night before. +Here is the card." + +Lord Newhaven glanced at it attentively, and then laughed. + +"It is four years old," he said; "I must have put you on my mother's +list, not knowing you had left London. It is in her writing." + +"I'm rather late," said Dick, composedly; "but I am here at last. Now, +Cack--Newhaven, if that's your noble name--as I am here, trot out a few +heiresses, would you? I want to take one or two back with me. I say, +ought I to put my gloves on?" + +"No, no. Clutch them in your great fist as you are doing now." + +"Thanks. I suppose, old chap, I'm all right? Not had on an evening-coat +for four years." + +Dick's trousers were too short for him, and he had tied his white tie +with a waist to it. Lord Newhaven had seen both details before he +recognized him. + +"Quite right," he said, hastily. "Now, who is to be the happy woman?" + +Dick's hawk eye promenaded over the crowd in the second room, in the +door-way of which he was standing. + +"That one," he said; "the tall girl in the green gown talking to the +Bishop." + +"You have a wonderful eye for heiresses. You have picked out the +greatest in London. That is Miss Rachel West. You say you want two." + +"One at a time, thanks. I shall take her down to supper. I +suppose--er--there is supper at this sort of thing, isn't there?" + +"Of a kind. You need not be afraid of the claret; it isn't yours." + +"Catch you giving your best at a crush," retorted Dick. "The Bishop's +moving. Hurry up." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell, + The King behind his shoulder spake: "Dead man, thou dost not well." + --RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +Hugh had gone through the first room, and, after a quarter of an hour, +found himself in the door-way of the second. He had arrived late, and +the rooms were already thinning. + +A woman in a pale-green gown was standing near the open window, her +white profile outlined against the framed darkness, as she listened with +evident amusement to the tall, ill-dressed man beside her. + +Hugh's eyes lost the veiled scorn with which it was their wont to look +at society and the indulgent patronage which lurked in them for pretty +women. + +Rachel West slowly turned her face towards him without seeing him, and +his heart leaped. She was not beautiful except with the beauty of +health, and a certain dignity of carriage which is the outcome of a head +and hands and body that are at unity with each other, and with a mind +absolutely unconscious of self. She had not the long nose which so +frequently usurps more than its share of the faces of the well-bred, nor +had she, alas! the short upper lip which redeems everything. Her +features were as insignificant as her coloring. People rarely noticed +that Rachel's hair was brown, and that her deep-set eyes were gray. But +upon her grave face the word "Helper" was plainly written--and something +else. What was it? + +Just as in the faces of seamen we trace the onslaught of storm and sun +and brine, and the puckering of the skin round the eyes that comes of +long watching in half-lights, so in some faces, calm and pure as +Rachel's, on which the sun and rain have never beaten, there is an +expression betokening strong resistance from within of the brunt of a +whirlwind from without. The marks of conflict and endurance on a young +face--who shall see them unmoved! The Mother of Jesus must have noticed +a great difference in her Son when she first saw Him again after the +temptation in the wilderness. + +Rachel's grave, amused glance fell upon Hugh. Their eyes met, and he +instantly perceived, to his astonishment, that she recognized him. But +she did not bow, and a moment later left the nearly empty rooms with the +man who was talking to her. + +Hugh was excited out of recognition of his former half-scornful, +half-_blasé_ self. That woman must be his wife. She would save him from +himself, this cynical, restless self, which never remained in one stay. +The half-acknowledged weakness in his nature unconsciously flung itself +upon her strength, a strength which had been tried. She would love him, +and uphold him. There would be no more yielding to circumstances if that +pure, strong soul were close beside him. He would lean upon her, and the +ugly by-paths of these last years would know him no more. Her presence +would leaven his whole life. In the momentary insanity, which was +perhaps, after all, only a prophetic intuition, he had no fears, no +misgivings. He thought that with that face it was not possible that she +could be so wicked as to refuse him. + +"She will marry me," he said to himself. "She must." + +Lady Newhaven touched him gently on the arm. + +"I dared not speak to you before," she said. "Nearly every one has gone. +Will you take me down to supper? I am tired out." + +He stared at her, not recognizing her. + +"Have I vexed you?" she faltered. + +And with a sudden horrible revulsion of feeling he remembered. The poor +chromo had fallen violently from its nail. But the nail remained--ready. +He took her into the supper-room and got her a glass of champagne. She +subsided on to a sofa beside another woman, vaguely suspecting trouble +in the air. He felt thankful that Rachel had already gone. Dick, nearly +the last, was putting on his coat, arranging to meet Lord Newhaven the +following morning at his club. They had been in Australia together, and +were evidently old friends. + +Lord Newhaven's listless manner returned as Dick marched out. Hugh had +got one arm in his coat. An instinct of flight possessed him, a vague +horror of the woman in diamonds furtively watching him under her lowered +eyelids through the open door. + +"Oh, Scarlett!" said Lord Newhaven, detaining him languidly, "I want +three minutes of your valuable time. Come into my study." + +"Another cross-bow for Westhope Abbey?" said Hugh, trying to speak +unconcernedly, as he followed his host to a back room on the ground +floor. Lord Newhaven was collecting arms for the hall of his +country-house. + +"No; much simpler than those elaborate machines," said the older man, +turning on the electric light. Hugh went in, and Lord Newhaven closed +the door. + +Over the mantel-shelf were hung a few old Japanese inlaid carbines, and +beneath them an array of pistols. + +"Useless now," said Lord Newhaven, touching them affectionately. "But," +he added, with a shade more listlessness than before, "Society has +become accustomed to do without them, and does ill without them, but we +must conform to her." Hugh started slightly, and then remained +motionless. "You observe these two paper lighters, Scarlett? One is an +inch shorter than the other. They have been waiting on the mantel-shelf +for the last month, till I had an opportunity of drawing your attention +to them. I am sure we perfectly understand each other. No name need be +mentioned. All scandal is avoided. I feel confident you will not +hesitate to make me the only reparation one man can make another in the +somewhat hackneyed circumstances in which we find ourselves." + +Lord Newhaven took the lighters out of the glass. He glanced suddenly at +Hugh's stunned face and went on: + +"I am sorry the idea is not my own. I read it in a magazine. Though +comparatively modern, it promises soon to become as customary as the +much-to-be-regretted pistols for two and coffee for four. I hold the +lighters thus, and you draw. Whoever draws or keeps the short one is +pledged to leave this world within four months, or shall we say five, on +account of the pheasant shooting? Five be it. Is it agreed? Just so! +Will you draw?" + +A swift spasm passed over Hugh's face, and a tiger glint leaped into +Lord Newhaven's eyes, fixed intently upon him. + +There was a brief second in which Hugh's mind wavered, as the flame of a +candle wavers in a sudden draught. Lord Newhaven's eyes glittered. He +advanced the lighters an inch nearer. + +If he had not advanced them that inch Hugh thought afterwards that he +would have refused to draw. + +He backed against the mantel-piece, and then put out his hand suddenly +and drew. It seemed the only way of escape. + +The two men measured the lighters on the table under the electric light. + +Lord Newhaven laughed. + +Hugh stood a moment, and then went out. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + "Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband?" + + +When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her husband and +Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did not follow them +with the deliberate intention of eavesdropping, but from a vague impulse +of suspicious anxiety. Yet she crouched in her white satin gown against +the door listening intently. + +Neither man moved within, only one spoke. There was no other sound to +deaden her husband's distinct, low voice. The silence that followed his +last words, "Will you draw?" was broken by his laugh, and she had barely +time to throw herself back from the door into a dark recess under the +staircase before Hugh came out. He almost touched her as he passed. He +must have seen her, if he had been capable of seeing anything; but he +went straight on unheeding. And as she stole a few steps to gaze after +him, she saw him cross the hall and go out into the night without his +hat and coat, the amazed servants staring after him. + +She drew back to go up-stairs, and met her husband coming slowly out of +the study. He looked steadily at her, as she clung trembling to the +banisters. There was no alteration in his glance, and she suddenly +perceived that what he knew now he had always known. She put her hand to +her head. + +"You look tired," he said, in the level voice to which she was +accustomed. "You had better go to bed." + +She stumbled swiftly up-stairs, catching at the banisters, and went into +her own room. + +Her maid was waiting for her by the dressing-table with its shaded +electric lights. And she remembered that she had given a party, and that +she had on her diamonds. + +It would take a long time to unfasten them. She pulled at the diamond +sun on her breast with a shaking hand. Her husband had given it to her +when her eldest son was born. Her maid took the tiara gently out of her +hair, and cut the threads that sewed the diamonds on her breast and +shoulders. Would it never end? The lace of her gown, cautiously +withdrawn through its hundred eyelet-holes, knotted itself. + +"Cut it," she said, impatiently. "Cut it." + +At last she was in her dressing-gown and alone. She flung herself face +downwards on the sofa. Her attitude had the touch of artificiality which +was natural to her. + +The deluge had arrived, and unconsciously she met it, as she would have +made a heroine meet it had she been a novelist, in a white dressing-gown +and pink ribbons in a stereotyped attitude of despair on a divan. + +Conscience is supposed to make cowards of us all, but it is a matter of +common experience that the unimaginative are made cowards of only by +being found out. + +Had David qualms of conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city? +Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the +prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely +obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly +nailed him to the cross of his sin. + +And so it was with Lady Newhaven. She had gone through the twenty-seven +years of her life believing herself to be a religious and virtuous +person. She was so accustomed to the idea that it had become a habit, +and now the whole of her self-respect was in one wrench torn from her. +The events of the last year had not worn it down to its last shred, had +not even worn the nap off. It was dragged from her intact, and the shock +left her faint and shuddering. + +The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to conceal his +knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than the probability +that she had been seen by some of the servants kneeling listening at a +keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant people make is to assume that +others are as unobservant as themselves. + +By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this catastrophe come +about? She thought of all the obvious incidents which would have +revealed the secret to herself--the dropped letter, the altered +countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She was convinced her secret +had been guarded with minute, with scrupulous care. The only thing she +had forgotten in her calculations was her husband's character, if, +indeed, she could be said to have forgotten that which she had never +known. + +Lord Newhaven was in his wife's eyes a very quiet man of few words. That +his few words did not represent the whole of him had never occurred to +her. She had often told her friends that he walked through life with his +eyes shut. He had a trick of half shutting his eyes which confirmed her +in this opinion. When she came across persons who were after a time +discovered to have affections and interests of which they had not +spoken, she described them as "cunning." She had never thought Edward +"cunning" till to-night. How had he, of all men, discovered +this--this--? She, had no words ready to call her conduct by, though +words would not have failed her had she been denouncing the same conduct +in another wife and mother. + +Gradually "the whole horror of her situation"--to borrow from her own +vocabulary--forced itself upon her mind like damp through a gay +wall-paper. What did it matter how the discovery had been made! It was +made, and she was ruined. She repeated the words between little gasps +for breath. Ruined! Her reputation lost! Hers--Violet Newhaven's. It was +a sheer impossibility that such a thing could have happened to a woman +like her. It was some vile slander which Edward must see to. He was good +at that sort of thing. But no, Edward would not help her. She had +committed--She flung out her hands, panic-stricken, as if to ward off a +blow. The deed had brought with it no shame, but the word--the word +wounded her like a sword. + +Her feeble mind, momentarily stunned, pursued its groping way. + +He would divorce her. It would be in the papers. But no. What was that +he had said to Hugh--"No names to be mentioned; all scandal avoided." + +She shivered and drew in her breath. It was to be settled some other +way. Her mind became an entire blank. Another way! What way? She +remembered now, and an inarticulate cry broke from her. They had drawn +lots. + +_Which had drawn the short lighter?_ + +Her husband had laughed. But then he laughed at everything. He was never +really serious, always shallow and heartless. He would have laughed if +he had drawn it himself. Perhaps he had. Yes, he certainly had drawn it. +But Hugh? She saw again the white, set face as he passed her. No; it +must be Hugh who had drawn it--Hugh, whom she loved. She wrung her hands +and moaned, half aloud: + +"Which? Which?" + +There was a slight movement in the next room, the door was opened, and +Lord Newhaven appeared in the door-way. He was still in evening dress. + +"Did you call?" he said, quietly. "Are you ill?" He came and stood +beside her. + +"No," she said, hoarsely, and she sat up and gazed fixedly at him. +Despair and suspense were in her eyes. There was no change in his, and +she remembered that she had never seen him angry. Perhaps she had not +known when he was angry. + +He was turning away, but she stopped him. "Wait," she said, and he +returned, his cold, attentive eye upon her. There was no contempt, no +indignation in his bearing. If those feelings had shaken him, it must +have been some time ago. If they had been met and vanquished in secret, +that also must have been some time ago. He took up an _Imitation of +Christ_, bound in the peculiar shade of lilac which at that moment +prevailed, and turned it in his hand. + +"You are overwrought," he said, after a moment's pause, "and I +particularly dislike a scene." + +She did not heed him. + +"I listened at the door," she said, in a harsh, unnatural voice. + +"I am perfectly aware of it." + +A sort of horror seemed to have enveloped the familiar room. The very +furniture looked like well-known words arranged suddenly in some new and +dreadful meaning. + +"You never loved me," she said. + +He did not answer, but he looked gravely at her for a moment, and she +was ashamed. + +"Why don't you divorce me if you think me so wicked?" + +"For the sake of the children," he said, with a slight change of voice. + +Teddy, the eldest, had been born in this room. Did either remember that +gray morning six years ago? + +There was a silence that might be felt. + +"Who drew the short lighter?" she whispered, before she knew that she +had spoken. + +"I am not here to answer questions," he replied. "And I have asked none. +Neither, you will observe, have I blamed you. But I desire that you will +never again allude to this subject, and that you will keep in mind that +I do not intend to discuss it with you." + +He laid down the _Imitation_ and moved towards his own room. + +With a sudden movement she flung herself upon her knees before him and +caught his arm. The attitude suggested an amateur. + +"Which drew the short lighter?" she gasped, her small upturned face +white and convulsed. + +"You will know in five months' time," he said. Then he extricated +himself from her trembling clasp and left the room, closing the door +quietly behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one! + --RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was +already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. For a few +seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of morphia, who +feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea of rest, but is +conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter shores of pain, and who +stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of hastening the touch of the +encircling, aching sands on which he is so soon to be cast in agony once +more. + +His mind cleared a little. Rachel's grave face stood out against a dark +background--a background darker surely than that of the summer night. He +remembered with self-contempt the extravagant emotion which she had +aroused in him. + +"Absurd," Hugh said to himself, with the distrust of all sudden springs +of pure emotion which those who have misused them rarely escape. And +then another remembrance, which only a sleeping-draught had kept at bay, +darted upon him like a panther on its prey. + +He had drawn the short lighter. + +He started violently, and then fell back trembling. + +"Oh, my God!" he said, involuntarily. + +He lay still, telling himself that this dreadful nightmare would pass, +would fade in the light of common day. + +His servant came in noiselessly with a cup of coffee and a little sheaf +of letters. + +He pretended to be asleep; but when the man had gone he put out his +shaking hand for the coffee and drank it. + +The mist before his mind gradually lifted. Gradually, too, the horror on +his face whitened to despair, as a twilight meadow whitens beneath the +evening frost. He had drawn the short lighter. Nothing in heaven or +earth could alter that fact. + +He did not stop to wonder how Lord Newhaven had become aware of his own +dishonor, or at the strange weapon with which he had avenged himself. He +went over every detail of his encounter with him in the study. His hand +had been forced. He had been thrust into a vile position. He ought to +have refused to draw. He did not agree to draw. Nevertheless, he had +drawn. And Hugh knew that, if it had to be done again, he should again +have been compelled to draw by the iron will before which his was as +straw. He could not have met the scorn of those terrible half-closed +eyes if he had refused. + +"There was no help for it," said Hugh, half aloud. And yet to die by his +own hand within five months! It was incredible. It was preposterous. + +"I never agreed to it," he said, passionately. + +_Nevertheless, he had drawn_. The remembrance ever returned to lay its +cold hand upon his heart, and with it came the grim conviction that if +Lord Newhaven had drawn the short lighter he would have carried out the +agreement to the letter. Whether it was extravagant, unchristian, +whatever might have been truly said of that unholy compact, Lord +Newhaven would have stood by it. + +"I suppose I must stand by it, too," said Hugh to himself, the cold +sweat breaking out on his forehead. "I suppose I am bound in honor to +stand by it, too." + +He suffered his mind to regard the alternative. + +To wrong a man as deeply as he had wronged Lord Newhaven; to tacitly +accept. That was where his mistake had been. Another man, that +mahogany-faced fellow with the colonial accent, would have refused to +draw, and would have knocked Lord Newhaven down and half killed him, or +would have been knocked down and half killed by him. But to tacitly +accept a means by which the injured man risked his life to avenge his +honor, and then afterwards to shirk the fate which a perfectly even +chance had thrown upon him instead of on his antagonist! It was too +mean, too despicable. Hugh's pale cheek burned. + +"I am bound," he said slowly to himself over and over again. There was +no way of escape. + +Yesterday evening, with some intuition of coming peril, he had said, "I +will get out." The way of retreat had been open behind him. Now, by one +slight movement, he was cut off from it forever. + +"I can't get out," said the starling, the feathers on its breast worn +away with beating against the bars. + +"I can't get out," said Hugh, coming for the first time in contact with +the bars which he was to know so well--the bars of the prison that he +had made with his own hands. + +He looked into the future with blank eyes. He had no future now. He +stared vacantly in front of him like a man who looks through his window +at the wide expanse of meadow and waving wood and distant hill which has +met his eye every morning of his life and finds it--gone. It was +incredible. He turned giddy. His reeling mind, shrinking back from the +abyss, struck against a fixed point, and, clutching it, came violently +to a stand-still. + +_His mother!_ + +His mother was a widow and he was her only son. If he died by his own +hand it would break her heart. Hugh groaned, and thrust the thought from +him. It was too sharp. He could not suffer it. + +His sin, not worse than that of many another man, had found him out. He +had done wrong. He admitted it, but this monstrous judgment on him was +out of all proportion to his offence. And, like some malignant +infectious disease, retribution would fall, not on him alone, but on +those nearest him, on his innocent mother and sister. It was unjust, +unjust, unjust! + +A very bitter look came into his face. Hugh had never so far hated any +one, but now something very like hatred welled up in his heart against +Lady Newhaven. She had lured him to his destruction. She had tempted +him. This was undoubtedly true, though not probably the view which her +guardian angel would take of the matter. + +Among the letters which the servant had brought him he suddenly +recognized that the topmost was in Lady Newhaven's handwriting. Anger +and repulsion seized him. No doubt it was the first of a series. "Why +was he so altered? What had she done to offend him?" etc., etc. He knew +the contents beforehand, or thought he knew them. He got up +deliberately, threw the unopened note into the empty fireplace, and put +a match to it. He watched it burn. + +It was his first overt act of rebellion against her yoke, the first step +along the nearest of the many well-worn paths that a man takes at random +to leave a woman. It did not occur to him that Lady Newhaven might have +written to him about his encounter with her husband. He knew Lord +Newhaven well enough to be absolutely certain that he would mention the +subject to no living creature, least of all to his wife. + +"Neither will I," he said to himself; "and as for her, I will break with +her from this day forward." + +The little pink notes with the dashing, twirly handwriting persisted for +a week or two and then ceased. + + * * * * * + +Hugh was a man of many social engagements. His first impulse, when later +in the day he remembered them, was to throw them all up and leave +London. But Lord Newhaven would hear of his departure, and would smile. +He decided to remain and to go on as if nothing had happened. When the +evening came he dressed with his usual care, verified the hour of his +engagement, and went out to dine with the Loftuses. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + What the _Bandar-log_ think now the jungle will think later. + --Maxim of the _Bandar-log_, RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +It was Sybell Loftus's first season in London since her second marriage +with Mr. Doll Loftus. After a very brief sojourn in that city of +frivolity she had the acumen to discover that London society was +hopelessly worldly and mercenary; that people only met to eat and to +abuse each other; that the law of cutlet for cutlet was universal; that +young men, especially those in the Guards, were garrisoned by a full +complement of devils; that London girls lived only for dress and the +excitement of husband-hunting. In short, to use her own expression, she +"turned London society inside out." + +London bore the process with equanimity, and presently Sybell determined +to raise the art of dinner-giving from the low estate to which she +avowed it had fallen to a higher level. She was young, she was pretty, +she was well-born, she was rich. All the social doors were open to her. +But one discovery is often only the prelude to another. She soon made +the further one that in order to raise the tone of social gatherings it +is absolutely necessary to infuse into them a leaven of "clever people." +Further light on this interesting subject showed her that most of the +really "clever people" did not belong to her set. The discovery which +all who love adulation quickly make--namely, that the truly appreciative +and sympathetic and gifted are for the greater part to be found in a +class below their own--was duly made and registered by Sybell. She +avowed that class differences were nothing to her with the enthusiasm of +all those who since the world began have preferred to be first in the +society which they gather round them. + +Fortunately for Sybell she was not troubled by doubts respecting the +clearness of her own judgment. Eccentricity was in her eyes originality; +a wholesale contradiction of established facts was a new view. She had +not the horrid perception of difference between the real and the +imitation which spoils the lives of many. She was equally delighted with +both, and remained in blissful ignorance of the fact that her "deep" +conversation was felt to be exhaustingly superficial if by chance she +came across the real artist or thinker instead of his counterfeit. + +Consequently to her house came the _raté_ in all his most virulent +developments; the "new woman" with stupendous lopsided opinions on +difficult Old Testament subjects; the "lady authoress" with a mission to +show up the vices of a society which she knew only by hearsay. Hither +came, unwittingly, simple-minded Church dignitaries, who, Sybell hoped, +might influence for his good the young agnostic poet who had written a +sonnet on her muff-chain, a very daring sonnet, which Doll, who did not +care for poetry, had not been shown. Hither, by mistake, thinking it was +an ordinary dinner-party, came Hugh, whom Sybell said she had +discovered, and who was not aware that he was in need of discovery. And +hither also on this particular evening came Rachel West, whom Sybell had +pronounced to be very intelligent a few days before, and who was +serenely unconscious that she was present on her probation, and that if +she did not say something striking she would never be asked again. + +Doll Loftus, Sybell's husband, was standing by Rachel when Hugh came in. +He felt drawn towards her because she was not "clever," as far as her +appearance went. At any rate, she had not the touzled, ill-groomed hair +which he had learned to associate with female genius. + +"This sort of thing is beyond me," he said, mournfully, to Rachel, his +eyes travelling over the assembly gathered round his wife, whose remarks +were calling forth admiring laughter. "I don't understand half they +say, and when I do I sometimes wish I didn't. But I suppose--" +tentatively--"You go in for all this sort of thing?" + +"I?" said Rachel, astonished. "I don't go in for anything. But what sort +of thing do you mean?" + +"There is Scarlett," said Doll, with relief, who hated definitions, and +felt the conversation was on the slippery verge of becoming deep. "Do +you know him? Looks as if he'd seen a ghost, doesn't he?" + +Rachel's interest, never a heavy sleeper, was instantly awakened as she +saw Sybell piloting Hugh towards her. She recognized him--the man she +had seen last night in the hansom and afterwards at the Newhavens. A +glance showed her that his trouble, whatever it might be, had pierced +beyond the surface feelings of anger and impatience and had reached the +quick of his heart. The young man, pallid and heavy-eyed, bore himself +well, and Rachel respected him for his quiet demeanor and a certain +dignity, which, for the moment, obliterated the slight indecision of his +face, and gave his mouth the firmness which it lacked. It seemed to +Rachel as if he had but now stood by a death-bed, and had brought with +him into the crowded room the shadow of an inexorable fate. + +The others only perceived that he had a headache. Hugh did not deny it. +He complained of the great heat to Sybell, but not to Rachel. Something +in her clear eyes told him, as they told many others, that small lies +and petty deceits might be laid aside with impunity in dealing with her. +He felt no surprise at seeing her, no return of the sudden violent +emotion of the night before. He had never spoken to her till this +moment, but yet he felt that her eyes were old friends, tried to the +uttermost and found faithful in some forgotten past. Rachel's eyes had a +certain calm fixity in them that comes not of natural temperament, but +of past conflict, long waged, and barely but irrevocably won. A faint +ray of comfort stole across the desolation of his mind as he looked at +her. He did not notice whether she was handsome or ugly, any more than +we do when we look at the dear familiar faces which were with us in +their childhood and ours, which have grown up beside us under the same +roof, which have rejoiced with us and wept with us, and without which +heaven itself could never be a home. + +In a few minutes he was taking her in to dinner. He had imagined that +she was a woman of few words, but after a faint attempt at conversation +he found that he had relapsed into silence, and that it was she who was +talking. Presently the heavy cloud upon his brain lifted. His strained +face relaxed. She glanced at him, and continued her little monologue. +Her face had brightened. + +He had dreaded this dinner-party, this first essay to preserve his +balance in public with his frightful invisible burden; but he was +getting through it better than he had expected. + +"I have come back to what is called society," Rachel was saying, "after +nearly seven years of an exile something like Nebuchadnezzar's, and +there are two things which I find as difficult as Kipling's 'silly +sailors' found their harps 'which they twanged unhandily.'" + +"Is small talk one of them?" asked Hugh. "It has always been a +difficulty to me." + +"On the contrary," said Rachel. "I plume myself on that. Surely my +present sample is not so much below the average that you need ask me +that." + +"I did not recognize that it _was_ small talk," said Hugh, with a faint +smile. "If it really is, I can only say I shall have brain fever if you +pass on to what _you_ might call conversation." + +It was to him as if a miniature wavelet of a great ocean somewhere in +the distance had crept up to laugh and break at his feet. He did not +recognize that this tiniest runlet which fell back at once was of the +same element as the tidal wave which had swept over him yesternight. + +"But are you aware," said Rachel, dropping her voice a little, "it is +beginning to dawn upon me that this evening's gathering is met together +for exalted conversation, and perhaps we ought to be practising a +little. I feel certain that after dinner you will be 'drawn through the +clefts of confession' by Miss Barker, the woman in the high dinner gown +with orange velvet sleeves. Mrs. Loftus introduced her to me when I +arrived as the 'apostle of humanity.'" + +"Why should you fix on that particular apostle for me?" said Hugh, +looking resentfully at a large-faced woman who was talking in an +"intense" manner to a slightly bewildered Bishop. + +"It is a prophetic instinct, nothing more." + +"I will have a prophetic instinct, too, then," said Hugh, helping +himself at last to the dish which was presented to him, to Rachel's +relief. "I shall give you the--" looking slowly down the table. + +"The Bishop?" + +"Certainly not, after your disposal of me." + +"Well, then, the poet? I am sure he is a poet because his tie is uneven +and his hair is so long. Why do literary men wear their hair long, and +literary women wear it short. I should _like_ the poet." + +"You shall not have him," said Hugh, with decision. "I am hesitating +between the bald young man with the fat hand and the immense ring and +the old professor who is drawing plans on the table-cloth." + +"The apostle told me with bated breath that the young man with the ring +is Mr. Harvey, the author of _Unashamed_." + +Hugh looked at his plate to conceal his disgust. + +There was a pause in the buzz of conversation, and into it fell +straightway the voice of the apostle like a brick through a skylight. + +"The need of the present age is the realization of our brotherhood with +sin and suffering and poverty. West London in satin and diamonds does +not hear her sister East London in rags calling to her to deliver her. +The voice of East London has been drowned in the dance-music of the West +End." + +Sybell gazed with awed admiration at the apostle. + +"What a beautiful thought," she said. + +"Miss Gresley's _Idyll of East London_," said Hugh, "is a voice which, +at any rate, has been fully heard." + +The apostle put up a _pince-nez_ on a bone leg and looked at Hugh. + +"I entirely disapprove of that little book," she said. "It is misleading +and wilfully one-sided." + +"Hester Gresley is a dear friend of mine," said Sybell, "and I must +stand up for her. She is the sister of our clergyman, who is a very +clever man. In fact, I am not sure he isn't the cleverest of the two. +She and I have great talks. We have so much in common. How strange it +seems that she who lives in the depths of the country should have +written a story of the East End!" + +"That is always so," said the author of _Unashamed_, in a sonorous +voice. "The novel has of late been dwarfed to the scope of the young +English girl"--he pronounced it gurl--"who writes from her imagination +and not from her experience. What true art requires of us is a faithful +rendering of a great experience." + +He looked round, as if challenging the world to say that _Unashamed_ was +not a lurid personal reminiscence. + +Sybell was charmed. She felt that none of her previous dinner-parties +had reached such a high level as this one. + +"A faithful rendering of a great experience," she repeated. "How I wish +Hester were here to hear that. I often tell her she ought to see life, +and cultivated society would do so much for her. I found her out a year +ago, and I'm always begging people to read her book, and I simply long +to introduce her to clever people and oblige the world to recognize her +talent." + +"I agree with you, it is not yet fully recognized," said Hugh, in a +level voice; "but if _The Idyll_ received only partial recognition, it +was, at any rate, enthusiastic. And it is not forgotten." + +Sybell felt vaguely uncomfortable, and conceived a faint dislike of Hugh +as an uncongenial person. + +The apostle and the poet began to speak simultaneously, but the female +key was the highest, and prevailed. + +"We all agree in admiring Miss Gresley's delicate piece of workmanship," +said the apostle, both elbows on the table after the manner of her kind, +"but it is a misfortune to the cause of suffering humanity--to _our_ +cause--when the books which pretend to set forth certain phases of its +existence are written by persons entirely ignorant of the life they +describe." + +"How true!" said Sybell. "I have often thought it, but I never could put +it into words as you do. Oh! how I agree with you and Mr. Harvey! As I +often say to Hester, 'How can you describe anything if you don't go +anywhere or see anything? I can't give you my experience. No one can.' I +said that to her only a month ago, when she refused to come up to London +with me." + +Rachel's white face and neck had taken on them the pink transparent +color that generally dwelt only in the curves of her small ears. + +"Why do you think Miss Gresley is ignorant of the life she describes?" +she said, addressing the apostle. + +The author and the apostle both opened their mouths at the same moment, +only to register a second triumph of the female tongue. + +Miss Barker was in her element. The whole table was listening. She +shrugged her orange-velvet shoulders. + +"Those who have cast in their lot with the poor," she said, +sententiously, "would recognize at once the impossibility of Miss +Gresley's characters and situations." + +"To me they seem real," said Rachel. + +"Ah, my dear Miss West, you will excuse me, but a young lady like +yourself, nursed in the lap of luxury, can hardly be expected to look at +life with the same eyes as a poor waif like myself, who has penetrated +to the very core of the city, and who has heard the stifled sigh of a +vast perishing humanity." + +"I lived in the midst of it for six years," said Rachel. "I did not cast +in my lot with the poor, for I was one of them, and earned my bread +among them. Miss Gresley's book may not be palatable in some respects, +the district visitor and the woman missionary are certainly treated with +harshness, but, as far as my experience goes, _The Idyll_ is a true word +from first to last." + +There was in Rachel's voice a restrained force that vaguely stirred all +the occupants of the room. Every one looked at her, and for a moment no +one spoke. She became quite colorless. + +"Very striking. Just what I should have said in her place," said Sybell +to herself. "I will ask her again." + +"I can hear it raining," said Doll's voice from the head of the table to +the company in general. "If it will only go on for a week without +stopping there may be some hope for the crops yet." + +The conversation buzzed up again, and Rachel turned instantly to Hugh, +before Mr. Harvey, leaning forward with his ring, had time to address +her. + +Hugh alone saw what a superhuman effort it had been to her to overcome +her shrinking from mentioning, not her previous poverty, but her +personal experience. She had sacrificed her natural reserve, which he +could see was great; she had even set good taste at defiance to defend +Hester Gresley's book. Hugh had shuddered as he heard her speak. He felt +that he could not have obtruded himself on so mixed an assembly. Yet he +saw that it had cost her more to do so than it would have cost him. + +He began to remember having heard people speak of an iron-master's +daughter, whose father had failed and died, and who, after several years +of dire poverty, had lately inherited a vast fortune from her father's +partner. It had been talked about at the time, a few months ago. This +must be she. + +"You have a great affection for Miss Gresley," he said, in a low voice. + +"I have," said Rachel, her lip still quivering. "But if I disliked her I +hope I should have said the same. Surely it is not necessary to love +the writer in order to defend the book." + +Hugh was silent. He looked at her, and wished that she might always be +on his side. + +"About two courses ago I was going to tell you," said Rachel, smiling, +"of one of my chief difficulties on my return to the civilized world and +'Society.' But now you have had an example of it. I am trying to cure +myself of the trick of becoming interested in conversation. I must learn +to use words as counters, not as coins. I need not disbelieve what I +say, but I must not speak of anything to which I attach value. I +perceive that to do this is an art and a means of defence from invasion. +But I, on the contrary, become interested, as you have just seen. I +forget that I am only playing a game, and I rush into a subject like a +bull into a china-shop, and knock about all the crockery until--as I am +not opposed by my native pitchfork--I suddenly return to my senses, and +discover that I have mistaken a game for real earnest." + +"We were all in earnest five minutes ago," said Hugh; "at least, I was. +I could not bear to hear Miss Gresley patronized by all these failures +and amateurs. But, unless I am very much mistaken, you will find several +pitchforks laid up for you in the drawing-room." + +"I don't mean to smash any more china," said Rachel. + +Another wavelet skimmed in and broke a little further up the sand. A +sense of freshness, of expectation was in the air. The great gathered +ocean was stirring itself in the distance. Hugh had forgotten his +trouble. + +He turned the conversation back to Hester Gresley and her writing. He +spoke of her with sympathy and appreciation, and presently detected a +softness in Rachel's eyes which made him jealous of Hester. + +By the time the evening was over the imperceptible travelling of the +summer sea had reached as far as the tidal wave. + +Hugh left when Rachel did, accompanying her to her carriage. At the +door were the darkness and the rain. At the door with them the horror +and despair of the morning were in wait for him, and laid hold upon him. +Hugh shuddered, and turned instinctively to Rachel. + +She was holding out her hand to him. He took it and held it tightly in +his sudden fear and desolation. + +"When shall I meet you again?" he said, hoarsely. + +A long look passed between them. Hugh's tortured soul, full of +passionate entreaty, leaped to his eyes. Hers, sad and steadfast, met +the appeal in his, and recognized it as a claim. There was no surprise +in her quiet face. + +"I ride early in the Row," she said. "You can join me there if you wish. +Good-night." + +She took her hand with great gentleness out of his and drove away. + +And the darkness shut down again on Hugh's heart. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + Ici bas tous les hommes pleurent + Leurs amitiés et leurs amours. + --BOURGET. + + +Many sarcastic but true words have been said by man, and in no jealous +spirit, concerning woman's friendship for woman. The passing judgment of +the majority of men on such devotion might be summed up in the words, +"Occupy till I come." It does occupy till they do come. And if they +don't come the hastily improvised friendship may hold together for +years, like an unseaworthy boat in a harbor, which looks like a boat but +never goes out to sea. + +But, nevertheless, here and there among its numberless counterfeits a +friendship rises up between two women which sustains the life of both, +which is still young when life is waning, which man's love and +motherhood cannot displace nor death annihilate; a friendship which is +not the solitary affection of an empty heart, nor the deepest affection +of a full one, but which nevertheless lightens the burdens of this world +and lays its pure hand upon the next. + +Such a friendship, very deep, very tender, existed between Rachel West +and Hester Gresley. It dated back from the nursery days, when Hester and +Rachel solemnly eyed each other, and then made acquaintance in the dark +gardens of Portman Square, into which Hester introduced a fortified +castle with a captive princess in it, and a rescuing prince and a +dragon, and several other ingredients of romance to the awed amazement +of Rachel--stolid, solid, silent Rachel--who loved all two and four +legged creatures, but who never made them talk to each other as Hester +did. And Hester, in blue serge, told Rachel, in crimson velvet, as they +walked hand in hand in front of their nursery-maids, what the London +sparrows said to each other in the gutters, and how they considered the +gravel path in the square was a deep river suitable to bathe in. And +when the spring was coming, and the prince had rescued the princess so +often from the dungeon in the laurel-bushes that Hester was tired of it, +she told Rachel how the elms were always sighing because they were shut +up in town, and how they went out every night with their roots into the +green country to see their friends, and came back, oh! so early in the +morning, before any one was awake to miss them. And Rachel's heart +yearned after Hester, and she gave her her red horse and the tin duck +and magnet, and Hester made stories about them all. + +At last the day came when Rachel's mother, who had long viewed the +intimacy with complacency, presented her compliments, in a note-sheet +with two immense gilt crests on it, to Hester's aunt, and requested that +her little niece might be allowed to come to tea with her little +daughter. And Lady Susan Gresley, who had never met the rich +iron-master's wife in this world, and would probably be equally +exclusive in the next, was about to refuse, when Hester, who up to that +moment had apparently taken no interest in the matter, suddenly cast +herself on the floor in a paroxysm of despair and beat her head against +the carpet. The tearful entreaties of her aunt gradually elicited the +explanation, riddled by sobs, that Hester could never take an interest +in life again, could never raise herself even to a sitting position, nor +dry her eyes on her aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go +to tea with Rachel and see her dormouse. + +Lady Susan, much upset herself, and convinced that these outbursts were +prejudicial to Hester's health, gave way at once, and a few days later +Hester, pale, shy, in a white muffler, escorted by mademoiselle, went to +tea in the magnificent house on the other side of the square, and saw +Rachel's round head without a feathered hat on it, and both children +were consumed by shyness until the two mademoiselles withdrew into +another room, and Rachel showed Hester the dormouse which she had found +in the woods in the country, and which ate out of her hand. And Hester +made a little poem on it, beginning, + + "There was a mouse in Portman Square"; + +and so, with many breaks, the friendship attained a surer footing, and +the intimacy grew with their growth, in spite of the fact that Lady +Susan had felt unable (notwithstanding the marked advances of Mrs. West, +possibly because of them) to enlarge her visiting-list, in spite of many +other difficulties which were only in the end surmounted by the +simplicity of character which Rachel had not inherited from her parents. + +And then, after both girls had danced through one London season in +different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, and +then--by accident--her father, leaving behind him an avalanche of +unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast fortune was +engulfed. + +Hard years followed for Rachel. She ate the bread of carefulness in the +houses of poor relations not of high degree, with whom her parents had +quarrelled when they had made their money and began to entertain social +ambitions. She learned what it was to be the person of least importance +in families of no importance. She essayed to teach, and failed. She had +no real education. She made desperate struggles for independence, and +learned how others failed besides herself. She left her relations and +their bitter bread and came to London, and struggled with those who +struggled, and saw how Temptation spreads her net for bleeding feet. +Because she loved Hester she accepted from her half her slender +pin-money. Hester had said, "If I were poor, Rachel, how would you bear +it if I would not let you help me?" And Rachel had wept slow, difficult +tears, and had given Hester the comfort of helping her. The greater +generosity was with Rachel, and Hester knew it. + +And as Rachel's fortunes sank, Hester's rose. Lady Susan Gresley had one +talent, and she did not lay it up in a napkin. She had the art of +attracting people to her house, that house to which Mrs. West had never +forced an entrance. Hester was thrown from the first into a society +which her clergyman brother, who had never seen it, pronounced to be +frivolous, worldly, profane, but which no one has called dull. There +were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to +place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she +attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to "cleverness" in a +woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to steel himself against +wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. She refused several offers, +one so brilliant that no woman ever believed that it was really made. + +Lady Susan saw that her niece, without a fortune, with little beauty +save that of high breeding, with weak health, was becoming a personage. +"What will she become?" people said. And in the meanwhile Hester did +nothing beyond dressing extremely well. And everything she saw and every +person she met added fuel to an unlit fire in her soul. + +At last Rachel was able to earn a meagre living by type-writing, and for +four years, happy by contrast with those when despair and failure had +confronted her, she lived by the work of her hands among those poor as +herself. Gradually she had lost sight of all her acquaintances. She had +been out of the school-room for too short a time to make friends. And, +alas! in the set in which she had been launched poverty was a crime; no, +perhaps not quite that, but as much a bar to intercourse as in another +class a want of the letter _h_ is found to be. + +It was while Rachel was still struggling for a livelihood that the event +happened which changed the bias of her character, as a geranium +transplanted from the garden changes its attitude in a cottage window. + +On one of the early days of her despair she met on the dreary stairs of +the great rabbit-warren in which she had a room, a man with whom she +had been acquainted in the short year of her social life before the +collapse of her fortunes. He had paid her considerable attention, and +she had thought once or twice, with momentary bitterness, that, like the +rest, he had not cared to find out what had become of her. She greeted +him with shy but evident pleasure. She took for granted he had come to +see her, and he allowed her to remain under that delusion. In reality he +had been hunting up an old model whom he wanted for his next picture, +and who had silently left Museum Buildings some months before without +leaving his address. He had genuinely admired her, though he had +forgotten her, and he was unaffectedly delighted to see her again. + +That one chance meeting was the first of many. Flowers came to Rachel's +little room, and romance came with them. Rachel's proud, tender heart +struggled, and then gave way before this radiant first love blossoming +in the midst of her loneliness. At last, on a March afternoon, when the +low sun caught the daffodils he had brought her, he told her he loved +her. + +Days followed, exquisite days, which have none like them in later life +whatever later life may bring. That year the spring came early, and they +went often together into the country. And that year when all the world +was white with blossom the snow came and laid upon earth's bridal veil a +white shroud. Every cup of May blossom, every petal of hawthorn, bent +beneath its burden of snow. And so it was in the full spring-tide of +Rachel's heart. The snow came down upon it. She discovered at last that +though he loved her he did not wish to marry her; that even from the +time of that first meeting he had never intended to marry her. That +discovery was a shroud. She wrapped her dead love in it, and would fain +have buried it out of her sight. + +But only after a year of conflict was she suffered to bury it--after a +year during which the ghost of her dead ever came back, and came back to +importune her vainly with its love. Rachel's poor neighbors grew +accustomed to see the tall, handsome, waiting figure which always +returned and returned, but which at last, after one dreadful day, was +seen no more in Museum Buildings. Rachel had laid the ghost at last. But +the conflict remained graven in her face. + + * * * * * + +On a certain cold winter morning Hester darted across the wet pavement +from the brougham to the untidy entrance of Museum Buildings where +Rachel still lived. It was a miserable day. The streets and bare trees +looked as if they had been drawn in in ink, and the whole carelessly +blotted before it was dry. All the outlines were confused, blurred. The +cold penetrated to the very bones of the shivering city. + +Rachel had just come in, wet and tired, bringing with her a roll of +manuscript to be transcribed. A woman waiting for her on the endless +stone stairs had cursed her for taking the bread out of her mouth. + +"He always employed me till you came," she shrieked, shaking her fist at +her, "and now he gives it all to you because you're younger and +better-looking." + +She gave the woman as much as she dared spare, the calculation did not +take long, and went on climbing the stairs. + +Something in the poor creature's words, something vague but repulsive in +her remembrance of the man who paid her for the work by which she could +barely live, fell like lead into Rachel's heart. She looked out dumbly +over the wilderness of roofs. The suffering of the world was eating into +her soul; the suffering of this vast travailing East London, where +people trod each other down to live. + +"If any one had told me," she said to herself, "when I was rich, that I +lived on the flesh and blood of my fellow-creatures, that my virtue and +ease and pleasure were bought by their degradation and toil and pain, I +should not have believed it, and I should have been angry. If I had +been told that the clothes I wore, the food I ate, the pen I wrote with, +the ink I used, the paper I wrote on--all these, and everything I +touched, from my soap to my match-box, especially my match-box, was the +result of sweated labor, I should not have believed it, I should have +laughed. But yet it is so. If I had not been rich once myself I should +think as all these people do, that the rich are devils incarnate to let +such things go on. They have the power to help us. We have none to help +ourselves. But they never use it. The rich grind the poor for their +luxuries with their eyes shut, and we grind each other for our daily +bread with our eyes open. I have got that woman's work. I have struggled +hard enough to get it, but, though I did not realize it, I might have +known that I had only got on to the raft by pushing some one else off +it." + +Rachel looked out across the miles of roofs which lay below her garret +window. The sound was in her ears of that great whirlpool wherein youth +and beauty and innocence go down quick day by day. The wilderness of +leaden roofs turned suddenly before her eyes into a sullen furrowed sea +of shame and crime which, awaiting no future day of judgment, daily gave +up its awful dead. + +Presently Hester came in, panting a little after the long ascent of worn +stairs, and dragging with her a large parcel. It was a fur-lined cloak. +Hester spread it mutely before her friend, and looked beseechingly at +her. Then she kissed her, and the two girls clung together for a moment +in silence. + +"Dearest," said Rachel, "don't give me new things. It isn't that--you +know I did take it when I was in need. But, oh, Hester, I know you can't +afford it. I should not mind if you were rich, at least, I would try +not, but--if you would only give me some of your old clothes instead. I +should like them all the better because you had worn them." And Rachel +kissed the lapel of Hester's coat. + +"I can't," whispered Hester into Rachel's hair. "The best is only just +good enough." + +"Wouldn't it be kinder to me?" + +Hester trembled, and then burst into tears. + +"I will wear it, I will wear it," said Rachel, hurriedly. "Look, Hester! +I have got it on. How deliciously warm! and--do look!--it has two little +pockets in the fur lining." + +But Hester wept passionately, and Rachel sat down by her on the floor in +the new cloak till the paroxysm was over. + +How does a subtle affinity find a foothold between natures which present +an obvious, a violent contrast to each other? Why do the obvious and the +subtle forget their life-long feud at intervals and suddenly appear for +a moment in each other's society? + +Rachel was physically strong. Hester was weak. The one was calm, +patient, practical, equable, the other imaginative, unbalanced, +excitable. + +Life had not spoiled Rachel. Lady Susan Gresley had done her best to +spoil Hester. The one had lived the unprotected life, and showed it in +her bearing. The other had lived the sheltered life, and bore its mark +upon her pure forehead and youthful face. + +"I cannot bear it," said Hester at last. "I think and think, and I can't +think of anything. I would give my life for you, and you will hardly let +me give you £3 10_s._ 6_d._ That is all it cost. It is only frieze, that +common red frieze, and the lining is only rabbit." A last tear fell at +the word rabbit. "I wanted to get you a velvet one, just the same as my +new one, lined with chinchilla, but I knew it would only make you +miserable. I wish," looking vindictively at the cloak--"I wish rabbits +had never been born." + +Rachel laughed. Hester was evidently recovering. + +"Mr. Scarlett was saying last night that no one can help any one," +continued Hester, turning her white, exhausted face to her friend. "He +said that we are always so placed that we can only look on. And I told +him that could not be true, but, oh, in my heart, Rachel, I have felt it +was true all these long, long five years since you have lived here." + +Rachel came and stood beside her at the little window. There was just +room for them between the type-writer and the bed. + +Far below, Hester's brougham was pacing up and down. + +"Then are love and sympathy nothing?" she said. "Those are the real +gifts. If I were rich to-morrow I should look to you just as I do now +for the things which money can't buy. And those are the +things"--Rachel's voice shook--"which you have always given me, and +which I can't do without. You feel my poverty more than I do myself. It +crushed me at first when I could not support myself. Now that I can--and +in everything except money I am very rich--I am comparatively happy." + +There was a long silence. + +"Perhaps," said Rachel at last, with difficulty, "if I had remained an +heiress Mr. Tristram might have married me. I feel nearly sure he would +have married me. In that case I lost my money only just in time to +prevent a much greater misfortune, and I am glad I am as I am." + +Rachel remembered that conversation often in after-years with a sense of +thankfulness that for once she, who was so reticent, had let Hester see +how dear she was to her. + +The two girls stood long together cheek against cheek. + +And as Hester leaned against Rachel the yearning of her soul towards her +suddenly lit up something which had long lain colossal, but +inapprehended, in the depths of her mind. Her paroxysm of despair at her +own powerlessness was followed by a lightning flash of self-revelation. +She saw, as in a dream, terrible, beautiful, inaccessible, but distinct, +where her power lay, of which restless bewildering hints had so often +mocked her. She had but to touch the houses and they would fall down. +She held her hands tightly together lest she should do it. The strength +as of an infinite ocean swept in beneath her weakness, and bore it upon +its surface like a leaf. + +"You must go home," said Rachel gently, remembering Lady Susan's +punctual habits. + +Hester kissed her absently and went out into the new world which had +been pressing upon her all her life, the gate of which Love had opened +for her. For Love has many keys besides that of her own dwelling. Some +who know her slightly affirm that she can only open her own cheap patent +padlock with a secret word on it that everybody knows. But some who know +her better hold that hers is the master-key which will one day turn all +the locks in all the world. + + * * * * * + +A year later Hester's first book, _An Idyll of East London_, was reaping +its harvest of astonished indignation and admiration, and her +acquaintances--not her friends--were still wondering how she came to +know so much of a life of which they decided she could know nothing, +when suddenly Lady Susan Gresley died, and Hester went to live in the +country with her clergyman brother. + +A few months later still, and on a mild April day, when the poor London +trees had black buds on them, Rachel brushed and folded away in the +little painted chest of drawers her few threadbare clothes, and put the +boots--which the cobbler, whose wife she had nursed, had patched for +her--under the shelf which held her few cups and plates and the faithful +tin kettle, which had always been a cheerful boiler. And she washed her +seven coarse handkerchiefs, and put them in the washhandstand drawer. +And then she raked out the fire and cleaned the grate, and set the room +in order. It was quickly done. She took up her hat, which lay beside a +bundle on the bed. Her hands trembled as she put it on. She looked +wistfully round her, and her face worked. The little room which had +looked so alien when she came to it six years ago had become a home. She +went to the window and kissed the pane through which she had learned to +see so much. Then she seized up the bundle and went quickly out, locking +the door behind her, and taking the key with her. + +"I am going away for a time, but I shall come back," she said to the +cobbler's wife on the same landing. + +"No one comes back as once goes," said the woman, without raising her +eyes from the cheap blouse which she was finishing, which kept so well +the grim secret of how it came into being that no one was afraid of +buying it. + +"I am keeping on the room." + +The woman smiled incredulously, giving one sharp glance at the bundle. +She had seen many flittings. She should buy the kettle when Rachel's +"sticks" were sold by the landlord in default of the rent. + +"Well, you was a good neighbor," she said. "There's a-many as 'ull miss +you. Good-bye, and good luck to ye. I sha'n't say as you've left." + +"I shall come back," said Rachel, hoarsely, and she slipped down-stairs +like a thief. She felt like a thief. For she was rich. The man who had +led her father into the speculations which had ruined him had died +childless, and had bequeathed to her a colossal fortune. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize + the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of + sentiment?--EMERSON. + + +A fortnight had passed since the drawing of lots, and Lady Newhaven +remained in ignorance as to which of the two men had received his +death-warrant. Few have found suspense easy to bear; but for the +self-centred an intolerable element is added to it, which unselfish +natures escape. From her early youth Lady Newhaven had been in the habit +of viewing life in picturesque _tableaux vivants_ of which she +invariably formed the central figure. At her confirmation the Bishop, +the white-robed clergy, and the other candidates had served but as a +nebulous background against which her own white-clad, kneeling figure, +bowed in reverent devotion, stood out in high relief. + +When she married Lord Newhaven he took so slight a part, though a +necessary one, in the wedding groups that their completeness had never +been marred by misgivings as to his exact position in them. When, six +years later, after one or two mild flirtations which only served as a +stimulus to her love of dress--when at last she met, as she would have +expressed it, "the one love of her life," her first fluctuations and +final deviation from the path of honor were the result of new +arrangements round the same centre. + +The first groups in which Hugh took part had been prodigies of virtue. +The young mother with the Madonna face--Lady Newhaven firmly believed +that her face, with the crimped fringe drawn down to the eyebrows, +resembled that of a Madonna--with her children round her, Lord Newhaven +as usual somewhat out of focus in the background; and Hugh, young, +handsome, devoted, heartbroken, and ennobled for life by the +contemplation of such impregnable virtue. + +"You accuse me of coldness," she had imagined herself saying in a later +scene, when the children and the husband would have made too much of a +crowd, and were consequently omitted. "I wish to Heaven I were as cold +as I appear." + +And she had really said it later on. Hugh never did accuse her of +coldness, but that was a detail. Those words, conned over many times, +had nevertheless actually proceeded out of her mouth. Few of us have the +power of saying anything we intend to say. But Lady Newhaven had that +power, and enjoyed also in consequence a profound belief in her +prophetic instincts; while others, Hugh not excepted, detected a +premeditated tone in her conversation, and a sense of incongruity +between her remarks and the occasion which called them forth. + +From an early date in their married life Lord Newhaven had been in the +habit of discounting these remarks by making them in rapid rotation +himself before proceeding to the matter in hand. + +"Having noticed that a mother--I mean a young mother--is never really +happy in the absence of her children, and that their affection makes up +for the carelessness of their father, may I ask, Violet, what day you +wish to return to Westhope?" he said one morning at breakfast. + +"Any day," she replied. "I am as miserable in one place as in another." + +"We will say Friday week, then," returned Lord Newhaven, ignoring, as he +invariably did, any allusions to their relative position, and because he +ignored them she made many. "The country," he added, hurriedly, "will be +very refreshing after the glare and dust and empty worldly society of +London." + +She looked at him in anger. She did not understand the reason, but she +had long vaguely felt that all conversation seemed to dry up in his +presence. He mopped it all into his own sponge, so to speak, and left +every subject exhausted. + +She rose in silent dignity, and went to her boudoir and lay down there. +The heat was very great, and another fire was burning within her, +withering her round cheek, and making her small, plump hand look shrunk +and thin. A fortnight had passed, and she had not heard from Hugh. She +had written to him many times, at first only imploring him to meet her, +but afterwards telling him she knew what had happened, and entreating +him to put her out of suspense, to send her one line that his life was +not endangered. She had received no answer to any of her letters. She +came to the conclusion that they had been intercepted by Lord Newhaven, +and that no doubt the same fate had befallen Hugh's letters to herself. +For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed that +Hugh's letters had become less frequent and shorter in length. She +understood the reason now. Half of them had been intercepted. How that +fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may not be +immediately apparent to the prosaic mind, but it was obvious to Lady +Newhaven. That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not force the narrow +entrance to her mind. Such a possibility had never been even considered +in the pictures of the future with which her imagination busied itself. +But what would the future be? The road along which she was walking +forked before her eyes, and her usual perspicacity was at fault. She +knew not in which of those two diverging paths the future would lie. + +Would she in eighteen months' time--she should certainly refuse to marry +within the year--be standing at the altar in a "confection" of lilac and +white with Hugh; or would she be a miserable wife, moving ghostlike +about her house, in colored raiment, while a distant grave was always +white with flowers sent by a nameless friend of the dead? "How some one +must have loved him!" she imagined Hugh's aged mother saying. And once, +as that bereaved mother came in the dusk to weep beside the grave, did +she not see a shadowy figure start up, black-robed, from the +flower-laden sod, and, hastily drawing a thick veil over a beautiful, +despairing face, glide away among the trees? At this point Lady Newhaven +always began to cry. It was too heart-rending. And her mind in violent +recoil was caught once more, and broken on the same wheel. "Which? +_Which_?" + +A servant entered. + +"Would her ladyship see Miss West for a few minutes?" + +"Yes," said Lady Newhaven, glad to be delivered from herself, if only by +the presence of an acquaintance. + +"It is very charitable of you to see me," said Rachel. "Personally, I +think morning calls ought to be a penal offence. But I came at the +entreaty of a former servant of yours. I feel sure you will let me carry +some message of forgiveness to her, as she is dying. Her name is Morgan. +Do you remember her?" + +"I once had a maid called Morgan," said Lady Newhaven. "She was drunken, +and I had to part with her in the end; but I kept her as long as I could +in spite of it. She had a genius for hair-dressing." + +"She took your diamond heart pendant," continued Rachel. "She was never +found out. She can't return it, for, of course, she sold it and spent +the money. But now at last she feels she did wrong, and she says she +will die easier for your forgiveness." + +"Oh! I forgive her," said Lady Newhaven, indifferently. "I often +wondered how I lost it. I never cared about it." She glanced at Rachel, +and added tremulously, "My husband gave it me." + +A sudden impulse was urging her to confide in this grave, gentle-eyed +woman. The temptation was all the stronger because Rachel, who had only +lately appeared in society, was not connected with any portion of her +previous life. She was as much a chance acquaintance as a +fellow-passenger in a railway carriage. + +Rachel rose and held out her hand. + +"Don't go," whispered Lady Newhaven, taking her outstretched hand and +holding it. + +"I think if I stay," said Rachel, "that you may say things you will +regret later on when you are feeling stronger. You are evidently tired +out now. Everything looks exaggerated when we are exhausted, as I see +you are." + +"I am worn out with misery," said Lady Newhaven. "I have not slept for a +fortnight. I feel I must tell some one." And she burst into violent +weeping. + +Rachel sat down again, and waited patiently for the hysterical weeping +to cease. Those in whom others confide early learn that their own +engagements, their own pleasures and troubles, are liable to be set +aside at any moment. Rachel was a punctual, exact person, but she missed +many trains. Those who sought her seldom realized that her day was as +full as, possibly fuller, than their own. Perhaps it was only a very +small pleasure to which she had been on her way on this particular +morning, and for which she had put on that ethereal gray gown for the +first time. At any rate, she relinquished it without a second thought. + +Presently Lady Newhaven dried her eyes and turned impulsively towards +her. + +The strata of impulsiveness and conventional feeling were always so +mixed up after one of these emotional upheavals that it was difficult to +guess which would come uppermost. Sometimes fragments of both appeared +on the surface together. + +"I loved you from the first moment I saw you," she said. "I don't take +fancies to people, you know. I am not that kind of person. I am very +difficult to please, and I never speak of what concerns myself. I am +_most_ reserved. I dare say you have noticed how reserved I am. I live +in my shell. But directly I saw you I felt I could talk to you. I said +to myself, 'I will make a friend of that girl.' Although I always feel a +married woman is so differently placed from a girl. A girl only thinks +of herself. I am not saying this the least unkindly, but, of course, it +is so. Now a married woman has to consider her husband and family in all +she says and does. How will it affect _them?_ That is what I so often +say to myself, and then my lips are sealed. But, of course, being +unmarried, you would not understand that feeling." + +Rachel did not answer. She was inured to this time-honored +conversational opening. + +"And the temptations of married life," continued Lady Newhaven--"a girl +cannot enter into them." + +"Then do not tell me about them," said Rachel, smiling, wondering if she +might still escape. But Lady Newhaven had no intention of letting her +go. She only wished to indicate to her her true position. And gradually, +not without renewed outbursts of tears, not without traversing many +layers of prepared conventional feelings, in which a few thin streaks of +genuine emotion wore embedded, she told her story--the story of a young, +high-minded, and neglected wife, and of a husband callous, indifferent, +a scorner of religion, unsoftened even by the advent of the +children--"such sweet children, such little darlings"--and the gradual +estrangement. Then came the persistent siege to the lonely heart of one +not pretty, perhaps, but fatally attractive to men; the lonely heart's +unparalleled influence for good over the besieger. + +"He would do anything," said Lady Newhaven, looking earnestly at Rachel. +"My influence over him is simply boundless. If I said, as I sometimes +did at balls, how sorry I was to see some plain girl standing out, he +would go and dance with her. I have seen him do it." + +"I suppose he did it to please you." + +"That was just it, simply to please me." + +Rachel was not so astonished as Lady Newhaven expected. She certainly +was rather wooden, the latter reflected. The story went on. It became +difficult to tell, and, according to the teller, more and more liable to +misconstruction. Rachel's heart ached as bit by bit the inevitable +development was finally reached in floods of tears. + +"And you remember that night you were at an evening party here," sobbed +Lady Newhaven, casting away all her mental notes and speaking extempore. +"It is just a fortnight ago, and I have not slept since, and _he_ was +here, looking so miserable"--(Rachel started slightly)--"he sometimes +did, if he thought I was hard upon him. And afterwards, when every one +had gone, Edward took him to his study and told him he had found us out, +and they drew lots which should kill himself within five months--and I +listened at the door." + +Lady Newhaven's voice rose half strangled, hardly human, in a shrill +grotesque whimper above the sobs which were shaking her. There was no +affectation about her now. + +Rachel's heart went out to her the moment she was natural. She knelt +down and put her strong arms round her. The poor thing clung to her, +and, leaning her elaborate head against her, wept tears of real anguish +upon her breast. + +"And which drew the short lighter?" said Rachel at last. + +"I don't know," almost shrieked Lady Newhaven. "It is that which is +killing me. Sometimes I think it is Edward, and sometimes I think it is +Hugh." + +At the name of Hugh, Rachel winced. Lady Newhaven had mentioned no name +in the earlier stages of her story while she had some vestige of +self-command; but now at last the Christian name slipped out unawares. + +Rachel strove to speak calmly. She told herself there were many Hughs in +the world. + +"Is Mr. Hugh Scarlett the man you mean?" she asked. If she had died for +it, she must have asked that question. + +"Yes," said Lady Newhaven. + +A shadow fell on Rachel's face, as on the face of one who suddenly +discovers, not for the first time, an old enemy advancing upon him under +the flag of a new ally. + +"I shall always love him," gasped Lady Newhaven, recovering herself +sufficiently to recall a phrase which she had made up the night before. +"I look upon it as a spiritual marriage." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + A square-set man and honest. + --TENNYSON. + + +"Dick," said Lord Newhaven, laying hold of that gentleman as he was +leaving Tattersall's, "what mischief have you been up to for the last +ten days?" + +"I lay low till I got my clothes," said Dick, "and then I went to the +Duke of ----. I've just been looking at a hack for him. He says he does +not want one that takes a lot of sitting on. I met him the first night I +landed. In fact, I stepped out of the train on to his royal toe +travelling incog. I was just going to advise him to draw in his feelers +a hit and give the Colonies a chance, when he turned round and I saw who +it was. I knew him when I was A.D.C. at Melbourne before I took to the +drink. He said he thought he'd know my foot anywhere, and asked me down +for ---- races." + +"And you enjoyed it?" + +"Rather. I did not know what to call the family at first, so I asked him +if he had any preference and what was the right thing, and he told me +how I must hop up whenever he came in, and all that sort of child's +play. There was a large party and some uncommonly pretty women. And I +won a tenner off his Royal Highness, and here I am." + +"And what are you going to do now?" + +"Go down to the city and see what Darneil's cellars are like before I +store my wine in them. It won't take long. Er!--I say, Cack--Newhaven?" + +"Well?" + +"Ought I to--how about my calling on Miss--? I never caught her name." + +"Miss West, the heiress?" + +"Yes. Little attention on my part." + +"Did she ask you to call?" + +"No, but I think it was an oversight. I expect she would like it." + +"Well, then, go and be--snubbed." + +"I don't want snubbing. A little thing like me wants encouragement." + +"A good many other people are on the lookout for encouragement in that +quarter." + +"That settles it," said Dick; "I'll go at once. I've got to call on Lady +Susan Gresley, and I'll take Miss--" + +"West. West. West." + +"Miss West on the way." + +"My dear fellow, Miss West does not live on the way to Woking. Lady +Susan Gresley died six months ago." + +"Great Scot! I never heard of it. And what has become of Hester? She is +a kind of cousin of mine." + +"Miss Gresley has gone to live in the country a few miles from us, with +her clergyman brother." + +"James Gresley. I remember him. He's a bad egg." + +"Now, Dick, are you in earnest, or are you talking nonsense about Miss +West?" + +"I'm in earnest." He looked it. + +"Then, for heaven's sake, don't put your foot in it by calling. My wife +has taken a violent fancy to Miss West. I don't think it is returned, +but that is a detail. If you want to give her a chance, leave it to me." + +"I know what that means. You married men are mere sieves. You'll run +straight home with your tongue out and tell Lady Newhaven that I want to +marry Miss--I can't clinch her name--and then she'll tell her when they +are combing their back hair. And then if I find, later on, I don't like +her and step off the grass, I shall have behaved like a perfect brute, +and all that sort of thing. A man I knew out in Melbourne told me that +by the time he'd taken a little notice of a likely girl, he'd gone too +far to go back, and he had to marry her." + +"You need not be so coy. I don't intend to mention the subject to my +wife. Besides, I don't suppose Miss West will look at you. You're a +wretched match for her. With her money she might marry a brewery or a +peerage." + +"I'll put myself in focus anyhow," said Dick. "Hang it all! if you could +get a woman to marry you, there is hope for everybody. I don't expect it +will be as easy as falling off a log. But if she is what I take her to +be I shall go for all I'm worth." + +Some one else was going for all he was worth. Lord Newhaven rode early, +and he had frequently seen Rachel and Hugh riding together at foot's +pace. Possibly his offer to help Dick was partly prompted by an +unconscious desire to put a spoke in Hugh's wheel. + +Dick, whose worst enemy could not accuse him of diffidence, proved a +solid spoke but for a few days only. Rachel suddenly broke all her +engagements and left London. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + "Pour vivre tranquille il faut vivre loin des gens d'église." + + +There is a little stream which flows through Middleshire which seems to +reflect the spirit of that quiet county, so slow is its course, so +narrow is its width. Even the roads don't take the trouble to bridge it. +They merely hump themselves slightly when they feel it tickling +underneath them, and go on, vouchsafing no further notice of its +existence. Yet the Drone is a local celebrity in Middleshire, and, like +most local celebrities, is unknown elsewhere. The squire's sons have +lost immense trout in the Drone as it saunters through their lands, and +most of them have duly earned thereby the distinction (in Middleshire) +of being the best trout-rod in England. Middleshire bristles with the +"best shots in England" and the "best preachers in England" and the +cleverest men in England. The apathetic mother-country knows, according +to Middleshire, "but little of her greatest men." At present she +associates her loyal county with a breed of small black pigs. + +Through this favored locality the Drone winds, and turns and turns +again, as if loath to leave the rich, low meadow-lands and clustering +villages upon its way. After skirting the little town of Westhope and +the gardens of Westhope Abbey, the Drone lays itself out in comfortable +curves and twists innumerable through the length and breadth of the +green country till it reaches Warpington, whose church is so near the +stream that in time of flood the water hitches all kinds of things it +has no further use for among the grave-stones of the little church-yard. +On one occasion, after repeated prayers for rain, it even overflowed +the lower part of the vicar's garden, and vindictively carried away his +bee-hives. But that was before he built the little wall at the bottom of +the garden. + +Slightly raised above the church, on ground held together by old elms, +the white vicarage of Warpington stands, blinking ever through its trees +at the church like a fond wife at her husband. Indeed, so like had she +become to him that she had even developed a tiny bell-tower near the +kitchen chimney, with a single bell in it, feebly rung by a female +servant on saints' days and G.F.S. gatherings. + +About eight o'clock on this particular morning in July the Drone could +hear, if it wanted to hear, which apparently no one else did, the high, +unmodulated voice in which Mr. Gresley was reading the morning service +to Mrs. Gresley and to a young thrush, which was hurling its person, +like an inexperienced bicyclist, now against Lazarus and his +grave-clothes, now against the legs of John the Baptist, with one foot +on a river's edge and the other firmly planted in a distant desert, and +against all the other Scripture characters in turn which adorned the +windows. + +The service ended at last, and, after releasing his unwilling +congregation by catching and carrying it, beak agape, into the open air, +Mr. Gresley and his wife walked through the church-yard--with its one +melancholy Scotch fir, embarrassed by its trouser of ivy--to the little +gate which led into their garden. + +They were a pleasing couple, seen at a little distance. He, at least, +evidently belonged to a social status rather above that of the average +clergyman, though his wife may not have done so. Mr. Gresley, with his +long, thin nose and his short upper lip and tall, well-set-up figure, +bore on his whole personality the stamp of that for which it is +difficult to find the right name, so unmeaning has the right name become +by dint of putting it to low uses--the maltreated, the travestied name +of "gentleman." + +None of those moral qualities, priggish or otherwise, are assumed for +Mr. Gresley which, we are told, distinguish the true, the perfect +gentleman, and some of which, thank Heaven! the "gentleman born" +frequently lacks. Whether he had them or not was a matter of opinion, +but he had that which some who have it not strenuously affirm to be of +no value--the right outside. + +To any one who looked beyond the first impression of good-breeding and a +well-cut coat, a second closer glance was discouraging. Mr. Gresley's +suspicious eye and thin, compressed lips hinted that both fanatic and +saint were fighting for predominance in the kingdom of that pinched +brain, the narrowness of which the sloping forehead betokened with such +cruel plainness. He looked as if he would fling himself as hard against +a truth without perceiving it as a hunted hare against a stone-wall. He +was unmistakably of those who only see side issues. + +Mrs. Gresley took her husband's arm as he closed the gate. She was still +young and still pretty, in spite of the arduous duties of a clergyman's +wife, and the depressing fact that she seemed always wearing out old +finery. Perhaps her devotion to her husband had served to prolong her +youth, for as the ivy is to the oak, and as the moon is to the sun, and +as the river is to the sea, so was Mrs. Gresley to Mr. Gresley. + +The fortunate couple were advancing through the garden, looking fondly +at their own vicarage, with their own sponges hanging out of their upper +windows, and their offspring waving to them from a third, when a small, +slight figure appeared on the terrace. + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, with decision, "it is your duty to speak to +Hester about attending early service. If she can go out in the garden +she can come to church." + +"I have spoken to her once," said Mr. Gresley, frowning, "and though I +put it before her very plainly she showed great obstinacy. Fond as I am +of Hester, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that she has an arrogant +and callous nature. But we must remember, my love, that Aunt Susan was +most lax in all her views, and we must make allowance for Hester, who +lived with her till last year. It is only natural that Hester, bred up +from childhood in that worldly circle--dinner-parties all through Lent, +and Sunday luncheons--should have fallen through want of solid church +teaching into freethinking and ideas of her own upon religion." + +Mr. Gresley's voice was of that peculiar metallic note which carries +farther than the owner is aware. It rose, if contradicted, into a sort +of continuous trumpet-blast which drowned all other lesser voices. +Hester's little garret was two stories above Mr. Gresley's study on the +ground floor, but, nevertheless, she often heard confused, anxious +parochial buzzings overwhelmed by that sustained high note which knew no +cessation until objection or opposition ceased. As she came towards +them, she heard with perfect distinctness what he was saying, but it did +not trouble her. Hester was gifted with imagination, and imagination +does not find it difficult to read by the shorthand of the expressions +and habitual opinions and repressions of others what they occasionally +say at full length, and to which they fondly believe they are giving +utterance for the first time. Mr. Gresley had said all this many times +already by his manner, and it had by its vain repetitions lost its +novelty. Mr. Gresley was fortunately not aware of this, for +unimaginative persons believe themselves to be sealed books, as +hermetically sealed as the characters of others are to themselves. + +Hester was very like her brother. She had the same nose, slightly too +long for her small face, the same short upper lip and light hair, only +her brother's was straight and hers was crimped, as wet sand is crimped +by a placid outgoing sea. That she had an equally strong will was +obvious. But there the likeness ended. Hester's figure was slight, and +she stooped a little. Hester's eyes were very gentle, very appealing +under their long, curled lashes. They were sad, too, as Mr. Gresley's +never were, gay as his never were. An infinite patience looked out of +them sometimes, that patience of enthusiasm which will cast away its +very soul and all its best years for the sake of an ideal. Hester +showed her age in her eyes. She was seven-and-twenty, and appeared many +years younger until she looked at you. + +Mrs. Gresley looked with veiled irritation at her sister-in-law in her +clean holland gown, held in at the waist with a broad lilac ribbon, +adroitly drawn in picturesque folds through a little silver buckle. + +Mrs. Gresley, who had a waist which the Southminster dress-maker +informed her had "to be kept down," made a mental note for the hundredth +time that Hester "laced in." + +Hester gave that impression of "finish" and sharpness of edge so rarely +found among the blurred, vague outlines of English women. There was +nothing vague about her. Lord Newhaven said she had been cut out body +and mind with a sharp pair of scissors. Her irregular profile, her +delicate, pointed speech and fingers, her manner of picking up her +slender feet as she walked, her quick, alert movements--everything about +her was neat, adjusted, perfect in its way, yet without more apparent +effort than the _succés fou_ in black and white of the water wagtail, +which she so closely resembled. + +"Good-morning," she said, turning back with them to the house. "Abel +says it is going to be the hottest day we have had yet. And the +letter-bag is so fat that I could hardly refrain from opening it. +Really, James, you ought to hide the key, or I shall succumb to +temptation." + +Once in the days of her ignorance, when she first came to live at +Warpington, Hester had actually turned the key in the lock of the sacred +letter-bag when the Gresleys were both late, and had extracted her own +letters. She never did it a second time. On the contrary, she begged +pardon in real regret at having given such deep offence to her brother +and his wife, and in astonishment that so simple an action could offend. +She had made an equally distressing blunder in the early days of her +life with the Gresleys by taking up the daily paper on its arrival in +the afternoon. + +"My dear Hester," Mrs. Gresley said, really scandalized, "I am sure you +won't mind my saying so, but James has not seen his paper yet." + +"I have noticed he never by any chance looks at it till the evening, and +you always say you never read it," said Hester, deep in a political +crisis. + +"That is his rule, and a very good rule it is; but he naturally likes to +be the _first_ to look at it," said Mrs. Gresley, with a great exercise +of patience. She had heard Hester was clever, but she found her very +stupid. Everything had to be explained to her. + +Her tone recalled Hester from the Indian tribal rising and the speech of +the Prime Minister to the realities of life. It was fortunate for her +that she was quick-witted. These two flagrant blunders were sufficient +for her. She grasped the principle that those who have a great love of +power and little scope for it must necessarily exercise it in trivial +matters. She extended the principle of the newspaper and the letter-bag +over her entire intercourse with the Gresleys and never offended in that +manner again. + +On this particular morning she waited decorously beside her brother as +he opened the bag and dealt out the contents into three heaps. Hester +pounced on hers and subsided into her chair at the breakfast-table. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Gresley, looking at Hester's pile of letters over +the top of her share of the morning's correspondence--namely, a list of +Pryce Jones--"that you care to write so many letters, Hester. I am sure +I never did such a thing when I was a girl. I should have regarded it as +a waste of time." + +"Ha!" said Mr. Gresley, in a gratified tone, opening a little roll. +"What have we here? Proofs! My paper upon 'Modern Dissent.' I told +Edwards I would not allow him to put it in his next number of the +_Southminster Advertiser_ until I had glanced at it in print. I don't +know when I shall find time to correct it. I shall be out all the +afternoon at the chapter meeting." + +He looked at Hester. She had laid down her letters and was taking a cup +of coffee from Mrs. Gresley. She evidently had not heard her brother's +remark. + +"You and I must lay our heads together over this, Hester," he said, +holding up with some pride a long slip of proof. "It will be just in +your line. You might run it over after breakfast," he continued, in high +good-humor, "and put in the stops and grammar and spelling--you're more +up in that sort of thing than I am--and then we will go through it +together." + +Hester was quite accustomed, when her help was asked as to a +composition, to receive as a reason for the request the extremely +gratifying assurance that she was "good" at punctuation and spelling. It +gave the would-be author a comfortable feeling that, after all, he was +only asking advice on the crudest technical matters on which Hester's +superiority could be admitted without a loss of masculine self-respect. + +"I would rather not tamper with punctuation and spelling," said Hester, +dryly. "I am so shaky on both myself. You had better ask the +school-master. He knows all that sort of ABC better than I do." + +Mr. Gresley frowned, and looked suspiciously at her. He wanted Hester's +opinion, of which she was perfectly aware. But she intended that he +should ask for it. + +Mrs. Gresley, behind the coffee-pot, felt that she was overlooked. She +had helped Mr. Gresley with his numerous literary efforts until Hester +came. + +"I saw you correcting some one's manuscript last week," he said. "You +were at it all day in the hay-field." + +"That was different. I was asked to criticise the style and +composition." + +"Oh, well," said Mr. Gresley, "don't let us split hairs. I don't want an +argument about it. If you'll come into my study at ten o'clock I'll get +it off my hands at once." + +"With pleasure," said Hester, looking at him with rueful admiration. She +had tried a hundred times to get the better of him in conversation, but +she had not yet succeeded. + +"I have a message for you," continued Mr. Gresley, in restored +good-humor. "Mrs. Loftus writes that she is returning to Wilderleigh at +the end of the week, and that the sale of work may take place in the +Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August. And--let me see, I will read +what she says: + +"'I am not unmindful of our conversation on the duty of those who go +annually to London to bring a spiritual influence to bear on +society'--("I impressed that upon her before she went up.")--'We had a +most interesting dinner-party last week, nearly all celebrated and +gifted persons, and the conversation was really beyond anything I can +describe to you. I thought my poor brain would turn. I was quite afraid +to join in. But Mr. Harvey--the great Mr. Harvey--told me afterwards I +was at my best. One lady, Miss Barker, who has done so much for the East +End, is coming down to Wilderleigh shortly for a rest. I am anxious you +should talk to her. She says she has doubts, and she is tired of the +Bible. By the way, please tell Hester, with my love, that she and Mr. +Harvey attacked _The Idyll of East London_, and showed it up entirely, +and poor little me had to stand up for her against them all." + +"She would never do that," said Hester, tranquilly. "She might perhaps +have said, 'The writer is a friend of mine. I must stand up for her.' +But she would never have gone beyond saying it to doing it." + +"Hester," exclaimed Mrs. Gresley, feeling that she might just as well +have remained a spinster if she was to be thus ignored in her own house, +"I can't think how you can allow your jealousy of Sybell Loftus, for I +can attribute it to nothing else, to carry you so far." + +"Perhaps it had better carry me into the garden," said Hester, rising +with the others. "You must forgive me if I spoke irritably. I have a +racking headache." + +"She looks ill," said her brother, following Hester's figure with +affectionate solicitude, as she passed the window a moment later. + +"And yet she does next to nothing," said the hard-worked little wife, +intercepting the glance. "I always thought she wrote her stories in the +morning. I know she is never about if the Pratt girls call to see her +before luncheon. Yet when I ran up to her room yesterday morning to ask +her to take Mary's music, as Fräulein had the headache"--(Mrs. Gresley +always spoke of "the headache" and "the toothache")--"she was lying on +her bed doing nothing at all." + +"She is very unaccountable," said Mr. Gresley. "Still, I can make +allowance for the artistic temperament. I share it to a certain degree. +Poor Hester. She is a spoiled child." + +"Indeed, James, she is. And she has an enormous opinion of herself. For +my part, I think the Bishop is to blame for making so much of her. Have +you never noticed how different she is when he is here, so gay and +talkative, and when we are alone she hardly says a word for days +together, except to the children?" + +"She talked more when she first came," said Mr. Gresley. "But when she +found I made it a rule to discourage argument"--(by argument Mr. Gresley +meant difference of opinion)--"she seemed gradually to lose interest in +conversation. Yet I have heard the Bishop speak of her as a brilliant +talker. And Lord Newhaven asked me last spring how I liked having a +celebrity for a sister. A celebrity! Why, half the people in Middleshire +don't even know of Hester's existence." And the author of "Modern +Dissent" frowned. + +"That was a hit at you, my dear," said Mrs. Gresley. "It was just after +your pamphlet on 'Schism' appeared. Lord Newhaven always says something +disagreeable. Don't you remember, when you were thinking of exchanging +Warpington for that Scotch living, he said he knew you would not do it +because with your feeling towards Dissent you would never go to a +country where you would be a Dissenter yourself?" + +"How about the proofs?" said Hester, through the open window. "I am +ready when you are, James." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother. + --EMERSON. + + +"Of course, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, leading the way to his study and +speaking in his lesson-for-the-day voice, "I don't pretend to +write"--("They always say that," thought Hester)--"I have not sufficient +leisure to devote to the subject to insure becoming a successful author. +And even if I had I am afraid I should not be willing to sell my soul to +obtain popularity, for that is what it comes to in these days. The +public must be pandered to. It must be amused. The public likes smooth +things, and the great truths--the only things I should care to write +about--are not smooth, far from it." + +"No, indeed." + +"This little paper on 'Dissent,' which I propose to publish in pamphlet +form after its appearance as a serial--it will run to two numbers in the +_Southminster Advertiser_--was merely thrown off in a few days when I +had influenza, and could not attend to my usual work." + +"It must be very difficult to work in illness," said Hester, who had +evidently made a vow during her brief sojourn in the garden, and was now +obviously going through that process which the society of some of our +fellow-creatures makes as necessary as it is fatiguing--namely, that of +thinking beforehand what we are going to say. + +Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed herself +flat under one of these resolutions. He was wont to say that no one was +pleasanter than Hester when she was reasonable, or made more suitable +remarks. He perceived with joy that she was reasonable now, and the +brother and sister sat down close together at the writing-table with the +printed sheets between them. + +"I will read aloud," said Mr. Gresley, "and you can follow me, and stop +me if you think--er--the sense is not quite clear." + +"I see." + +The two long noses, the larger freckled one surmounted by a _pince-nez_, +the other slightly pink, as if it had absorbed the tint of the +blotting-paper over which it was so continually poised, both bent over +the sheets. + +Through the thin wall which separated the school-room from the study +came the sound of Mary's scales. Mary was by nature a child of wrath, as +far as music was concerned, and Fräulein--anxious, musical Fräulein--was +strenuously endeavoring to impart to her pupil the rudiments of what was +her chief joy in life. + +"'Modern Dissent,'" read aloud Mr. Gresley, "by Veritas." + +"_Veritas_!" repeated Hester. Astonishment jerked the word out of her +before she was aware. She pulled herself hastily together. + +"Certainly," said the author, looking at his sister through his glasses, +which made the pupils of his eyes look as large as the striped marbles +on which Mary and Regie spent their pennies. "Veritas," he continued, +"is a Latin word signifying Truth." + +"So I fancied. But is not _Truth_ rather a large name to adopt as a _nom +de guerre_? Might it not seem rather--er--in a layman it would appear +arrogant." + +"I am not a layman, and I do not pretend to write on subjects of which I +am ignorant," said Mr. Gresley, with dignity. "This is not a work of +fiction. I don't imagine this, or fancy that, or invent the other. I +merely place before the public, forcibly, and in a novel manner, a few +great truths." + +Mary was doing her finger exercises. C, C, C, with the thumb; D, D, D, +with the first finger, Fräulein was repeating. "Won! two! free! Won! +two! free!" with a new intonation of cheerful patience at each +repetition. + +"Ah!" said Hester. "A few great truths. Then the name must be 'Veritas.' +You would not reconsider it?" + +"Certainly not," said Mr. Gresley, his eye challenging hers. "It is the +name I am known by as the author of 'Schism.'" + +"I had momentarily forgotten 'Schism,'" said Hester, dropping her +glance. + +"I went through a good deal of obloquy about 'Schism,'" said Mr. Gresley +with pride, "and I should not wonder if 'Modern Dissent' caused quite a +ferment in Middleshire. If it does, I am willing to bear a little spite +and ill-will. All history shows that truth is met at first by +opposition. Half the country clergy round here are asleep. Good men, but +lax. They want waking up. I said as much to the Bishop the other day, +and he agreed with me; for he said that if some of his younger clergy +could be waked up to a sense of their own arrogance and narrowness he +would hold a public thanksgiving in the cathedral. But he added that he +thought nothing short of the last trump would do it." + +"I agree with him," said Hester, having first said the sentence to +herself, and having decided it was innocuous. + +The climax of the music lesson had arrived. "The Blue Bells of +Scotland"--the sole _Clavier Stück_ which Mary's rigidly extended little +starfishes of hands could wrench out of the school-room piano--was at +its third bar. + +"Well," said Mr. Gresley, refreshed by a cheering retrospect. "Now for +'Modern Dissent.'" + +A strenuous hour ensued. + +Hester was torn in different directions, at one moment tempted to allow +the most flagrant passages to pass unchallenged rather than attempt the +physical impossibility of interrupting the reader only to be drawn into +a dispute with him, at another burning to save her brother from the +consequences which wait on certain utterances. + +Presently Mr. Gresley's eloquence, after various tortuous and unnatural +windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage after following +the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears a villa. Hester had +seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see the villa through the +trees long before we are allowed to approach it, and she longed to save +her brother from what was in her eyes as much a degradation as a _tu +quoque_. But she remembered in time that the Gresleys considered she had +no sense of humor, and she decided to let it pass. Mr. Gresley enjoyed +it so much himself that he hardly noticed her fixed countenance. + +Why does so deep a gulf separate those who have a sense of humor and +those who, having none, are compensated by the conviction that they +possess it more abundantly? The crevasse seems to extend far inland to +the very heights and water-sheds of character. Those who differ on humor +will differ on principles. The Gresleys and the Pratts belonged to that +large class of our fellow-creatures who, conscious of a genius for +adding to the hilarity of our sad planet, discover an irresistible +piquancy in putting a woman's hat on a man's head, and in that "verbal +romping" which playfully designates a whiskey-and-soda as a gargle, and +says "au reservoir" instead of "au revoir." + +At last, however, Hester nervously put her hand over the next sheet, as +he read the final words of the last. + +"Wait a moment," she said, hurriedly. "This last page, James. Might it +not be well to reconsider it? Is it politic to assume such great +ignorance on the part of Nonconformists? Many I know are better educated +than I am." + +"My dear," said Mr. Gresley, "ignorance is at the root of any difference +of opinion on such a subject as this. I do not say wilful ignorance, but +the want of sound Church teaching. I must cut at the roots of this +ignorance." + +"Dear James, it is thrice killing the slain. No one believes these +fallacies which you are exposing--the Nonconformists least of all. Those +I have talked with don't hold these absurd opinions that you put down +to them. You don't even touch their real position. You are elaborately +knocking down ninepins that have never stood up, because they have +nothing to stand on." + +"I am not proposing to play a game of mental skittles," said the +clerical author. "It is enough for me, as I said before, to cut at the +roots of ignorance wherever I see it flourishing, not to pull off the +leaves one by one as you would have me do by dissecting their opinions. +This may not be novel, it may not even be amusing, but, nevertheless, +Hester, a clergyman's duty is to wage unceasing war against spiritual +ignorance. And what," read on Mr. Gresley, after a triumphant moment in +which Hester remained silent, "is the best means of coping against +ignorance, against darkness"--("It was a root a moment ago," thought +Hester)--"but by the infusion of light? The light shineth in darkness, +and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Half a page more and the +darkness was 'Modern Dissent.' Hester put her hand over her mouth and +kept it there. + +The familiar drama of a clerical bull and a red rag was played out +before her eyes, and, metaphorically speaking, she followed the example +of the majority of laymen and crept up a tree to be out of the way. + +When it was all over she came down trembling. + +"Well! what do you think of it?" said Mr. Gresley, rising and pacing up +and down the room. + +"You hit very hard," said Hester, after a moment's consideration. She +did not say, "You strike home." + +"I have no opinion of being mealy-mouthed," said Mr. Gresley, who was +always perfectly satisfied with a vague statement. "If you have anything +worth saying, say it plainly. That is my motto. Don't hint this or that, +but take your stand upon a truth and strike out." + +"Why not hold out our hands to our fellow-creatures instead of striking +at them?" said Hester, moving towards the door. + +"I have no belief in holding out our hands to the enemies of Christ," +Mr. Gresley began, who in the course of his pamphlet had thus gracefully +designated the great religious bodies who did not view Christianity +through the convex glasses of his own mental _pince-nez_. "In these days +we see too much of that. I leave that to the Broad Church, who want to +run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. I, on the contrary--" + +But Hester had vanished. + +There was a dangerous glint in her gray eyes, as she ran up to her +little attic. + +"According to him, our Lord must have been the first Nonconformist," she +said to herself. "If I had stayed a moment longer I should have said so. +For once I got out of the room in time." + +Hester's attic was blisteringly hot. It was over the kitchen, and +through the open window came the penetrating aroma of roast mutton newly +wedded to boiled cabbage. Hester had learned during the last six months +all the variations of smells, evil, subtle, nauseous, and overpowering, +of which the preparation of food--and, still worse, the preparation of +chicken food--is capable. She seized her white hat and umbrella and fled +out of the house. + +She moved quickly across a patch of sunlight, looking, with her large +white, pink-lined umbrella, like a travelling mushroom on a slender +stem, and only drew rein in the shady walk near the beehives, where the +old gardener, Abel, was planting something large in the way of "runners" +or "suckers," making a separate hole for each with his thumb. + +Abel was a solid, pear-shaped man, who passed through life bent double +over the acre of Vicarage garden, to which he committed long lines of +seeds, which an attentive Providence brought up in due season as "curly +kebbidge" or "salary" or "sparrow-grass." + +Abel had his back towards Hester, and only the corduroy half of him was +visible as he stooped over his work. Occasionally he could be induced to +straighten himself, and--holding himself strongly at the hinge with +earth-ingrained hands--to discourse on polities and religion, and to +opine that our policy in China was "neither my eye nor my elber." "The +little lady," as he called Hester, had a knack of drawing out Abel; but +to-day, as he did not see her, she slipped past him, and, crossing the +church-yard, sat down for a moment in the porch to regain her breath, +under the card of printed texts offered for the consideration of his +flock by their young pastor. + +"How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God," +was the culling from the Scriptures which headed the selection.[A] +Hester knew that card well, though she never by any chance looked at it. +She had offended her brother deeply by remonstrating, or, as he called +it, by "interfering in church matters," when he nailed it up. After a +few minutes she dropped over the low church-yard wall into the meadow +below, and flung herself down on the grass in the short shadow of a yew +near at hand. What little air there was to be had came to her across the +Drone, together with the sound of the water lazily nudging the bank and +whispering to the reeds little jokelets which they had heard a hundred +times before. + +[Footnote A: A card, headed by the above text, was seen by the writer in +August, 1898, in the porch of a country church.] + +Hester's irritable nerves relaxed. She stretched out her small, neatly +shod foot in front of her, leaned her back against the wall, and +presently could afford to smile. + +"Dear James," she said, shaking her head gently to and fro, "I wish we +were not both writers, or, as he calls it, 'dabblers with the pen.' One +dabbler in a vicarage is quite enough." + +She took out her letters and read them. Only half of them had been +opened. + +"I shall stay here till the luncheon bell rings," she said, as she +settled herself comfortably. + +Rachel's letter was read last, on the principle of keeping the best to +the end. + +"And so she is leaving London--isn't this rather sudden?--and coming +down at once--to-day--no, yesterday, to Southminster, to the Palace. And +I am to stay in this afternoon, as she will come over, and probably the +Bishop will come too. I should be glad if I were not so tired." + +Hester looked along the white high road which led to Southminster. In +the hot haze she could just see the two ears of the cathedral pricking +up through the blue. Everything was very silent, so silent that she +could hear the church clock of Slumberleigh, two miles away, strike +twelve. A whole hour before luncheon! + +The miller's old white horse, with a dip in his long back and a +corresponding curve in his under outline, was standing motionless in the +sun, fast asleep, his front legs bent like a sailor's. + +A little bunch of red and white cows, knee-deep in the water, were +swishing off the flies with the wet tufts of their tails. Hester watched +their every movement. She was no longer afraid of cows. Presently, as if +with one consent, they all made up their minds to relieve the tedium of +the contemplative life by an exhibition of humor, and, scrambling out of +the water, proceeded to canter along the bank with stiff raised tails, +with an artificial noose sustained with difficulty just above the tuft. + +"How like James and the Pratts!" Hester said to herself, watching the +grotesque gambols and nudgings of the dwindling humorists. "It must be +very fatiguing to be so comic." + +Hester had been up since five o'clock, utilizing the quiet hours before +the house was astir. She was tired out. A bumblebee was droning sleepily +near at hand. The stream talked and talked and talked about what he was +going to do when he was a river. "How tired the banks must be of +listening to him!" thought Hester, with closed eyes. + +And the world melted slowly away in a delicious sense of well-being, +from which the next moment, as it seemed to her, she was suddenly +awakened by Mr. Gresley's voice near at hand. + +"Hester! _Hester_! HESTER!" + +"Here! here!" gasped Hester, with a start, upsetting her lapful of +letters as she scrambled hastily to her feet. + +The young vicar drew near, and looked over the church-yard wall. A large +crumb upon his upper lip did not lessen the awful severity of his +countenance. + +"We have nearly finished luncheon," he observed. "The servants could not +find you anywhere. I don't want to be always finding fault, Hester, but +I wish, for your own sake as well as ours, you would be more punctual at +meals." + +Hester had never been late before, but she felt that this was not the +moment to remind her brother of that fact. + +"I beg pardon," she said, humbly. "I fell asleep." + +"You fell asleep!" said Mr. Gresley, who had been wrestling all the +morning with platitudes on "Thy will be done." "All I can say, Hester, +is that it is unfortunate you have no occupation. I cannot believe it is +for the good of any of us to lead so absolutely idle a life that we fall +asleep in the morning." + +Hester made no reply. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance + as to whip the fog.--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +The children, who had reached the pear stage, looked with round, awed +eyes at "Auntie Hester" as she sat down at the luncheon-table beside the +black bottle which marked her place. The Gresleys were ardent total +abstainers, and were of opinion that Hester's health would be greatly +benefited by following their example. But Hester's doctor differed from +them--he was extremely obstinate--with the result that the Gresleys were +obliged to tolerate the obnoxious bottle on their very table. It was +what Mrs. Gresley called a "cross," and Mr. Gresley was always afraid +that the fact of its presence might become known and hopelessly +misconstrued in Warpington and the world at large. + +The children knew that Hester was in disgrace, as she vainly tried to +eat the congealed slice of roast mutton, with blue slides in it, which +had been put before her chair half an hour ago, when the joint was sent +out for the servants' dinner. The children liked "Auntie Hester," but +without enthusiasm, except Regie, the eldest, who loved her as himself. +She could tell them stories, and make butterflies and horses and dogs +out of paper, but she could never join in their games, not even in the +delightful new ones she invented for them. She was always tired +directly. And she would never give them rides on her back, as the large, +good-natured Pratt girls did. And she was dreadfully shocked if they did +not play fair, so much so that on one occasion Mr. Gresley had to +interfere, and to remind her that a game was a game, and that it would +be better to let the children play as they liked than to be perpetually +finding fault with them. + +Perhaps nothing in her life at the Vicarage was a greater trial to +Hester than to see the rules of fair play broken by the children with +the connivance of their parents. Mr. Gresley had never been to a public +school, and had thus missed the ABC of what in its later stages is +called "honor." He was an admirable hockey-player, but he was not in +request at the frequent Slumberleigh matches, for he never hit off fair, +or minded being told so. + +"Auntie Hester is leaving all her fat," said Mary, suddenly, in a shrill +voice, her portion of pear held in her left cheek as she spoke. She had +no idea that she ought not to draw attention to the weakness of others. +She was only anxious to be the first to offer interesting information. + +"Never mind," said Mrs. Gresley, admiring her own moderation. "Finish +your pear." + +If there was one thing more than another in Hester's behavior that +annoyed Mrs. Gresley--and there were several others--it was Hester's +manner of turning her food over on her plate and leaving half of it. + +Hester did it again now, and Mrs. Gresley, already irritated by her +unpunctuality, tried to look away so as not to see her, and prayed for +patience. The hundred a year which Hester contributed to the little +establishment had eased the struggling household in many ways; but Mrs. +Gresley sometimes wondered if the money, greatly needed as it was, +counterbalanced the perpetual friction of her sister-in-law's presence. + +"Father!" + +"Yes, my son." + +"Isn't it wrong to drink wine?" + +Yes, my son." + +"Then why does Auntie Hester drink it?" + +Hester fixed her eyes intently on her brother. Would he uphold her +before the children? + +"Because she thinks it does her good," said Mr. Gresley. + +She withdrew her eyes. Her hand, holding a spoonful of cold rice +pudding, shook. A delicate color flooded her face, and finally settled +in the tip of her nose. In her own way she loved the children. + +"Ach, mein Herr," almost screamed Fräulein, who adored Hester, and saw +the gravity of the occasion, "aber Sie vergessen that the Herr Doctor +Br-r-r-r-r-own has so strong--so very strong command--" + +"I cannot allow a discussion as to the merits or demerits of alcohol at +my table," said Mr. Gresley. "I hold one opinion, Dr. Brown holds +another. I must beg to be allowed to differ from him. Children, say +grace." + + * * * * * + +It was Wednesday and a half-holiday, and Mrs. Gresley had arranged to +take the children in the pony-carriage to be measured for new boots. +These expeditions to Westhope were a great event. At two o'clock exactly +the three children rushed down-stairs, Regie bearing in his hand his tin +money-box, in which a single coin could be heard to leap. Hester +produced a bright threepenny-piece for each child, one of which was +irretrievably buried in Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately +lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and +slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, +accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French +extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a +certain hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. +He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who wear their +tails high. + +Hester saw them drive off, and a few minutes later Mr. Gresley started +on his bicycle for a ruridecanal chapter meeting in the opposite +direction. She heard the Vicarage gate "clink" behind him as she crossed +the little hall, and then she suddenly stopped short and wrung her +hands. She had forgotten to tell either of them that the Bishop of +Southminster was going to call that afternoon. She knew he was coming on +purpose to see her, but this would have been incredible to the +Gresleys. She had not read Rachel's letter announcing his coming till +she had taken refuge in the field where she had fallen asleep, and her +mental equilibrium had been so shaken by the annoyance she felt she had +caused the Gresleys at luncheon that she had entirely forgotten the +subject till this moment. + +She darted out of the house and flew down the little drive. But Fortune +frowned on Hester to-day. She reached the turn of the road only to see +the bent figure of Mr. Gresley whisk swiftly out of sight, his clerical +coat-tails flowing gracefully out behind like a divided skirt on each +side of the back wheel. + +Hester toiled back to the house breathless and dusty, and ready to cry +with vexation. "They will never believe I forgot to tell them," she said +to herself. "Everything I do is wrong in their eyes and stupid in my +own." And she sat down on the lowest step of the stairs and leaned her +head against the banisters. + +To her presently came a ministering angel in the shape of Fräulein, who +had begged an egg from the cook, had boiled it over her spirit-lamp, and +now presented it with effusion to her friend on a little tray, with two +thin slices of bread-and-butter. + +"You are all goodness, Fräulein," said Hester, raising her small, +haggard face out of her hands. "It is wrong of me to give so much +trouble." She did not want the egg, but she knew its oval was the only +shape in which Fräulein could express her silent sympathy. So she +accepted it gratefully, and ate it on the stairs, with the tenderly +severe Fräulein watching every mouthful. + +Life did not seem quite such a hopeless affair when the little meal was +finished. There were breaks in the clouds, after all. Rachel was coming +to see her that afternoon. Hester was, as Fräulein often said, "easy +cast down and easy cast up." The mild stimulant of the egg "cast her up" +once more. She kissed Fräulein and ran up to her room, where she +divested her small person of every speck of dust contracted on the +road, smoothed out an invisible crease in her holland gown, put back the +little ring of hair behind her ear which had become loosened in her rush +after her brother, and then came down, smiling and composed, to await +her friend in the drawing-room. + +Hester seldom sat in the drawing-room, partly because it was her +sister-in-law's only sitting-room and partly because it was the regular +haunt of the Pratt girls, who (with what seemed to Hester dreadful +familiarity) looked in at the windows when they came to call, and, if +they saw any one inside, entered straightway by the same, making retreat +impossible. + +The Miss Pratts had been willing, when Hester first came into the +neighborhood, to take a good-natured though precarious interest in +"their Vicar's sister." Indeed, Mrs. Gresley had felt obliged to warn +Hester not to count too much on their attentions, "as they sometimes +dropped people as quickly as they took them up." + +Hester was ignorant of country life, of its small society, its +inevitable relations with unsympathetic neighbors just because they were +neighbors; and she was specially ignorant of the class to which Mrs. +Gresley and the Pratts belonged, and from which her aunt had in her +lifetime unwisely guarded her niece as from the plague. She was amazed +at first at the Pratts calling her by her Christian name without her +leave, until she discovered that they spoke of the whole county by their +Christian names, even designating Lord Newhaven's two younger +brothers--with whom they were not acquainted--as Jack and Harry, though +they were invariably called by their own family John and Henry. + +When, after her aunt's death, she had, by the advice of her few +remaining relatives, taken up her abode with her brother, as much on his +account as her own, for he was poor and with an increasing family, she +journeyed to Warpington accompanied by a pleasant feeling that, at any +rate, she was not going among strangers. She had often visited in +Middleshire, at Wilderleigh, in the elder Mr. Loftus's time, for whom +she had entertained an enthusiastic reverence; at Westhope Abbey, where +she had a firm ally in Lord Newhaven, and at several other Middleshire +houses. She was silly enough to think she knew Middleshire fairly well, +but after she settled at Warpington she gradually discovered the +existence of a large undercurrent of society of which she knew nothing +at all, in which, whether she were willing or not, she was plunged by +the fact that she was her brother's sister. + +Hester perceived clearly enough that her brother did not by birth belong +to this set, though his profession brought him in contact with it, but +he had evidently, though involuntarily, adopted it for better for worse; +perhaps because a dictatorial habit is generally constrained to find +companionship in a social grade lower than its own, where a loud voice +and a tendency to monologue checkered by prehistoric jokes and tortured +puns may meet with a more patient audience. Hester made many discoveries +about herself during the first months of her life at Warpington, and the +first of the series amazed her more than any of the later ones. + +She discovered that she was proud. Perhaps she had not the enormous +opinion of herself which Mrs. Gresley so frequently deplored, for +Hester's thoughts seldom dwelt upon herself. But the altered +circumstances of her life forced them momentarily upon herself +nevertheless, as a burst pipe will spread its waters down a damask +curtain. + +So far, during the eight years since she had left the school-room, she +had always been "Miss Gresley," a little personage treated with +consideration wherever she went, and _choyée_ for her delicate humor and +talent for conversation. She now experienced the interesting sensation, +as novel to her as it is familiar to most of us, of being nobody, and +she disliked it. The manners of the set in which she found herself also +grated continually on her fastidious taste. She was first amazed and +then indignant at hearing her old Middleshire friends, whose simplicity +far surpassed that of her new acquaintance, denounced by the +latter--without being acquainted with them except officially--as "fine," +as caring only for "London people," and as being "tuft-hunters," because +they frequently entertained at their houses persons of rank, to half of +whom they were related. All this was new to Hester. She discovered that, +though she might pay visits at these houses, she must never mention +them, as it was considered the height of vulgarity to speak of people of +rank. + +Mrs. Gresley, who had been quite taken aback when the first of these +invitations came, felt it her duty to warn Hester against a love of +rank, reminding her that it was a very bad thing to get a name for +running after titled people. + +"James and I have always kept clear of that," she remarked, with +dignity. "For my part, I dare say you will think me very old-fashioned, +but I must own I never can see that people with titles or wealth are one +bit nicer or pleasanter than those without them." + +Hester agreed. + +"And," continued Mrs. Gresley, "it has always been our aim to be +independent, not to bow down before any one. If I am unworldly, it is +because I had the advantage of parents who impressed on me the +hollowness of all social distinctions. If the Pratts were given a title +to-morrow I should behave exactly the same to them as I do now." + +If Lady Susan Gresley had passed her acquaintance through a less +exclusive sieve, Hester might have had the advantage of hearing all +these well-worn sentiments, and of realizing the point of view of a +large number of her fellow-creatures before she became an inconspicuous +unit in their midst. + +But if Mrs. Gresley was pained by Hester's predilection for the society +of what she called "swells" (the word, though quite extinct in civilized +parts, can occasionally be found in country districts), she was still +more pained by the friendships Hester formed with persons whom her +sister-in-law considered "not quite." + +Mrs. Gresley was always perfectly civil, and the Pratts imperfectly so, +to Miss Brown, the doctor's invalid sister. But Hester made friends with +her, in spite of the warnings of Mrs. Gresley that kindness was one +thing and intimacy another. + +"The truth is," Mrs. Gresley would say, "Hester loves adulation, and as +she can't get it from the Pratts and us, she has to go to those below +her in the social scale, like Miss Brown, who will give it to her. Miss +Brown may be very cultivated. I dare say she is, but she makes up to +Hester." + +Sybell Loftus, who lived close at hand at Wilderleigh, across the Prone, +was one of the very few besides Miss Brown among her new acquaintances +who hailed Hester at once as a kindred spirit, to the unconcealed +surprise of the Pratts and the Gresleys. Sybell adored Hester's book, +which the Gresleys and Pratts considered rather peculiar "as emanating +from the pen of a clergyman's sister." She enthusiastically suggested to +Hester several improvements which might easily be made in it, which +would have changed its character altogether. She even intrenched on the +sacred precinct of a married woman's time to write out the openings of +several romances, which she was sure Hester, with her wonderful talent, +could build up into magnificent works of art. She was always running +over to the Vicarage to confide to Hester the unique thoughts which had +been vouchsafed to her while contemplating a rose, or her child, or her +husband, or all three together. + +Hester was half amused, half fascinated, and ruefully lost many of the +mornings still left her by the Pratts and Gresleys in listening to the +outpourings of this butterfly soul, which imagined every flower it +involuntarily alighted on and drew honey from to be its own special +production. + +But Hester's greatest friend in Middleshire was the Bishop of +Southminster, with whom Rachel was staying, and whom she was expecting +this afternoon. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + The depth and dream of my desire, + The bitter paths wherein I stray, + Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire, + Thou knowest Who hast made the clay! + --RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +The unbalanced joys and sorrows of emotional natures are apt to arouse +the pity of the narrow-hearted and the mild contempt of the obtuse of +their fellow-creatures. + +But perhaps it is a mistake to feel compassion for persons like Hester, +for if they have many evil days and weeks in their usually short lives, +they have also moments of sheer bliss, hours of awed contemplation and +of exquisite rapture which, possibly, in the long run, equal the more +solid joys of a good income and a good digestion, nay, even the +perennial glow of that happiest of happy temperaments which limits the +nature of others by its own, which sees no uncomfortable difference +between a moral and a legal right, and believes it can measure life with +the same admirable accuracy with which it measures its drawing-room +curtains. + +As Hester and Rachel sat together in the Vicarage drawing-room, Rachel's +faithful, doglike eyes detected no trace of tears in Hester's dancing, +mischievous ones. They were alone, for the Bishop had dropped Rachel on +his way to visit a sick clergyman, and had arranged to call at the +Vicarage on his way back. + +Hester quickly perceived that Rachel did not wish to talk of herself, +and drew a quaint picture of her own life at Warpington, which she +described "not wisely but too well." But she was faithful to her salt. +She said nothing of the Gresleys to which those worthies could have +objected had they been present. Indeed, she spoke of them in what they +would have termed "a very proper manner," of their kindness to her when +she had been ill, of how Mr. Gresley had himself brought up her +breakfast-tray every morning, and how, in the spring, he had taught her +to bicycle. + +"But, oh! Rachel," added Hester, "during the last nine months my +self-esteem has been perforated with wounds, each large enough to kill +the poor creature. My life here has shown me horrible faults in myself +of which I never dreamed. I feel as if I had been ironed all over since +I came here, and all kinds of ugly words in invisible ink are coming out +clear in the process." + +"I am quite alarmed," said Rachel, tranquilly. + +"You ought to be. First of all I did think I cared nothing about food. I +don't remember ever giving it a thought when I lived with Aunt Susan. +But here I--I am difficult about it. I do try to eat it, but often I +really can't. And then I leave it on my plate, which is a disgusting +habit, which always offends me in other people. Now I am as bad as any +of them; indeed, it is worse in me because I know poor James is not very +rich." + +"I suppose the cooking is vile?" + +"I don't know. I never noticed what I ate till I came here, so I can't +judge. Perhaps it is not very good. But the dreadful part is that I +should mind. I could not have believed it of myself. James and Minna +never say anything, but I know it vexes them, as of course it must." + +Rachel looked critically at Hester's innocent, childlike face. When +Hester was not a cultivated woman of the world she was a child. There +was, alas! no medium in her character. Rachel noticed how thin her face +and hands had become, and the strained look in the eyes. The faint color +in her cheek had a violet tinge. + +She did not waste words on the cookery question. She saw plainly enough +that Hester's weak health was slipping further down the hill. + +"And all this time you have been working?" + +"If you call it working. I used to call it so once, but I never do now. +Yes, I manage about four hours a day. I have made another pleasant +discovery about myself--that I have the temper of a fiend if I am +interrupted." + +"But surely you told the Gresleys when first you came that you must not +be interrupted at certain hours?" + +"I did. I did. But, of course--it is very natural--they think that +rather self-important and silly. I am thought very silly here, Rachel. +And James does not mind being interrupted in writing his sermons. And +the Pratts have got the habit of running in in the mornings." + +"Who on earth are the Pratts?" + +"They are what _they_ call 'county people.' Their father made a fortune +in oil, and built a house covered with turrets near here a few years +ago. I used to know Captain Pratt, the son, very slightly in London. I +never would dance with him. He used to come to our 'At Homes,' but he +was never asked to dinner. He is a great 'parti' among a certain set +down here. His mother and sisters were very kind to me when I came, but +I was not so accustomed then as I am now to be treated familiarly and +called 'Hessie,' which no one has ever called me before, and I am afraid +I was not so responsive as I see now I ought to have been. Down here it +seems your friends are the people whom you live near, not the ones you +like. It seems a curious arrangement. And as the Pratts are James's and +Minna's greatest friends, I did not wish to offend them. And then, of +course, I did offend them mortally at last by losing my temper when they +came up to my room to what they called 'rout me out,' though I had told +them I was busy in the mornings. I was in a very difficult place, and +when they came in I did not know who they were, because only the people +in the book were real just then. And then when I recognized them, and +the scene in my mind which I had been waiting for for weeks was +shattered like a pane of glass, I became quite giddy and spoke wildly. +And then--I was so ashamed afterwards--I burst into tears of rage and +despair." + +Even the remembrance was too much. Hester wiped away two large tears +onto a dear little handkerchief just large enough to receive them, and +went on with a quaver in her voice. + +"I was so shocked at myself that I found it quite easy to tell them next +day that I was sorry I had lost my temper; but they have not been the +same since. Not that I wanted them to be the same. I would rather they +were different. But I was anxious to keep on cordial terms with Minna's +friends. She quarrels with them herself, but that is different. I +suppose it is inevitable if you are on terms of great intimacy with +people you don't really care for." + +"At any rate, _they_ have not interrupted you again?" + +"N--no. But still, I was often interrupted. Minna has too much to do, +and she is not strong just now, and she often sends up one of the +children, and I was so nearly fierce with one of them--poor little +things!--that I felt the risk was becoming too great, so I have left off +writing between breakfast and luncheon, and I get up directly it is +light instead. It is light very early now. Only the worst part of it is +that I am so tired for the rest of the day that I can hardly drag myself +about." + +Rachel said nothing. She seldom commented on the confidences that were +made to her. She saw that Hester, always delicate, was making an +enormous effort under conditions which would be certain to entail +disastrous effects on her health. The book was sapping her strength like +a vampire, and the Gresleys were evidently exhausting it still further +by unconsciously strewing her path with difficulties. Rachel did not +know them, but she supposed they belonged to that large class whose eyes +are holden. + +"And the book itself? Is it nearly finished?" + +Hester's face changed. Eagerly, shyly, enthusiastically she talked to +her friend about the book, as a young girl talks of her lover. +Everything else was forgotten. Hester's eyes burned. Her color came and +went. She was transfigured. + +The protecting, anxious affection died out of Rachel's face as she +looked at Hester, and gave place to a certain wistful, half-envious +admiration. She had once been shaken by all these emotions herself, +years ago, when she was in love. She had regarded them as a revelation +while they lasted; and afterwards, as a steep step--a very steep +step--upon the stair of life. But she realized now that such as Hester +live constantly in the world which the greater number of us can only +enter when human passion lends us the key; the world at which, when the +gates are shut against us, the coarser minded among us are not ashamed +to level their ridicule and contempt. + +Hester spoke brokenly with awe and reverence of her book, as of some +mighty presence, some constraining power outside herself. She saw it +complete, beautiful--an entrancing vision, inaccessible, as a sunset. + +"I cannot reach up to it. I cannot get near it," she said. "When I try +to write it, it is like drawing an angel with spread wings with a bit of +charcoal. I understate everything. Yet I labor day by day travestying +it, caricaturing the beautiful thoughts that come into my mind. I make +everything commonplace and vulgar by putting it into words. I go alone +into the woods and sit for hours quite still with the trees. And +gradually I understand and know. And I listen, and Nature speaks, really +speaks--not a _façon de parler_, as some people think who explain to you +that you mean this or that by your words which you don't mean--and her +spirit becomes one with my spirit. And I feel I can never again +misunderstand her, never again fail to interpret her, never again wander +so far away from her that every white anemone and every seedling fern +disowns me, and waits in silence till the alien has gone from among +them. And I come home, Rachel, and I try, sometimes I try for half the +night, to find words to translate it into. But there are no words, or, +if there are, I cannot find them, and at last I fall back on some +coarse simile, and in my despair I write it down. And, oh! Rachel, the +worst is that presently, when I have forgotten what it ought to have +been, when the vision fades, I know I shall _admire_ what I have +written. It is that that breaks my heart." + +The old, old lament of those who worship art, that sternest mistress in +the world, fell into the silence of the little drawing-room. Rachel +understood it in part only, for she had always vaguely felt that Hester +idealized Nature, as she idealized her fellow-creatures, as she +idealized everything, and she did not comprehend why Hester was in +despair because she could not speak adequately of Life or Nature as she +saw them. Rachel thought, with bewilderment, that that was just what she +could do. + +At this moment a carriage drew up at the door, and after a long +interval, during which the wrathful voice of the cook could be +distinctly heard through the kitchen window recalling "Hemma" to a sense +of duty from the back yard, "Hemma" breathlessly ushered in the Bishop +of Southminster. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + Originality irritates the religious classes, who will not be taken + out of their indolent ways of thinking; who have a standing + grievance against it, and "heresy" and "heterodoxy" are bad words + ready for it.--W.W. PEYTON. + + +The Bishop was an undersized, spare man, with a rugged, weather-beaten +face and sinewy frame. If you had seen him working a crane in a +stone-mason's yard, or leading a cut-and-thrust forlorn-hope, or sailing +paper boats with a child, you would have felt he was the right man in +the right place. That he was also in his right place as a bishop had +never been doubted by any one. Mr. Gresley was the only person who had +occasionally had misgivings as to the Bishop's vocation as a true +priest, but he had put them aside as disloyal. + +Jowett is believed to have said, "A bishop without a sense of humor is +lost." Perhaps that may have been one of the reasons why, by Jowett's +advice, the See of Southminster was offered to its present occupant. The +Bishop's mouth, though it spoke of an indomitable will, had a certain +twist of the lip, his deep-set, benevolent eyes had a certain twinkle +which made persons like Lord Newhaven and Hester hail him at once as an +ally, but which ought to have been a danger-signal to some of his +clerical brethren--to Mr. Gresley in particular. + +The Bishop respected and upheld Mr. Gresley as a clergyman, but as a +conversationalist the young vicar wearied him. If the truth were known +(which it never was), he had arranged to visit Hester when he knew Mr. +Gresley would be engaging the reluctant attention of a ruridecanal +meeting. + +He gave a sigh of relief as he became aware that Hester and Rachel were +the only occupants of the cool, darkened room. Mrs. Gresley, it seemed, +was also out. + +Hester made tea, and presently the Bishop, who looked much exhausted, +roused himself. He had that afternoon attended two death-beds--one the +death-bed of a friend, and the other that of the last vestige of peace, +expiring amid the clamor of a distracted Low Church parish and High +Church parson, who could only meet each other after the fashion of +cymbals. For the moment even his courageous spirit had been +disheartened. + +"I met a son of Anak the other night at the Newhavens'," he said to +Hester, "who claimed you as a cousin--a Mr. Richard Vernon. He broke the +ice by informing me that I had confirmed him, and that perhaps I should +like to know that he had turned out better than he expected." + +"How like Dick!" said Hester. + +"I remembered him at last. His father was the squire of Farlow, where I +was rector before I came to Southminster. Dick was not a source of +unmixed pleasure to his parents. As a boy of eight he sowed the parental +billiard-table with mustard and cress in his father's absence, and +raised a very good crop, and performed other excruciating experiments. I +believe he beat all previous records of birch rods at Eton. I remember +while he was there he won a bet from another boy who could not pay, and +he foreclosed on the loser's cricketing trousers. His parents were +distressed about it when he brought them home, and I tried to make him +see that he ought not to have taken them. But Dick held firm. He said it +was like tithe, and if he could not get his own in money, as I did, he +must collect it in trousers. I must own he had me there. I noticed that +he wore the garment daily as long as any question remained in his +parents' minds as to whether they ought to be returned. After that I +felt sure he would succeed in life." + +"I believe he is succeeding in Australia." + +"I advised his father to send him abroad. There really was not room for +him in England, and, unfortunately for the army, the examiners jibbed at +his strictly phonetic spelling. He tells me he has given up being an +A.D.C. and has taken to vine-growing, because if people are up in the +world they always drink freely, and if they are 'down on their luck' +they drink all the more to drown care. The reasoning appeared to me +sound." + +"He and James used to quarrel frightfully in the holidays," said Hester. +"It was always the same reason, about playing fair. Poor James did not +know that games were matters of deadly importance, and that a rule was a +sacred thing. I wonder why it is that clergymen so often have the same +code of honor as women; quite a different code from that of the average +man." + +"I think," said the Bishop, "it is owing to that difference of code that +women clash so hopelessly with men when they attempt to compete or work +with them. Women have not to begin with the _esprit de corps_ which the +most ordinary men possess. With what difficulty can one squeeze out of a +man any fact that is detrimental to his friend, or even to his +acquaintance, however obviously necessary it may be that the information +should be asked for and given. Yet I have known many good and earnest +and affectionate women, who lead unselfish lives, who will 'give away' +their best woman friend at the smallest provocation, or without any +provocation at all; will inform you, _à propos_ of nothing, that she was +jilted years ago, or that her husband married her for her money. The +causes of humiliation and disaster in a woman's life seem to have no +sacredness for her women friends. Yet if that same friend whom she has +run down is ill, the runner down will nurse her day and night with +absolutely selfless devotion." + +"I have often been puzzled by that," said Rachel. "I seem to be always +making mistakes about women, and perhaps that is the reason. They show +themselves capable of some deep affection or some great self-sacrifice, +and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all +through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or +are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man who is not fit to black +their boots would never stoop to." + +Hester's eyes fixed on her friend. + +"Do you tell them? Do you show them up to themselves," she asked, "or do +you leave them?" + +"I do neither," said Rachel. "I treat them just the same as before." + +"Then aren't you a hypocrite, too?" + +Hester's small face was set like a flint. + +"I think not," said Rachel, tranquilly, "any more than they are. The +good is there for certain, and the evil is there for certain. Why should +I take most notice of the evil, which is just the part which will be +rubbed out of them presently, while the good will remain?" + +"I think Rachel is right," said the Bishop. + +"I don't think she is, at all," said Hester, her plumage ruffled, +administering her contradiction right and left to her two best friends +like a sharp peck from a wren. "I think we ought to believe the best of +people until they prove themselves unworthy, and then--" + +"Then what?" said the Bishop, settling himself in his chair. + +"Then leave them in silence." + +"I only know of a woman's silence by hearsay. I have never met it. Do +you mean bitterly reproach the thistle for not bearing grapes?" + +"I do not. It is my own fault if I idealize a thistle until the thistle +and I both think it is a vine. But if people appear to love and honor +certain truths which they know are everything to me, and claim kinship +with me on that common ground, and then desert when the pinch comes, as +it always does come, and act from worldly motives, then I know that they +have never really cared for what they professed to love, that what I +imagined to be a principle was only a subject of conversation--and--I +withdraw." + +"You withdraw!" echoed the Bishop. "This is terrible." + +"Just as I should," continued Hester, "if I were in political life. If a +man threw in his lot with me, and then, when some means of worldly +advancement seemed probable from the other side, deserted to it, I +should not in consequence think him incapable of being a good husband +and father and landlord. But I should never again believe that he cared +for what I had staked my all on. And when he began to talk as if he +cared (as they always do, as if nothing had happened) I should not show +him up to himself. I have tried that and it is no use. I should--" + +"Denounce him as an apostate?" suggested the Bishop. + +"No. He should be to me thenceforward as a heathen." + +"Thrice miserable man!" + +"You would not have me treat him as a brother after that?" + +"Of course not, because he would probably dislike that still more." + +At this moment a hurricane seemed to pass through the little house, and +the three children rushed into the drawing-room, accompanied by Boulou, +in a frantic state of excitement. Boulou, like Hester, had no happy +medium in his character. He was what Mrs. Gresley called "very Frenchy," +and he now showed his Frenchyness by a foolish exhibition of himself in +coursing round and round the room with his silly foreign tail crooked +the wrong way. + +"Mother got out at Mrs. Brown's," shrieked Regie, in his highest voice, +"and I drove up." + +"Oh, Regie!" expostulated Mary the virtuous, the invariable corrector of +the statements of others. "You held the reins, but William walked +beside." + +Hester made the children shake hands with her guests, and then they +clustered round her to show what they had bought. + +Though the Bishop was fond of children, he became suddenly restive. He +took out his watch, and was nervously surprised at the lapse of time. +The carriage was sent for, and in a few minutes that dignified vehicle +was bowling back to Southminster. + +"I am not satisfied about Hester," said the Bishop. "She looks ill and +irritable, and she has the tense expression of a person who is making a +colossal effort to be patient, and whose patience, after successfully +meeting twenty calls upon it in the course of the day, collapses +entirely at the twenty-first. That is a humiliating experience." + +"She spoke as if she were a trial to her brother and his wife." + +"I think she is. I have a sort of sympathy with Gresley as regards his +sister. He has been kind to her according to his lights, and if she +could write little goody-goody books he would admire her immensely, and +so would half the neighborhood. It would be felt to be suitable. But +Hester jars against the preconceived ideas which depute that clergymen's +sisters and daughters should, as a matter of course, offer up their +youth and hair and teeth and eyesight on the altar of parochial work. +She does and is nothing that long custom expects her to do and be. +Originality is out of place in a clergyman's family, just because it is +so urgently needed. It is a constant source of friction. But, on the +other hand, the best thing that could happen to Hester is to be thrown +for a time among people who regard her as a nonentity, who have no sense +of humor, and to whom she cannot speak of any of the subjects she has at +heart. If Hester had remained in London after the success of her _Idyll_ +she would have met with so much sympathy and admiration that her next +book would probably have suffered in consequence. She is so susceptible, +so expansive, that repression is positively necessary to her to enable +her, so to speak, to get up steam. There is no place for getting up +steam like a country vicarage with an inner cordon of cows round it and +an outer one of amiable country neighbors, mildly contemptuous of +originality in any form. She cannot be in sympathy with them in her +present stage. It is her loss, not theirs. At forty she will be in +sympathy with them, and appreciate them as I do; but that is another +story. She has been working at this new book all winter with a fervor +and concentration which her isolation has helped to bring about. She +owes a debt of gratitude to her surroundings, and some day I shall tell +her so." + +"She says her temper has become that of a fiend." + +"She is passionate, there is no doubt. She nearly fell on us both this +afternoon. She is too much swayed by every little incident. Everything +makes a vivid impression on her and shakes her to pieces. It is rather +absurd and disproportionate now, like the long legs of a foal, but it is +a sign of growth. My experience is that people without that fire of +enthusiasm on the one side and righteous indignation on the other never +achieve anything except in domestic life. If Hester lives, she will +outgrow her passionate nature, or at least she will grow up to it and +become passive, contemplative. Then, instead of unbalanced anger and +excitement, the same nature which is now continually upset by them will +have learned to receive impressions calmly and, by reason of that +receptiveness and insight, she will go far." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + Only those who know the supremacy of the Intellectual life--the + life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within + it--can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene + activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly + annoyances.--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +Hester in the meanwhile was expressing wonder and astonishment at the +purchases of the children, who, with the exception of Mary, had spent +their little all on presents for Fräulein, whose birthday was on the +morrow. After Mary's tiny white bone umbrella had been discovered to be +a needle-case, and most of the needles had been recovered from the +floor, Regie extracted from its paper a little china cow. But, alas! the +cow's ears and horns remained in the bag, owing possibly to the +incessant passage of the parcel from one pocket to another on the way +home. Regie looked at the remnants in the bag, and his lip quivered, +while Mary, her own umbrella safely warehoused, exclaimed, "Oh, Regie!" +in tones of piercing reproach. + +But Hester quickly suggested that she could put them on again quite +easily, and Fräulein would like it just as much. Still, it was a blow. +Regie leaned his head against Hester's shoulder. + +Hester pressed her cheek against his little dark head. Sybell Loftus had +often told Hester that she could have no idea of the happiness of a +child's touch till she was a mother; that she herself had not an inkling +till then. But perhaps some poor substitute for that exquisite feeling +was vouchsafed to Hester. + +"The tail is still on," she whispered, not too cheerfully, but as one +who in darkness sees light beyond. + +The cow's tail was painted in blue upon its side. + +"When I bought it," said Regie, in a strangled voice, "and it was a +great-deal-of-money cow, I did wish its tail had been out behind; but I +think now it is safer like that." + +"All the best cows have their tails on the side," said Hester. "And +to-morrow morning, when you are dressed, run up to my room, and you will +find it just like it was before." And she carefully put aside the bits +with the injured animal. + +"And now what has Stella got?" + +Stella produced a bag of "bull's-eyes," which, in striking contrast with +the cow, had, in the course of the drive home, cohered so tightly +together that it was doubtful if they would ever be separated again. + +"Fräulein never eats bull's-eyes," said Mary, who was what her parents +called "a very truthful child." + +"I eats them," said Stella, reversing her small cauliflower-like person +on the sofa till only a circle of white rims with a nucleus of coventry +frilling, with two pink legs kicking gently upward, were visible. + +Stella always turned upsidedown if the conversation took a personal +turn. In later and more conventional years we find a poor equivalent for +marking our disapproval by changing the subject. + +Hester had hardly set Stella right side upward when the door opened once +more and Mrs. Gresley entered, hot and exhausted. + +"Run up-stairs, my pets," she said. "Hester, you should not keep them +down here now. It is past their tea-time." + +"We came ourselves, mother," said Regie. "Fruälein said we might, to +show Auntie Hester our secrets." + +"Well, never mind; run away now," said the poor mother, sitting down +heavily in a low chair, "and take Boulou." + +"You are tired out," said Hester, slipping on to her knees and unlacing +her sister-in-law's brown boots. + +Mrs. Gresley looked with a shade of compunction at the fragile kneeling +figure, with its face crimsoned by the act of stooping and by the +obduracy of the dust-ingrained boot-laces. But as she looked she noticed +the flushed cheeks, and, being a diviner of spirits, wondered what +Hester was ashamed of now. + +As Hester rose her sister-in-law held out, with momentary hesitation, a +thin paper bag, in which an oval form allowed its moist presence to be +discerned by partial adhesion to its envelope. + +"I saw you ate no luncheon, Hester, so I have brought you a little sole +for supper." + +Some of us poor Marthas spend all our existence, so to speak, in the +kitchens of life. We never get so far as the drawing-room. Our +conquests, our self-denials, are achieved through the medium of suet and +lard and necks of mutton. We wrestle with the dripping, and rise on +stepping-stones--not of our dead selves, but of sheep and oxen--to +higher things. + +The sole was a direct answer to prayer. Mrs. Gresley had been enabled to +stifle her irritation against this delicate, whimsical, fine lady of a +sister-in-law--laced in, too, we must not forget that--who, in Mrs. +Gresley's ideas, knew none of the real difficulties of life, its +butcher's bills, its monthly nurses, its constant watchfulness over +delicate children, its long, long strain at two ends which won't meet. +We must know but little of our fellow-creatures if the damp sole in the +bag appears to us other than the outward and homely sign of an inward +and spiritual conquest. + +As such Hester saw it, and she kissed Mrs. Gresley and thanked her, and +then ran, herself, to the kitchen with the peace offering, and came back +with her sister-in-law's down-at-heel in-door shoes. + +Mr. Gresley was stabling his bicycle in the hall as she crossed it. He +was generally excessively jocose with his bicycle. He frequently said, +"Whoa, Emma!" to it. But to-day he, too, was tired, and put Emma away in +silence. + +When Hester returned to the drawing-room Mrs. Gresley had recovered +sufficiently to notice her surroundings. She was sitting with her +tan-stockinged feet firmly planted on the carpet instead of listlessly +outstretched, her eyes ominously fixed on the tea-table and seed-cake. + +Hester's silly heart nudged her side like an accomplice. + +"Who has been here to tea?" said Mrs. Gresley. "I met the Pratts and the +Thursbys in Westhope." + +Hester was frightened. We need to be in the presence of those who judge +others by themselves. + +"The Bishop was here and Rachel West," she said, coloring. "They left a +few minutes ago." + +"Well, of all unlucky things, that James and I should have been out. +James, do you hear that? The Bishop's been while we were away. And I do +declare, Hester," looking again at the table, "you never so much as +asked for the silver teapot." + +"I never thought of it," said Hester, ruefully. It was almost impossible +to her to alter the habit of a lifetime, and to remember to dash out and +hurriedly change the daily routine if visitors were present. Lady Susan +had always used her battered old silver teapot every day, and for the +life of her Hester could not understand why there should be one kind one +day and one kind another. She glanced resentfully at the little brown +earthen-ware vessel which she had wielded so carefully half an hour ago. +Why did she never remember the Gresleys' wishes? + +"Hester," said Mrs. Gresley, suddenly, taking new note of Hester's +immaculate brown holland gown, which contrasted painfully with her own +dilapidated pink shirt with hard collars and cuffs and imitation tie, +tied for life in the shop where it was born. "You are so smart; I do +believe you knew they were coming." + +If there was one thing more than another which offended Hester, it was +being told that she was _smart_. + +"I trust I am never smart," she replied, not with any touch of the +haughtiness that some ignorant persons believe to be the grand manner, +but with a subtle change of tone and carriage which seemed instantly to +remove her to an enormous distance from the other woman with her +insinuation and tan stockings. Mrs. Gresley unconsciously drew in her +feet. "I did not know when I dressed this morning that the Bishop was +coming to-day." + +"Then you _did_ know later that he was coming?" + +"Yes, Rachel West wrote to tell me so this morning, but I did not open +her letter at breakfast, and I was so vexed at being late for luncheon +that I forgot to mention it then. I remembered as soon as James had +started, and ran after him, but he was too far off to hear me call to +him." + +It cost Hester a good deal to give this explanation, as she was aware +that the Bishop's visit had been to her and to her alone. + +"Come, come," said Mr. Gresley, judicially, with the natural masculine +abhorrence of a feminine skirmish. + +"Don't go on making foolish excuses, Hester, which deceive no one; and +you, Minna, don't criticise Hester's clothes. It is the Bishop's own +fault for not writing his notes himself. He might have known that Miss +West would have written to Hester instead of to me. I can't say I think +Hester behaved kindly towards us in acting as she did, but I won't hear +any more argument about it. I desire the subject should now _drop_." + +The last words were uttered in the same tone in which Mr. Gresley closed +morning service, and were felt to be final. He was not in reality +greatly chagrined at missing the Bishop, whom he regarded with some of +the suspicious distrust with which a certain class of mind ever regards +that which is superior to it. Hester left the room, closing the door +gently behind her. + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, looking at her priest with tears of +admiration in her eyes, "I shall never be good like you, so you need not +expect it. How you can be so generous and patient with her I don't know. +It passes me." + +"We must learn to make allowances for each other," said Mr. Gresley, in +his most affectionate cornet, drawing his tired, tearful little wife +down beside him on the sofa. And he made some fresh tea for her, and +waited on her, and she told him about the children's boots and the sole, +and he told her about a remarkable speech he had made at the chapter +meeting, and a feeling that had been borne in on him on the way home +that he should shortly write something striking about Apostolic +Succession. And they were happy together; for though he sometimes +reproved her as a priest if she allowed herself to dwell on the +probability of his being made a Bishop, he was very kind to her as a +husband. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + "Beware of a silent dog and still water." + + +If you are travelling across Middleshire on the local line between +Southminster and Westhope, after you have passed Wilderleigh with its +gray gables and park wall, close at hand you will perceive to nestle (at +least, Mr. Gresley said it nestled) Warpington Vicarage; and perhaps, if +you know where to look, you will catch a glimpse of Hester's narrow +bedroom window under the roof. Half a mile farther on Warpington Towers, +the gorgeous residence of the Pratts, bursts into view, with flag on +turret flying, and two tightly bitted rustic bridges leaping high over +the Drone. You cannot see all the lodges of Warpington Towers from the +line, which is a source of some regret to Mr. Pratt; but if he happens +to be travelling with you he will point out two of them, chaste stucco +Gothic erections with church windows, and inform you that the three +others are on the northern and eastern sides, vaguely indicating the +directions of Scotland and Ireland. + +And the Drone, kept in order on your left by the low line of the +Slumberleigh hills, will follow you and leave you, leave you and return +all the way to Westhope. You are getting out at Westhope, of course, if +you are a Middleshire man; for Westhope is on the verge of Middleshire, +and the train does not go any farther--at least, it only goes into one +of the insignificant counties which jostle each other to hold on to +Middleshire, unknown Saharas, where passengers who oversleep themselves +wake to find themselves cast away. + +Westhope Abbey stands in its long, low meadows and level gardens, close +to the little town, straggling red roof above red roof, up its steep +cobbled streets. + +Down the great central aisle you may walk on mossy stones between the +high shafts of broken pillars under the sky. God's stars look down once +more where the piety of man had for a time shut them out. Through the +slender tracery of what was once the east window, instead of glazed +saint and crucifix, you may see the little town clasping its hill. + +The purple clematis and the small lizard-like leaf of the ivy have laid +tender hands on all that is left of that stately house of prayer. The +pigeons wheel round it, and nest in its niches. The soft, contented +murmur of bird praise has replaced the noise of bitter human prayer. A +thin wind-whipped grass holds the summit of the broken walls against all +corners. The fallen stones, quaintly carved with angel and griffin, are +going slowly back year by year, helped by the rain and hindered by the +frost, slowly back through the sod to the generations of human hands +that held and hewed them, and fell to dust below them hundreds of years +ago. The spirit returns to the God who gave it, and the stone to the +hand that fashioned it. + +The adjoining monastery had been turned into a dwelling-house, without +altering it externally, and it was here that Lord Newhaven loved to pass +the summer months. Into its one long upper passage all the many rooms +opened, up white stone steps through arched doors, rooms which had once +been monks' dormitories, abbots' cells, where Lady Newhaven and her +guests now crimped their hair and slept under down quilts till noon. + +It was this long passage, with its interminable row of low latticed +windows, that Lord Newhaven was turning into a depository for the old +English weapons which he was slowly collecting. He was standing now +gazing lovingly at them, drawing one finger slowly along an inlaid +arquebus, when a yell from the garden made him turn and look out. + +It was not a yell of anguish, and Lord Newhaven remained at the window +leaning on his elbows and watching at his ease the little scene which +was taking place below him. + +On his bicycle on the smooth-shaven lawn was Dick, wheeling slowly in +and out among the stone-edged flower-beds, an apricot in each broad +palm, while he discoursed in a dispassionate manner to the two excited +little boys who were making futile rushes for the apricots. The +governess and Rachel were looking on. Rachel had arrived at Westhope the +day before from Southminster. "Take your time, my son," said Dick, just +eluding by a hair's-breadth a charge through a geranium-bed on the part +of the eldest boy. "If you are such jolly little fools as to crack your +little skulls on the sun-dial, I shall eat them both myself. Miss Turner +says you may have them, so you've only got to take them. I can't keep on +offering them all day long. My time"--(Dick ran his bicycle up a +terrace, and, as soon as the boys were up, glided down again)--"my time +is valuable. You don't want them?" A shrill disclaimer and a fresh +onslaught. "Miss Turner, they thank you very much, but they don't care +for apricots." + +Half a second more and Dick skilfully parted from his bicycle and was +charged by his two admirers and severely pummelled as high as they could +reach. When they had been led away by Miss Turner, each biting an +apricot and casting longing backward looks at their friend, Rachel and +Dick wandered to the north side of the abbey and sat down there in the +shade. + +Lord Newhaven could still see them, could still note her amused face +under her wide white hat. He was doing his best for Dick, and Dick was +certainly having his chance, and making the most of it according to his +lights. + +"But, all the same, I don't think he has a chance," said Lord Newhaven +to himself. "That woman, in spite of her frank manner and her +self-possession, is afraid of men; not of being married for her money, +but of man himself. And whatever else he may not be, Dick is a man. +It's the best chance she will ever get, so it is probable she won't take +it." + +Lord Newhaven sauntered back down the narrow black oak staircase to his +own room on the ground-floor. He sat down at his writing-table and took +out of his pocket a letter which he had evidently read before. He now +read it slowly once more. + +"Your last letter to me had been opened," wrote his brother from India, +"or else it had not been properly closed. As you wrote on business, I +wish you would be more careful." + +"I will," said Lord Newhaven, and he wrote a short letter in his small, +upright hand, closed the envelope, addressed and stamped it, and +sauntered out through the low-arched door into the garden. + +Dick was sitting alone on the high-carved stone edge of the round pool +where the monks used to wash, and where gold-fish now lived cloistered +lives. A moment of depression seemed to have overtaken that cheerful +personage. + +"Come as far as the post-office," said Lord Newhaven. + +Dick gathered himself together, and rose slowly to his large feet. + +"You millionaires are all the same," he said. "Because you have a house +crawling with servants till they stick to the ceiling you have to go to +the post-office to buy a penny stamp. It's like keeping a dog and +barking yourself." + +"I don't fancy I bark much," said Lord Newhaven. + +"No, and you don't bite _often_, but when you do you take out the piece. +Do you remember that colored chap at Broken Hill?" + +"He deserved it," said Lord Newhaven. + +"He richly deserved it. But you took him in, poor devil, all the same. +You were so uncommonly mild and limp beforehand, and letting pass things +you ought not to have let pass, that, like the low beast he was, he +thought he could play you any dog's trick, and that you would never +turn on him." + +"It's a way worms have." + +"Oh, hang worms; it does not matter whether they turn or not. But cobras +have no business to imitate them till poor rookies think they have no +poison in them, and that they can tickle them with a switch. What a +great hulking brute that man was! You ricked him when you threw him! I +saw him just before I left Adelaide. He's been lame ever since." + +"He'd have done for me if he could." + +"Of course he would. His blood was up. He meant to break your back. I +saw him break a chap's back once, and it did not take so very long +either. I heard it snap. But why did you let him go so far to start with +before you pulled him up? That's what I've never been able to understand +about you. If you behaved different to start with they would behave +different to you. They would know they'd have to." + +"I have not your art," said Lord Newhaven, tranquilly, "of letting a man +know when he's getting out of hand that unless he goes steady there will +be a row, and he'll be in it. I'm not made like that." + +"It works well," said Dick. "It's a sort of peaceful way of rubbing +along and keeping friends. If you let those poor bullies know what to +expect they aren't, as a rule, over-anxious to toe the mark. But you +never _do_ let them know." + +"No," said Lord Newhaven, as he shot his letter into the brass mouth in +the cottage wall, just below a window of "bulls'-eyes" and peppermints, +"I never do. I don't defend it. But--" + +"But what?" + +Lord Newhaven's face underwent some subtle change. His eyes fixed +themselves on a bottle of heart-shaped peppermints, and then met Dick's +suddenly, with the clear, frank glance of a schoolboy. + +"But somehow, for the life of me, until things get serious--_I can't_." + +Dick, whose perceptions were rather of a colossal than an acute order, +nevertheless perceived that he had received a confidence, and changed +the subject. + +"Aren't you going to buy some stamps?" he asked, perfectly aware that +Lord Newhaven had had his reasons for walking to the post-office. + +Lord Newhaven, who was being watched with affectionate interest from +behind the counter by the grocer postmaster, went in, hit his head +against a pendent ham, and presently emerged with brine in his hair and +a shilling's worth of stamps in his hand. + +Later in the day, when he and Dick were riding up the little street, +with a view to having a look at the moor--for Middleshire actually has a +grouse moor, although it is in the Midlands--the grocer in his white +apron rushed out and waylaid them. + +"Very sorry about the letter, my lord," he repeated volubly, touching +his forelock. "Hope her la'ship told you as I could not get it out +again, or I'm sure I would have done to oblige your lordship, and her +la'ship calling on purpose. But the post-office is that mean and +distrustful as it don't leave me the key, and once hanything is in, in +it is." + +"Ah!" said Lord Newhaven, slowly. "Well, Jones, it's not your fault. I +ought not to have changed my mind. I suppose her ladyship gave you my +message that I wanted it back?" + +"Yes, my lord, and her la'ship come herself, not ten minutes after you +was gone. But I've no more power over that there receptacle than a +hunlaid hegg, and that's the long and short of it. I've allus said, and +I say it again, 'Them as have charge of the post-office should have the +key.'" + +"When I am made postmaster-general you _shall_ have it," said Lord +Newhaven, smiling. "It is the first reform that I shall bring about." +And he nodded to the smiling, apologetic man and trotted on, Dick beside +him, who was apparently absorbed in the action of his roan cob. + +But Dick's mind had sustained a severe shock. That Lady Newhaven, "that +jolly little woman," the fond mother of those two "jolly little chaps," +should have been guilty of an underhand trick, was astonishing to him. + +Poor Dick had started life with a religious reverence for woman; had +carried out his brittle possession to bush-life in Australia, from +thence through two A.D.C.-ships, and, after many vicissitudes, had +brought it safely back with a large consignment of his own Burgundy to +his native land. It was still sufficiently intact--save for a chip or +two--to make a pretty wedding-present to his future wife. But it had had +a knock since he mounted the roan cob. For, unfortunately, the kind of +man who has what are called "illusions" about women is too often the man +whose discrimination lies in other directions, in fields where little +high-heeled shoes are not admitted. + +Rachel had the doubtful advantage of knowing that, in spite of Dick's +shrewdness respecting shades of difference in muscatels, she and Lady +Newhaven were nevertheless ranged on the same pedestal in Dick's mind as +flawless twins of equal moral beauty. But after this particular day she +observed that Lady Newhaven had somehow slipped off the pedestal, and +that she, Rachel, had the honor of occupying it alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + "Une grande passion malheureaux est un grand moyen de sagesse." + + +Rachel had left London precipitately after she had been the unwilling +confidante of Lady Newhaven's secret, and had taken refuge with that +friend of all perplexed souls, the Bishop of Southminster. She felt +unable to meet Hugh again without an interval of breathing-time. She +knew that if she saw much more of him he would confide in her, and she +shrank from receiving a confidence the ugliest fact of which she already +knew. Perhaps she involuntarily shrank also from fear lest he should +lower himself in her eyes by only telling her half the truth. Sad +confessions were often poured into Rachel's ears which she had known for +years. She never alluded to that knowledge, never corrected the half-lie +which accompanies so many whispered self--accusations. Confidences and +confessions are too often a means of evasion of justice--a laying of the +case for the plaintiff before a judge without allowing the defendant to +be present or to call a witness. Rachel, by dint of long experience, +which did slowly for her the work of imagination, had ceased to wonder +at the faithfully chronicled harsh words and deeds of generous souls. +She knew or guessed at the unchronicled treachery or deceit which had +brought about that seemingly harsh word or deed. + +She had not the exalted ideas about her fellow-creatures which Hester +had, but she possessed the rare gift of reticence. She exemplified the +text--"Whether it be to friend or foe, talk not of other men's lives." +And in Rachel's quiet soul a vast love and pity dwelt for these same +fellow-creatures. She had lived and worked for years among those whose +bodies were half starved, half clothed, degraded. When she found money +at her command she had spent sums (as her lawyer told her) out of all +proportion on that poor human body, stumbling between vice and +starvation. But now, during the last year, when her great wealth had +thrown her violently into society, she had met, until her strong heart +flinched before it, the other side of life--the starved soul in the +delicately nurtured, richly clad body, the atrophied spiritual life in +hideous contrast with the physical ease and luxury which were choking +it. The second experience was harder to bear than the first. And just as +in the old days she had shared her bread and cheese with those hungrier +than herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread +and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her +new associates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of +luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins +the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually +starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose +names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke--the little +world which is called "Society." + +She longed to comfort them, to raise them up, to wipe from their hands +and garments the muddy gold stains of the gutter into which they had +fallen, to smooth away the lines of mean care from their faces. But it +had been far simpler in her previous life to share her hard-earned bread +with those who needed it than it was now to share her equally +hard-earned thoughts and slow gleanings of spiritual knowledge, to share +the things which belonged to her peace. + +Rachel had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming passion of +love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had devastated the +little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, involving its hospitable +dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in one common ruin. Out of that +desolation she was unconsciously rebuilding her city, but it was still +rather gaunt and bare, the trees had not had time to grow in the +streets, and there was an ugly fortification round it of defaced, +fire-seared stones, which had once stood aloft in minaret and tower, and +which now served only as a defence against all corners. + +If Dick had been in trouble, or rather if she had known the troubles he +had been through, and which had made his crooked mouth shut so firmly, +Rachel might possibly have been able to give him something more valuable +than the paper money of her friendship. But Dick was obviously +independent. He could do without her, while Hugh had a claim upon her. +Rachel's thoughts turned to Hugh again and ever again. Did he see his +conduct as she saw it? A haunting fear was upon her that he did not. And +she longed with an intensity that outbalanced for the time every other +feeling that he should confess his sin fully, entirely--see it in all +its ugliness, and gather himself together into a deep repentance before +he went down into silence, or before he made a fresh start in life. She +would have given her right hand to achieve that. + +And in a lesser degree she was drawn towards Lady Newhaven. Lady +Newhaven was conscious of the tender compassion which Rachel felt for +her, and used it to the uttermost; but unfortunately she mistook it for +admiration of her character, mixed with sympathetic sorrow for her +broken heart. If she had seen herself as Rachel saw her, she would have +conceived, not for herself, but for Rachel, some of the aversion which +was gradually distilling, bitter drop by drop, into her mind for her +husband. She would not have killed him. She would have thought herself +incapable of an action so criminal, so monstrous. But if part of the +ruin in the garden were visibly trembling to its fall, she would not +have warned him if he had been sitting beneath it, nor would her +conscience have ever reproached her afterwards. + +"I wish Miss Gresley would come and stay here instead of taking you away +from me," she said, plaintively, to Rachel one morning, when she made +the disagreeable discovery that Rachel and Hester were friends. "I don't +care much about her myself, she is so profane and so dreadfully +irreligious. But Edward likes to talk to her. He prefers artificial +people. I wonder he did not marry her. That old cat, Lady Susan Gresley, +was always throwing her at his head. I wish she was not always +persuading you to leave me for hours together. I get so frightened when +I am left alone with Edward. I live in perpetual dread that he will say +something before the children or the servants. He is quite cruel +enough." + +"He will never say anything." + +"You are always so decided, Rachel. You don't see possibilities, and you +don't know him as I do. He is capable of anything. I will write a note +now, and you can take it to Miss Gresley, if you _must_ go there +to-day." + +"I wish to go very much." + +"And you will stay another week whether she comes or not?" + +There was a momentary pause before Rachel said, cheerfully, "I will stay +another week, with pleasure. But I am afraid Lord Newhaven will turn +restive at taking me in to dinner." + +"Oh! he likes you. He always prefers people who are not of his own +family." + +Rachel laughed. "You flatter me." + +"I never flatter any one. He does like you, and, besides, there are +people coming next week for the grouse-shooting. I suppose that heavy +young Vernon is going to lumber over with you. It's not my fault if he +is always running after you. Edward insisted on having him. I don't want +him to dance attendance on _me_." + +"He and I are going to bicycle to Warpington together. The Gresleys are +cousins of his. If it turns very hot we will wait till after sunset to +return, if we may." + +"Just as you like," said Lady Newhaven with asperity. "But I advise you +to be careful, my dear Rachel. It never seems to occur to you what +on-lookers see at a glance, namely, that Mr. Vernon is in love with +your fortune." + +"According to public opinion that is a very praiseworthy attachment," +said Rachel, who had had about enough. "I often hear it commended." + +Lady Newhaven stared. That her conversation could have the effect of a +mustard leaf did not strike her. She saw that Rachel was becoming +restive, and, of course, the reason was obvious. She was thinking of +marrying Dick. + +"Well, my dear," she said, lying down on a low couch near the latticed +window, and opening a novel, "you need not be vexed with me for trying +to save you from a mercenary marriage. I only speak because I am fond of +you. But one marriage is as good as another. I was married for love +myself; I had not a farthing. And yet you see my marriage has turned out +a tragedy--a bitter, bitter tragedy." + +_Tableau_.--A beautiful, sad-faced young married woman in white, +reclining among pale-green cushions near a bowl of pink carnations, +endeavoring to rouse the higher feelings of an inexperienced though not +youthful spinster in a short bicycling skirt. Decidedly, the picture was +not flattering to Rachel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + "On s'ennuie presque toujours avec ceux qu'on ennuie." + + +Hester did not fail a second time to warn the Gresleys of the arrival of +guests. She mentioned it in time to allow of the making of cakes, and +Mr. Gresley graciously signified his intention of returning early from +his parochial rounds on the afternoon when Dick and Rachel were +expected, while Mrs. Gresley announced that the occasion was a +propitious one for inviting the Pratts to tea. + +"Miss West will like to meet them," she remarked to Hester, whose jaw +dropped at the name of Pratt. "And it is very likely if they take a +fancy to her they will ask her to stay at the Towers while she is in the +neighborhood. If the captain is at home I will ask him to come too. The +Pratts are always so pleasant and hospitable." + +Hester was momentarily disconcerted at the magnitude of the social +effort which Rachel's coming seemed to entail. But for once she had the +presence of mind not to show her dismay, and she helped Mrs. Gresley to +change the crewel-work antimacassars, with their washed-out kittens +swinging and playing leap-frog, for the best tussore-silk ones. + +The afternoon was still young when all the preparations had been +completed, and Mrs. Gresley went up-stairs to change her gown, while +Hester took charge of the children, as Fräulein had many days previously +arranged to make music with Dr. and Miss Brown on this particular +afternoon. And very good music it was which proceeded out of the open +windows of the doctor's red brick house opposite Abel's cottage. Hester +could just hear it from the bottom of the garden near the church-yard +wall, and there she took the children, and under the sycamore, with a +bench round it, the dolls had a tea-party. Hester had provided herself +with a lump of sugar and a biscuit, and out of these many dishes were +made, and were arranged on a clean pocket-handkerchief spread on the +grass. Regie carried out his directions as butler with solemn +exactitude; and though Mary, who had inherited the paternal sense of +humor, thought fit to tweak the handkerchief and upset everything, she +found the witticism so coldly received by "Auntie Hester," although she +explained that father always did it, that she at once suited herself to +her company, and helped to repair the disaster. + +It was very hot. The dolls, from the featureless midshipman to the +colossal professional beauty sitting in her own costly perambulator (a +present from Mrs. Pratt), felt the heat, and showed it by their moist +countenances. The only person who was cool was a small, nude, china +infant in its zinc bath, the property of Stella, whose determination to +reach central facts, and to penetrate to the root of the matter, at +present took the form of tearing or licking off all that could be torn +or licked from objects of interest. Hester, who had presented her with +the floating baby in the bath, sometimes wondered, as she watched Stella +conscientiously work through a well-dressed doll down to its stitched +sawdust compartments, what Mr. Gresley would make of his daughter when +she turned her attention to theology. + +They were all sitting in a tight circle round the handkerchief, Regie +watching Hester cutting a new supply of plates out of smooth leaves with +her little gilt scissors, while Mary and Stella tried alternately to +suck an inaccessible grain of sugar out of the bottom of an acorn cup. + +Rachel and Dick had come up on their silent wheels, and were looking at +them over the wall before Hester was aware of their presence. + +"May we join the tea-party?" asked Rachel, and Hester started +violently. + +"I am afraid the gate is locked," she said. "But perhaps you can climb +it." + +"We can't leave the bicycles outside, though," said Dick, and he took a +good look at the heavy padlocked gate. Then he slowly lifted it off its +hinges, wheeled in the bicycles, and replaced the gate in position. + +Rachel looked at him. + +"Do you always do what you want to do?" she said, involuntarily. + +"It saves trouble," he said, "especially as no one can be such a +first-class fool as to think a padlock will keep a gate shut. He would +expect it to be opened." + +"But father said no one could come in there now," explained Regie, who +had watched, open-mouthed, the upheaval of the gate. "Father said it +could not be opened any more. He told mother." + +"Did he, my son?" said Dick, and he kissed every one, beginning with +Hester and finishing with the dolls. Then they all sat down to the +tea-party, and partook largely of the delicacies, and after tea Dick +solemnly asked the children if they had seen the flying half-penny he +had brought back with him from Australia. The children crowded round +him, and the half-penny was produced and handed round. Each child +touched it, and found it real. Auntie Hester and Auntie Rachel examined +it. Boulou was requested to smell it. And then it was laid on the grass, +and the pocket-handkerchief which had done duty as a table-cloth was +spread over it. + +The migrations of the half-penny were so extraordinary that even Rachel +and Hester professed amazement. Once it was found in Rachel's hand, into +which another large hand had gently shut it. But it was never discovered +twice in the same place, though all the children rushed religiously to +look for it where it was last discovered. + +Another time, after a long search, the doll in the bath was discovered +to be sitting upon it, and once it actually flew down Regie's back; and +amid the wild excitement of the children its cold descent was described +by Regie in piercing minuteness until the moment when it rolled out over +his stocking at his knee. + +"Make it fly down my back too, Uncle Dick," shrieked Mary. "Regie, give +it to me." + +But Regie danced in a circle round Dick, holding aloft the wonderful +half-penny. + +"Make it fly down my throat," he cried, too excited to know what he was +doing, and he put the half-penny in his mouth. + +"Put it out this instant," said Dick, without moving. + +A moment's pause followed, in which the blood ebbed away from the hearts +of the two women. + +"I can't," said Regie; "I've swallowed it." And he began to whimper, and +then suddenly rolled on the grass screaming. + +Dick pounced upon him like a panther, and held him by the feet head +downward, shaking him violently. The child's face was terrible to see. + +Hester hid her face in her hands. Rachel rose and stood close to Dick. + +"I think the shaking is rather too much for him," she said, watching the +poor little purple face intently. "I'm bound to go on," said Dick, +fiercely. "Is it moving, Regie?" + +"It's going down," screamed Regie, suddenly. + +"That it's not," said Dick, and he shook the child again, and the +half-penny flew out upon the grass. "Thank God," said Dick, and he laid +the gasping child on Hester's lap and turned away. + +A few minutes later Regie was laughing and talking, and feeling himself +a hero. Presently he slipped off Hester's knee and ran to Dick, who was +lying on the grass a few paces off, his face hidden in his hands. + +"Make the half-penny fly again, Uncle Dick," cried all the children, +pulling at him. + +Dick raised an ashen face for a moment and said, hoarsely, "Take them +away." + +Hester gathered up the children and took them back to the house through +the kitchen garden. + +"Don't say we have arrived," whispered Rachel to her. "I will come on +with him presently." And she sat down near the prostrate vine-grower. +The president of the South Australian Vine-Growers' Association looked +very large when he was down. + +Presently he sat up. His face was drawn and haggard, but he met Rachel's +dog-like glance of silent sympathy with a difficult, crooked smile. + +"He is such a jolly little chap," he said, winking his hawk eyes. + +"It was not your fault." + +"That would not have made it any better for the parents," said Dick. "I +had time to think of that while I was shaking that little money-box. +Besides, it was my fault, in a way. I'll never play with other people's +children again. They are too brittle. I've had shaves up the Fly River +and in the South Sea Islands, but never anything as bad as this, in this +blooming little Vicarage garden with a church looking over the wall." + +Hester was skimming back towards them. + +"Don't mention it to James and his wife," she said to Dick. "He has to +speak at a temperance meeting to-night. I will tell them when the +meeting is over." + +"That's just as well," said Dick, "for I know if James jawed much at me +I should act on the text that it is more blessed to give than to +receive." + +"In what way?" + +"Either way," said Dick. "Tongue or fist. It does not matter which, so +long as you give more than you get. And the text is quite right. It is +blessed, for I've tried it over and over again, and found it true every +time. But I don't want to try it on James if he's anything like what he +was as a curate." + +"He is not much altered," said Hester. + +"He is the kind of man that would not alter much," said Dick. "I expect +God Almighty likes him as he is." + +Mr. and Mrs. Gresley, meanwhile, were receiving Mrs. Pratt and the two +Misses Pratt in the drawing-room. Selina and Ada Pratt were fine, +handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their smart sailor +hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and whose +muff-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and sequin belts +and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the highest pinnacle of the +world of fashion. + +Selina was the most popular, being liable to shrieks of laughter at the +smallest witticisms, and always ready for that species of amusement +termed "bally-ragging" or "hay-making." But Ada was the most admired. +She belonged to that type which in hotel society and country towns is +always termed "queenly." She "kept the men at a distance." She "never +allowed them to take liberties," etc., etc. She held her chin up and her +elbows out, and was considered by the section of Middleshire society in +which she shone to be very distinguished. Mrs. Pratt was often told that +her daughter looked like a duchess; and this facsimile of the +aristocracy, or rather of the most distressing traits of its latest +recruits, had a manner of lolling with crossed legs in the parental +carriage and pair which was greatly admired. "Looks as if she was born +to it all," Mr. Pratt would say to his wife. + +Mrs. Gresley was just beginning to fear her other guests were not coming +when two tall figures were seen walking across the lawn, with Hester +between them. + +Mr. Gresley sallied forth to meet them, and blasts of surprised welcome +were borne into the drawing-room by the summer air. + +"But it was locked. I locked it myself." Inaudible reply. + +"Padlocked. Only opens to the word Moon. Key on my own watch-chain." + +Inaudible reply. + +"Hinges! ha! ha! ha! Very good, Dick. Likely story that. I see you're +the same as ever. Travellers' tales. But we are not so easily taken in, +are we, Hester?" + +Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the Pratts +were concerned. Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected "fancy" to Rachel, and +pressed her to stay at "The Towers" while she was in the neighborhood, +and make further acquaintance with her "young ladies." + +"Ada is very pernickety," she said, smiling towards that individual +conversing with Dick. "She won't make friends with everybody, and she +gives it me" (with maternal pride) "when I ask people to stay whom she +does not take to. She says there's a very poor lot round here, and most +of the young ladies so ill-bred and empty she does not care to make +friends with them. I don't know where she gets all her knowledge from. +I'm sure it's not from her mother. Ada, now you come and talk a little +to Miss West." + +Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel made room +for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself behind the +tea-table with Mrs. Gresley. + +The conversation turned on bicycling. + +"I bike now and then in the country," said Ada, "but I have not done +much lately. We have only just come down from town, and, _of course_, I +never bike in London." + +Rachel had just said that she did. + +"Perhaps you are nervous about the traffic," said Rachel. + +"Oh! I'm not the least afraid of the traffic, but it's such bad form to +bike in London." + +"That, of course, depends on how it's done," said Rachel; "but I am sure +in your ease you need not be afraid." + +Ada glared at Rachel, and did not answer. + +When the Pratts had taken leave she said to her mother: + +"Well, you can have Rachel West if you want to, but if you do I shall go +away. She is only Birmingham, and yet she's just as stuck up as she can +be." + +The Pratts were "Liverpool." + +"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt with natural pride, "it's well known +no one is good enough for you. But I took to Miss West, and an orphan +and all, with all that money, poor thing!" + +"She has no style," said Selina, "but she has a nice face; and she's +coming to stay with Sibbie Loftus next week, when she leaves Vi +Newhaven. She may be Birmingham, Ada, but she's just as thick with +county people as we are." + +"I did not rightly make out," said Mrs. Pratt, reflectively, "whether +that tall gentleman, Mr. Vernon, was after Miss West or Hessie Gresley." + +"Oh, ma! You always think some one's after somebody else," said Ada, +impatiently, whose high breeding obliged her to be rather peremptory +with her simple parent. "Mr. Vernon is a pauper, and so is Hessie. And, +besides, Hessie is not the kind of girl anybody would want to marry." + +"Well, I'm not so sure of that," said Selina. "But if she had had any +chances I know she would have told me, because I told her all about +Captain Cobbett and Mr. Baxter." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages. + --LA FONTAINE. + + +If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a word with +Hester, she was doomed to disappointment. Mr. Gresley took the seat on +the sofa beside Rachel which Ada Pratt had vacated, and after a few +kindly eulogistic remarks on the Bishop of Southminster and the +responsibilities of wealth, he turned the conversation into the +well-worn groove of Warpington. + +Rachel proved an attentive listener, and after Mr. Gresley had furnished +her at length with nutritious details respecting parochial work, he went +on: + +"I am holding this evening a temperance meeting in the Parish Room. I +wish, Miss West, that I could persuade you to stay for it, and thus +enlist your sympathies in a matter of vital importance." + +"They have been enlisted in it for the last ten years," said Rachel, who +was not yet accustomed to the invariable assumption on the part of Mr. +Gresley that no one took an interest in the most obvious good work until +he had introduced and championed it. "But," she added, "I will stay with +pleasure." + +Dick, who was becoming somewhat restive under Mrs. Gresley's inquiries +about the Newhavens, became suddenly interested in the temperance +meeting. + +"I've seen many a good fellow go to the dogs through drink in the +Colonies, more's the pity," Dick remarked. "I think I'll come too, +James. And if you want a few plain words you call on me." + +"I will," said Mr. Gresley, much gratified. "I always make a point of +encouraging the laity--at least, those among them who are thoroughly +grounded in Church teaching--to express themselves. Hear both sides, +that is what I always say. The Bishop constantly enjoins on his clergy +to endeavor to elicit the lay opinion. The chair this evening will be +taken by Mr. Pratt, a layman." + +The temperance meeting was to take place at seven o'clock, and possibly +Rachel may have been biassed in favor of that entertainment by the hope +of a quiet half-hour with Hester in her own room. At any rate, she +secured it. + +When they were alone Rachel produced Lady Newhaven's note. + +"Do come to Westhope," she said. "While you are under this roof it seems +almost impossible to see you, unless we are close to it," and she +touched the sloping ceiling with her hand. "And yet I came to Westhope, +and I am going on to Wilderleigh, partly in order to be near you." + +Hester shook her head. + +"The book is nearly finished," she said, the low light from the attic +window striking sideways on the small face with its tightly compressed +lips. + +A spirit indomitable, immortal, looked for a moment out of Hester's gray +eyes. The spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was becoming weaker +day by day. + +"When it is finished," she went on, "I will go anywhere and do anything, +but stay here I must till it is done. Besides, I am not fit for society +at present. I am covered with blue mould. Do you remember how that +horrid Lady Carbury used to laugh at the country squires' daughters for +being provincial? I have gone a peg lower than being provincial--I have +become parochial." + +A knock came at the door, and Fräulein's mild, musical face appeared in +the aperture. + +"I fear to disturb you," she said, "but Regie say he cannot go to sleep +till he see you." + +Hester introduced Fräulein to Rachel, and slipped down-stairs to the +night nursery. + +Mary and Stella were already asleep in their high-barred cribs. The +blind was down, and Hester could only just see the white figure of Regie +sitting up in his night-gown. She sat down on the edge of the bed and +took him in her arms. + +"What is it; my treasure?" + +"Auntie Hester, was I naughty about the flying half-penny?" + +"No, darling. Why?" + +"Because mother always says not to put pennies in my mouth, and I never +did till to-day. And now Mary says I have been very naughty." + +"It does not matter what Mary says," said Hester, with a withering +glance towards the sleeping angel in the next crib, who was only Mary by +day. "But you must never do it again, and you will tell mother all about +it to-morrow." + +"Yes," said Regie; "but, but--" + +"But what?" + +"Uncle Dick did say it was a flying half-penny, and you said so, too, +and that other auntie. And I thought it did not matter putting in flying +half-pennies, only common ones." + +Hester saw the difficulty in Regie's mind. + +"It felt common when it was inside," said Regie, doubtfully, "and yet +you and Uncle Dick _did_ say it was a flying one." + +Regie's large eyes were turned upon her with solemn inquiry in them. It +is crises like this that our first ideals are laid low. + +Regie had always considered Hester as the very soul of honor, that +mysterious honor which he was beginning to dimly apprehend through her +allegiance to it, and which, in his mind, belonged as exclusively to her +as the little bedroom under the roof. + +"Regie," said Hester, tremulously, seeing that she had unwittingly put +a stumbling-block before the little white feet she loved, "when we +played at the doll's tea-party, and you were the butler, I did not mean +you were _really_ a butler, did I? I knew, and you knew, and we all +knew, that you were Regie all the time." + +"Ye-es." + +"It was a game. And so when Uncle Dick found us playing the tea-party +game he played another game about the flying half-penny." + +"Then it was a common half-penny, after all," said Regie, with a deep +sigh. + +"Yes, it was a common half-penny, only the game was that it could fly, +like the other game was that the acorn cups were real teacups. So Uncle +Dick and all of us were not saying what was not true. We were all +playing at a game. Do you understand, my little mouse?" + +"Yes," said Regie, with another voluminous sigh, and Hester realized, +with thankfulness, that the half-penny and not herself had fallen from +its pedestal. "I see now; but when he said, Hi! Presto! and it flew +away, I thought I saw it flying. Mary said she did. And I suppose the +gate was only a game, too." + +Hester felt that the subject would be quite beyond her powers of +explanation if once the gate were introduced into it. + +She laid Regie down and covered him. + +"And you will go to sleep now. And I will ask Uncle Dick when next he +comes to show us how he did the game with the half-penny." + +"Yes," said Regie, dejectedly. "I'd rather know what there is to be +known. Only I _thought_ it was a flying one. Good-night, Auntie Hester." + +She stayed beside him a few minutes until his even breathing showed her +he was asleep, and then slipped back to her own room. The front-door +bell was ringing as she came out of the nursery. The temperance +deputation from Liverpool had arrived. Mr. Gresley's voice of welcome +could be heard saying that it was only ten minutes to seven. + +Accordingly, a few minutes before that hour, Mr. Gresley and his party +entered the Parish Room. It was crammed. The back benches were filled +with a large contingent of young men, whose half-sheepish, half-sullen +expression showed that their presence was due to pressure. Why the +parishioners had come in such numbers it would be hard to say. Perhaps +even a temperance meeting was a change in the dreary monotony of rural +life at Warpington. Many of the faces bore the imprint of this monotony, +Rachel thought, as she refused the conspicuous front seat pointed out to +her by Mrs. Gresley, and sat down near the door with Hester. + +Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a moment +later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his eye +travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking for her. +Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five deep by the +last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and the wall, but it +was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding the anxious +church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick disappeared among the +young men at the back, and Rachel thought no more of him until a large +Oxford shoe descended quietly out of space upon the empty seat near her, +and Dick, who had persuaded the young men to give him foot-room on their +seats, and had stepped over the high backs of several "school forms," +sat down beside her. + +It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling. But the thought +darted through her mind that Dick was the kind of man who, somehow or +other, would succeed where he meant to succeed, and would marry the +woman he intended to marry. There was no doubt that she was that woman, +and as he sat tranquilly beside her she wished, with a nervous tremor, +that his choice had fallen on some one else. + +The meeting opened with nasal and fervent prayer on the part of a +neighboring Archdeacon. No one could kneel down except the dignitaries +on the platform, but every one pretended to do so. Mr. Pratt, who was in +the chair, then introduced the principal speaker. Mr. Pratt's face, very +narrow at the forehead, became slightly wider at the eyes, widest when +it reached round the corners of the mouth, and finally split into two +long, parti-colored whiskers. He assumed on these occasions a manner of +pontifical solemnity towards his "humble brethren," admirably suited to +one who, after wrestling for many years with a patent oil, is conscious +that he has blossomed out into a "county family." + +The Warpington parishioners listened to him unmoved. + +The deputation from Liverpool followed, a thin, ascetic-looking man of +many bones and little linen, who spoke with the concentrated fury of a +fanatic against alcohol in all its varieties. Dick, who had so far taken +more interest in Rachel's gloves, which she had dropped, and with which +he was kindly burdening himself, than in the proceedings, drew himself +up and fixed his steel eyes on the speaker. + +A restive movement in the audience followed the speech, which was loudly +clapped by Mr. Gresley and the Pratts. + +Mr. Gresley then mounted the platform. + +Mr. Gresley had an enormous advantage as a platform speaker, and as a +preacher in the twin pulpits of church and home, owing to the conviction +that he had penetrated to the core of any subject under discussion, and +could pronounce judgment upon it in a conclusive manner. He was wont to +approach every subject by the preliminary statement that he had +"threshed it out." This threshing-out had been so thorough that there +was hardly a subject even of the knottiest description which he was +unable to dismiss with a few pregnant words. "Evolution! Ha! ha! +Descended from an ape. I don't believe that for one." While women's +rights received their death-blow from a jocose allusion to the woman +following the plough while the man sat at home and rocked the cradle. + +With the same noble simplicity he grappled with the difficult and +complex subject of temperance, by which he meant total abstinence. He +informed his hearers, "in the bigoted tones of a married teetotaler," +that he had gone to the root of the matter--the roots were apparently on +the surface--and that it was no use calling black white and white black. +He for one did not believe in muddling up black and white, as some +lukewarm people advocated, till they were only a dirty gray. No; either +drink was right or it was wrong. If it was not wrong to get drunk, he +did not know what was wrong. He was not a man of compromise. Alcohol was +a servant of the devil, and to tamper with it was to tamper with the +Evil One himself. Touch not. Taste not. Handle not. He for his part +should never side with the devil. + +This lofty utterance having been given time to sink in, Mr. Gresley +looked round at the sea of stolid, sullen faces, and concluded with +saying that the chairman would now call upon his cousin, Mr. Vernon, to +speak to them on the shocking evils he himself had witnessed in +Australia as the results of drink. + +Dick was not troubled by shyness. He extricated himself from his seat +with the help of the young men, and slowly ascended the platform. He +looked a size too large for it, and for the other speakers, and his +loose tweed suit and heather stockings were as great a contrast to the +tightly buttoned-up black of the other occupants as were his strong, +keen face and muscular hands to those of the previous speakers. + +"That's a man," said a masculine voice behind Rachel. "He worn't reared +on ditch-water, you bet." + +"Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen," said Dick. "You've only got to +listen to me for half a minute, and you'll find out without my telling +you that Nature did not cut me out for a speaker. I'm no talker. I'm a +workingman"--an admission which Mr. Pratt would rather have been boiled +in his own oil than have made. "For the last seven years I've done my +twelve hours a day, and I've come to think more of what a man gets +through with his hands than the sentiments which he can wheeze out after +a heavy meal. But Mr. Gresley has asked me to tell you what I know about +drink, as I have seen a good many samples of it in Australia." + +Dick then proceeded, with a sublime disregard of grammar, and an +earnestness that increased as he went on, to dilate on the evil effects +of drink as he himself had witnessed them. He described how he had seen +men who could not get spirits make themselves drunk on "Pain-killer"; +how he had seen strong, young station hands, who had not tasted spirits +for months, come down from the hills with a hundred pounds in their +pockets, and drink themselves into "doddery" old men in a fortnight in +the nearest township, where they were kept drunk on drugged liquor till +all their hard-earned wages were gone. + +The whole room listened in dead silence. No feet shuffled. Mr. Gresley +looked patronizingly at Dick's splendid figure and large, outstretched +hand, with the crooked middle finger, which he had cut off by mistake in +the bush and had stuck on again himself. Then the young Vicar glanced +smiling at the audience, feeling that he had indeed elicited a "lay +opinion" of the best kind. + +"Now what are the causes of all these dreadful things?" continued Dick. +"I'm speaking to the men here, not the women. What are the causes of all +this poverty and vice and scamped workmanship, and weak eyes and shaky +hands, on the top of high wages? I tell you they come from two things, +and one is as bad as the other. One is drinking too much, and the other +is drinking bad liquor. Every man who's worth his salt," said Dick, +balancing his long bent finger on the middle of his other palm, "should +know when he has had enough. Some can carry more, some less." Mr. +Gresley started and signed to Dick, but Dick did not notice. "Bad liquor +is at the root of half the drunkenness I know. I don't suppose there are +many publicans here to-night, for this meeting isn't quite in their +line; and if there are, they can't have come expecting compliments. But +if you fellows think you get good liquor at the publics round here, I +tell you you are jolly well mistaken." + +"Hear! hear!" shouted several voices. + +"I've been in the course of the last week to most of the public-houses +in Southminster and Westhope and Warpington to see what sort of stuff +they sold, and upon my soul, gentlemen, if I settled in Warpington I'd, +I'd"--Dick hesitated for a simile strong enough--"I'd turn teetotaler +until I left it again, rather than swallow the snake poison they serve +out to you." + +There was a general laugh, in the midst of which Mr. Gresley, whose +complexion had deepened, sprang to his feet and endeavored to attract +Dick's attention, but Dick saw nothing but his audience. Mr. Gresley +began to speak in his high, "singsong" voice. + +"My young friend," he said, "has mistaken the object of this meeting. In +short I must--" + +"Not a bit," said Dick--"not a bit; but if the people have had enough of +me I'll take your chair while you have another innings." + +In a moment the room was in an uproar. + +Shouts of "No, no," "Go on," "Let him speak." + +In the tumult Mr. Gresley's voice, instead of being the solo, became but +as one instrument--albeit a trombone--in an orchestra. + +"But I thoroughly agree with the gentlemen who spoke before me," said +Dick, when peace was restored. "Total abstinence is a long chalk below +temperance, but it's better than drunkenness any day. And if a man can't +get on without three-finger nips, let him take the pledge. There are one +or two here to-night who would be the better for it. But, to my +thinking, total abstinence is like a water mattress. It is good for a +sick man, and it's good for a man with a weak will, which is another +kind of illness. But temperance is for those who are in health. There is +a text in the Bible about wine making glad the heart of man. That's a +good text, and one to go on. As often as not texts are like bags, and a +man crams all his own rubbish into them, and expects you to take them +together. There are some men, who ought to know better, who actually get +out of that text by saying the Bible means unfermented liquor"--Mr. +Gresley became purple. "Does it? Then how about the other place where we +hear of new wine bursting old bottles. What makes them burst? +Fermentation, of course, as every village idiot knows. No, I take it +when the Bible says wine it means wine. Wine's fermented liquor, and +what's unfermented liquor? Nothing but 'pop.'" + +Dick pronounced the last word with profound contempt, which was met with +enthusiastic applause. + +"My last word to you, gentlemen," continued Dick, "is, keep in mind two +points: first, look out for an honest publican, if there is such an +article, who will buy only the best liquor from the best sources, and is +not bound by the breweries to sell any stuff they send along. Join +together, and make it hot for a bound publican. Kick him out, even if he +is the Squire's butler." Mr. Pratt's complexion became apoplectic. "And +the second point is, Remember some men have heads and some haven't. It +is no use for a lame man entering for a hurdle-race. A strong man can +take his whack--if it's with his food--and it will do him good, while a +weak man can't hang up his hat alter the first smile." + +A storm of applause followed, which was perhaps all the heartier by +reason of the furious face of Mr. Gresley. Dick was clapped continuously +as he descended the platform and slowly left the room, feeling in his +pockets for his tobacco-pouch. A squad of young men creaked out after +him, and others followed by twos and threes, so that the mellifluous +voice of Mr. Pratt was comparatively lost, who, disregarding his +position as chairman, now rose to pour oil--of which, in manner alone, +he had always a large supply--on the troubled waters. Mr. Pratt had felt +a difficulty in interrupting a member of a county family, which with the +eye of faith he plainly perceived Dick to be, and at the same time a +guest of "Newhaven's." The Pratts experienced in the rare moments of +their intercourse with the Newhavens some of that sublime awe, that +subdued rapture, which others experience in cathedrals. Mr. Pratt had +also taken a momentary pleasure in the defeat of Mr. Gresley, who did +not pay him the deference which he considered due to him and his "seat." +Mr. Pratt always expected that the Vicar should, by reason of his small +income, take the position of a sort of upper servant of the Squire; and +he had seen so many instances of this happy state of things that he was +perpetually nettled by Mr. Gresley's "independent" attitude; while Mr. +Gresley was equally irritated by "the impatience of clerical control" +and shepherding which Mr. Pratt, his largest and woolliest sheep, too +frequently evinced. + +As the chairman benignly expressed his approval of both views, and toned +down each to meet the other, the attention of the audience wandered to +the occasional laughs and cheers which came from the school play-ground. +And when, a few minutes later, Rachel emerged with the stream, she saw +Dick standing under the solitary lamp-post speaking earnestly to a +little crowd of youths and men. The laughter had ceased. Their +crestfallen appearance spoke for itself. + +"Well, good-night, lads," said Dick, cordially, raising his cap to them, +and he rejoined Rachel and Hester at the gate. + +When Dick and Rachel had departed on their bicycles, and when the +deputation, after a frugal supper, had retired to rest, and when the +drawing-room door was shut, then, and not till then, did Mr. Gresley +give vent to his feelings. + +"And he would not stop," he repeated over and over again almost in +hysterics, when the total-abstinence hose of his wrath had been turned +on Dick until every reservoir of abuse was exhausted. "I signed to him; +I spoke to him. You saw me speak to him, Minna, and he would not stop." + +Hester experienced that sudden emotion which may result either in tears +or laughter at the cruel anguish brought upon her brother by the +momentary experience of what he so ruthlessly inflicted. + +"He talked me down," said Mr. Gresley, his voice shaking. "He opposed me +in my own school-room. Of course, I blame myself for asking him to +speak. I ought to have inquired into his principles more thoroughly, but +he took me in entirely by saying one thing in this room and the exact +opposite on the platform." + +"I thought his views were the same in both places," said Hester, "and, +at the time, I admired you for asking him to speak, considering he is a +vine-grower." + +"A what?" almost shrieked Mr. Gresley. + +"A vine-grower. Surely you know he has one of the largest vineyards in +South Australia?" + +For a moment Mr. Gresley was bereft of speech. + +"And you knew this and kept silence," he said at last, while Mrs. +Gresley looked reproachfully, but without surprise, at her +sister-in-law. + +"Certainly. What was there to speak about? I thought you knew." + +"I never heard it till this instant. That quite accounts for his views. +He wants to push his own wines. Of course, drunkenness is working for +his interests. I understand it all now. He has undone the work of years +by that speech for the sake of booking a few orders. It is contemptible. +I trust, Hester, he is not a particular friend of yours, for I shall +feel it my duty to speak very strongly to him if he comes again." + +But Dick did not appear again. He was off and away before the terrors of +the Church could be brought to bear on him. + +But his memory remained green at Warpington. + +"They do say," said Abel to Hester a few days later, planting his spade +on the ground, and slowly scraping off upon it the clay from his nailed +boots, "as that Muster Vernon gave 'em a dusting in the school-yard as +they won't forget in a hurry. He said he could not speak out before the +women folk, but he was noways nesh to pick his words onst he was +outside. Barnes said as his tongue 'ud 'ave raised blisters on a hedge +stake. But he had a way with him for all that. There was a deal of talk +about him at market last Wednesday, and Jones and Peg is just silly to +go back to Australy with 'im. I ain't sure," continued Abel, closing the +conversation by a vigorous thrust of his spade into the earth, "as one +of the things that fetched 'em all most wasn't his saying that since +he's been in a hot climate he knowed what it was to be tempted himself +when he was a bit down on his luck or a bit up. Pratts would never have +owned to that." The village always spoke of Mr. Pratt in the plural +without a prefix. "I've been to a sight of temperance meetings, +because," with indulgence, "master likes it, tho' I always has my glass, +as is natural. But I never heard one of the speakers kind of settle to +it like that. That's what the folks say; that for all he was a born +gentleman he spoke to 'em as man to man, not as if we was servants or +childer." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + Le bruit est pour le fat. + La plainte est pour le sot. + L'honnête homme trompé + S'en va et ne dit mot. + --M. DELANONI + + +"And so you cannot persuade Miss Gresley to come to us next week?" said +Lord Newhaven, strolling into the dining-room at Westhope Abbey, where +Rachel and Dick were sitting at a little supper-table laid for two in +front of the high altar. The dining-room had formerly been the chapel, +and the carved stone altar still remained under the east window. + +Lord Newhaven drew up a chair, and Rachel felt vaguely relieved at his +presence. He had a knack of knowing when to appear and when to efface +himself. + +"She can't leave her book," said Rachel. + +"Her first book was very clever," said Lord Newhaven, "and, what was +more, it was true. I hope for her own sake she will outgrow her love of +truth, or it will make deadly enemies for her." + +"And good friends," said Rachel. + +"Possibly," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at her, and almost +obliged to believe that she had spoken without self-consciousness. "But +if she outgrows all her principles, I hope, at any rate, she won't +outgrow her sharp tongue. I liked her ever since she first came to this +house, ten years ago, with Lady Susan Gresley. I remember saying that +Captain Pratt; who called while she was here, was a 'bounder.' And Miss +Gresley said she did not think he was quite a bounder, only on the +boundary-line. If you knew Captain Pratt, that describes him exactly." + +"I wish she had not said it," said Rachel, with a sigh. "She makes +trouble for herself by saying things like that. Is Lady Newhaven in the +drawing-room?" + +"Yes, I heard her singing 'The Lost Chord' not ten minutes ago." + +"I will go up to her," said Rachel. + +"I do believe," said Lord Newhaven, when Rachel had departed, "that she +has an affection for Miss Gresley." + +"It is not necessary to be a detective in plain clothes to see that," +said Dick. + +"No. It generally needs to be a magnifying-glass to see a woman's +friendship, and then they are only expedients till we arrive, Dick. You +need not he jealous of Miss Gresley. Miss West will forget all about her +when she is Mrs. Vernon." + +"She does not seem very keen about that," said Dick, grimly. "I'm only +marking time. I'm no forwarder than I was." + +"Well, it's your own fault for fixing your affections on a woman who is +not anxious to marry. She has no objection to you. It is marriage she +does not like." + +"Oh, that's bosh!" said Dick. "All women wish to be married, and if they +don't they ought to." + +He felt that an invidious reflection had been east on Rachel. + +"All the same, a man with one eye can see that women with money, or +anything that makes them independent of us, don't flatter us by their +alacrity to marry us. They will make fools of themselves for love--none +greater--and they will marry for love. But their different attitude +towards us, their natural lords and masters, directly we are no longer +necessary to them as stepping-stones to a home and a recognized +position, revolts me. If you had taken my advice at the start, you would +have made up to one among the mob of women who are dependent on marriage +for their very existence. If a man goes into that herd he will not be +refused. And if he is it does not matter. It is the blessed custom of +piling everything on to the eldest son, and leaving the women of the +family almost penniless, which provides half of us with wives without +any trouble to ourselves. Whatever we are, they have got to take us. The +average dancing young woman living in luxury in her father's house is +between the devil and the deep sea. We are frequently the devil; but it +is not surprising that she can't face the alternative--a poverty to +which she was not brought up, and in which she has seen her old spinster +aunts. But I suppose in your case you really want the money?" + +Dick looked rather hard at Lord Newhaven. + +"I should not have said that unless I had known it to be a lie," +continued the latter, "because I dislike being kicked. But, Dick, listen +to me. You have not," with sudden misgiving, "laid any little +matrimonial project before her this evening, have you?" + +"No; I was not quite such a fool as that." + +"Well! Such things do occur. Moonlight, you know, etc. I was possessed +by a devil once, and proposed by moonlight, as all my wife's friends +know, and probably her maid. But, seriously, Dick, you are not making +progress, as you say yourself." + +"Well!" rather sullenly. + +"Well, on-lookers see most of the game. Miss West may--I don't say she +is--but if things go on as they are for another week she may become +slightly bored. That was why I joined you at supper. She had had, for +the time, enough." + +"Of me?" said Dick, reddening under his tan. + +"Just so. It is a matter of no importance after marriage, but it should +be avoided beforehand. Are you really in earnest about this?" + +Dick delivered himself slowly and deliberately of certain platitudes. + +"Well, I hope I shall hear you say all that again some day in a +condensed form before a clergyman. In the meanwhile--" + +"In the meanwhile I had better clear out." + +"Yes; I don't enjoy saying so in the presence of my own galantine and +mayonnaise, but that is it. Go, and--come back." + +"If you have a Bradshaw," said Dick, "I'll look out my train now. I +think there is an express to London about seven in the morning, if you +can send me to the station." + +"But the post only comes in at eight." + +"Well, you can send my letters after me." + +"I dare say I can, my diplomatist. But you are not going to leave till +the post has arrived, when you will receive business letters requiring +your immediate presence in London. You are not going to let a woman know +that you leave on her account." + +"You are very sharp, Cackles," said Dick, drearily. "And I'll take a +leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right thing. But I +expect she will know very well that the same business which took me to +that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to London." + +Rachel was vaguely relieved when Dick went off next morning. She was +not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from young men, +which in due season became "marked," and then resulted in proposals +neatly or clumsily expressed. But she was disturbed when she thought of +Dick, and his departure was like the removal of a weight, not a heavy, +but still a perceptible one. For Rachel was aware that Dick was in +deadly earnest, and that his love was growing steadily, almost +unconsciously, was accumulating like snow, flake by flake, upon a +mountain-side. Some day, perhaps not for a long time, but some day, +there would be an avalanche, and, in his own language, she "would be in +it." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est + le pardon qu'elle a fait naître dans votre âme. . . . Mais si la + trahison n'a pas accru la simplicité, la confiance plus haute, + l'étendue de l'amour, on vous aura trahi bien inutilement, et vous + pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrivé.--MAETERLINCK. + + +Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard wall +where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous occasion. +It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley did +not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk secrets," as they +would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was felt by the Gresleys +to be the appropriate moment to momentarily lay aside their daily +avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in the garden for social +intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. Listeners are generally liked. +Perhaps also her gentle, unassuming manner was not an unpleasant change +after the familiar nonchalance of the Pratts. + +The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, and +then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain obtuse +persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and outwitting +them, just as the really wicked people, who give _vivâ voce_ +invitations, goad us into crevasses of lies, for which, if there is any +justice anywhere, they will have to answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley +gave the last shove to Hester and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on +what he called socialism. Finding they were discussing some phase of it, +he drew up a chair and informed them that he had "threshed out" the +whole subject. + +"Socialism," he began, delighted with the polite resignation of his +hearers, which throughout life he mistook for earnest attention. +"Community of goods. People don't see that if everything were divided up +to-day, and everybody was given a shilling, by next week the thrifty man +would have a sovereign, and the spendthrift would be penniless. +Community of goods is impossible as long as human nature remains what it +is. But I can't knock that into people's heads. I spoke of it once to +Lord Newhaven, after his speech in the House of Lords. I thought he was +more educated and a shade less thoughtless than the idle rich usually +are, and that he would see it if it was put plainly before him. But he +only said my arguments were incontrovertible, and slipped away." + +It was after this conversation, or rather monologue, that Hester and +Rachel arranged to meet by stealth. + +They were sitting luxuriously in the short grass, with their backs +against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over their eyes. + +"I wish I had met this Mr. Dick five or six years ago," said Rachel, +with a sigh. + +Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love +disaster. + +"Dick always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. "I should +offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a lot of +trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end." + +Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put into words +a latent conviction of her own which troubled her. + +"Dick is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester, +dispassionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not high +praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his goodness does +not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care for such things, he +has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him +in a little patent safe of his own." + +"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture," +said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. Dick." + +There was a short silence. + +"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how +commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of second-rate +novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong, +promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of +stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I +have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal +experience. I keep before my mind that other men are _not_ like _him_. I +know they aren't, but yet--somehow I think they are. I am frightened." + +Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend. + +"Do you still consider, after these four years, that _he_ did you an +injury?" + +Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of +midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the +distant hills. + +"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw it away. +I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is because I am +naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, "that it seems now, +looking back, such a dreadful waste." + +"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks like a +waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless +passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. +Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the +love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish +prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses +happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for +having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of all the reins.'" + +"You mean it did me good," said Rachel, "and that _he_ was a kind of +benefactor in disguise. I dare say you are right, but you see I don't +take a burning interest in my own character. I don't find my mental +stand-point--isn't that what Mrs. Loftus calls it?--very engrossing." + +"He was a benefactor, all the same," said Hester, with decision. "I did +not think so at the time, and if I could have driven over him in an +omnibus I would have done so with pleasure. But I believe that the day +will come when you will cover that grave with a handsome monument, +erected out of gratitude to him for not marrying you. And now, Rachel, +will you forgive me beforehand for what I am going to say?" + +"Oh!" said Rachel, ruefully. "When you say that I know it is the prelude +to something frightful. You are getting out a dagger, and I shall be its +sheath directly." + +"You are a true prophet, Rachel." + +"Yes, executioner." + +"My dear, dear friend, whom I love best in the world, when that happened +my heart was wrung for you. I would have given everything I had, life +itself--not that that is saying much--to have saved you from that hour." + +"I know it." + +"But I should have been the real enemy if I had had power to save you, +which, thank God! I had not. That hour had to be. It was necessary. You +may not care about your own character, but I do. There is something +stubborn and inflexible in you--the seamy side of your courage and +steadfastness--which cannot readily enter into the feelings of others or +put itself in their place. I think it is want of imagination--I mean the +power of seeing things as they are. You are the kind of woman who, if +you had married comfortably some one you rather liked, might have become +like Sybell Loftus, who never understands any feeling beyond her own +microscopic ones, and who measures love by her own small preference for +Doll. You would have had no more sympathy than she has. People, like +Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what one has experienced. +That is why they are always saying, 'as a mother,' or 'as a wife.' If +that were true the world would have to get on without sympathy, for no +two people have the same experience. Only a shallow nature believes +that a resemblance in two cups means that they both contain the same +wine. Sybell believes it, and you would have been very much the same, +not from lack of perception, as in her case, but from want of using your +powers of perception. If you had not undergone an agonized awakening, +all the great realities of life--love, hatred, temptation, +enthusiasm--would have remained for you as they have remained for +Sybell, merely pretty words to string on light conversation. That is why +I can't bear to hear her speak of them, because every word she says +proves she has not known them. But the sword that pierced your heart +forced an entrance for angels, who had been knocking where there was no +door--until then." + +Silence. + +"Since when is it that people have turned to you for comfort and +sympathy?" + +No answer. + +"Rachel, on your oath, did you ever really care for the London poor +until you became poor yourself, and lived among them?" + +"No." + +"But they were there all the time. You saw them in the streets. It was +not as if you only heard of them. You saw them. Their agony, their vice, +was written large on their faces. There was a slum almost at the back of +that great house in Portman Square where you lived many years in luxury +with your parents." + +"Don't," said Rachel, her lip trembling. + +"I must. You did not care then. If a flagrant case came before you you +gave something like other uncharitable people who hate feeling +uncomfortable. But you care _now_. You seek out those who need you. +Answer me. Were they cheaply bought or not, that compassion and love for +the degraded and the suffering which were the outcome of your years of +poverty in Museum Buildings?" + +"They were cheaply bought," said Rachel, with conviction, speaking with +difficulty. + +"Would you have learned them if you had gone on living in Portman +Square?" + +"Oh, Hester! would anybody?" + +"Yes, they would. But that is not the question. Would _you?_" + +"N--no," said Rachel. + +There was a long silence. + +Rachel's mind took its staff and travelled slowly, humbly, a few more +difficult steps up that steep path where "Experience is converted into +thought as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin." + +At last she turned her grave eyes upon her friend. + +"I see what you mean," she said; "I have not reached the place yet; but +I can believe that I shall come to it some day, when I shall feel as +thankful for that trouble as I do feel now for having known poverty. +Yes, Hester, you are right. I was a hard woman, without imagination. I +have been taught in the only way I could learn--by experience. I have +been very fortunate." + +Hester did not answer, but bent down and kissed Rachel's hands. It was +as if she had said, "Forgive me for finding fault with one so far above +me." And the action was so understood. + +Rachel colored, and they sat for a moment hand close in hand, heart very +near to heart. + +"How is it you are so sure of these things, Hester?" said Rachel, in a +whisper. "When you say them I see they are true, and I believe them, but +how do you _know_ them?" + +A shadow, a very slight one, fell across Hester's face. "'Love knows the +secret of grief.' But can Love claim that knowledge if he is asked how +he came by it by one who should have known?" The question crept in +between the friends and moved them apart. Hester's voice altered. + +"Minna would say that I picked them up from the conversation of James. +You know the Pratts are perfectly aware of what I have, of course, tried +to conceal, namely, that the love-scenes in the _Idyll_ were put +together from scraps I had collected of James's engagement to Minna. And +all the humorous bits are claimed by a colony of cousins in Devonshire +who say that any one 'who had heard them talk' could have written the +_Idyll._ And any one who had not heard them apparently. The so-called +profane passages are all that are left to me as my own." + +"You are profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the +flippancy which she had brought upon herself. + +A distant whoop distracted their attention, and they saw Regie galloping +towards them, imitating a charger, while Fräulein and the two little +girls followed. + +Regie stopped short before Rachel, and looked suspiciously at her. + +"Where is Uncle Dick?" he said. + +"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and her +eyes falling guiltily before her questioner. + +"Then he has not come with you?" + +Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley +often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was +quick-witted and flashy. + +"No, he has not come with me." + +"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come." + +"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I knew he +was somewhere else." + +Dear little Mary was naturally the Gresleys' favorite child. However +thoroughly they might divest themselves of parental partiality, they +could not but observe that she was as sensible as a grown-up person. + +"I thought he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a tree or +something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell with a +conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever Mary may +say?" + +"Mary is generally wrong," said Hester, "but she is right for once." + +Mary, who was early acquiring the comfortable habit of hearing only the +remarks that found an echo in her own breast, heard she was right, and +said, shrilly: + +"I told Regie when we was still on the road that Uncle Dick wasn't +there. Mother doesn't always go with father, but he said he'd run and +see." + +"We shall be ver'r late for luncheon," said Fräulein, hastily, blushing +down to the onyx brooch at her turn-down collar, and drawing Mary away. + +"Perhaps he left the half-penny with you," said Regie. "Fräulein would +like to see it." + +"No, no," said Fräulein, the tears in her eyes. "I do not vish at all. I +cry half the night when I hear of it." + +"I only cry when baby beats me," said Mary, balancing on one leg. + +"I have not got the half-penny," said Rachel, the three elders +studiously ignoring Mary's personal reminiscences. + +The children were borne away by Fräulein, and the friends kissed and +parted. + +"I am coming to Wilderleigh to-morrow," said Rachel. "I shall be much +nearer to you then." + +"It is no good contending against Dick and fate," said Hester, shaking +her finger at her. "You see it is all decided for you. Even the children +have settled it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + If a fool be associated with a wise man all his life, he will + perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of + soup.--_Buddhist Dhammapada_. + + +"I can't think what takes you to Wilderleigh," said Lady Newhaven to +Rachel. "I am always bored to death when I go there. Sybell is so +self-centred." + +Perhaps one of the reasons why Lady Newhaven and Sybell Loftus did not +"get on" was owing to a certain superficial resemblance between them. + +Both exacted attention, and if they were in the same room together it +seldom contained enough attention to supply the needs of both. Both were +conscious, like "Celia Chettam," that since the birth of their first +child their opinions respecting literature, politics, and art had +acquired additional weight and solidity, and that a wife and mother +could pronounce with decision on important subjects where a spinster +would do well to hold her peace. Each was fond of saying, "As a married +woman I think this or that"; yet each was conscious of dislike and +irritation when she heard the other say it. And there is no doubt that +Sybell had been too unwell to appear at Lady Newhaven's garden-party the +previous summer, because Lady Newhaven had the week before advanced her +cherished theory of "one life one love," to the delight of Lord Newhaven +and the natural annoyance of Sybell, whose second husband was at that +moment handing tea and answering "That depends" when appealed to. + +"As if," as Sybell said afterwards to Hester, "a woman can help being +the ideal of two men." + +"Sybell is such a bore now," continued Lady Newhaven, "that I don't +know what she will be when she is older. I don't know why you go to +Wilderleigh, of all places." + +"I go because I am asked," said Rachel, "and partly because I shall be +near Hester Gresley." + +"I don't think Miss Gresley can be very anxious to see you, or she would +have come here when I invited her. I told several people she was coming, +and that Mr. Carstairs, who thinks so much of himself, came on purpose +to meet her. It is very tiresome of her to behave like that, especially +as she did not say she had any engagement. You make a mistake, Rachel, +in running after people who won't take any trouble to come and see you. +It is a thing I never do myself." + +"She is buried in her book at present." + +"I can't think what she has to write about. But I suppose she picks up +things from other people." + +"I think so. She is a close observer." + +"I think you are wrong there, Rachel, for when she was here some years +ago she never looked about her at all. And I asked her how she judged of +people, and she said, 'By appearances.' Now that was very silly, +because, as I explained to her, appearances were most deceptive, and I +had often thought a person with a cold manner was cold-hearted, and +afterwards found I was quite mistaken." + +Rachel did not answer. She wondered in what the gift consisted, which +Lady Newhaven and Sybell both possessed, of bringing all conversation to +a stand-still. + +"It seems curious," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause, "how the books +are mostly written by the people who know least of life. Now, the +_Sonnets from the Portuguese_. People think so much of them. I was +looking at them the other day. Why, they are nothing to what I have +felt. I sometimes think if _I_ wrote a book--I don't mean that I have +any special talent--but if I really sat down and wrote a book with all +the deep side of life in it, and one's own religious feelings, and +described love and love's tragedy as they really are, what a sensation +it would make! It would take the world by storm." + +"Any book dealing sincerely with one of those subjects could not fail to +be a great success." + +"Oh yes. I am not afraid I should fail. I do wish you were not going, +Rachel. We have so much in common. And it is such a comfort to be with +some one who knows what one is going through. I believe you feel the +suspense, too, for my sake." + +"I do feel it--deeply." + +"I sometimes think," said Lady Newhaven, her face aging suddenly under +an emotion so disfiguring that Rachel's eyes fell before it--"I am +sometimes almost certain that Edward drew the short lighter. Oh! do you +think if he did he will really _act up to it_ when the time comes?" + +"If he drew it he will certainly take the consequences." + +"Will he, do you think? I am almost sure he drew it. He is doing so many +little things that look as if he knew he were not going to live. I heard +Mr. Carstairs ask him to go to Norway with him next spring, and Edward +laughed, and said he never looked more than a few months ahead." + +"I am afraid he may have said that intending you to hear it." + +"But he did not intend me to hear it. I overheard it." Rachel's face +fell. + +"You did promise after you told me about the letter that you would never +do that kind of thing again." + +"Well, Rachel, I have not. I have not even looked at his letters since. +I could not help it that once, because I thought he might have told his +brother in India. But don't you think his saying that to Mr. Carstairs +looks--" + +Rachel shook her head. + +"He is beyond me," she said. "There may be something more behind which +we don't know about." + +"I have a feeling, it has come over me again and again lately, that I +shall be released, and that Hugh and I shall be happy together yet." + +And Lady Newhaven turned her face against the high back of her carved +oak chair and sobbed hysterically. + +"Could you be happy if you had brought about Lord Newhaven's death?" +said Rachel. + +Her voice was full of tender pity, not for the crouching unhappiness +before her, but for the poor atrophied soul. Could she reach it? She +would have given everything she possessed at that moment for one second +of Christ's power to touch those blind eyes to sight. + +"How can you say such things? I should _not_ have brought it about. I +did not even know of that dreadful drawing of lots till the thing was +done. That was all his own doing." + +Rachel sighed. The passionate yearning towards her companion shrank back +upon herself. + +"The fault is in me," she said to herself. "If I were purer, humbler, +more loving, I might have been allowed to help her." + +Lady Newhaven rose, and held Rachel tightly in her arms. + +"I count the days," she said, hoarsely, shaking from head to foot. "It +is two months and three weeks to-day. November the twenty-ninth. You +will promise faithfully to come to me and be with me then? You will not +desert me? Whatever happens you will be sure--to come?" + +"I will come. I promise," said Rachel. And she stooped and kissed the +closed eyes. She could at least do that. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + Brother, thy tail hangs down behind. + --_Song of the Bandar-log_. + + +Rachel arrived after tea at Wilderleigh, and went straight to her room +on a plea of fatigue. It was a momentary cowardice that tempted her to +yield to her fatigue. She felt convinced that she should meet Hugh +Scarlett at Wilderleigh. She had no reason for the conviction beyond the +very inadequate one that she had met him at Sybell's London house. +Nevertheless, she felt sure that he would be among the guests, and she +longed for a little breathing-space after parting with Lady Newhaven +before she met him. Presently Sybell flew in and embraced her with +effusion. + +"Oh! what you have missed!" she said, breathlessly. "But you do look +tired. You were quite right to lie down before dinner, only you aren't +lying down. We have had such a conversation down-stairs. The others are +all out boating with Doll but Mr. Harvey, the great Mr. Harvey, you +know." + +"I am afraid I don't know." + +"Oh yes, you do. The author of _Unashamed_." + +"I remember now." + +"Well, he is here, resting after his new book, _Rahab_. And he has been +reading us the opening chapters, just to Miss Barker and me. It is quite +wonderful. So painful, you know. He does not spare the reader anything; +he thinks it wrong to leave out anything--but so powerful!" + +"Is it the same Miss Barker whom I met at your house in the season, who +denounced _The Idyll?_" + +"Yes. How she did cut it up! You see, she knows all about East London, +and that sort of thing. I knew you would like to meet her again because +you are philanthropic, too. She hardly thought she could spare the time +to come, but she thought she would go back fresher if the wail were out +of her ears for a week. The wail! Isn't it dreadful? I feel we ought to +do more than we do, don't you?" + +"We ought, indeed." + +"But then, you see, as a married woman, I can't leave my husband and +child and bury myself in the East End, can I?" + +"Of course not. But surely it is an understood thing that marriage +exempts women from all impersonal duties." + +"Yes, that is just it. How well you put it! But others could. I often +wonder why, after writing _The Idyll_, Hester never goes near East +London. I should have gone straight off, and have cast in my lot with +them if I had been in her place." + +"Do you ever find people do what you would have done if you had been in +their place?" + +"No, never. They don't seem to see it. It's a thing I can't understand +the way people don't act up to their convictions. And I do know, though +I would not tell Hester so for worlds, that the fact that she goes on +living comfortably in the country after bringing out that book makes +thoughtful people, not me, of course, but other earnest-minded people, +think she is a humbug." + +"It would--naturally," said Rachel. + +"Well, now I am glad you agree with me, for I said something of the same +kind to Mr. Scarlett last night, and he could not see it. He's rather +obtuse. I dare say you remember him?" + +"Perfectly." + +"I don't care about him, he is so superficial, and Miss Barker says he +is very lethargic in conversation. I asked him because--don't breathe a +word of it--but because, as a married woman, one ought to help others, +and--do you remember how he stood up for Hester that night in London?" + +"For her book, you mean." + +"Well, it's all one. Men are men, my dear. Let me tell you he would +never have done that if he had not been in love with her." + +"Do you mean that men never defend obvious truths unless they are in +love?" + +"Now you are pretending to misunderstand me," said Sybell, joyously, +making her little squirrel face into a becoming pout. "But it's no use +trying to take me in. And it's coming right. He's there at this moment!" + +"At the Vicarage?" + +"Where else? I asked him to go. I urged him. I said I felt sure she +expected him. One must help on these things." + +"But if he is obtuse and lethargic and superficial, is he likely to suit +Hester?" + +"My dear, the happiest lot for a woman is marriage. And you and I are +Hester's friends. So we ought to do all we can for her happiness. That +is why I just mentioned this." + +The dressing-gong began to boom. + +"I must fly," said Sybell, depositing a butterfly kiss on Rachel's +forehead. And she flew. + +"I wish I knew what I felt about him," said Rachel to herself. "I don't +much like hearing him called obtuse and superficial, but I suppose I +should like still less to hear Sybell praise him. I have never heard her +praise anything but mediocrity yet." + +If Rachel had been at all introspective she might have found a clew as +to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her +hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown +lying in state on the bed for a white satin one embroidered at long +intervals with rose-colored carnations. The gown was a masterpiece, +designed especially for her by a great French milliner. Rachel often +wondered whose eyesight had been strained over those marvellous +carnations, but to-night she did not give them a thought. She looked +with grave dissatisfaction at her pale, nondescript face and nondescript +hair and eyes. She did not know that only women with marriageable +daughters saw her as she saw herself in the glass. + +As she left her room a door opened at the farther end of the same wing, +and a tall man came out. The middle-class element in her said, +"Superfine." His fastidious taste said, "A plain woman." + +In another instant they recognized each other. + +"Superfine! What nonsense," she thought, as she met his eager, tremulous +glance. + +"A plain woman. Rachel plain!" He had met the welcome in her eyes, and +there was beauty in every movement, grace in every fold of her white +gown. + +As they met the gong suddenly boomed out close beneath them, and they +could only smile at each other as they shook hands. The butler, who was +evidently an artist in his way, proved the gong to the uttermost; and +they had descended the staircase together, and had crossed the hall +before its dying tremors allowed them to speak. + +As he was about to do so he saw her wince suddenly. She was looking +straight in front of her at the little crowd in the drawing-room. For an +instant her face turned from white to gray, and she involuntarily put +out her hand as if to ward off something. Then a lovely color mounted to +her cheek; she drew herself up and entered the room, while Hugh, behind +her, looked fiercely at each man in succession. + +It is always the unexpected that happens. As Rachel's half-absent eyes +passed over the group in the brilliantly lighted drawing-room her heart +reared, without warning, and fell back upon her. She had only just +sufficient presence of mind to prevent her hand pressing itself against +her heart. He was there; he was before her--the man whom she had loved +with passion for four years, and who had tortured her. + +Mr. Harvey (the great Mr. Harvey) strode forward, and Rachel found her +hand engulfed in a large soft hand, which seemed to have a poached egg +in the palm. + +"This is a pleasure to which I have long looked forward," murmured the +great man, all cuff and solitaire, bending in what he would have termed +a "chivalrous manner" over Rachel's hand; while Doll, standing near, +wondered drearily "why these writing chaps were always such bounders." + +Rachel passed on to greet Miss Barker, standing on the hearthrug, this +time in magenta velveteen, but presumably still tired of the Bible, +conversing with Rachel's former lover, whose eyes were on the floor and +whose hand gripped the mantel-piece. He had seen her--recognized her. + +"May I introduce Mr. Tristram?" said Sybell to Rachel. + +"We have met before," said Rachel, gently, as he bowed without looking +at her, and she put out her hand. + +He was obliged to touch it, obliged to meet for one moment the clear, +calm eyes that had once held boundless love for him, boundless trust in +him; that had, as he well knew, wept themselves half blind for him. + +Mr. Tristram was one of the many who judge their actions in the light of +after-circumstances, and who towards middle-age discover that the world +is a treacherous world. He had not been "in a position to marry" when he +had fallen in love with Rachel. But he had been as much in love with her +as was consistent with a permanent prudential passion for himself and +his future--that future which the true artist must ever preserve +untrammelled. "High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone," etc. He had felt +keenly breaking with Rachel. Later on, when a tide of wealth flowed up +to the fifth floor of Museum Buildings, he had recognized, for the first +time, that he had made a great mistake in life. To the smart of baffled +love had been added acute remorse, not so much for wealth missed as for +having inflicted upon himself and upon her a frightful and unnecessary +pain. But how could he have foreseen such a thing? How could he tell? +he had asked himself, in mute stupefaction, when the news reached him. +What a cheat life was! What a fickle jade was Fortune! + +Since the memorable day when Rachel had found means to lay the ghost +that haunted her he had made no sign. + +"I hardly expected you would remember me," he said, catching at his +self-possession. + +"I have a good memory," she said, aware that Miss Barker was listening +and that Hugh was bristling at her elbow. "And the little Spanish boy +whom you were so kind to, and who lodged just below me in Museum +Buildings, has not forgotten either. He still asks after the +'Cavalier.'" + +"Mr. Tristram is positively blushing at being confronted with his good +deeds," said Sybell, intervening on discovering that the attention of +some of her guests had been distracted from herself. "Yes, darling"--to +her husband--"you take in Lady Jane. Mr. Scarlett, will you take in Miss +West?" + +"I have been calling on your friend, Miss Gresley," said Hugh, after he +had overcome his momentary irritation at finding Mr. Harvey was on +Rachel's other side. "I did not know until her brother dined here last +night that she lived so near." + +"Did not Mrs. Loftus tell you?" said Rachel, with a remembrance of +Sybell's remarks before dinner. + +"She told me after I had mentioned my wish to go and see her. She even +implored me so repeatedly to go that I--" + +"Nearly did not go at all." + +"Exactly. But in this case I persevered because I am, or hope I am, a +friend of hers. But I was not rewarded." + +"I thought you said you had seen her." + +"Oh yes, I saw her, and I saw that she looked very ill. But I found it +impossible to have any conversation with her in the presence of Mr. and +Mrs. Gresley. Whenever I spoke to her Mr. Gresley answered, and +sometimes Mrs. Gresley also. In fact, Mr. Gresley considered the call as +paid to himself. Mrs. Loftus tells me he is much cleverer than his +sister, but I did not gain that impression. And after I had given tongue +to every platitude I could think of I had to take my leave." + +"Hester ought to have come to the rescue." + +"She did try. She offered to show me the short cut to Wilderleigh across +the fields. But unluckily--" + +"I can guess what you are going to say." + +"I am sure you can. Mr. Gresley accompanied us, and Miss Gresley turned +back at the first gate." + +"You have my sympathy." + +"I hope I have, for I have had a severe time of it. Mr. Gresley was most +cordial," continued Hugh, ruefully, "and said what a pleasure it was to +him to meet any one who was interested in intellectual subjects. I +suppose he was referring to my platitudes. He said living in the country +cut him off almost entirely from the society of his mental equals, so +much so that at times he had thoughts of moving to London and making a +little centre for intellectual society. According to him the whole +neighborhood was sunk in a state of hopeless apathy, with the exception +of Mrs. Loftus. He said she was the only really clever, cultivated +person in Middleshire." + +"Did he? How about the Bishop of Southminster?" + +"He did not mention him. My acquaintance with Mrs. Loftus is of the +slightest," added Hugh, interrogatively, looking at his graceful, +animated hostess. + +"I imagined you knew her fairly well, as you are staying here." + +"No. She asked me rather late in the day. I fancy I was a 'fill up.' I +accepted in the hope, rather a vague one, that I might meet you here." + +To Rachel's surprise her heart actually paid Hugh the compliment of +beating a shade faster than its wont. She looked straight in front of +her, and her absent eyes fell on Mr. Tristram sitting opposite, talking +somewhat sulkily to Miss Barker. Rachel looked steadily at him. + +Mr. Tristram had been handsome once, and four years had altered him but +little in that respect. He had not yet grown stout, but it was evident +that Nature had that injury in reserve for him. To grow stout is not +necessarily to look common, but if there is an element of inherent +commonness in man or woman, a very little additional surface will make +it manifest, as an enlarged photograph magnifies its own defects. The +"little more and how much it is" had come upon the unhappy Tristram, +once the slimmest of the slim. Life had evidently not gone too well with +him. Self-pity and the harassed look which comes of annoyance with +trifles had set their mark upon him. His art had not taken possession of +him. "High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone." But they sometimes faint +also in bachelor lodgings. The whole effect of the man was second-rate, +mentally, morally, socially. He seemed exactly on a par with the +second-rate friends with whom Sybell loved to surround herself. Hugh and +Dick were taking their revenge on the rival who blocked their way. +Whatever their faults might be, they were gentlemen, and Mr. Tristram +was only "a perfect gentleman." Rachel had not known the difference when +she was young. She saw it now. + +"I trust, Miss West," said the deep voice of Mr. Harvey, revolving +himself and his solitaire slowly towards her, that I have your sympathy +in the great cause to which I have dedicated myself, the emancipation of +woman." + +"I thought the new woman had effected her own emancipation," said +Rachel. + +Mr. Harvey paid no more attention to her remark than any one with a +theory to propound which must be delivered to the world as a whole. + +"I venture to think," he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to +a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the +position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in _The Princess_, +by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that +respect. I hold"--in a voice calculated to impress the whole +table--"that woman is man's superior, and that she degrades herself +when she endeavors to place herself on an equality with him." + +There was a momentary silence, like that which travellers tell us +succeeds the roar of the lion in his primeval forest, silencing even the +twitter of the birds. + +"How true that is!" said Sybell, awed by the lurid splendor of Mr. +Harvey's genius. "Woman is man's superior, not his equal. I have felt +that all my life, but I never quite saw how until this moment. Don't you +think so, too, Miss Barker?" + +"I have never lost an opportunity of asserting it," said the Apostle, +her elbow on Mr. Tristram's bread, looking at Mr. Harvey with some +asperity for poaching on her manor. + +"All sensible women have been agreed for years on that point." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + With aching hands and bleeding feet + We dig and heap, lay stone on stone, + We bear the burden and the heat + Of the long day, and wish 'twere done! + Not till the hours of light return + All we have built do we discern. + --MATTHEW ARNOLD. + + +It was Sunday morning. The night was sinking out of the sky to lean +faint unto death upon the bosom of the earth. The great forms of the +trees, felt rather than seen, were darkness made visible. Among the +night of high elms round Warpington a single yellow light burned in an +upper window. It had been burning all night. And now, as the night +waned, the little light waned with it. At least, it was suddenly blown +out. + +Hester came to the window and looked out. There was light, but there was +no dawn as yet. In the gray sky over the gray land the morning-star, +alone and splendid, kept watch in the east. + +She sat down and leaned her brow against the pane. She did not know that +it was aching. She did not know that she was cold, exhausted; so +exhausted that the morning-star in the outer heaven and the morning-star +in her soul were to her the same. They stooped together, they merged +into one great light, heralding a perfect day presently to be. + +The night was over, and that other long night of travail and patience +and faith, and strong rowing in darkness against the stream, was over, +too, at last--at last. _The book was finished_. + +The tears fell slowly from Hester's eyes on to her clasped hands, those +blessed tears which no human hand shall ever intervene to wipe away. + +To some of us Christ comes in the dawn of the spiritual life walking +upon the troubled waves of art. And we recognize Him, and would fain go +to meet Him. But our companions and our own fears dissuade us. They say +it is only a spirit, and that Christ does not walk on water, that the +land whither we are rowing is the place He has Himself appointed for us +to meet Him. So our little faith keeps us in the boat, or fails us in +the waves of that windswept sea. + +It seemed to Hester as if once, long ago, shrinking and shivering, she +had stood in despair upon the shore of a great sea, and had heard a +voice from the other side say, "Come over." She had stopped her ears; +she had tried not to go. She had shrunk back a hundred times from the +cold touch of the water that each time she essayed let her trembling +foot through it. And now, after an interminable interval, after she had +trusted and doubted, had fallen and been sustained, had met the wind and +the rain, after she had sunk in despair and risen again, she knew not +how, now at length a great wave--the last--had cast her up half drowned +upon the shore. A miracle had happened. She had reached the other side, +and was lying in a great peace after the storm upon the solemn shore +under a great white star. + +Hester sat motionless. The star paled and paled before the coming of a +greater than he. Across the pause which God has set 'twixt night and day +came the first word of the robin. It reached Hester's ear as from +another world--a world that had been left behind. The fragmentary notes +floated up to her from an immeasurable distance, like scattered bubbles +through deep water. + +The day was coming. God's creatures of tree and field and hill took +form. Man's creature, the little stout church in their midst, thrust +once more its plebeian outline against God's sky. Dim shapes moved +athwart the vacancy of the meadows. Voices called through the gray. +Close against the eaves a secret was twittered, was passed from beak to +beak. In the nursery below a little twitter of waking children broke the +stillness of the house. + +But Hester did not hear it. She had fallen into a deep sleep in the low +window-seat, with her pale forehead against the pane; a sleep so deep +that even the alarum of the baby did not rouse her, nor the entrance of +Emma with the hot water. + + * * * * * + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, an hour later; as she and her husband +returned through the white mist from early celebration, "Hester was not +there. I thought she had promised to come." + +"She had." + +There was a moment's silence. + +"Perhaps she is not well," said Mr. Gresley, closing the church-yard +gate into the garden. + +Mrs. Gresley's heart swelled with a sense of injustice. She had often +been unwell, often in feeble health before the birth of her children, +but had she ever pleaded ill-health as an excuse for absenting herself +from one of the many services which her husband held to be the +main-spring of the religious life? + +"I do not think she can be very unwell. She is standing by the magnolia +now," she said, her lip quivering, and withdrawing her hand from her +husband's arm. She almost hated the slight, graceful figure, which was +not of her world, which was, as she thought, coming between her and her +husband. + +"I will speak seriously to her," said Mr. Gresley, dejectedly, who +recollected that he had "spoken seriously" to Hester many times at his +wife's instigation without visible result. And as he went alone to meet +his sister he prayed earnestly that he might be given the right word to +say to her. + +A ray of sunlight, faint as an echo, stole through the lingering mist, +parting it on either hand, and fell on Hester. + +Hester, standing in a white gown under the veiled trees in a glade of +silver and trembling opal, which surely mortal foot had never trod, +seemed infinitely removed from him. Dimly he felt that she was at one +with this mysterious morning world, and that he, the owner, was an alien +and a trespasser in his own garden. + +But a glimpse of his cucumber-frames in the background reassured him. He +advanced with a firmer step, as one among allies. + +Hester did not hear him. + +She was gazing with an absorption that shut out all other sights and +sounds at the solitary blossom on the magnolia-tree. Yesterday it had +been a bud; but to-day the great almond-white petals which guarded it, +overlapping each other so jealously, had opened wide, and the perfect +flower, keeping nothing back, had laid bare all its pure white soul +before its God. + +As Mr. Gresley stopped beside her, Hester turned her little pinched, +ravaged face towards him and smiled. Something of the passionate +self-surrender of the flower was reflected in her eyes. + +"Dear Hester," he said, seeing only the wan, drawn face. "Are you ill?" + +"Yes--no. I don't think so," said Hester, tremulously, recalled suddenly +to herself. She looked hastily about her. The world of dew and silver +had deserted her, had broken like an iridescent bubble at a touch. The +magnolia withdrew itself. Hester found herself suddenly transplanted +into the prose of life, emphasized by a long clerical coat and a bed of +Brussels sprouts. + +"I missed you," said Mr. Gresley, with emphasis. + +"Where? When?" Hester's eyes had lost their fixed look and stared +vacantly at him. + +Mr. Gresley tried to subdue his rising annoyance. + +Hester was acting, pretending not to understand, and he saw through it. + +"At God's altar," he said, gravely, the priest getting the upper hand of +the man. + +"Have you not found me there?" said Hester, below her breath, but so low +that fortunately her brother did not catch the words, and was spared +their profanity. + +"I will appeal to her better feelings," he said to himself. "They must +be there, if I can only touch them." + +He did not know that in order to touch the better feelings of our +fellow-creatures we must be able to reach up to them, or by reason of +our low stature we may succeed only in appealing to the lowest in them, +in spite of our tiptoe good intentions. Is that why such appeals too +often meet with bitter sarcasm and indignation? + +But fortunately a robust belief in the assiduities of the devil as the +cause of all failures, and a conviction that who-so opposed Mr. Gresley +opposed the Deity, supported and blindfolded the young Vicar in +emergencies of this kind. + +He spoke earnestly and at length to his sister. He waved aside her timid +excuse that she had overslept herself after a sleepless night, and had +finished dressing but the moment before he found her in the garden. He +entreated her to put aside such insincerity as unworthy of her. He +reminded her of the long months she had spent at Warpington with its +peculiar spiritual opportunities; that he should be to blame if he did +not press upon her the first importance of the religious life, the +ever-present love of God, and the means of approaching Him through the +sacraments. He entreated her to join her prayers with his that she might +be saved from the worship of her own talent, which had shut out the +worship of God, from this dreadful indifference to holy things, and the +impatience of all religious teaching which he grieved to see in her. + +He spoke well, the earnest, blind, would-be leader endeavoring to guide +her to the ditch from which he knew not how she had emerged, +passionately distressed at the opposition he met with as he would have +drawn her lovingly towards it. + +The tears were in Hester's eyes, but the eyes themselves were as flint +seen through water. She stifled many fierce and cruel impulses to speak +as plainly as he did, to tell him that it was not religion that was +abhorent to her, but the form in which he presented it to her, and that +the sin against the Holy Ghost was disbelief, like his, in the religion +of others. But when have such words availed anything? When have they +been believed? Hester had a sharp tongue, and she was slowly learning to +beware of it as her worst enemy. She laid down many weapons before she +trusted herself to speak. + +"It is good of you to care what becomes of me," she said, gently, but +her voice was cold. "I am sorry you regard me as you do. But from your +point of view you were right to speak--as--as you have done. I value the +affection that prompted it." + +"She can't meet me fairly," said Mr. Gresley to himself, with sudden +anger at the meanness of such tactics. "They say she is so clever, and +she can't refute a word I say. She appears to yield and then defies me. +She always puts me off like that." + +The sun had vanquished the mist, and in the brilliant light the two +figures moved silently, side by side, back to the house, one with +something very like rage in his heart, the rage that in bygone days +found expression in stake and fagot. + +Perhaps the heaviest trouble which Hester was ever called upon to bear +had its mysterious beginnings on that morning of opal and gossamer when +the magnolia opened. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et irréfutables, de ces + arguments qui fondent devant la raison comme la neige an feu, et + qu'on ne peut saisir, des arguments absurdes et triomphants, de + curé de campagne qul démontre Dieu.--Guy DE MAUPASSANT. + + +Sybell's party broke up on Saturday, with the exception of Rachel and +Mr. Tristram, who had been unable to finish by that date a sketch he was +making of Sybell. When Doll discovered that his wife had asked that +gentleman to stay over Sunday he entreated Hugh, in moving terms, to do +the same. + +"I am not literary," said Doll, who always thought it necessary to +explain that he was not what no one thought he was. "I hate all that +sort of thing. Utter rot, I call it. For goodness' sake, Scarlett, sit +tight. I must be decent to the beast in my own house, and if you go I +shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all hours of the night in +the smoking-room." + +Hugh was easily persuaded, and so it came about that the morning +congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching Hugh +and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved Wilderleigh pew, +with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it, and Doll at the other. No one +looked at Rachel. Her hat attracted a momentary attention, but her face +none. + +The Miss Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man +milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the sparse +congregation. The spectator of so many points, all made the most of, +unconsciously felt with a sense of oppression that everything that could +be done had been done. No stone had been left unturned. + +Their brother, Captain Algernon Pratt, sitting behind them, looked +critically at them, and owned that they were smart women. But he was not +entirely satisfied with them, as he had been in the old days, before he +went into the Guards and began the real work of his life, raising +himself in society. + +Captain Pratt was a tall, pale young man--_assez beau +garçon_--faultlessly dressed, with a quiet acquired manner. He was not +ill-looking, the long upper lip concealed by a perfectly kept mustache, +but the haggard eye and the thin line in the cheek, which did not +suggest thought and overwork as their cause, made his appearance vaguely +repellent. + + "Jesu, lover of my soul," + +sang the shrill voices of the choir-boys, echoed by Regie and Mary, +standing together, holding their joint hymnbook exactly equally between +them, their two small thumbs touching. + +Fräulein, on Hester's other side, was singing with her whole soul, +accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body: + + "Cover my defenceless 'ead, + Wiz ze sadow of Zy wing." + +Mr. Gresley, after baying like a blood-hound through the opening verses, +ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer. The congregation amened and +settled itself. Mary leaned her blond head against her mother, Regie +against Hester. + +The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley. + +He gave out the text: + +"Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?" + + * * * * * + +All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a period +admirably suited for quiet reflection. + +"A good woman loves but once," said Mr. Tristram to himself, in an +attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a pillar in +front of him. Some of us would be as helpless without a Bowdlerized +generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the invalid would be +without his peptonized beef-tea. + +"Rachel is a good woman, a saint. Such a woman does not love in a hurry, +but when she does she loves forever." What was that poem he and she had +so often read together? Tennyson, wasn't it? About love not altering +"when it alteration finds," but bears it out even to the crack of doom. +Fine poet, Tennyson; he knew the human heart. She had certainly adored +him four years ago, just in the devoted way in which he needed to be +loved. And how he had worshipped her! Of course he had behaved badly. He +saw that now. But if he had it was not from want of love. She had been +unable to see that at the time. Good women were narrow, and they were +hard, and they did not understand men. Those were their faults. Had she +learned better by now? Did she realize that she had far better marry a +man who had loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than +some fortune-hunter, like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram +called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and ask +for forgiveness. He glanced for a moment at the gentle, familiar face +beside him. + +"She will forgive me," he said, reassuring himself, in spite of an +inward qualm of misgiving. "I am glad I arranged to stay on. I will +speak to her this afternoon. She has become much softened, and we will +bury the past and make a fresh start together." + + * * * * * + +"I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon," said Doll, stretching a leg +outside the open end of the pew. "I wish Gresley would not call the +Dissenters worms. They are some of my best tenants, and they won't like +it when they hear of it. And I'll go round the young pheasants. (Doll +did this, or something similar, every Sunday afternoon of his life, but +he always rehearsed it comfortably in thought on Sunday mornings.) And +if Withers is about I'll go out in the boat--the big one, the little one +leaks--and set a trimmer or two for to-morrow. I'm not sure I'll set one +under the south bank, for there was the devil to pay last time, when +that beast of an eel got among the roots. I'll ask Withers what he +thinks. I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters blind leaders of +the blind. It's such bad form, and I don't suppose the text meant that +to start with, and what's the use of ill-feeling in a parish? And I'll +take Scarlett with me. We'll slip off after luncheon, and leave that +bounder to bound by himself. And poor old Crack shall come too. Uncle +George always took him." + + * * * * * + +"James is simply surpassing himself," said Mrs. Gresley to herself, her +arm round her little daughter. "Worms what a splendid comparison! The +Churchman, the full-grown man after the stature of Christ, and the +Dissenter invertebrate (I think dear James means inebriate), like a worm +cleaving to the earth. But possibly God in His mercy may let them slip +in by a back-door to heaven! How like him to say that, so generous, so +wide-minded, taking the hopeful view of everything! How noble he looks! +These are days in which we should stick to our colors. I wonder how he +can think of such beautiful things. For my part, I think the duty of the +true priest is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right +wrong for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson +to the Bishop, if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as if +right and wrong were mere matters of opinion! What a gift he has! I know +he will eat nothing for luncheon. If only we were somewhere else where +the best joints were a little cheaper, and his talents more +appreciated." And Mrs. Gresley closed her eyes and prayed earnestly, a +tear sliding down her cheek on to Mary's floss-silk mane, that she might +become less unworthy to be the wife of one so far above her, that the +children might all grow up like him, and that she might be given +patience to bear with Hester even when she vexed him. + + * * * * * + +Captain Pratt's critical eye travelled over the congregation. It +absolutely ignored Mrs. Gresley and Fräulein. It lingered momentarily on +Hester. He knew what he called "breeding" when he saw it, and he was +aware that Hester possessed it, though his sisters would have laughed at +the idea. He had seen many well-bred women on social pinnacles look like +that, whose houses were at present barred against him. The Pratt sisters +were fixed into their smartness as some faces are fixed into a grin. It +was not spontaneous, fugitive, evanescent as a smile, gracefully worn, +or lightly laid aside, as in Hester's case. He had known Hester slightly +in London for several years. He had seen her on terms of intimacy, such +as she never showed to his sisters, with inaccessible men and women with +whom he had achieved a bare acquaintance, but whom, in spite of many +carefully concealed advances, he had found it impossible to know better. +Captain Pratt had reached that stage in his profession of raising +himself when he had become a social barometer. He was excessively +careful whom he knew, what women he danced with, what houses he visited; +and any of his acquaintances who cared to ascertain their own social +status to a hair's-breadth had only to apply to it the touchstone of +Captain Pratt's manner towards them. + +Hester, who grasped many facts of that kind, was always amused by the +cold consideration with which he treated her on his rare visits to the +parental Towers; and which his sisters could only construe as a sign +that "Algy was gone on Hessie." + +"But he will never marry her," they told each other. "Algy looks +higher." + +It was true. If Hester had been Lady Hester, it is possible that the +surname of Pratt, if frequently refused by stouter women, might +eventually have been offered to her. But Captain Pratt was determined +to marry rank, and nothing short of a Lady Something was of any use to +him. An Honorable was better than nothing, but it did not count for much +with him. It had a way of absenting itself when wanted. No one was +announced as an Honorable. It did not even appear on cards. It might he +overlooked. Rank, to be of any practical value, must be apparent, +obvious. Lady Georgiana Pratt, Lady Evelina Pratt! Any name would do +with that prefix. His eye travelled as far as Sybell and stopped again. +She was "the right sort" herself, and she dressed in the right way. Why +could not Ada and Selina imitate her? But he had never forgiven her the +fact that he had met "a crew of cads" at her house, whom he had been +obliged to cut afterwards in the Row. No, Sybell would not have done for +him. She surrounded herself with vulgar people. + +Captain Pratt was far too well-mannered to be guilty of staring, except +at pretty maid-servants or shop-girls, and his eye was moved on by the +rigid police of etiquette which ruled his every movement. It paused +momentarily on Rachel. He knew about her, as did every bachelor in +London. A colossal heiress. She was neither plain nor handsome. She had +a good figure, but not good enough to counterbalance her nondescript +face. She had not the air of distinction which he was so quick to detect +and appraise. She was a social nonentity. He did not care to look at her +a second time. "I would not marry her with twice her fortune," he said +to himself. + + * * * * * + +Regie's hand had stolen into Hester's. His even breathing, felt rather +than heard, as he dropped asleep against her shoulder, surrounded Hester +with the atmosphere of peace and comfort which his father had broken +earlier in the day. Regie often brought back to her what his father +wrested from her. + +She listened to the sermon as from a warm nest safely raised above the +quaggy ground of personal feeling. + +"Dear James! How good he is! how much in earnest! But worms don't go in +at back-doors. Why are not clergymen taught a few elementary rules of +composition before they are ordained? But perhaps no one will notice it +except myself. James is certainly a saint. He has the courage of his +opinions. I believe he loves God and the Church with his whole heart, +and would go to the stake for them, or send me there if he thought it +was for the good of my soul. Why has he no power? Why is he so much +disliked in the parish and neighborhood? I am sure it is not because he +has small abilities, and makes puns, and says cut-and-dried things. How +many excellent clergymen who do the same are beloved? Is it because he +deals with every one as he deals with me? What dreadful things he thinks +of me. I don't wonder he is anxious about me. What unworthy motives of +wilful blindness and arrogance he is attributing to the Nonconformists! +Oh, James, James! will you never see that it is disbelief in the +sincerity of the religion of others, because it is not in the same +narrow form as your own, which makes all your zeal and earnestness of +none effect! You think the opposition you meet with everywhere is the +opposition of evil to good, of indifference to piety. When will you +learn that it is the good in your hearers which opposes you, the love of +God in them which is offended by your representation of Him?" + + * * * * * + +Hugh's eyes were fixed on the same pillar as Mr. Tristram's, but if he +had been aware of that fact he would have chosen another pillar. His +thin, handsome face was beginning to show the marks of mental strain. +His eyes had the set, impassive look of one who, hedged in on both +sides, sees a sharp turn ahead of him on an unknown road. + + * * * * * + +"Rachel! Rachel! Rachel! Don't you hear me calling to you? Don't you +hear me telling you that I can't live without you? The hymn was +right--'Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee'--only +it was written of you, not of that far, far away God who does not care. +Only care for me. Only love me. Only give me those cool hands that I may +lean my forehead against them. No help can come to me except through +you. Stoop down to me and raise me up, for I love you." + +The sun went in suddenly, and a cold shadow fell on the pillar and on +Hugh's heart. + +Love and marriage were not for him. That far-away God, that Judge in the +black cap, had pronounced sentence against him, had doomed that he +should die in his sins. When he had sat in his own village church only +last Sunday between his mother and sister, he had seen the empty place +on his chancel wall where the tablet to his memory would be put up. When +he walked through the church-yard, his mother leaning on his arm, his +step regulated by her feeble one, he had seen the vacant space by his +father's grave already filled by the mound of raw earth which would +shortly cover him. His heart had ached for his mother, for the gentle, +feeble-minded sister, who had transferred the interest in life, which +keeps body and soul together, from her colorless existence to that of +her brother. Hughie was the romance of her gray life: what Hughie said, +what Hughie thought, Hughie's wife--oh, jealous thought, only to be met +by prayer! But later on--joy of joys--Hughie's children! He realized it, +now and then, vaguely, momentarily, but never as fully as last Sunday. +He shrank from the remembrance, and his mind wandered anew in the +labyrinth of broken, twisted thought, from which he could find no way +out. + +_There must be some way out!_ He had stumbled callously through one day +after another of these weeks in which he had not seen Rachel towards his +next meeting with her, as a half-blind man stumbles towards the light. +But the presence of Rachel afforded no clew to the labyrinth. What vain +hope was this that he had cherished unconsciously that she could help +him. There was no help for him. There was no way out. He was in a trap. +He must die, and soon, by his own hand. Incredible, preposterous fate! +He shuddered, and looked around him involuntarily. + +His glance, reverent, full of timid longing, fell on Rachel, and his +heart cried aloud, suddenly, "If she loves me, I shall not be able to +leave her." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + Look in my face! my name is Might-have-been; + I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell. + --DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. + + +It was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Tristram leaned on the stone balustrade +that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was watching two +distant figures, followed by a black dot, stroll away across the park. +One of them seemed to drag himself unwillingly. Mr. Tristram +congratulated himself on the acumen which had led him to keep himself +concealed until Doll and Hugh had started for Beaumere. + +Sybell had announced at luncheon, in the tone of one who observes a +religious rite, that she should rest till four o'clock, and would be +ready to sit for the portrait of her upper lip at that hour. + +It was only half-past two now. Mr. Tristram had planted himself exactly +in front of Rachel's windows, with his back to the house. "She will keep +me waiting, but she will come out in time," he said to himself, nervous +and self-confident by turns, resting his head rather gracefully on his +hand. His knowledge of womankind supported him like a life-belt, but it +has been said that life-belts occasionally support their wearers +upsidedown. Theories have been known to exhibit the same spiteful +tendency towards those who place their trust in them. + +"Of course, she has got to show me that she is offended with me," he +reflected, gazing steadily at the Welsh hills. "She would not have come +out if I had asked her, but she will certainly come as I did not. I will +give her half an hour." + +Rachel, meanwhile, was looking fixedly at Mr. Tristram from her bedroom +window with that dispassionate scrutiny to avoid which the vainest would +do well to take refuge in noisome caves. + +"I wonder," she said to herself, "whether Hester always saw him as I see +him now. I believe she did." + +Rachel put on her hat and took up her gloves. "If this is really I, and +that is really he, I had better go down and get it over," she said to +herself. + +Mr. Tristram had given her half an hour. She appeared in the low stone +doorway before the first five minutes of the allotted time had elapsed, +and he gave a genuine start of surprise as he heard her step on the +gravel. His respect for her fell somewhat at this alacrity. + +"I have been waiting in the hope of seeing you," he said, after a +moment's hesitation. "I am anxious to have a serious conversation with +you." + +"Certainly," she said. + +They walked along the terrace, and presently found themselves in the +little coppice adjoining it. They sat down together on a wooden seat +round an old cedar, in the heart of the golden afternoon. + +It was an afternoon the secret of which Autumn and Spring will never +tell to Winter and Summer, when the wildest dreams of love might come +true, when even the dead might come down and put warm lips to ours, and +we should feel no surprise. + +A kingfisher flashed across the open on his way back to the brook near +at hand, fleeing from the still splendor of the sun-fired woods, where +he was but a courtier, to the little winding world of gray stones and +water, where he was a jewelled king. + +When the kingfisher had left them _tête-à-tête_, Mr. Tristram found +himself extremely awkwardly placed on the green bench. He felt that he +had not sufficiently considered beforehand the peculiar difficulties +which, in the language of the law, "had been imported into his case." + +Rachel sat beside him in silence. If it could be chronicled that +sympathetic sorrow for her companion's predicament was the principal +feeling in her mind, she would have been an angel. + +Mr. Tristram halted long between two opinions. At last he said, +brokenly: + +"Can you forgive me?" + +What woman, even with her white hair, even after a lifetime spent out of +ear-shot, ever forgets the tone her lover's voice takes when he is in +trouble? Rachel softened instantly. + +"I forgave you long ago," she said, gently. + +Something indefinable in the clear, full gaze that met his daunted him. +He stared apprehensively at her. It seemed to him as if he were standing +in cold and darkness looking in through the windows of her untroubled +eyes at the warm, sunlit home which had once been his, when it had been +exceeding well with him, but of which he had lost the key. + +A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came sailing +on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel's knee. + +"I was angry at first," she said, her voice falling across the silence +like another leaf. "And then, after a time, I forgave you. And later +still, much later, I found out that you had never injured me--that I had +nothing to forgive." + +He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained +volubly--for here he felt he was on sure ground--that, on the contrary, +she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an infernal blackguard, +that men were coarse brutes, not fit to kiss a good woman's +shoe-latchet, etc., etc. He identified his conduct with that of the +whole sex, without alluding to it as that of the individual Tristram. He +made it clear that he did not claim to have behaved better than most +men. + +Rachel listened attentively. "And I actually loved him," she said to +herself. + +"But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her love +raises a man, transfigures him, ennobles his whole life," etc., etc. + +"My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at the time," +said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were spoken. + +Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last; was the reproach he had been +expecting. + +He assured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once more. +He denounced the accursed morals of the day, above which he ought to +have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all unmarried men. + +"That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett," she said, scornfully, to herself, and +then her cheek blanched as she remembered that Hugh was not exempt, +after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient; but she waited quietly +for the inevitable proposal. + +Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic and facile utterance, which +the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, had become so +entangled in the morals of the age that it took him some time to +extricate himself from the subject before he could pass on to plead, in +an impassioned manner, the cause of the man, unworthy though he might +be, who had long loved her, loved her now, and would always love her, in +this world and the next. + +It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had many. +But if the proposal was long, the refusal was longer. Rachel, who had a +good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic life made great +demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that +domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high +hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these +objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have +not seen them for a day or two. + +Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at first +impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But +the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him +devotedly could not at last prevail against the odious conviction that +she was determined not to marry him. + +"Then, in that case, you never loved me?" + +"I do not love you now." + +"You are determined not to marry?" + +"On the contrary, I hope to do so." + +Rachel's words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment +that she hoped anything of the kind. + +"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth." + +"I prefer several others." + +Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally with +his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his +docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence, and she +had learned it. + +"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an +aristocrat than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever his +faults may be, loves you for yourself." + +Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is as +offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman? + +Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly. + +"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that touch of +_hauteur_ which, when the vulgar have at last drawn it upon themselves +by the insolence which is the under side of their courtesy, always has +the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull. + +In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. Tristram +stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two +rabbits to hurry back into their holes. + +Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again. +His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close +at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first +among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of rank, now that +her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He +should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if he had not heard it +from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she had chosen. +It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions +from him and to bid her good-bye. + +"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and looking very +much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He +had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman's No," which at the last +moment meant "Yes." And then there was another which chronicled how, +after several stanzas of upbraiding, "we rushed into each other's arms." +Both recurred to him now. He had often thought how true they were. + +"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who apparently had an +unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this +once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other +and to our--former attachment." + +"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful she +would lose him. + +"Good-bye." + +"You understand it is for always?" + +"I do." + +He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she really +let him go? + +"I am not the kind of man to be whistled back," he said, fiercely. It +was an appeal and a defiance, for he was just the kind of man, and they +both knew it. + +"Of course not." + +"That is your last word?" + +"My last word." + +He dropped her hand and half turned to go. + +She made no sign. + +Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind him. At +the little gate he stopped a moment, listening intently. No recalling +voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were talking about. With +a trembling hand he slammed the gate and departed. + +Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long that +the stooping sun found out the solemn, outstretched arms of the cedar, +and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle's wing. Each little +twig and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold against the twilight that +lurked beneath the heavy boughs. + +She sat so still that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, and +struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her, +first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, with the +other, and decided that she was harmless. + +Presently a robin dropped down close to her, flashing up his gray under +wing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, and from its +sun-stirred depths said his say. + +The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons, when the shadows are +lengthening, he sings sadness into your heart. If you are joyful shut +your ears against him, for you may keep peace, but never joy, while he +is singing. He knows all about it, "love's labor lost," the gray face of +young Love dead, the hard-wrought grave in the live rock where he is +buried. And he tells of it again and again and again, as if Love's sharp +sword had indeed reddened his little breast, until the heart aches to +hear him. But he tells also that consolation is folded not in +forgetfulness, but in remembrance. That is why he sings in the silence +of the autumn dawn, before Memory closes her eyes, and again near +sunset, when Memory wakes. + +Still Rachel sat motionless. + +She had labored with dumb unreasoning passion to forget, as a man works +his hand to the bone night after night, week after week, month after +month, to file through the bars of his prison. She found at last that +forgetfulness came not of prayer and fasting; that it was not in her to +forget. The past had seemed to stretch its cruel, desecrating hand over +all the future, cutting her off from the possibility of love and +marriage, and from the children whom in dreams she held in her arms. As +she had said to Hester, she thought she "had nothing left to give." + +But now the dead past had risen from its grave in her meeting with her +former lover, and in a moment, in two short days and wakeful nights, the +past relinquished its false claim upon her life. She saw that it was +false, that she had been frightened where no fear was, that her +deliverance lay in remembrance itself, not in the handcuffs with which +until now she had bound her deliverer. + +Mr. Tristram had come back into her life, and with his own hands had +destroyed the overthrown image of himself, which lay like a barrier +across her heart. He had replaced it by an accurate presentment of +himself as he really was. + +"Only that which is replaced is destroyed," and it is often our real +self in its native rags, and not, as we jealously imagine, another king +in richer purple who has replaced us in the throne-room of the heart +that loved us. To the end of life Rachel never forgot Mr. Tristram, any +more than the amber forgets its fly. But she was vaguely conscious as he +left her that he had set her free. She listened to his retreating step +hardly daring to breathe. It was too good to be true. At last there was +dead silence. No echo of a footfall. Quite gone. He had departed not +only out of her presence, but out of her life. + +She breathed again. A tremor, like that which shakes the first green +leaf against the March sky, stole across her crushed heart, empty at +last, empty at last. She raised her hand timidly in the sunshine. She +was free. She looked round dazzled, bewildered. The little world of +sunshine and the turquoises of sky strewn among the golden net-work of +the trees smiled at her, as one who brings good tidings. + +A certain familiar hold on life and nature, so old that it was almost +new, which she had forgotten, but which her former self used to feel, +came back suddenly upon her, like a lost friend from over-seas. Scales +seemed to fall from her eyes. The light was too much for her. She had +forgotten how beautiful the world was. Everything was possible. + +Some, in the night of their desolation, can take comfort when they see +the morning-star shuddering white in the east, and can say, "Courage, +the day is at hand." + +But others never realize that their night is over till the sun is up. +Rachel had sat in a long stupor. The message writ large for her comfort +in the stars that the night was surely waning had not reached her, +bowed, as she thought, beneath God's hand. And the sure return of the +sun at last came upon her like a miracle. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + "'Tis not for every one to catch a salmon." + + +Every one who knows Middleshire knows that the little lake of Beaumere +is bounded on the one side by the Westhope and on the other by the +Wilderleigh property, the boundary being the ubiquitous Drone, which +traverses the mere in a desultory fashion, and with the assistance of +several springs makes Beaumere what it is, namely (to quote from the +local guide-book), "the noblest expanse of water surrounded by some of +the most picturesque scenery in Middleshire." + +Thither Doll and Hugh took their way in the leisurely manner of men +whose orthodoxy obliges them to regard Sunday as a day of rest. + +Doll pointed out to Hugh the coppice which his predecessor, Mr. George +Loftus, had planted. Hugh regarded it without excitement. Both agreed +that it was coming on nicely. Hugh thought that he ought to do a little +planting at his own place. Doll said, "You can't do everything at once." +A large new farm was the next object of interest. "Uncle George rebuilt +Greenfields from the ground," remarked Doll, as they crossed the high +road and took to the harvesting fields, where "the ricks stood gray to +the sun." + +Hugh nodded. Doll thought he was a very decent chap, though rather +low-spirited. Hugh thought that if Mr. George Loftus had been alive he +might have consulted him. In an amicable silence, broken occasionally by +whistling for Crack, who hurried blear-eyed and asthmatic out of +rabbit-holes, the pair reached Beaumere; and, after following the path +through the wood, came suddenly upon the little lake locked in the heart +of the steeply climbing forest. + +Doll stood still and pointed with his stick for fear Hugh might overlook +it. "I come here every Sunday," he remarked. + +A sense of unreality and foreboding seized on Hugh, as the still face of +the water looked up at him. Where had he seen it before, this sea of +glass reflecting the yellow woods that stooped to its very edge? What +had it to do with him? + +"I've been here before," he said, involuntarily. + +"I dare say," said Doll. "Newhaven marches with me here. The boundary is +by that clump of silver birch. The Drone comes in there, but you can't +see it. The Newhavens are friends of yours, aren't they?" + +"Acquaintances," said Hugh, absently, looking hard at the water. He had +never been here before. Memory groped blindly for a lost link, as one +who momentarily recognizes a face in a crowd, and tries to put a name to +it and fails. As the face disappears, so the sudden impression passed +from Hugh's mind. + +"I expect you have been here with them," said Doll. "Good man, +Newhaven." + +"I used to see a good deal of them at one time," said Hugh; "but they +seem to have forgotten me of late." + +"Oh, that's her!" said Doll. "She is always off and on with people. +Takes a fancy one day and a dislike the next. But he's not like that. +You always know where to find him. Solid man, Newhaven. He doesn't say +much, but what he says he sticks to." + +"He gives one that impression," said Hugh. + +"I rather think he is there now," said Doll, pointing to the farther +shore. "I see a figure moving, and two little specks. I should not +wonder if it were him and the boys. They often come here on Sunday +afternoons." + +"You have long sight," said Hugh. He had met Lord Newhaven several times +since the drawing of lots, and they had always greeted each other with +cold civility. But Hugh avoided him when he could without drawing +attention to the fact that he did so. + +"Are you going over to his side?" he asked. + +"Rather not," said Doll. "I have never set a single trimmer or fired a +shot beyond that clump of birch, or Uncle George before me." + +The two men picked their way down the hill-side among the tall, thin +tree-trunks. There was no one except the dogs at the keeper's cottage, +in a clearing half-way down. Doll took the key of the boat-house from a +little hole under the eaves. + +"I think Withers must be out," he remarked at last, after knocking and +calling at the locked door and peering through the closed window. Hugh +had been of that opinion for some time. "Gone out with his wife, I +expect. Never mind, we can do without him." + +They went slipping over the dry beech-mast to the boat-house. Doll +unlocked the door and climbed into one of the boats; Hugh and Crack +followed. They got a perch-rod off a long shelf, and half a dozen +trimmers. Then they pulled out a little way and stopped near an +archipelago of water-lily leaves. + +Doll got out the perch-rod and float and made a cast. + +"It's not fishing," he said, apologetically, half to his guest and half +to his Maker. "But we are bound to get some baits." + +Hugh nodded, and gazed down at the thin forest below. He could see the +perch moving in little companies in the still water beyond the +water-trees. Presently a perch, a very small one, out alone for the +first time, came up, all stiff head and shoulders and wagging tail, to +the carelessly covered hook. + +"Don't, don't, you young idiot!" said Hugh, below his breath. But the +perch knew that the time had come when a perch must judge for himself. + +The float curtesied and went under, and in another second the little +independent was in the boat. + +"There are other fools in the world besides me, it seems," said Hugh to +himself. + +"He'll do; but I wish he was a dace," said Doll, slipping the victim +into a tin with holes in the top. "Half a dozen will be enough." + +They got half a dozen, baited and set the trimmers white side up, and +were turning to row back, when Doll's eyes became suddenly fixed. + +"By Jove! there's something at it," he said, pointing to a trimmer at +some distance. + +Both men looked intently at it. Crack felt that something was happening, +and left off smelling the empty fish-can. + +The trimmer began to nod, to tilt, and then turned suddenly upsidedown, +and remained motionless. + +"He's running the line off it," said Doll. + +As he spoke the trimmer gave one jerk and went under. Then it +reappeared, awkwardly bustling out into the open. + +"Oh, hang it all! it's Sunday," said Doll, with a groan. "We can't be +catching pike on a Sunday." And he caught up the oars and rowed swiftly +towards the trimmer. + +As soon as they were within a boat's length it disappeared again, came +up again, and went pecking along the top of the water. Doll pursued +warily, and got hold of it. + +"Gently, now," he said, as he shipped the oars. "He'll go under the boat +and break us if we don't look out. I'll play him, and you shove the net +under him. Damn!--God forgive me!--we've come out without a landing-net. +Good Lord, Scarlett, you can't gaff him with a champagne-opener. There, +you pull him in, and I'll grab him somehow. I've done it before. Crack, +lie down, you infernal fool! Scarlett, if you pull him like that you'll +lose him to a certainty. By George, he's a big one!" Doll tore off his +coat and turned up his shirt-sleeves. "He's going under the boat. If you +let him go under the boat, I tell you, he'll break us. I'm quite ready." +Doll was rubbing his waistcoat-buttons against the gunwale. "Bring him +in gradually. For goodness' sake, keep your feet off the line, or, if +he makes a dash, he'll break you! Give him line. Keep your elbows out. +Keep your hands free. Don't let him jerk you. If you don't give him more +line when he runs, you'll lose him. He's not half done yet. Confound +you, Scarlett! hold on for all you're worth. All right, old chap, all +right. Don't mind me. You're doing it first-class. Right as rain. Now, +now. By George! did you see him that time? He's a nailer! Steady on him! +Bring him in gently. Keep an even pull on him. Keep steady!" + +Doll craned over the gunwale, his arms in the water. There was a swirl, +a momentary glimpse of a stolid fish, face and heavy shoulders, and the +boat righted itself. + +"Missed him, as I live!" gasped Doll. "Bring him in again." + +Hugh let out the slippery line, and drew it in again slowly, hand over +hand. Doll's round head was over the side, his long legs spread +adhesively in the bottom of the boat. Crack, beyond himself with +excitement, got on the seat and barked without ceasing. + +"He's coming up again," said Doll, gutturally, sliding forward his left +hand. "I must get him by the eyes, and then I doubt if I can lift him. +He's a big brute. He's dragging the whole boat and everything. He's +about done now. Steady! Now!" + +The great side of the pike lay heaving on the surface for a second, and +Doll's left forefinger and thumb were groping for its eyes. But the +agonized pike made a last effort. Doll had him with his left hand, but +could not raise him. "Pull him in now for all you're worth," he roared +to Hugh, as he made a grab with his right hand. His legs began to lose +their grip under the violent contortions of the pike. The boat tilted +madly. Hugh reached forward to help him. There was a frantic effort, and +it capsized. + +"Bad luck," said Doll, coming up spluttering, shaking his head like a +spaniel. "But we shall get him yet. He's bleeding like a pig. He'll +come up directly. Good Lord! the water's like ice. We must be over one +of the springs. I suppose you are all right, Scarlett." + +Hugh had come up, but in very different fashion. + +"Yes," he said, faintly, clutching the upturned boat. + +"I'm not sure," said Doll, keeping going with one hand, "that we had not +better get ashore and fetch the other boat. The water's enough to freeze +one." + +"I can't swim," said Hugh, his teeth chattering. + +He was a delicate man at the best of times, and the cold was laying hold +of him. + +Doll looked at his blue lips and shaking hands, and his face became +grave. He measured the distance to the shore with his eye. It had +receded in a treacherous manner. + +"I'm not much of a performer myself," he said, "since I broke my arm +last winter, but I can get to the shore. The question is, can you hold +on while I go back and bring the other boat, or shall we have a try at +getting back together?" + +"I can hold on all right," said Hugh, instantly aware that Doll did not +think he could tow him to land, but was politely ready to risk his +existence in the attempt. + +"Back directly," said Doll, and without a second's delay he was gone. +Hugh put out his whole strength in the endeavor to raise himself +somewhat out of the ice-cold water. But the upturned boat sidled away +from him like a skittish horse, and after grappling with it he only +slipped back again exhausted, and had to clutch it as best he could. + +As he clung to the gunwale he heard a faint coughing and gasping close +to his ear. Some one was drowning. Hugh realized that it must be Crack, +under the boat. He called to him; he chirruped, as if all were well. He +stretched one hand as far as he could under the boat feeling for him. +But he could not reach him. Presently the faint, difficult sound ceased, +began again, stopped, and was heard no more. + +A great silence seemed to rush in on the extinction of that small sound. +It stooped down and enveloped Hugh in it. Everything was very calm, very +still. The boat kept turning slowly round and round, the only thing that +moved. The sunlight quivered on the wet, upturned keel. Already it was +drying in patches. Hugh watched it. The cold was sapping his powers as +if he were bleeding. + +"I could have built a boat in the time Loftus takes to fetch one," he +said to himself, and he looked round him. No sign of Doll. He was alone +in the world. The cold was gaining on him slowly, surely. Why had he on +such heavy gloves, which made him fumble so clumsily. He looked at his +bare cut hands, and realized that their grip was leaving them. He felt +that he was in measurable distance of losing his hold. + +Suddenly a remembrance flashed across him of the sinister face of the +water as it had first looked up at him through the trees. Now he +understood. This was the appointed place for him to die. Hugh tightened +his hold with his right hand, for his left was paralyzed. + +"I will not," he said. "Nothing shall induce me. I will live and marry +Rachel." + +The cold advanced suddenly on him, as at the point of the bayonet. + +"Why not die?" said another voice. "Will it be easier in three months' +time than it is now? Will it ever be so easy again? See how near death +is to life, a wheel within a wheel, two rings linked together. A touch, +and you pass from one to the other." + +Hugh looked wildly round him. The sun lay warm upon the tree-tops. It +could not be that he was going to die _here_ and _now_; here in the +living sunshine, with the quiet, friendly faces of the hills all around +him. + +He strengthened his numb hold fiercely, all but lost it, regained it. +Cramp, long held at bay, overcame him. + +And the boat kept turning in the twilight. He reached the end of his +strength, and held on beyond it. He heard some one near at hand +suffocating in long-drawn gasps. Not Crack this time, but himself. + +The boat was always turning in the darkness. + +The struggle was over. "It is better so," said the other voice, through +the roaring of a cataract near at hand. "Your mother will bear it better +so. And all the long difficulties are over, and pain is past, and life +is past, and sleep is best." + +"But Rachel?" + +She was here in the warm, swaying darkness. She was with him. She was +Death. Death was only her arms round him in a great peace. Death was +better than life. He let go the silly boat that kept him from her and +turned wholly to her, his closed eyes against her breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + The main difference between people seems to be that one man can + come under obligations on which you can rely--is obligable--and + another is not. As he has not a law within him, there's nothing to + tie him to.--EMERSON. + + +"Father," said Teddy to Lord Newhaven, "do--do be a horse, and I will +ride you in the water." + +"Me, too," said Pauly. + +"I am not anxious to be a horse, Teddy. I'm quite content as I am." + +Lord Newhaven was stretched in an easy but undefensive attitude on the +heathery bank, with his hands behind his head. His two sons rushed +simultaneously at him and knelt on his chest. + +"Promise!" they cried, punching him. "Two turns each." There was a free +fight, and Lord Newhaven promised. + +"Honor bright! Two turns each, and really deep!" + +"Honor bright," said Lord Newhaven. + +His two sons got off his chest, and Teddy climbed on his back in +readiness, as his father sat up and began to unlace his boots. + +"Higher!" said Teddy, over his shoulder, his arms tightly clasped round +his father's neck, as Lord Newhaven rolled up his trousers. + +"You young slave-driver, they won't go up any higher." + +"You said 'honor bright.'" + +"Well, Shylock, I _am_ 'honor bright.'" + +"You had them over your knees last time." + +"I had knickerbockers on, then." + +"Won't these do the same?" + +"They won't come up another inch." + +"Then one, two, three--off!" shrieked Teddy, digging his heels into the +parental back. + +The horse displayed surprising agility. It curveted, it kicked, it +jumped a little drain, it careered into the water, making a tremendous +splashing. + +The two boys screamed with delight. + +But at last the horse sat down on the bank gasping, wiped its forehead, +and, in spite of frenzied entreaties, proceeded to put on its socks and +boots. + +Lord Newhaven was not to be moved a second time. He lit a cigarette and +observed that the moment for sailing boats had arrived. + +The boats were accordingly sailed. Lord Newhaven tilted his hat over his +eyes and acted as umpire. + +"It is not usual to sail boats upsidedown," he said, seeing Teddy +deliberately upset his. + +"They are doing it out there," said Teddy, who had a reason for most +things. And he continued to sail his boat upsidedown. + +Lord Newhaven got up, and swept the water with his eye. His face became +keen. Then his glance fell anxiously on the children. + +"Teddy and Pauly," he said, "promise me that you will both play on this +one bit of sand, and not go in the water till I come back." + +They promised, staring bewildered at their father. + +In another moment Lord Newhaven was tearing through the brushwood that +fringed the water's edge. + +As he neared the boat-house he saw another figure trying to shove out +the remaining boat. + +It was Doll. Lord Newhaven pushed her off and jumped in. + +Doll was almost speechless. His breath came in long gasps. The sweat +hung on his forehead. He pointed to the black, upturned boat. + +"This one leaks," said Lord Newhaven, sharply. + +"It's got to go all the same, and sharp," said Doll, hoarsely. + +Lord Newhaven seized up a fishing-tin and thrust it into Doll's hands. + +"You bale while I row," he said, and he rowed as he had never rowed +before. + +"Who is it?" he said, as the boat shot out into the open. + +Doll was baling like a madman. + +"Scarlett," he said. "And he's over one of the springs. He'll get +cramp." + +Lord Newhaven strained at the oars. + + * * * * * + +Consciousness was coming back, was slowly climbing upwards, upwards +through immense intervals of time and space, to where at last, with a +wrench, pain met it half-way. Hugh stirred feebly in the dark of a great +forlornness and loneliness. + +"Rachel," he said--"Rachel." + +His head was gently raised, and a cup pressed to his lips. He swallowed +something. + +He groped in the darkness for a window, and then opened his eyes. Lord +Newhaven withdrew a pace or two, and stood looking at him. + +Their eyes met. + +Neither spoke; but Hugh's eyes, dark with the shadow of death, said +plainly, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" + +Then he turned them slowly, as an infant turns them to the sky, the +climbing woods, leaning over each other's shoulders to look at him, to +the warm earth on which he lay. At a little distance was stretched a +small rough-haired form. Hugh's eyes fixed on it. It lay very still. + +"Crack," he said, suddenly, raising himself on his elbow. + +There was neither speech nor language. Crack's tail, that courteous +member, made no sign. + +"He was under the boat," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at the +exhausted face of the man he had saved, and unable for the life of him +to help a momentary fellow-feeling about the little dog. + +Hugh remembered. It all came back, the boat, Crack's dying gasps, the +agonized struggle, the strait gate of death, the difficult passage +through it, the calm beyond. He had almost got through, and had been +dragged back. + +"Why did you interfere?" he said, in sudden passion, his eyes flaming in +his white face. + +A dull color rose to Lord Newhaven's cheek. + +"I thought it was an accident," he said. "If it was not, I beg your +pardon." + +There was a moment's silence. + +"It _was_ an accident," said Hugh, hoarsely, and he turned on his elbow +and looked fixedly at the water, so that his companion might not see the +working of his face. + +Lord Newhaven walked slowly away in the direction of Doll, whose distant +figure, followed by another, was hurrying towards them. + +"And so there is a Rachel as well, is there?" he said to himself, vainly +trying to steel himself against his adversary. + +"How is he now?" said Doll, coming within ear-shot. + +"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and +yourself, too." + +"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the keeper. "It's +as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting up! I thought when +we laid into him on the bank that he was too far gone, didn't you? I +suppose"--hesitating--"Crack?" + +Lord Newhaven shook his head. + +"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be getting into +mischief." + +Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get the +leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had filled +ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the heavy, +unconscious body. + +There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had +remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim. + +"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the incident +and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of the remark, +repeated it to the Gresleys. + +Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his +water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he could see +in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a log where he +had left them. + +"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud. + +In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings towards +him had not changed, but they had been forced during the last half-hour +out of their original intrenchments into the open, and were liable to +attack from new directions. + +It was not that he had virtually saved Hugh's life, for Doll would never +have got him into the leaking boat and kept it afloat single-handed. +That first moment of enthusiasm, when he had rubbed the senseless limbs +and breathed into the cold lips, and had felt his heart leap when life +came halting back into them, that moment had passed and left him cold. + +But Hugh's melancholy eyes, as they opened once more on this world and +met his unflinchingly, haunted him, and the sudden anger at his +interference. It was the intrenchment of his contempt that Lord Newhaven +missed. + +A meaner nature would not have let him off so easily as Hugh had done. + +"It _was_ an accident," he said to himself, unwillingly. "He need not +have admitted that, but I should have been on a gridiron if he had not. +In different circumstances that man and I might have been friends. And +if he had got into a scrape of this kind a little further afield I might +have helped to get him out of it. He feels it. He has aged during the +last two months. But as it is--Upon my word, if he were a boy I should +have had to let him off. It would have been too bloodthirsty. But he is +seven-and-twenty. He is old enough to know better. She made a fool of +him, of course. She made a greater one of me once, for I--married her." + +Lord Newhaven reviewed with a dispassionate eye his courtship and +marriage. + +"A wood anemone," he said to himself; "I likened her to a wood anemone. +Good Lord! And I was thirty years of age, while this poor devil is +twenty-seven." + +Lord Newhaven stopped short with fixed eyes. + +"I believe I should have to let him off," he said, half-aloud. "I +believe I would let him off if I was not as certain as I stand here that +he will never do it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + "The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it." + + +Hester always took charge of the three elder children and Fräulein of +the baby during the six-o'clock service, so that the nurse might go to +church. On this particular Sunday afternoon Hester and the children were +waiting in the little hall till the bell stopped, before which moment +they were forbidden to leave the house. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had just +started for the church, Mr. Gresley looking worn and harassed, for since +luncheon he had received what he called "a perfectly unaccountable +letter" from one of his principal parishioners, a Dissenter, who had +been present at the morning service, and who Mr. Gresley had confidently +hoped might have been struck by the sermon. This hope had been +justified, but not in the manner Mr. Gresley had expected. Mr. Walsh +opined, in a large round hand, that as worms (twice under-dashed) did +not usually pay voluntary church and school rates he no longer felt +himself under an obligation to do so, etc. The letter was a great, an +unexpected blow. Who could have foreseen such a result of the morning's +eloquence. + +"The truth is," said Mr. Gresley, tremulously, "that they can't and +won't hear reason. They can't controvert what I say, so they take refuge +in petty spite like this. I must own I am disappointed in Walsh. He is a +man of some education, and liberal as regards money. I had thought he +was better than most of them, and now he turns on me like this." + +"It's a way worms have," said Hester. + +"Oh, don't run a simile to death, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, +impatiently. "If you had listened to what I tried to say this morning +you would have seen I only used the word _worm_ figuratively. I never +meant it literally, as any one could see who was not determined to +misunderstand me. Worms pay school-rates! Such folly is positively +sickening, if it were not malicious." + +Hester had remained silent. She had been deeply vexed for her brother at +the incident. + +As the church-bell stopped the swing-door opened, and Boulou hurried in, +like a great personage, conscious that others have waited, and bearing +with him an aroma of Irish stew and onions, which showed that he had +been exchanging affabilities with the cook. For the truth must be owned. +No spinster over forty could look unmoved on Boulou. Alas! for the +Vicarage cook, who "had kept herself _to_ herself" for nearly fifty +years, only to fall the victim of a "grande passion" for Boulou. + +The little Lovelace bounded in, and the expedition started. It was +Regie's turn to choose where they should go, and he decided on the +"shrubbery," a little wood through which ran the private path to +Wilderleigh. Doll Loftus had given the Gresleys leave to take the +children there. + +"Oh, Regie, we always go there," said Mary, plaintively, who invariably +chose the Pratts' park, with its rustic bridges and _châlets_, which Mr. +Pratt, in a gracious moment, had "thrown open" to the Gresleys on +Sundays, because, as he expressed it, "they must feel so cramped in +their little garden." + +But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the "shrubberies" they +went. Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even to tell +them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in the coppice +near at hand. + +As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life leads us +we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in +our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were +born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the underneath of every +laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green +dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs. We +see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which +sad-faced elders call _ribes_; but once long ago, when the world was +young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on +them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them. +Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test, +just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of +interest was not ascertained. There was a certain scarlet berry, very +red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly +poison. How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter +taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly +essayed in later years. We ate those scarlet berries and lived, though +warned to the contrary. + +Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where +any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it +an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings. The +children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices +could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as the body was being lowered +into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly +restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over. + +"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a +little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to +Hester. + +As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards +them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested +that when two is not company three may be. + +"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified tone, +sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am to blame. +You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with +us?" + +"I know him," said Hester. + +"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large +pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any harm +myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I love the +Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one's +self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at +four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a little--well rather--" + +"Just so," said Hester. + +"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A married +woman often has to deal with such things without making a fuss about +them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly half-past four before +I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room a servant brought me a +note. It was from him, saying he had been obliged to leave Wilderleigh +suddenly on urgent business, and asking that his baggage might be sent +after him." + +Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. Sybell's +conversation always interested her. + +"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to herself, +"is because the ground the confidence would cover is invariably built +over already by a fiction of her own which it would not please her to +see destroyed." + +"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have behaved +in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of course the +pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because there is no +Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I asked that. And he +was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost asked to stay over Sunday +on purpose." + +Rachel and Hester looked on the ground. + +"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't you, +Rachel?" + +"I said I thought he was a little nervous." + +And what did he talk to you about?" + +"He spoke about the low tone of the morals of the day, and about +marriage." + +"Ah! I don't wonder he talked to you, Rachel, you are so sympathetic. I +expect lots of people confide in you about their troubles and love +affairs. Morals of the day! Marriage! Poor, poor Mr. Tristram! I shall +tell Doll quietly this evening. On the whole, it is just as well he is +gone." + +"Just as well," said Rachel and Hester, with surprising unanimity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + So fast does a little leaven spread within us--so incalculable is + the effect of one personality on another.--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +Hugh was not ill after what Mr. Gresley called "his immersion," but for +some days he remained feeble and exhausted. Sybell quite forgot she had +not liked him, insisted on his staying on indefinitely at Wilderleigh, +and, undaunted by her distressing experience with Mr. Tristram, read +poetry to Hugh in the afternoons and surrounded him with genuine +warm-hearted care. Doll was steadily, quietly kind. + +It was during these days that Hugh and Rachel saw much of each other, +during these days that Rachel passed in spite of herself beyond the +anxious impersonal interest which Hugh had awakened in her, on to that +slippery much-trodden ground of uncomfortable possibilities where the +unmarried meet. + +Hugh attracted and repelled her. + +It was, alas! easy to say why she was repelled. But who shall say why +she was attracted? Has the secret law ever been discovered which draws +one man and woman together amid the crowd? Hugh was not among the best +men who had wished to marry her, but nevertheless he was the only man +since Mr. Tristram who had succeeded in making her think continually of +him. And perhaps she half knew that though she had been loved by better +men, Hugh loved her better than they had. + +Which would prove the stronger, the attraction or the repulsion? + +"How can I?" she said to herself, over and over again. + +"When I remember Lady Newhaven, how can I? When I think of what his +conduct was for a whole year, how can I? Can he have any sense of honor +to have acted like that? Is he even really sorry? He is very charming, +very refined, and he loves me. He looks good, but what do I know of him +except evil? He looks as if he could be faithful, but how can I trust +him?" + +Hugh fell into a deep dejection after his narrow escape. Dr. Brown said +it was nervous prostration, and Doll rode into Southminster and returned +laden with comic papers. Who shall say whether the cause was physical or +mental? Hugh had seen death very near for the first time, and the +thought of death haunted him. He had not realized when he drew lots that +he was risking the possibility of anything like _that_, such an entire +going away, such an awful rending of his being as the short word _death_ +now conveyed to him. He had had no idea it would be like _that_. And he +had got to do it again. There was the crux. He had got to do it again. + +He leaned back faint and shuddering in the deck-chair in the rose-garden +where he was lying. + +Presently Rachel appeared, coming towards him down the narrow grass walk +between two high walls of hollyhocks. She had a cup of tea in her hand. + +"I have brought you this," she said, "with a warning that you had better +not come in to tea. Mr. Gresley has been sighted walking up the drive. +Mrs. Loftus thought you would like to see him, but I reminded her that +Dr. Brown said you were to be kept very quiet." + +Mr. Gresley had called every day since the accident in order to cheer +the sufferer, to whom he had been greatly attracted. Hugh had seen him +once, and afterwards had never felt strong enough to repeat the process. + +"Must you go back?" he asked. + +"No," she said. "Mrs. Loftus and he are great friends. I should be +rather in the way." + +And she sat down by him. + +"Are you feeling ill?" she said, gently, noticing his careworn face. + +"No," he replied. "I was only thinking. I was thinking," he went on, +after a pause, "that I would give everything I possess not to have done +something which I have done." + +Rachel looked straight in front of her. The confession was coming at +last. Her heart beat. + +"I have done wrong," he said, slowly, "and I am suffering for it, and I +shall suffer more before I've finished. But the worst is--" + +She looked at him. + +"The worst is that I can't bear all the consequences myself. An innocent +person will pay the penalty of my sin." + +Hugh's voice faltered. He was thinking of his mother. + +Rachel's mind instantly flew to Lord Newhaven. + +"Then Lord Newhaven drew the short lighter," she thought, and she +colored deeply. + +There was a long silence. + +"Do you think," said Hugh, smiling faintly, "that people are ever given +a second chance?" + +"Always," said Rachel. "If not here--afterwards." + +"If I were given another," said Hugh. "If I might only be given another +now in this life I should take it." + +He was thinking if only he might be let off this dreadful self-inflicted +death. She thought he meant that he repented of his sin, and would fain +do better. + +There was a sound of voices near at hand. Sybell and Mr. Gresley came +down the grass walk towards them. + +"London society," Mr. Gresley was saying, "to live in a stuffy street +away from the beauties of Nature, its birds and flowers, to spend half +my days laying traps for invitations, and half my nights grinning like a +fool in stifling drawing-rooms, listening to vapid talk. No, thanks! I +know better than to care for London society. Hester does, I know, but +then Hester does not mind making up to big people, and I do. In fact--" + +"I have brought Mr. Gresley, after all, in spite of Dr. Brown," said +Sybell, "because we were in the middle of such an interesting +conversation on the snares of society that I knew you would like to hear +it. You have had such a dull day with Doll away at his County Council." + +That night, as Rachel sat in her room, she went over that half-made, +ruthlessly interrupted confidence. + +"He does repent," she said to herself, recalling the careworn face. "If +he does, can I overlook the past? Can I help him to make a fresh start? +If he had not done this one dishonorable action, I could have cared for +him. Can I now?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + "A fool's mouth is his destruction." + + +The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have forgotten, but +the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an earlier chapter a +sale of work was mentioned which was to take place in the Wilderleigh +gardens at the end of August. + +The end of August had now arrived, and with it two white tents, which +sprang up suddenly one morning, like giant mushrooms, on one of Doll's +smooth-shaven lawns. He groaned in spirit as he watched their erection. +They would ruin the turf. + +"Might as well iron it with a hot iron," he said, disconsolately to +Hugh. "But, of course, this sort of thing--Diocesan Fund, eh? In these +days we must stand by our colors." He repeated Mr. Gresley's phrase. +Doll seldom ventured on an opinion not sanctioned by the ages, or that +he had not heard repeated till its novelty had been comfortably rubbed +off by his wife or the Gresleys. + +The two men watched the proceedings mournfully. They could not help, at +least they were told they could not help the women busily engaged in +draping and arranging the stalls. They were still at large, but Doll +knew, as well as a dog who is going to be washed, what was in store for +him in the afternoon, and he was depressed beforehand. + +"Don't let yourself be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not +up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing. +Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the smoking-room +till it's all over." + + * * * * * + +"All I can say is," remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led the +Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the work of +many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly badly. Here they +are, the richest people by far in the parish, and they would not even +take a stall, they would not even furnish half of one, and they said +they would be away, and they are at the Towers, after all. No one likes +the Pratts more than I do, or sees their good points as I do, but I +can't shut my eyes to the fact that they are the meanest of the mean." + +The Pratts had only contributed two "bed-spreads," and a "sheet-sham," +and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to know what +"bed-spreads" and "sheet-shams" are, let him ask his intended, and let +him see to it that he marries a woman who cannot tell him. + +Mrs. Pratt had bought the antimacassars for the Towers, and secretly +adored them until Ada pronounced them to be vulgar. The number of things +which Ada discovered to be vulgar increased every day, and included the +greater part of her mother's wardrobe, much to the distress of that poor +lady. Mrs. Pratt had reached the size when it is prudent to concentrate +a love of bright colors in one's parasol. On this particular afternoon +she shed tears over the fact that Ada refused to accompany her if her +mother wore a unique garment of orange satin, covered with what appeared +to be a plague of black worms. + +Of course, the sale of work was combined with a garden-party, and a +little after three o'clock carriage after carriage began to arrive, and +Sybell, with a mournful, handsome, irreproachably dressed husband, took +up her position on the south front to receive her guests. + +The whole neighborhood had been invited, and it can generally be gauged +with tolerable accuracy by a hostess of some experience who will respond +to the call and who will stay away. Sybell and her husband were among +those who were not to be found at these festivities, neither were the +Newhavens, save at their own, nor the Pontisburys, nor the Bishop of +Southminster. Cards had, of course, been sent to each, but no one +expected them to appear. + +Presently, among the stream of arrivals, Sybell noticed the slender +figure of Lady Newhaven, and--astonishing vision--Lord Newhaven beside +her. + +"Wonders will never cease," said Doll, shaken for a moment out of the +apathy of endurance. + +Sybell raised her eyebrows, and advanced with the prettiest air of +_empressement_ to meet her unexpected guests. No, clearly it was +impossible that the two women should like each other. They were the same +age, about the same height and coloring; their social position was too +similar; their historic houses too near each other. Lady Newhaven was by +far the best looking, but that was not a difference which attracted +Sybell towards her. On this occasion Sybell's face assumed its most +squirrel-like expression, for, as ill-luck would have it, they were +dressed alike. + +Lady Newhaven looked very ethereal, as she came slowly across the grass +in her diaphanous gown of rich white, covered with a flowing veil of +thinnest transparent black. Her blue eyes looked restlessly bright; her +lips wore a mechanical smile. Rachel, watching her, experienced a sudden +pang at her undeniable loveliness. It wounded her suddenly, as it never +had done before. "I am a common-looking, square-built woman compared to +her," she said to herself. "No wonder he--" + +She instinctively drew back as Lady Newhaven turned quickly towards her. + +"You dear person," said Lady Newhaven, her eyes moving restlessly over +the crowd, "are you still here? Let us go and buy something together. +How nice you look," without looking at her. She drew Rachel apart in the +direction of the tents. + +"Where is he?" she said, sharply. "I know he is here. I heard all about +the accident, though Edward never told me. I don't see him." + +"He is not in the gardens. He is not coming out. He is still rather +knocked up." + +"I thought I should have died when I heard it. Ah, Rachel, never love +any one. You don't know what it's like. But I must see him. I have come +here on purpose." + +"So I supposed." + +"Edward would come, too. He appeared at the last moment when the +carriage came round, though I have never known him to go to a +garden-party in his life. But where is he, Rachel?" + +"Somewhere in the house, I suppose." + +"I shan't know where to find him. I can't be wandering about that +woman's house by myself. We must slip away together, Rachel, and you +must take me to him. I must see him alone for five minutes." + +Rachel shook her head. + +Captain Pratt, tall, pale, cautious, immaculate, his cane held along his +spinal column, appeared suddenly close at hand. + +"Mrs. Loftus is fortunate in her day," he remarked, addressing himself +to Lady Newhaven, and observing her fixedly with cold admiration. "I +seldom come to this sort of thing, but neighbors in the country must +support each other. I see you are on your way to the tents. Pray allow +me to carry your purchases for you." + +"Oh! don't let me trouble you," said Lady Newhaven, shrinking +imperceptibly. But it was no trouble to Captain Pratt, and they walked +on together. + +Lord Newhaven, who could not have been far off, joined Rachel. + + * * * * * + +"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt to Ada, "you might have let me wear my +black and orange, after all, for you see Lady Newhaven has something +very much the same, only hers is white underneath. And do you see she +has got two diamond butterflies on--the little one at her throat and the +big one holding her white carnations. And you would not let me put on a +single thing. There now, Algy has joined her," continued Mrs. Pratt, her +attention quickly diverted from her own wrongs. "Now they are walking on +together. How nice he looks in those beautiful clothes. Algy and Lord +Newhaven and Mr. Loftus all have the same look, haven't they? All +friends together, as I often say, such a mercy among county people. You +might walk a little with Lord Newhaven, Ada. It's unaccountable how +seldom we see him, but always so pleasant when we do. Ah! he's speaking +to Rachel West. They are going to the tents, after all. Well, whatever +you may say, I do think we ought to go and buy something, too. Papa says +he won't put his hand in his pocket if the Loftuses are to get all the +credit, and we ought to have had the choice of having the sale at the +Towers, so he sha'n't do anything; but I think it would be nice if we +went and bought a little something. Just a five-pound note. You shall +spend it, my dear, if you like." + + * * * * * + +"This is sheer recklessness," said Lord Newhaven, as Rachel bought an +expensive tea-cosey from Fräulein. "In these days of death-duties you +cannot possess four teapots, and you have already bought three teapot +costumes." + +"That is what I am here for," said Rachel, producing a check-book. "How +much did you say, Fräulein?" + +"Twenty-seven and seex," said Fräulein. + +"Now I see it in the full light, I have taken a fancy to it myself," +said Lord Newhaven. "I never saw anything the least like it. I don't +think I can allow you to appropriate it, Miss West. You are sweeping up +all the best things." + +"I have a verr' pretty thing for gentlemen," said Fräulein. "Herr +B-r-r-rown has just bought one." + +"Very elaborate, indeed. Bible-markers, I presume? Oh, braces! Never +mind, they will be equally useful to me. I'll have them. Now for the +tea-cosey. It is under-priced. I consider that, with the chenille +swallow, it is worth thirty shillings. I will give thirty for it." + +"Thirty-two and six," said Rachel. + +"The landed interest is not going to be browbeaten by coal-mines. +Thirty-three and twopence." + +"Forty shillings," said Rachel. + +"Forty-two," said Lord Newhaven. + +Every one in the tent had turned to watch the bidding. + +"Forty-two and six," said Rachel. + +Fräulein blushed. She had worked the tea-cosey. It was to her a sonata +in red plush. + +"Three guineas," said Captain Pratt, by an infallible instinct, +perceiving, and placing himself within the focus of general interest. + +The bidding ceased instantly. Lord Newhaven shrugged his shoulders and +turned away. Fräulein, still shaking with conflicting emotions, handed +the tea-cosey to Captain Pratt. He took it with an acid smile, secretly +disgusted at the sudden cessation of interest, for which he had paid +rather highly, and looked round for Lady Newhaven. + +But she had disappeared. + +"Fancy you and Algy bidding against each other like that," said Ada +Pratt, archly, to Lord Newhaven, for though Ada was haughty in general +society she could be sportive, and even friskily ingratiating, towards +those of her fellow-creatures whom she termed "swells." "Why, half +Middleshire will be saying that you have quarrelled next." + +"Only those who do not know how intimate Captain Pratt and I really are +could think we have quarrelled," said Lord Newhaven, his eyes wandering +over the crowd. "But I am blocking your way and Mrs. Pratt's. How do you +do, Mrs. Pratt? Miss West, your burden is greater than you can bear. You +are dropping part of it. I don't know what it is, but I can shut my eyes +as I pick it up. I insist on carrying half back to the house. It will +give a pleasing impression that I have bought largely. Weren't you +pleased at the money we wrung out of Captain Pratt? He never thought we +should stop bidding. It's about all the family will contribute, unless +that good old Mamma Pratt buys something. She is the only one of the +family I can tolerate. Is Scarlett still here? I ought to have asked +after him before." + +"He's here, but he's not well. He's in hiding in the smoking-room." + +"He is lucky he is no worse. I should have had rheumatic fever if I had +been in his place. How cool it is in here after the glare outside. Must +you go out again? Well, I consider I have done my duty, and that I may +fairly allow myself a cigarette in peace." + + * * * * * + +"Really, Mr. Loftus, I'm quite shocked. This absurd faintness! The tent +was very crowded, and there is not much air to-day, is there? I shall be +all right if I may sit quietly in the hail a little. How deliciously +cool in here after the glare outside. A glass of water? Thanks. Yes, +only I hate to be so troublesome. And how are you after that dreadful +accident in the boat?" + +"Oh! I am all right," said Doll, who by this time hated the subject. "It +was Scarlett who was nearly frozen like New Zealand lamb." + +Doll had heard Mr. Gresley fire off the simile of the lamb, and +considered it sound. + +"How absurd you are. You always make me laugh. I suppose he has left now +that he is unfrozen." + +"Oh no. He is still here. We would not let him go till he was better. He +is not up to much. Weak chap at the best of times, I should think. He's +lying low in the smoking-room till the people are gone." + +"Mr. Scarlett is an old friend of ours," said Lady Newhaven, sipping her +glass of water, and spilling a little; "but I can't quite forgive +him--no, I really can't--for the danger he caused to Edward. You know, +or perhaps you don't know, that Edward can't swim, either. Even now I +can't bear to think what might have happened." + +She closed her eyes with evident emotion. + +Doll's stolid garden-party face relaxed. "Good little woman," he +thought. "As fond of him as she can be." + +"All's well that ends well," he remarked, aloud. + +Doll did not know that he was quoting Shakespeare, but he did know by +long experience that this sentence could be relied on as suitable to +the occasion, or to any occasion that looked a little "doddery," and +finished up all right. + +"And now, Mr. Loftus, positively I must insist on your leaving me +quietly here. I am quite sure you are wanted outside, and I should blame +myself if you wasted another minute on me. It was only the sun which +affected me. Don't mention it to Edward. He is always so fussy about me. +I will rest quietly here for a quarter of an hour, and then rejoin you +all again in the garden." + + * * * * * + +"I hope I am not disturbing any one," said Lord Newhaven, quietly +entering the smoking-room. "Well, Scarlett, how are you getting on?" + +Hugh, who was lying on a sofa with his arms raised and his hands behind +his head, looked up, and his expression changed. + +"He was thinking of something uncommonly pleasant," thought Lord +Newhaven, "not of me or mine, I fancy. I have come to smoke a cigarette +in peace," he added aloud, "if you don't object." + +"Of course not." + +Lord Newhaven lit his cigarette and puffed a moment in silence. + +"Hot outside," he said. + +Hugh nodded. He wondered how soon he could make a pretext for getting up +and leaving the room. + +There was a faint silken rustle, and Lady Newhaven, pale, breathless, +came swiftly in and closed the door. The instant afterwards she saw her +husband, and shrank back with a little cry. Lord Newhaven did not look +at her. His eyes were fixed on Hugh. + +Hugh's face became suddenly ugly, livid. He rose slowly to his feet, and +stood motionless. + +"He hates her," said Lord Newhaven to himself. And he removed his glance +and came forward. + +"You were looking for me, Violet?" he remarked. "I have no doubt you are +wishing to return home. We will go at once." He threw away his +cigarette. "Well, good-bye, Scarlett, in case we don't meet again. I +dare say you will pay Westhope a visit later on. Ah, Captain Pratt! so +you have fled, like us, from the madding crowd. I can recommend Loftus's +cigarettes. I have just had one myself. Good-bye. Did you leave your +purchases in the hall, Violet? Yes? Then we will collect them on our +way." + +The husband and wife were half-way down the grand staircase before Lord +Newhaven said, in his usual even voice: + +"I must ask you once more to remember that I will not have any scandal +attaching to your name. Did not you see that that white mongrel Pratt +was on your track? If I had not been there when he came in he would have +drawn his own vile conclusions, and for once they would have been +correct." + +"He could not think worse of me than you do," said the wife, half cowed, +half defiant. + +"No, but he could say so, which I don't; or, what is more probable, he +could use his knowledge to obtain a hold over you. He is a dangerous +man. Don't put yourself in his power." + +"I don't want to, or in anybody's." + +"Then avoid scandal instead of courting it, and don't repeat the folly +of this afternoon." + + * * * * * + +Captain Pratt did not remain long in the smoking-room. He had only a +slight acquaintance with Hugh, which did not appear capable of +expansion. Captain Pratt made a few efforts, proved its inelastic +properties, and presently lounged out again. + +Hugh moved slowly to the window, and leaned his throbbing forehead +against the stone mullion. He was still weak, and the encounter with +Lady Newhaven had shaken him. + +"What did he mean?" he said to himself, bewildered and suspicious. +"'Perhaps I should be staying at Westhope later on!' But, of course, I +shall never go there again. He knows that as well as I do. What did he +mean?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To flutter--and the Bird is on the wing. + --OMAR KHAYYÁM. + +It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was late, but +he had come at last. There was death in the air, a whisper of death +stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side. The birds heard it and +were silent. The November wind was hurrying round Westhope Abbey, +shaking its bare trees. + +Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the level land +to the low hills beyond. He stood so long that the day died, and +twilight began to rub out first the hills and then the long, white lines +of flooded meadow and blurred pollard willows. Presently the river mist +rose up to meet the coming darkness. In the east, low and lurid, a tawny +moon crept up the livid sky. She made no moonlight on the gray earth. + +Lord Newhaven moved away from the window, where he had become a shadow +among the shadows, and sat down in the dark at his writing-table. + +Presently he turned on the electric lamp at his elbow and took a letter +out of his pocket. The circle of shaded light fell on his face as he +read--the thin, grave face, with the steady, inscrutable eyes. + +He read the letter slowly, evidently not for the first time. + +"If I had not been taken by surprise at the moment I should not have +consented to the manner in which our differences were settled. +Personally, I consider the old arrangement, to which you regretfully +alluded at the time"--("pistols for two and coffee for four," I remember +perfectly)--"as preferable, and as you appeared to think so yourself, +would it not be advisable to resort to it? Believing that the old +arrangement will meet your wishes as fully as it does mine, I trust that +you will entertain this suggestion, and that you will agree to a meeting +with your own choice of weapons, on any pretext you may choose to name +within the next week." + +The letter ended there. It was unsigned. + +"The time is certainly becoming short," said Lord Newhaven. "He is right +in saying there is only a week left. If it were not for the scandal for +the boys, and if I thought he would really hold to the compact, I would +meet him, but _he won't_. He flinched when he drew lots. He won't. He +has courage enough to stand up in front of me for two minutes, and take +his chance, but not to blow his own brains out. No. And if he knew what +is in store for him if he does not, he would not have courage to face +that either. Nor should I if I were in his shoes, poor devil. The first +six foot of earth would be good enough for me." + +He threw the letter with its envelope into the fire and watched it burn. + +Then he took up the gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the +nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness. + +"Allow me to remind you that you made no objection at the time to the +manner of our encounter and my choice of weapons, by means of which +publicity was avoided. The risk was equal. You now, at the last moment, +propose that I should run it a second time, and in a manner to cause +instant scandal. I must decline to do so, or to reopen the subject, +which had received my careful consideration before I decided upon it. I +have burned your letter, and desire you will burn mine." + +"Poor devil!" said Lord Newhaven, putting the letter, not in the +post-box at his elbow, but in his pocket. + +"Loftus and I did him an ill turn when we pulled him out of the water." + + * * * * * + +The letter took its own time, for it had to avoid possible pitfalls. It +shunned the company of the other Westhope letters, it avoided the +village post-office, but after a day's delay it was launched, and lay +among a hundred others in a station pillar-box. And then it hurried, +hurried as fast as express train could take it, till it reached its +London address, and went softly up-stairs, and laid itself, with a few +others, on Hugh's breakfast-table. + +For many weeks since his visit at Wilderleigh Hugh had been like a man +in a boat without oars, drifting slowly, imperceptibly on the placid +current of a mighty river, who far away hears the fall of Niagara +droning like a bumblebee in a lily cup. + +Long ago, in the summer, he had recognized the sound, had realized the +steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, and had struggled +horribly, impotently, against the inevitable. But of late, though the +sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of the blue distance, he had +given up the useless struggle, and lay still in the sunshine watching +the summer woods slide past and the clouds sail away, always away and +away, to the birthplace of the river, to that little fluttering pulse in +the heart of the hills which a woman's hand might cover, the infant +pulse of the great river to be. + +Hugh's thoughts went back, like the clouds, towards that tiny spring of +passion in his own life. He felt that he could have forgiven it--and +himself--if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain +torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it. +Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of +their own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their +youth. But it had not been so with him. He had walked more cautiously +than they. As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of +water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so +pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it, +watched it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped +its course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It never +leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe and +shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was quickly tired +of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a commonplace country, +past squalid polluting towns and villages. The hills were long since +gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, behold, his oars were gone! He +had been trapped to his destruction. + +Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady Newhaven. He +had been attracted, excited, partially, half-willingly enslaved. He had +thought at the time that he loved her, and that supposition had +confirmed him in his cheap cynicism about woman. This, then, was her +paltry little court, where man offered mock homage, and where she played +at being queen. Hugh had made the discovery that love was a much +overrated passion. He had always supposed so; but when he tired of Lady +Newhaven he was sure of it. His experience was, after all, only the same +as that which many men acquire by marriage, and hold unshaken through +long and useful lives. But Hugh had not been able to keep the treasures +of this early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather +contemptible by a later one--that of falling in love with Rachel, and +the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had +sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or +woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his +birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first +person who had offered him anything in exchange. + +His whole soul had gradually hardened itself against Lady Newhaven. If +he had loved her, he said to himself, he could have borne his fate. But +the play had not been worth the candle. His position was damnable; but +that he could have borne--at least, so he thought if he had had his +day. But he had not had it. That thought rankled. To be hounded out of +life because he had mistaken paper money for real was not only unfair, +it was grotesque. + +Gradually, however, Hugh forgot his smouldering hate of Lady Newhaven, +his sense of injustice and anger against fate; he forgot everything in +his love for Rachel. It became the only reality of his life. + +He had remained in London throughout October and November, cancelling +all his engagements because she was there. What her work was he vaguely +apprehended: that she was spending herself and part of her colossal +fortune in the East End, but he took no interest in it. He was incapable +of taking more interests into his life at this time. He passed many +quiet evenings with her in the house in Park Lane, which she had lately +bought. The little secretary who lived with her had always a faint smile +and more writing to do than usual on the evenings when he dined with +them. + +A great peace was over all their intercourse. Perhaps it was the hush +before the storm, the shadow of which was falling, falling, with each +succeeding day across the minds of both. Once only a sudden gust of +emotion stirred the quiet air, but it dropped again immediately. It came +with the hour when Hugh confessed to her the blot upon his past. The +past was taking upon itself ever an uglier and more repulsive aspect as +he saw more of Rachel. It was hard to put into words, but he spoke of +it. The spectre of love rose like a ghost between them, as they looked +earnestly at each other, each pale even in the ruddy fire-light. + +Hugh was truthful in intention. He was determined he would never lie to +Rachel. He implied an intrigue with a married woman, a deviation not +only from morality, but from honor. More he did not say. But as he +looked at her strained face it seemed to him that she expected something +more. A dreadful silence fell between them when he had finished. Had +she then no word for him. Her eyes--mute, imploring, dark with an agony +of suspense--met his for a second and fell instantly. She did not speak. +Her silence filled him with despair. He got up. "It's getting late. I +must go," he stammered. + +She rose, mechanically, and put out her hand. + +"May I come again?" he said, holding it more tightly than he knew, and +looking intently at her. Was he going to be dismissed? + +The pain he caused her hand recalled her to herself. A look of +bewilderment crossed her face, and then she realized his suspense and +said, gravely, "You may come again." + +He kissed the hand he held, and, as he did so, he knew for the first +time that she loved him. But he could not speak of love after what he +had just told her. He looked back when he reached the door, and saw her +standing where he had left her. She had raised the hand he had kissed to +her lips. + +That was three days ago. Since then he had not dared to go and see her. +He could not ask her to marry him when he was within a few days of the +time when he was bound in so-called honor to give Lord Newhaven +satisfaction. He certainly could not be in her presence again without +asking her. The shadows of the last weeks had suddenly become ghastly +realities once more. The roar of Niagara drowned all other sounds. What +was he going to do? What was he going to do in the predicament towards +which he had been drifting so long, which was now actually upon him? Who +shall say what horror, what agony of mind, what frenzied searching for a +way of escape, what anguish of baffled love crowded in on Hugh's mind +during those last days? At the last moment he caught at a straw, and +wrote to Lord Newhaven offering to fight him. He did not ask himself +what he should do if Lord Newhaven refused. But when Lord Newhaven did +refuse his determination, long unconsciously fostered, sprang full-grown +into existence in a sudden access of passionate anger and blind rage. + +"He won't fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a trap +with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair chance of +revenging himself--I would have fired into the air--and if he won't take +it is his own look-out, damn him! He can shoot me at sight if he likes. +Let him." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + 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 honor. He owed it to the man he had injured to +preserve 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 dishonorably once he is an honorable 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 to 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, on the +twenty-eighth of November, the evening of the last day of the five +months. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + "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 door-way 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 crystallized 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 up-stairs 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 fire-light. + +"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 up-stairs heard the carriage +drive away into the darkness, and a great silence settled down upon the +house. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + "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 up-stairs. + +Mrs. Gresley recovered slowly, and before she was down-stairs 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 agonized 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 gray 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 +Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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 +behavior 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 Dr. 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, etc. But Dick, after one glance at her +strained face, was obdurate. He would hear no reason. He would not go +away. She and Fräulein nervously cast a few clothes into a box, Fräulein +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 untiring 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 apologize! 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 +tire 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, Fräulein; 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + 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 color 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 recognized +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 clinched 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 upward at her colorless 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + And Nicanor lay dead in his harness. + --1 MACABEES, 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 portmanteau 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 honor. 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + Le nombre des êtres qui veulent voir vrai est extraordinairement + petit. Ce qui domineles 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 play-fellow 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 bed-time, 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 hands. + +"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 Newhaven's death, glanced with enthusiastic admiration at +her mistress. Lady Newhaven was a fickle, inconsiderate mistress, but at +this moment her behavior 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 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 color 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 a +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 +mantel-shelf. She prayed urgently that she might stay upon the +hearth-rug, 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + "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 honor 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 +realized 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 Cæsar," 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 Cæsar. 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's 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 mantel-piece, 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 realized 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 +leaped. "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 accidently 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 laboring breath +of Despair had wellnigh 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + "Les sots sont plus à craindre que les méchants." + + +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 color 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 increasing 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. "Water-proof 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 +note-paper, 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 dare say 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 hear 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 he 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 forever 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 overcoloring 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 +realization 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 perseverence of the +writer of those many pages. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + + 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 favorite 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 alms-houses 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 learned 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 realize 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, coloring 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 washer-woman 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 a light 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 +publishers, 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 +parlor-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 teapot, etc. + +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 endeavor 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 was still decided to gain it in an +unscrupulous manner. Or I could help him to rewrite 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 +endeavoring 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 back-yard, and he is burning weeds and all kinds of things, and +he has given us each a ''tato' to bake, and Fräulein has given us a +band-box 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + + 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 realized, 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 realized 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 neighbor. 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 color 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 Fräulein a fur boa and muff, and Miss Brown a +type-writer 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 gray, 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-tipped ripples fleeing into the darkness of the reeds. The +little bridge, so vulgar in every-day life, leaned a mystery of darkness +over a mystery of light. The white frost held the meadows, and binding +them to the gray 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 Fräulein. 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 arm-chair, rose, and +holding it firmly against his small person to prevent any disconnection +with it, solemnly crossed the hearth-rug, 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, +etc. + +"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 wellnigh 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 apologize, +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 color 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--burned 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 burned into him. + +He was frightened. + +"Dear Hester," he said, "I will help you to rewrite 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 back-yard. + +The bonfire was out. A thread of smoke twisted up from the crater of +gray 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 burned +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 burned 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 +burned 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + + "Is it well with the child?" + + +"I am not really anxious," said Mr. Gresley, looking out across the +Vicarage laurels to the white fields and hedges. All was blurred and +vague and very still. The only thing that had a distinct outline was the +garden railing, with a solitary rook on it. + +"I am not really anxious," he said again, sitting down at the +breakfast-table. But his face contradicted him. It was blue and pinched, +for he had just returned from reading the morning service to himself in +an ice-cold church, but there was a pucker in the brow that was not the +result of cold. The Vicarage porch had fallen down in the night, but he +was evidently not thinking of that. He drank a little coffee, and then +got up and walked to the window again. + +"She is with the Pratts," he said, with decision. "I am glad I sent a +note over early, if it will relieve your mind, but I am convinced she is +with the Pratts." + +Mrs. Gresley murmured something. She looked scared. She made an attempt +to eat something, but it was a mere pretence. + +The swing door near the back staircase creaked. In the Vicarage you +could hear everything. + +Mr. and Mrs. Gresley looked eagerly at the door. The parlor-maid came in +with a note between her finger and thumb. + +"She is not there," said Mr. Gresley, in a shaking voice. "I wrote Mr. +Pratt such a guarded letter, saying Hester had imprudently run across to +see them on her return home, and how grateful I was to Mrs. Pratt for +not allowing her to return, as it had begun to snow. He says he and Mrs. +Pratt have not seen her." + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, "where _is_ she?" + +A second step shuffled across the hail, and Fräulein stood in the +door-way. Her pale face was drawn with anxiety. In both hands she +clutched a trailing skirt plastered with snow, hitched above a pair of +large goloshed feet, into which the legs were grafted without ankles. + +"She has not return?" + +"No," said Mr. Gresley, "and she is not with the Pratts." + +"I know always she is not wiz ze Pratts," said Fräulein, scornfully. +"She never go to Pratt if she is in grief. I go out at half seven this +morning to ze Br-r-rowns, but Miss Br-r-rown know nozing. I go to +Wilderleigh, I see Mrs. Loftus still in bed, but she is not there. I go +to Evannses, I go to Smeeth, I go last to Mistair Valsh, but she is not +there." + +Mr. Gresley began to experience something of what Fräulein had been +enduring all night. + +"She would certainly not go from my house to a Dissenter's," he said, +stiffly. "You might have saved yourself the trouble of calling there, +Fräulein." + +"She like Mr. and Mrs. Valsh. She gives them her book." + +Fräulein's voice drowned the muffled rumbling of a carriage and a ring +at the bell, the handle of which, uninjured amid the chaos, kept watch +above the remains of the late porch. + +The Bishop stood a moment in the little hall, while the maid went into +the dining-room to tell the Gresleys of his arrival. His eyes rested on +the pile of letters on the table, on the dead flowers beside them. They +had been so beautiful yesterday when he gave them to Hester. Hester +herself had been so pretty yesterday. + +The maid came back and asked him to "step" into the dining-room. + +Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had risen from their chairs. Their eyes were fixed +anxiously upon him. Fräulein gave a little shriek and rushed at him. + +"She is viz you?" she gasped, shaking him by the arm. + +"She is with me," said the Bishop, looking only at Fräulein, and taking +her shaking hands in his. + +"Thank God," said Mr. Gresley, and Mrs. Gresley sat down and began to +cry. + +Some of the sternness melted out of the Bishop's face as he looked at +the young couple. + +"I came as soon as I could," he said. "I started soon after seven, but +the roads are heavy." + +"This is a great relief," said Mr. Gresley. He began on his deepest +organ note, but it quavered quite away on the word relief for want of +wind. + +"How is Regie?" said the Bishop. It was his turn to be anxious. + +"Regie is verr vell," said Fräulein, with decision. "Tell her he is so +vell as he vas." + +"He is very much shaken," said Mrs. Gresley, indignant mother-love +flashing in her wet eyes. "He is a delicate child, and she, Hester--may +God forgive her!--struck him in one of her passions. She might have +killed him. And the poor child fell and bruised his arm and shoulder. +And he was bringing her a little present when she did it. The child had +done nothing whatever to annoy her, had he, James?" + +"Nothing," said Mr. Gresley, and his conscience pricking him, he added, +"I must own Hester had always seemed fond of Regie till last night." + +He felt that it would not be entirely fair to allow the Bishop to think +that Hester was in the habit of maltreating the children. + +"I have told him that his own mother will take care of him," said Mrs. +Gresley, "and that he need not be afraid, his aunt shall never come back +again. When I saw his little arm I felt I could never trust Hester in +the house again." As Mrs. Gresley spoke she felt she was making +certainty doubly sure that the woman of whom she was jealous would +return no more. + +"Regie cry till his 'ead ache because you say Miss Gresley no come +back," said Fräulein, looking at Mrs. Gresley, as if she would have +bitten a piece out of her. + +"I think, Fräulein, it is the children's lesson-time," said Mr. Gresley, +majestically. + +Who could have imagined that unobtrusive, submissive Fräulein, gentlest +and shyest of women, would put herself forward in this aggressive +manner. The truth is, it is all very well to talk, you never can tell +what people will do. They suddenly turn round and act exactly opposite +to their whole previous character. Look at Fräulein! + +That poor lady, recalled thus to a sense of duty, hurried from the room, +and the Bishop, who had opened the door for her, closed it gently behind +her. + +"You must excuse her, my lord," said Mr. Gresley; "the truth is, we are +all somewhat upset this morning. Hester would have saved us much +uneasiness, I may say anxiety, if she had mentioned to us yesterday +evening that she was going back to you. No doubt she overtook your +carriage, which put up at the inn for half an hour." + +"No," said the Bishop, "she came on foot. She--walked all the way." + +Mr. Gresley smiled. "I am afraid, my lord, Hester has given you an +inaccurate account. I assure you, she is incapable of walking five +miles, much less ten." + +"She took about five hours to do it," said the Bishop, who had hesitated +an instant, as if swallowing something unpalatable. "In moments of great +excitement nervous persons like your sister are capable of almost +anything. The question is, whether she will survive the shock that drove +her out of your house last night. Her hands are severely burned. Dr. +Brown, whom I left with her, fears brain fever." + +The Bishop paused, giving his words time to sink in. Then he went on +slowly in a level voice, looking into the fire. + +"She still thinks that she has killed Regie. She won't believe the +doctor and me when we assure her she has not. She turns against us for +deceiving her." + +Mr. Gresley wrestled with a very bitter feeling towards his sister, +overcame it, and said, hoarsely: + +"Tell her from me that Regie is not much the worse, and tell her that +I--that his mother and I--forgive her." + +"Not me, James," sobbed Mrs. Gresley. "It is too soon. I don't. I can't. +If I said I did I should not feel it." + +"Hester is not in a condition to receive messages," said the Bishop. +"She would not believe them. Dr. Brown says the only thing we can do for +her is to show Regie to her. If she sees him she may believe her own +eyes, and this frightful excitement may be got under. I came to take him +back with me now in the carriage." + +"I will not let him go," said Mrs. Gresley, the mother in her overriding +her awe of the Bishop. "I am sorry if Hester is ill. I will"--and Mrs. +Gresley made a superhuman effort--"I will come and nurse her myself, but +I won't have Regie frightened a second time." + +"He shall not be frightened a second time. But it is very urgent. While +we are wasting time talking, Hester's life is ebbing away as surely as +if she were bleeding to death. If she were actually bleeding in this +room how quickly you two would run to her and bind up the wound. There +would be nothing you would not do to relieve her suffering." + +"If I would let Regie go," said Mrs. Gresley, "he would not be willing, +and we could not have him taken away by force, could we, James?" + +The door opened, and Regie appeared, gently pushed from behind by +Fräulein's thin hand. Boulou followed. The door was closed again +immediately, almost on Boulou's tail. + +The Bishop and Regie looked hard at each other. + +"I send my love to Auntie Hester," said Regie, in his catechism voice, +"and I am quite well." + +"I should like to have some conversation with Regie alone," said the +Bishop. + +Mrs. Gresley wavered, but the Bishop's eye remained fixed on Mr. +Gresley, and the latter led his wife away. The door was left ajar, but +the Bishop closed it. Then he sat down by the fire and held out his +hand. + +Regie went up to him fearlessly, and stood between his knees. The two +faces were exactly on the same level. Boulou sat down before the fire, +his tail uncurling in the heat. + +"Auntie Hester is very sorry," said the Bishop. "She is so sorry that +she can't even cry." + +"Tell her not to mind," said Regie. + +"It's no good telling her. Does your arm hurt much?" + +"I don't know. Mother says it does, and Fräulein says it doesn't. But it +isn't that." + +"What is it, then?" + +"It isn't that, or the 'tato being lost, it was only crumbs afterwards; +but, Mr. Bishop, _I hadn't done nothing_." + +Regie looked into the kind keen eyes, and his own little red ones filled +again with tears. + +"I had not done nothing," he repeated. "And I'd kept my 'tato for her. +It's that--that--I don't mind about my arm. I'm Christian soldiers about +my arm; but it's that--that--" + +"That hurts you in your heart," said the Bishop, putting his arm round +him. + +"Yes," said Regie, producing a tight little ball that had once been a +handkerchief. "Auntie Hester and I were such friends. I told her all my +secrets, and she told me hers. I knew long before, when she gave father +the silver cream-jug, and about Fräulein's muff. If it was a mistake, +like father treading on my foot at the school-feast, I should not mind, +but she did it on purpose." + +The Bishop's brow contracted. Time was ebbing away, ebbing away like a +life. Yet Dr. Brown's warning remained in his ears. "If the child is +frightened of her, and screams when he sees her, I won't answer for the +consequences." + +"Is that your little dog?" he said, after a moment's thought. + +"Yes, that is Boulou." + +"Was he ever in a trap?" asked the Bishop, with a vague recollection of +the ways of clergymen's dogs, those "little rifts within the lute," +which so often break the harmony between a sporting squire and his +clergyman. + +"He was once. Mr. Pratt says he hunts, but father says not, that he +could not catch anything if he tried." + +"I had a dog once," said the Bishop, "called Jock. And he got in a trap +like Boulou did. Now, Jock loved me. He cared for me more than anybody +in the world. Yet, as I was letting him out of the trap, he bit me. Do +you know why he did that?" + +"Why?" + +"Because the trap hurt him so dreadfully that he could not help biting +something. He did not really mean it. He licked me afterwards. Now, +Auntie Hester was like Jock. She was in dreadful, dreadful pain like a +trap, and she hit you like Jock bit me. But Jock loved me best in the +world all the time. And Auntie Hester loves you, and is your friend she +tells secrets to, all the time." + +"Mother says she does not love me really. It was only pretence." Regie's +voice shook. "Mother says she must never come back, because it might be +baby next. She said so to father." + +"Mother has made a mistake. I'm so old that I know better even than +mother. Auntie Hester loves you, and can't eat any breakfast till you +tell her you don't mind. Will you come with me and kiss her, and tell +her so? And we'll make up a new secret on the way." + +"Yes," said Regie, eagerly, his wan little face turning pink. "But +mother?" he said, stopping short. + +"Run and get your coat on. I will speak to mother. Quick, Regie." + +Regie rushed curveting out of the room. The Bishop followed more slowly, +and went into the drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Gresley were sitting +by the fireless hearth. The drawing-room fire was never lit till two +o'clock. + +"Regie goes with me of his own free will," he said; "so that is settled. +He will be quite safe with me, Mrs. Gresley." + +"My wife demurs at sending him," said Mr. Gresley. + +"No, no, she does not," said the Bishop, gently. "Hester saved Regie's +life, and it is only right that Regie should save hers. You will come +over this afternoon to take him back," he continued to Mr. Gresley. "I +wish to have some conversation with you." + +Fräulein appeared breathless, dragging Regie with her. + +"He has not got on his new overcoat," said Mrs. Gresley. "Regie, run up +and change at once." + +Fräulein actually said, "Bozzer ze new coat," and she swept Regie into +the carriage, the Bishop following, stumbling over the ruins of the +porch. + +"Have they had their hot mash?" he said to the coachman, who was tearing +off the horses' clothing. + +"Yes, my lord." + +"Then drive all you know. Put them at the hills at a gallop." + +Fräulein pressed a packet of biscuits into the Bishop's hand. "He eat no +breakfast," she said. + +"Uncle Dick said the porch would sit down, and it has," said Regie, in +an awe-struck voice, as the carriage swayed from side to side of the +road. "Father knows a great deal, but sometimes I think Uncle Dick knows +most of all. First gates and flying half-pennies, and now porches." + +"Uncle Dick is staying in Southminster. Perhaps we shall see him." + +"I should like to ask him about his finger, if it isn't a secret." + +"I don't think it is. Now, what secret shall we make up on the way?" The +Bishop put his head out of the window. "Drive faster," he said. + +It was decided that the secret should be a Christmas-present for +"Auntie Hester," to be bought in Southminster. The Bishop found that +Regie's entire capital was sixpence. But Regie explained that he could +spend a shilling, because he was always given sixpence by his father +when he pulled a tooth out. "And I've one loose now," he said. "When I +suck it it moves. It will be ready by Christmas." + +There was a short silence. The horses' hoofs beat the muffled ground all +together. + +"Don't you find, Mr. Bishop," said Regie, tentatively, "that this riding +so quick in carriages and talking secrets does make people very hungry?" + +The Bishop blushed. "It is quite true, my boy. I ought to have thought +of that before. I am uncommonly hungry myself," he said, looking in +every pocket for the biscuits Fräulein had forced into his hand. When +they were at last discovered, in a somewhat dilapidated condition in the +rug, the Bishop found they were a kind of biscuit that always made him +cough, so he begged Regie, who was dividing them equally, as a personal +favor, to eat them all. + +It was a crumb be-sprinkled Bishop who, half an hour later, hurried up +the stairs of the Palace. + +"What an age you have been," snapped Dr. Brown, from the landing. + +"How is she?" + +"The same, but weaker. Have you got Regie?" + +"Yes, but it took time." + +"Is he frightened?" + +"Not a bit." + +"Then bring him up." + +The doctor went back into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar. + +A small shrunken figure with bandaged head and hands was sitting in an +arm-chair. The eyes of the rigid, discolored face were fixed. + +Dr. Brown took the bandage off Hester's head, and smoothed her hair. + +"He is coming up-stairs now," he said, shaking her gently by the +shoulders. "Regie is coming up-stairs now to see you. Regie is quite +well, and he is coming in now to see you." + +"Regie is dead, you old gray wolf," said Hester, in a monotonous voice. +"I killed him in the back-yard. The place is quite black, and it +smokes." + +"Look at the door," repeated Dr. Brown, over and over again. "He is +coming in at the door now." + +Hester trembled, and looked at the door. The doctor noticed, with a +frown, that she could hardly move her eyes. + +Regie stood in the doorway, holding the Bishop's hand. The cold snow +light fell upon the gallant little figure and white face. + +The doctor moved between Hester and the window. His shadow was upon her. + +The hearts of the two men beat like hammers. + +A change came over Hester's face. + +"My little Reg," she said, holding out her bandaged hands. + +Regie ran to her, and put his arms round her neck. They clasped each +other tightly. The doctor winced to watch her hands. + +"It's all right, Auntie Hester," said Regie. "I love you just the same, +and you must not cry any more." + +For Hester's tears were falling at last, quenching the wild fire in her +eyes. + +"My little treasure, my little mouse," she said, over and over again, +kissing his face and hands and little brown overcoat. + +Then all in a moment her face altered. Her agonized eyes turned to the +doctor. + +In an instant Dr. Brown's hand was over Regie's eyes, and he hurried him +out of the room. + +"Take him out of hearing," he whispered to the Bishop, and darted back. + +Hester was tearing the bandages off her hands. + +"I don't know what has happened," she wailed, "but my hands hurt me so +that I can't bear it." + +"Thank God!" said the old doctor, blowing his nose. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + + The Devil has no stancher ally than _want of perception_.--PHILIP + H. WICKSTEED. + + It takes two to speak truth--one to speak and another to + hear.--THOREAU. + + +Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. In the afternoon all the +Pratts had called, and Mr. Gresley, who departed early in the afternoon +for Southminster, had left his wife no directions as to how to act in +this unforseen occurrence, or how to parry the questions with which she +was overwhelmed. + +After long hesitation she at last owned that Hester had returned to +Southminster in the Bishop's carriage not more than half an hour after +it had brought her back. + +"I can't explain Hester's actions," she would only repeat over and over +again. "I don't pretend to understand clever people. I'm not clever +myself. I can only say Hester went back to Southminster directly she +arrived here." + +Hardly had the Pratts taken their departure when Doll Loftus was ushered +in. His wife had sent him to ask where Hester was, as Fräulein had +alarmed her earlier in the day. Doll at least asked no questions. He had +never asked but one in his life, and that had been of his wife, five +seconds before he had become engaged to her. + +He accepted with equanimity the information that Hester had returned to +Southminster, and departed to impart the same to his exasperated wife. + +"But why did she go back? She had only that moment arrived," inquired +Sybell. How should Doll know. She, Sybell, had said she could not rest +till she knew where Hester was, and he, Doll, had walked to Warpington +through the snow-drifts to find out for her. And he had found out, and +now she wanted to know something else. There was no satisfying some +women. And the injured husband retired to unlace his boots. + +Yes, Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. She had ventured out +for a few minutes, and had found Abel, with his arms akimbo; +contemplating the little gate which led to the stables. It was lying on +the ground. He had swept the snow off it. + +"I locked it up the same as usual last night," he said to Mrs. Gresley. +"There's been somebody about as has tampered it off its hinges. Yet +nothing hasn't been touched, the coal nor the stack. It doesn't seem +natural, twisting the gate off for nothing." + +Mrs. Gresley did not answer. She did not associate Hester with the gate. +But she was too much perturbed to care about such small matters at the +moment. + +"His lordship's coachman tell me as Miss Gresley was at the Palace," +continued Abel, "while I was a hotting up his mash for him, for William +had gone in with a note, and onst he's in the kitchen the hanimals might +be stocks and stones for what he cares. He said his nevvy, the footman, +heard the front door-bell ring just as he was getting into bed last +night, and Miss Gresley come in without her hat, with the snow upon her. +The coachman said as she must ha' run afoot all the way." + +Abel looked anxiously at Mrs. Gresley. + +"I was just thinking," he said, "as perhaps the little lady wasn't quite +right in her 'ead. They do say as too much learning flies to the 'ead, +the same as spirits to them as ain't manured to 'em. And the little lady +does work desperate hard." + +"Not as hard as Mr. Gresley," said Mrs. Gresley. + +"Maybe not, mem, maybe not. But when I come up when red cow was sick at +four in the morning, or maybe earlier, there was always a light in her +winder, and the shadder of her face agin the blind. Yes, she do work +precious hard." + +Mrs. Gresley retreated into the house, picking her way over the debris +of the porch. At any other time its demise would have occupied the minds +of the Vicarage household for days. But, until this moment, it had +hardly claimed the tribute of a sigh. Mrs. Gresley did sigh as she +crossed the threshold. That prostrate porch meant expense. She had +understood from her husband that Dick had wantonly torn out the clamp +that supported it, and that the whole thing had in consequence given way +under the first snowfall. "He meant no harm," Mr. Gresley had added, +"but I suppose in the Colonies they mistake horse-play for wit." + +Mrs. Gresley went back to the drawing-room, and sat down to her +needle-work. She was an exquisite needlewoman, but all the activity of +her untiring hands was hardly able to stem the tide of mending that was +for ever flowing in upon her. When was she to find time to finish the +darling little garments which the new baby required? Fräulein had been +kind in helping, but Fräulein's eyes are not very strong, or her +stitches in consequence very small. Mrs. Gresley would have liked to sit +in the school-room when lessons were over, but Fräulein had been so +distant at luncheon about a rissole that she had not the courage to go +in. + +So she sat and stitched with a heavy heart awaiting her husband's +return. The fly was another expense. Southminster was ten miles from +Warpington, eleven according to the Loftus Arms, from which it issued, +the owner of which was not on happy terms with his "teetotal" vicar. Yet +it had been absolutely necessary to have the fly, in order that Regie, +who so easily caught cold, might return in safety. + +The dusk was already falling, and more snow with it. + +It was quite dark when Mrs. Gresley at last caught the sound of wheels, +and hurried to the door. + +Mr. Gresley came in, bearing Regie, fast asleep in a fur rug, and laid +him carefully on the sofa, and then went out to have an altercation with +the driver, who demurred in forcible language to the arrangement, +adhered to by Mr. Gresley, that the cost of the fly should be considered +as part payment of certain arrears of tithe which in those days it was +the unhappy duty of the clergyman to collect himself. Mr. Gresley's +methods of dealing with money matters generally brought in a high rate +of interest in the way of friction, and it was a long time before the +driver drove away, turning his horse deliberately on the little patch of +lawn under the dining-room windows. + +Regie in the meanwhile had waked up, and was having tea in the +drawing-room as a great treat. + +He had much to tell about his expedition; how the Bishop had given him +half-a-crown, and Uncle Dick had taken him into the town to spend it, +and how after dinner he had ridden on Uncle Dick's back. + +"And Auntie Hester. How was she?" + +"She was very well, only she cried a little. I did not stay long, +because Mr. Bishop was wanting to give me the half-crown, and he kept it +down-stairs. And when I went in again she was in bed, and she was so +sleepy she hardly said anything at all." + +Mr. Gresley came in wearily and dropped into a chair. + +Mrs. Gresley gave him his tea, and presently took Regie up-stairs. Then +she came back and sat down in a low chair close to her husband. It was +the first drop of comfort in Mr. Gresley's cup to-day. + +"How is Hester?" + +"According to Dr. Brown she is very ill," said Mr. Gresley, in an +extinguished voice. "But they would not let me see her." + +"Not see her own brother! My dear James, you should have insisted." + +"I did, but it was no use. You know how angry Dr. Brown gets at the +least opposition. And the Bishop backed him up. They said it would +excite her." + +"I never heard of such a thing. What is the matter with her?" + +"Shock, Dr. Brown calls it. They have been afraid of collapse all day, +but she is better this evening. They seemed to think a great deal of her +knowing Regie." + +"Did the little lamb forgive her?" + +"Oh yes; he kissed her, and she knew him and cried. And it seems her +hands are severely burned. They have got a nurse, and they have +telegraphed for Miss West. The Bishop was very good to Regie and gave +him that fur rug." + +They looked at the splendid blue fox rug on the sofa. + +"I am afraid," said Mrs. Gresley, after a pause, "that Hester did run +all the way to Southminster as the Bishop said. Abel said the Bishop's +coachman told him that she came late last night to the Palace, and she +was white with snow when the footman let her in." + +"My dear, I should have thought you were too sensible to listen to +servant's gossip," said Mr. Gresley, impatiently. "Your own common-sense +will tell you that Hester never performed that journey on foot. I told +Dr. Brown the same, but he lost his temper at once. It's curious how +patient he is in a sick-room, and how furious he can be out of it. He +was very angry with me, too, because when he mentioned to the Bishop in +my presence that Hester was under morphia, I said I strongly objected to +her being drugged, and when I repeated that morphia was a most dangerous +drug, with effects worse than intoxication, in fact, that morphia was a +form of intoxication, he positively, before the Bishop, shook his fist +in my face, and said he was not going to be taught his business by me. + +"The Bishop took me away into the study. Dick Vernon was sitting there, +at least he was creeping about on all fours with Regie on his back. I +think he must be in love with Hester, he asked so anxiously if there was +any change. He would not speak to me, pretended not to know me. I +suppose the Bishop had told him about the porch, and he was afraid I +should come on him for repairs, as he had tampered with it. The Bishop +sent them away, and said he wanted to have a talk with me. The Bishop +himself was the only person who was kind." + +There was a long pause. Mrs. Gresley laid her soft cheek against her +husband's, and put her small hand in a protecting manner over his large +one. It was not surprising that on the following Sunday Mr. Gresley said +such beautiful things about women being pillows against which weary +masculine athletes could rest. + +"He spoke very nicely of you," went on Mr. Gresley at last. "He said he +appreciated your goodness in letting Regie go after what had happened, +and your offer to come and nurse Hester yourself. And then he spoke +about me. And he said he knew well how devoted I was to my work, and how +anything I did for the Church was a real labor of love, and that my +heart was in my work." + +"It is quite true. So it is," said Mrs. Gresley. + +"I never thought he understood me so well. And he went on to say that he +knew I must be dreadfully anxious about my sister, but that as far as +money was concerned--I had offered to pay for a nurse--I was to put all +anxiety off my mind. He would take all responsibility about the illness. +He said he had a little fund laid by for emergencies of this kind, and +that he could not spend it better than on Hester, whom he loved like his +own child. And then he went on to speak of Hester. I don't remember all +he said when he turned off about her, but he spoke of her as if she were +a person quite out of the common." + +"He always did spoil her," said Mrs. Gresley. + +"He went off on a long rigmarole about her and her talent, and how vain +he and I should be if leading articles appeared in the _Spectator_ about +us as they did about her. I did not know there had been anything of the +kind, but he said every one else did. And then he went on more slowly +that Hester was under a foolish hallucination, as groundless, no doubt, +as that she had caused Regie's death, that her book was destroyed. He +said, 'It is this idea which has got firm hold of her, but which has +momentarily passed off her mind in her anxiety about Regie, which has +caused her illness.' And then he looked at me. He seemed really quite +shaky. He held on to a chair. I think his health is breaking." + +"And what did you say?" + +"I said the truth, that it was no hallucination but the fact, that much +as I regretted to say so Hester had written a profane and immoral book, +and that I had felt it my duty to burn it, and a very painful duty it +had been. I said he would have done the same if he had read it." + +"I am glad you said that." + +"Well, the awkward part was that he said he had read it, every word, and +that he considered it the finest book that had been written in his day. +And then he began to walk up and down and to become rather excited, and +to say that he could not understand how I could take upon myself such a +responsibility, or on what grounds I considered myself a judge of +literature. As if I ever did consider myself a judge! But I do know +right from wrong. We had got on all right up till then, especially when +he spoke so cordially of you and me, but directly he made a personal +matter of Hester's book, setting his opinion against mine, for he +repeated over and over again it was a magnificent book, his manner +seemed to change. He tried to speak kindly, but all the time I saw that +my considering the book bad while he thought it good, gravelled him, and +made him feel annoyed with me. The truth is, he can't bear any one to +think differently from himself." + +"He always was like that," said the comforter. + +"I said I supposed he thought it right to run down the clergy and hold +them up to ridicule. He said, 'Certainly not, but he did not see how +that applied to anything in Hester's book.' He said, 'She has drawn us, +without bias towards us, exactly as we appear to three-quarters of the +laity. It won't do us any harm to see ourselves for once as others see +us. There is in these days an increasing adverse criticism of us in many +men's minds, to which your sister's mild rebukes are as nothing. We have +drawn it upon ourselves, not so much by our conduct, which I believe to +be uniformly above reproach, or by any lack of zeal, as by our ignorance +of our calling; by our inability to "convert life into truth," the +capital secret of our profession, as I was once told as a divinity +student. I for one believe that the Church will regain her prestige and +her hold on the heart of the nation, but if she does, it will be mainly +due to a new element in the minds of the clergy, a stronger realization, +not of our responsibilities--we have that--but of the education, the +personal search for truth, the knowledge of human nature, which are +necessary to enable us to meet them.' He went on a long time about that. +I think he grows very wordy. But I did not argue with him. I let him say +what he liked. I knew that I must be obedient to my Bishop, just as I +should expect my clergy to be to me, if I ever am a Bishop myself. Not +that I expect I ever shall be"--Mr. Gresley was overtired--"but it +seemed to me as he talked about the book, that all the time, though he +put me down to the highest motives--he did me that justice--he was +trying to make me own I had done wrong." + +"You didn't say so?" said the little wife, hotly. + +"My dear, need you ask? But I did say at last that I had consulted with +Archdeacon Thursby on the matter, and he had strongly advised me to do +as I did. The Bishop seemed thunderstruck. And then--it really seemed +providential--who should come in but Archdeacon Thursby himself. The +Bishop went straight up to him, and said, 'You come at a fortunate +moment, for I am greatly distressed at the burning of Miss Gresley's +book, and Gresley tells me that you advised it.' And would you believe +it," said Mr. Gresley, in a strangled voice, "the Archdeacon actually +denied it then and there. He said he did not know Hester had written a +book, and had never been consulted on the subject." + +The tears forced themselves out of Mr. Gresley's eyes. He was exhausted +and overwrought. He sobbed against his wife's shoulder. + +"Wicked liar!" whispered Mrs. Gresley, into his parting. "Wicked, +wicked man! Oh, James, I never thought the Archdeacon could have behaved +like that!" + +"Nor I," gasped Mr. Gresley, "but he did. I suppose he did not want to +offend the Bishop. And when I expostulated with him, and reminded him of +what he had advised only the day before, he said that was about a +letter, not a book, as if it mattered which it was. It was the principle +that mattered. But they neither of them would listen to me. I said I had +offered to help to rewrite it, and the Bishop became quite fierce. He +said I might as well try to rewrite Regie if he were in his coffin. And +then he mentioned, casually, as if it were quite an afterthought, that +Hester had sold it for a thousand pounds. All through, I knew he was +really trying to hurt my feelings, in spite of his manner, but when he +said _that_ he succeeded." + +Mr. Gresley groaned. + +"A thousand pounds!" said Mrs. Gresley, turning white. "Oh, it isn't +possible!" + +"He said he had seen the publisher's letter offering it, and that Hester +had accepted it by his advice. He seemed to know all about her affairs. +When he said that, I was so distressed I could not help showing it, and +he made rather light of it, saying the money loss was the least serious +part of the whole affair, but, of course, it is the worst. Poor Hester, +when I think that owing to me she has lost a thousand pounds. Seventy +pounds a year, if I had invested it for her, and I know of several good +investments, all perfectly safe, at seven per cent.--when I think of it +it makes me absolutely miserable. We won't talk of it any more. The +Bishop sat with his head in his hands for a long time after the +Archdeacon had gone, and afterwards he was quite kindly again, and said +we looked at the subject from such different points of view that perhaps +there was no use in discussing it. And we talked of the Church Congress +until the fly came, only he seemed dreadfully tired, quite knocked up. +And he promised to let us know first thing to-morrow morning how Hester +was. He was cordial when we left. I think he meant well. But I can +never feel the same to Archdeacon Thursby again. He was quite my +greatest friend among the clergy round here. I suppose I shall learn in +time not to have such a high ideal of people, but I certainly thought +very highly of him until to-day." + +Mr. Gresley sat upright, and put away his handkerchief with decision. + +"One thing this miserable day has taught us," he said, "and that is that +we must part with Fräulein. If she is to become impertinent the first +moment we are in trouble, such a thing is not to be borne. We could not +possibly keep her after her behavior to-day." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + + If two lives join, there is oft a scar. --ROBERT BROWNING. + + +Rachel left Westhope Abbey the day after Lord Newhaven's funeral, and +returned to London. And the day after that Hugh came to see her, and +proposed, and was accepted. + +He had gone over in his mind a hundred times all that he should say to +her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to +say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well disposed towards +him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But what he really said, +in a hoarse, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, will you marry me?" He was +looking so intently into a little grove of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps +the hyacinths heard what he said; at any rate, she did not. But she +supposed, from long experience, that he was proposing, and she said +"Yes" immediately. + +She had not intended to say so--at least, not at first. She had made up +her mind that it would be only right to inform him that she was fourteen +months older than he (she had looked him out in Burke where she herself +was not to be found); that she was "old enough to be his mother"; also +that she was of a cold, revengeful temper not calculated to make a home +happy, and several other odious traits of character which she had never +dreamed of confiding to any of the regiment of her previous lovers. + +But the only word she had breath to say when the time came was "Yes." + + * * * * * + +Rachel had shivered and hesitated on the brink of a new love long +enough. Her anxiety about Hugh had unconsciously undermined her +resistance. His confession had given her instantly the confidence in him +which had been wanting. It is not perfection that we look for in our +fellow-creatures, but for what is apparently rarer, a little plain +dealing. + +How they rise before us!--the sweet reproachful faces of those whom we +could have loved devotedly if they had been willing to be +straightforward with us; whom we have lost, not by our own will, but by +that paralysis of feeling which gradually invades the heart at the +discovery of small insincerities. Sincerity seems our only security +against losing those who love us, the only cup in which those who are +worth keeping will care to pledge us when youth is past. + +Rachel was not by nature _de celles qui se jettent dans l'amour comme +dans un précipice_. But she shut her eyes, recommended her soul to God, +and threw herself over. She had climbed down once--with assistance--and +she was not going to do that again. That she found herself alive at the +bottom was a surprise to her, but a surprise that was quickly forgotten +in the constant wonder that Hugh could love her as devotedly as it was +obvious he did. + +Women would have shared that wonder, but not men. There was a home ready +made in Rachel's faithful, dog-like eyes, which at once appealed to the +desire of expansion of empire in the heart of the free-born Briton. + +Hugh had, until lately, considered woman as connected with the downward +slope of life. He would have loudly disclaimed such an opinion if it had +been attributed to him; but nevertheless it was the key-note of his +behavior towards them, his belief concerning them which was of a piece +with his cheap cynicism and dilettante views of life. He now discovered +that woman was made out of something more than man's spare rib. + +It is probable that if he had never been in love with Lady Newhaven, +Hugh would never have loved Rachel. He would have looked at her, as many +men did, with a view to marriage and would probably have dismissed her +from his thoughts as commonplace. He knew better now. It was Lady +Newhaven who was commonplace. His worldliness was dropping from him day +by day as he learned to know Rachel better. + +Where was his cynicism now that she loved him? + +His love for her, humble, triumphant, diffident, passionate, impatient +by turns, now exacting, now selfless, possessed him entirely. He +remembered once, with astonishment, that he was making a magnificent +match. He had never thought of it, as Rachel knew, as she knew well. + + * * * * * + +December came in bleak and dark. The snow did its poor best, laying day +after day its white veil upon the dismal streets. But it was +misunderstood. It was scraped into murky heaps. It melted and then +froze, and then melted again. And London groaned and shivered on its +daily round. + +Every afternoon Hugh came, and every morning Rachel made her rooms +bright with flowers for him. The flower shop at the corner sent her tiny +trees of white lilac, and sweet little united families of hyacinths and +tulips. The time of azaleas was not yet. And once he sent her a bunch of +daffodils. He knew best how he had obtained them. + +Their wild, sweet faces peered at Rachel, and she sat down faint and +dizzy, holding them in her nerveless hands. If one daffodil knows +anything, all daffodils know it to the third and fourth generation. + +"Where is he?" they said. "That man whom you loved once? We were there +when he spoke to you. We saw you stand together by the attic window. We +never say, but we heard, we remember. And you cried for joy at night +afterwards. We never say. But we heard. We remember." + +Rachel's secretary in the little room on the ground-floor was +interrupted by a tap at the door. Rachel came in laden with daffodils. +Their splendor filled the gray room. + +"Would you mind having them?" she said, smiling, and laying them down by +her. "And would you kindly write a line to Jones telling him not to send +me daffodils again. They are a flower I particularly dislike." + + * * * * * + +"Rachel?" + +"Hugh!" + +"Don't you think it would be better if we were married immediately?" + +"Better than what?" + +"Oh, I don't know; better than breaking it off." + +"You can't break it off now. I'm not a person to be trifled with. You +have gone too far." + +"If you gave me half your attention, you would understand that I am only +expressing a wish to go a little further, but you have become so +frivolous since we have been engaged that I hardly recognize you." + +"I suit myself to my company." + +"Are you going to talk to me in that flippant manner when we are +married. I sometimes fear, Rachel, you don't look upon me with +sufficient awe. I foresee I shall have to be very firm when we are +married. When may I begin to be firm?" + +"Are these such evil days, Hugh?" + +"I am like Oliver Twist," he said. "I want more." + + * * * * * + +They were sitting together one afternoon in the fire-light in silence. +They often sat in silence together. + +"A wise woman once advised me," said Rachel at last, "if I married, +never to tell my husband of any previous attachment. She said, Let him +always believe that he was the first + + That ever burst + Into that silent sea. + +I believe it was good advice, but it seems to me to have one +drawback--to follow it may be to tell a lie. It would be in my case." + +Silence. + +"I know that a lie and an adroit appeal to the vanity of man are +supposed to be a woman's recognized weapons. The same woman told me that +I might find myself mistaken in many things in this world, but never in +counting on the vanity of man. She said that was a reed which would +never pierce my hand. I don't think you are vain, Hugh." + +"Not vain! Why, I am so conceited at the fact that you are going to +marry me that I look down on every one else. I only long to tell them +so. When may I tell my mother, Rachel? She is coming to London this +week." + +"You have the pertinacity of a fly. You always come back to the same +point. I am beginning to be rather bored with your marriage. You can't +talk of anything else." + +"I can't think about anything else." + +He drew her cheek against his. He was an ingratiating creature. + +"Neither can I," she whispered. + +And that was all Rachel ever said of all she meant to say about Mr. +Tristram. + + * * * * * + +A yellow fog. It made rings round the shaded electric lamp by which +Rachel was reading. The fire burned tawny and blurred. Even her red gown +looked dim. Hugh came in. + +"What are you reading?" he said, sitting down by her. + +He did not want to know, but if you are reading a book on another +person's knee you cannot be a very long way off. He glanced with feigned +interest at the open page, stooping a little, for he was short-sighted +now and then--at least now. + +Rachel took the opportunity to look at him. You can't really look at a +person when he is looking at you. Hugh was very handsome, especially +side face, and he knew it; but he was not sure whether Rachel thought +so. + +He read mechanically: + + "Take back your vows. + Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; + You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. + You lit those candles in another shrine, + Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. + Take back your vows." + +A shadow fell across Hugh's mind. Rachel saw it fall. + +"You do not think that of me, Rachel," he said, pointing to the verse. +It was the first time he had alluded to that halting confession which +had remained branded on the minds of both. + +He glanced up at her, and she suffered him for a moment to look through +her clear eyes into her soul. + +"I never thought that of you," she said, with difficulty. "I am so +foolish that I believe the candles are lit now for the first time. I am +so foolish that I believe you love me nearly as much as I love you." + +"It is a dream," said Hugh, passionately, and he fell on his knees, and +hid his white face against her knee. "It is a dream. I shall wake, and +find you never cared for me." + +She sat for a moment stunned by the violence of his emotion, which was +shaking him from head to foot. Then she drew him into her trembling +arms, and held his head against her breast. + +She felt his tears through her gown. + +"What is past will never come between us," she said, brokenly, at last. +"I have cried over it too, Hugh; but I have put it from my mind. When +you told me about it, knowing you risked losing me by telling me, I +suddenly trusted you entirely. I had not quite up till then. I can't say +why, except that perhaps I had grown suspicious because I was once +deceived. But I do now, because you were open with me. I think, Hugh, +you and I can dare to be truthful to each other. You have been so to me, +and I will be so to you. I knew about _that_ long before you told me. +Lady Newhaven--poor thing!--confided in me last summer. She had to tell +some one. I think you ought to know that I know. And oh, Hugh, I knew +about the drawing of lots, too." + +Hugh started violently, but he did not move. + +Would she have recognized that ashen, convulsed face if he had raised +it? + +"Lady Newhaven listened at the door when you were drawing lots, and she +told me. But we never knew which had drawn the short lighter till Lord +Newhaven was killed on the line. Only she and I and you know that that +was not an accident. I know what you must have gone through all the +summer, feeling you had taken his life as well. But you must remember it +was his own doing, and a perfectly even chance. You ran the same risk. +His blood is on his own head. But oh, my darling, when I think it might +have been you!" + +Hugh thought afterwards that if her arms had not been round him, if he +had been a little distance from her, he might have told her the truth. +He owed it to her, this woman who was the very soul of truth. But if she +had withdrawn from him, however gently, in the moment when her +tenderness had, for the first time, vanquished her natural reserve, if +she had taken herself away then, he could not have borne it. In deep +repentance after Lord Newhaven's death, he had vowed that from that day +forward he would never deviate again from the path of truth and honor, +however difficult it might prove. But this frightful moment had come +upon him unawares. He drew back instinctively, giddy and unnerved, as +from a chasm yawning suddenly among the flowers, one step in front of +him. He was too stunned to think. When he rallied they were standing +together on the hearth-rug, and she was saying--he did not know what she +was saying, for he was repeating over and over again to himself, "The +moment is past. The moment is past." + +At last her words conveyed some meaning to him. + +"We will never speak of this again, my friend," she said; "but now that +no harm can be done by it, it seemed right to tell you I knew." + +"I ought never to have drawn," said Hugh, hoarsely. + +"No," said Rachel. "He was in fault to demand such a thing. It was +inhuman. But having once drawn he had to abide by it, as you would have +done if you had drawn the short lighter." + +She was looking earnestly at him, as at one given back from the grave. + +"Yes," said Hugh, feeling she expected him to speak. "If I had drawn it +I should have had to abide by it." + +"I thank God continually that you did not draw it. You made him the +dreadful reparation he asked. If it recoiled upon himself you were not +to blame. You have done wrong, and you have repented. You have suffered, +Hugh. I know it by your face. And perhaps I have suffered too, but that +is past. We will shut up the past, and think of the future. Promise me +that you will never speak of this again." + +"I promise," said Hugh, mechanically. + +"The moment to speak is past," he said to himself. + +Had it ever been present? + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + + Dieu n'oublíe personne. Il visite tout le monde.--VINET. + + +Hugh did not sleep that night. + +His escape had been too narrow. He shivered at the mere thought of it. +It had never struck him as possible that Rachel and Lady Newhaven had +known of the drawing of lots. Now that he found they knew, sundry small +incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding back to his memory. That +was why Lady Newhaven had written so continually those letters which he +had burned unread. That was why she had made that desperate attempt to +see him in the smoking-room at Wilderleigh after the boating accident. +She wanted to know which had drawn the short lighter. That explained the +mysterious tension which Hugh had noticed in Rachel during the last days +in London before--before the time was up. He saw it all now. And, of +course, they naturally supposed that Lord Newhaven had committed +suicide. They could not think otherwise. They were waiting for one of +the two men to do it. + +"If Lord Newhaven had not turned giddy and stumbled on to the line, if +he had not died by accident when he did," said Hugh to himself, "where +should I be now?" + +There was no answer to that question. + +What was the use of asking it? He _was_ dead. And, fortunately, the two +women firmly believed he had died by his own hand. Hugh as firmly +believed that the death was accidental. + +But it could not be his duty to set them right, to rake up the whole +hideous story again. + +By an extraordinary, by a miraculous chance, he was saved, as it were, a +second time. It could do no good to allude to the dreadful subject +again. Besides, he had promised Rachel never to speak of it again. + +He groaned, and hid his face in his hands. + +"Oh, coward and wretch that I am," he said. "Cannot I even be honest +with myself? I lied to her to-day. I never thought I could have told +Rachel a lie, but I did. I can't live without her. I must have her. I +would rather die than lose her now. And I should have lost her if I'd +told her the truth. I felt that. I am not worthy. It was an ill day for +her when she took my tarnished life into her white hands. She ought to +have trodden me under foot. But she does love me, and I will never +deceive her again. She does love me, and, God helping me, I will make +her happy." + +The strain of conflict was upon Hugh--the old, old conflict of the seed +with the earth, of the soul with love. How many little fibres and roots +the seed puts out, pushed by an unrecognized need within itself, not +without pain, not without a gradual rending of its being, not without a +death unto self into a higher life. Love was dealing with Hugh's soul as +the earth deals with the seed, and--he suffered. + +It was a man who did not look like an accepted lover who presented +himself at Rachel's door the following afternoon. + +But Rachel was not there. Her secretary handed Hugh a little note which +she had left for him, telling him that Hester had suddenly fallen ill, +and that she had been sent for to Southminster. The note ended: "These +first quiet days are past. So now you may tell your mother, and put our +engagement in the _Morning Post_." + +Hugh was astonished at the despair which overwhelmed him at the bare +thought that he should not see Rachel that day and not the next either. +It was not to be borne. She had no right to make him suffer like this. +Day by day, when a certain restless fever returned upon him, he had +known, as an opium-eater knows, that at a certain hour he should become +rested and calm and sane once more. To be in the same room with Rachel, +to hear her voice, to let his eyes dwell upon her, to lean his forehead +for a moment against her hand, was to enter, as we enter in dreams, a +world of joy and comfort, and boundless, endless, all-pervading peace. + +And now he was suddenly left shivering in a bleak world without her. +With her he was himself, a released, freed self, growing daily further +and further away from all he had once been. Without her he felt he was +nothing but a fierce, wounded animal. + +He tried to laugh at himself as he walked slowly away from Rachel's +house. He told himself that he was absurd, that an absence of a few days +was nothing. He turned his steps mechanically in the direction of his +mother's lodgings. At any rate, he could tell her. He could talk about +this cruel woman to her. The smart was momentarily soothed by his +mother's painful joy. He wrenched himself somewhat out of himself as she +wept the tears of jealous love, which all mothers must weep when the +woman comes who takes their son away. "I am so glad," she kept +repeating. "These are tears of joy, Hughie. I can forgive her for +accepting you, but I should never have forgiven her if she had refused +you--if she had made my boy miserable. And you have been miserable +lately. I have seen it for a long time. I suppose it was all this coming +on." + +He said it was. The remembrance of other causes of irritation and +moodiness had slipped entirely off his mind. + +He stayed a long time with his mother, who pressed him to wait till his +sister, who was shopping, returned. But his sister tarried long +out-of-doors, and at last the pain of Rachel's absence returning on him, +he left suddenly, promising to return in the evening. + +He did not go back to his rooms. He wandered aimlessly through the +darkening streets, impatient of the slow hours. At last he came out on +the Embankment. The sun was setting redly, frostily, in a gray world of +sky-mist and river-mist and spectral bridge and spire. A shaking +path-way of pale flame came across the gray of the hidden river to meet +him. + +He stood a long time looking at it. The low sun touched and forsook, +touched and forsook point by point the little crowded world which it was +leaving. + +"My poor mother," said Hugh to himself. "Poor, gentle, loving soul whom +I so nearly brought down with sorrow to the grave. She will never know +what an escape she has had. I might have been more to her. I might have +made her happier, seeing her happiness is wrapped up in me. I will make +up to her for it. I will be a better son to her in future. Rachel and I +together will make her last years happy. Rachel and I together," said +Hugh, over and over again. + +And then he suddenly remembered that though Rachel had taken herself +away he could write to her, and--he might look out the trains to +Southminster. He leaped into a hansom and hurried back to his rooms. + +The porter met him in a mysterious manner in the entrance. Lady waiting +to see him. Lady said she was his sister. Had been waiting two hours. In +his rooms now. + +Hugh laughed, and ran up the wide, common staircase. His sister had +heard the news from his mother and had rushed over at once. + +As he stooped a little to fit the latch-key on his chain into the lock a +man, who was coming down the stairs feeling in his pockets, stopped with +a sudden exclamation. It was Captain Pratt, pallid, smiling, hair newly +varnished, resplendent in a magnificent fur overcoat. + +"What luck," he said. "Scarlett, I think. We met at Wilderleigh. Have +you such a thing as a match about you?" + +Hugh felt in his pockets. He had not one. + +"Never mind," he said, opening the door. "I've plenty inside. Come in." + +Hugh went in first, extricating his key. Captain Pratt followed, +murmuring, "Nice little dens, these. A pal of mine lives just +above--Streatham. You know Streatham, son of Lord--" + +The remainder of the sentence was lost. + +The door opened straight into the little sitting-room. + +A woman in deep mourning rose suddenly out of a chair by the fire and +came towards them. + +"Hughie!" she said. + +It was Lady Newhaven. + +It is probable that none of the tableaux she had arranged were quite so +dramatic as this one, in which she had not reckoned on that elaborate +figure in the door-way. + +Captain Pratt's opinion of Hugh, whom he had hitherto regarded as a +pauper with an involved estate, leaped from temperate to summer +heat--blood-heat. After the first instant he kept his eyes steadily +fixed on Hugh. + +"I--er--thank you, Scarlett. I have found my matches. A thousand thanks. +Good-night." + +He was disappearing, but Hugh, his eyes flashing in his gray face, held +him forcibly by the arm. + +"Lady Newhaven," he said, "the porter is inexcusable. These are my rooms +which he has shown you into by mistake, not Mr. Streatham's, your +nephew. He is just above. I think," turning to Captain Pratt, "Streatham +is out of town." + +"He is out of town," said Captain Pratt, looking with cold admiration at +Hugh. "Admirable," he said to himself; "a born gentleman." + +"This is not the first time Streatham's visitors have been shown in +here," continued Hugh. "The porter shall be dismissed. I trust you will +forgive me my share in the annoyance he has caused you. Is your carriage +waiting?" + +"No," said Lady Newhaven, faintly, quite thrown off the lines of her +prepared scene by the sudden intrusion into it of a foreign body. + +"My hansom is below," said Captain Pratt, deferentially, venturing, now +that the situation was, so to speak, draped, to turn his discreet agate +eyes towards Lady Newhaven. "If it could be of the least use, I myself +should prefer to walk." + +Now that he looked at her, he looked very hard at her. She was a +beautiful woman. + +Lady Newhaven's self-possession had returned sufficiently for her to +take up her fur cloak. + +"Thank you," she said, letting Captain Pratt help her on with it. "I +shall be glad to make use of your hansom, if you are sure you can spare +it. I am shocked at having taken possession of your rooms," turning to +Hugh; "I will write to Georgie Streatham to-night. I am staying with my +mother, and I came across to ask him to take my boys to the pantomime, +as I cannot take them myself--so soon," with a glance at her crape. +"Don't come down, Mr. Scarlett. I have given you enough trouble +already." + +Captain Pratt's arm was crooked. He conducted her in his best manner to +the foot of the staircase and helped her into his hansom. His manner was +not so unctuous as his father's, but it was slightly adhesive. Lady +Newhaven shuddered involuntarily as she took his arm. + +Hugh followed. + +"I hope you will both come and see my mother," she said, with an attempt +at graciousness. "You know Lady Trentham, I think?"--to Captain Pratt. + +"Very slightly. No. Delighted!" murmured Captain Pratt, closing the +hansom doors in an intimate manner. "And if I could be of the least use +at any time in taking your boys to the pantomime--er--only too glad. The +glass down, Richards!" + +The hansom with its splendid bay horse rattled off. + +Captain Pratt nodded to Hugh, who was still standing on the steps, and +turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing urchin. Then he +turned up his fur collar, and proceeded leisurely on his way. + +"Very stand-off both of them in the past," he said to himself, "but they +will have to be civil in future. I wonder if he will make her keep her +title. Deuced awkward for them both though, only a month after +Newhaven's death. I wish that sort of _contre-temps_ would happen to me +when I'm bringing in a lot of fellows suddenly. An opening like that is +all I want to give me a start, and I should get on as well as anybody. +The aristocracy all hang together, whatever Selina and Ada may say. +Money don't buy everything, as the governor thinks. But if you're once +in with 'em you're in." + + * * * * * + +Hugh went back to his room and locked himself in. He was a delicate man, +highly strung, and he had not slept the night before. He collapsed into +a chair and remained a long time, his head in his hands. + +It was too horrible, this woman coming back upon him suddenly, like the +ghost of some one whom he had murdered. His momentary infatuation had +been clean forgotten in his overwhelming love for Rachel. His intrigue +with Lady Newhaven seemed so long ago that it had been relegated to the +same mental shelf in his mind as the nibbling of a certain forbidden +ginger-bread when he was home for his first holidays. He could not be +held responsible for either offence after this immense interval of time. +It was not he who had committed them, but that other embryo self, that +envelope of flesh and sense which he was beginning to abhor, through +which he had passed before he reached himself, Hugh, the real man--the +man who loved Rachel, and whom Rachel loved. + +He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. At the +sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in +one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he +used it. He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good +name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for. It was for +her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had concocted the story of the +mistaken rooms. He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel +had not been concerned. + +He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble yet with +her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead lust would be +dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly grave. + +He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to marry +Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. "She will +know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when she sees my +engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get at me somehow, and +make my life a hell to me, while she can. And she will try and come +between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I deserve anything I get. But +Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I will go down to her to-morrow. I +can't go on without seeing her. And she won't mind, as the engagement +will be given out next day." + +He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently his lip +quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to have done +it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage with a whiter +past, not to need her forgiveness on the very threshold of their life +together, not to have been unfaithful to her before he knew her. + +What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of Love, and +then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang? + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + + There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellowship in + thee.--SHAKESPEARE + + +"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as +Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I +am convinced that you have been up to some mischief." + +"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your +wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better." + +"It certainly was my wish. I'm very much obliged to you. But I +remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to Gresley +when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you." + +"I spoke to him all right," said Dick, grimly. "That was why I was so +alacritous to go." + +The Bishop looked steadily at him. + +"Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own business +with my clergy." + +"Just so," said Dick, helping himself to mustard. "But, you see, I'm his +cousin, and I thought it just as well to let him know quietly and +dispassionately what I thought of him. So I told him I was not +particular about my acquaintances. I knew lots of bad eggs out in +Australia, half of them hatched in England, chaps who'd been shaved and +tubbed gratis by Government--in fact, I'd a large visiting list, but +that I drew the line at such a cad as him, and that he might remember I +wasn't going to preach for him at any more of his little cold-water +cures"--a smile hovered on Dick's crooked mouth--"or ever take any +notice of him in future. That was what he wanted, my lord. You were too +soft with him, if you'll excuse my saying so. But that sort of chap +wants it giving him hot and strong. He doesn't understand anything else. +He gets quite beyond himself, fizzing about on his little +pocket-handkerchief of a parish, thinking he is a sort of god, because +no one makes it their business to keep him in his place, and rub it into +him that he is an infernal fool. That is why some clergymen jaw so, +because they never have it brought home to them what rot they talk. +They'd be no sillier than other men if they were only treated properly. +I was very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean sneak, +and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue going, and +that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the right to do +dishonest things with other people's property, though it did save him +from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to interrupt; indeed, he +was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but I did not take any notice, +and I wound up by saying it was men like him who brought discredit on +the Church and on the clergy, and who made the gorge rise of decent +chaps like me. Yes," said Dick, after a pause, "when I left him he +understood, I don't say entirely, but he had a distant glimmering. It +isn't often I go on these errands of mercy, but I felt that the least I +could do was to back you up, my lord. Of course, it is in little matters +like this that lay helpers come in, who are not so hampered about their +language as I suppose the clergy are." + +The Bishop tried, he tried hard, to look severe, but his mouth twitched. + +"Don't thank me," said Dick. "Nothing is a trouble where you are +concerned. It was--ahem--a pleasure." + +"That I can believe," said the Bishop. "Well, Dick, Providence makes use +of strange instruments--the jawbone of an ass has a certain Scriptural +prestige. I dare say you reached poor Gresley where I failed. I +certainly failed. But, if it is not too much to ask, I should regard it +as a favor another time if I might be informed beforehand what +direction your diocesan aid was about to take." + +Dr. Brown, who often came to luncheon at the Palace, came in now. He +took off his leathern driving-gloves and held his hands to the fire. + +"Cold," he said. "They're skating everywhere. How is Miss Gresley?" + +"She knows us to-day," said Rachel, "and she is quite cheerful." + +"Does the poor thing know her book is burned?" + +"No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the spring." + +The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the subject. + +"I travelled from Pontesbury this morning," he said, "with that man who +was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored him at +Wilderleigh. Tall, thin, rather a fine gentleman. I forget his name." + +Dr. Brown aways spoke of men above himself in the social scale as "fine +gentlemen." + +"Mr. Redman," said Miss Keane, the Bishop's sister, a dignified person, +who had been hampered throughout life by a predilection for the wrong +name, and by making engagements in illegible handwriting by last year's +almanacs. + +"Was it Mr. Scarlett?" said Rachel, feeling Dick's lynx eye upon her. "I +was at Wilderleigh when the accident happened." + +"That's the man. He got out at Southminster, and asked me which was the +best hotel. No, I won't have any more, thanks. I'll go up and see Miss +Gresley at once." + +Rachel followed the Bishop into the library. They generally waited there +together till the doctor came down. + +"I don't know many young men I like better than Dick," said the Bishop. +"I should marry him if I were a young woman. I admire the way he acts up +to his principles. Very few of us do. Until he has a further light on +the subject, he is right to, knock a man down who insults him. And from +his point of view he was justified in speaking to Mr. Gresley as he did. +I was sorely tempted to say something of that kind to him myself, but as +one grows gray one realizes that one can only speak in a spirit of love. +A man of Dick's stamp will always be respected, because he does not +assume virtues which belong to a higher grade than he is on at present. +But when he reaches that higher grade he will act as thoroughly upon the +convictions that accompany it as he does now on his present +convictions." + +"He certainly would not turn the other cheek to the smiter." + +"I should not advise the smiter to reckon on it. And unless it is turned +from that rare sense of spiritual brotherhood it would be unmanly to +turn it. To imitate the outward appearance of certain virtues is like +imitating the clothes of a certain class. It does not make us belong to +the class to dress like it. The true foundation for the spiritual life, +as far as I can see it, is in the full development of our human nature +with all its simple trusts and aspirations. I admire Dick's solid +foundation. It will carry a building worthy of him some day. But my +words of wisdom appear to be thrown away upon you. You are thinking of +something else." + +"I was thinking that I ought to tell you that I am engaged to be +married." + +The Bishop's face lit up. + +"I am engaged to Mr. Scarlett. That is why he has come down here." + +The Bishop's face fell. Rachel had been three days at the Palace. Dick +had not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. "That admirable +promptitude," the Bishop had remarked to himself, "deserves success." + +"Poor, dear Dick," he said, softly. + +"That is what Hester says. I told her yesterday." + +"I really have a very high opinion of Dick," said the Bishop. + +"So have I. If I might have two I would certainly choose him second." + +"But this superfluous Mr. Scarlett comes first, eh?" + +"I am afraid he does." + +"Well," said the Bishop, with a sigh, "if you are so ungrateful as to +marry to please yourself, instead of to please me, there is nothing more +to be said. I will have a look at your Mr. Scarlett when he comes to +tea. I suppose he will come to tea. I notice the most _farouche_ men do +when they are engaged. It is the first step in the turning process. I +shall, of course, bring an entirely unprejudiced mind to bear upon him, +as I always make a point of doing, but I warn you beforehand I shan't +like him." + +"Because he is not Mr. Dick." + +"Well, yes; because he is not Dick. I suppose his name is Bertie." + +"Not Bertie," said Rachel, indignantly, "Hugh." + +"It's a poor, inefficient kind of name, only four letters, and a +duplicate at each end. I don't think, my dear, he is worthy of you." + +"Dick has only four letters." + +"I make it a rule never to argue with women. Well, Rachel, I'm glad you +have decided to marry. Heaven bless you, and may you be happy with this +man. Ah! here comes Dr. Brown." + +"Well!" said the Bishop and Rachel, simultaneously. + +"She's better," said the little doctor, angrily; he was always angry +when he was anxious. "She's round the first corner. But how to pull her +round the next corner, that is what I'm thinking." + +"Defer the next corner." + +"We can't now her mind is clear. She's as sane as you or I are, and a +good deal sharper. When she asks about her book she'll have to be told." + +"A lie would be quite justifiable under the circumstances." + +"Of course, of course, but it would be useless. You might hoodwink her +for a day or two, and then she would find out, first, that the _magnum +opus_ is gone, and secondly, that you and Miss West, whom she does trust +entirely at present, have deceived her. You know what she is when she +thinks she is being deceived. She abused you well, my lord, until you +reinstated yourself by producing Regie Gresley. But you can't reinstate +yourself a second time. You can't produce the book." + +"No," said the Bishop. "That is gone forever." + +Rachel could not trust herself to speak. Perhaps she had realized more +fully than even the Bishop had done what the loss of the book was to +Hester, at least, what it would be when she knew it was gone. + +"Tell her, and give her that if she becomes excitable," said Dr. Brown, +producing a minute bottle out of a voluminous pocket. "And if you want +me I shall be at Canon Wylde's at five o'clock. I'll look in anyhow +before I go home." + +Rachel and the Bishop stood a moment in silence after he was gone, and +then Rachel took up the little bottle, read the directions carefully, +and turned to go up-stairs. + +The Bishop looked after her, but did not speak. He was sorry for her. + +"You can go out till tea-time," said Rachel, to the nurse. "I will stay +with Miss Gresley till then." + +Hester was lying on a couch by the fire in a rose-colored wrapper. Her +small face, set in its ruffle of soft lace, looked bright and eager. Her +hair had been cut short, and she looked younger and more like Regie than +ever. + +Her thin hands lay contentedly in her lap. The principal bandages were +gone. Only three fingers of the right hand were in a chrysalis state. + +"I shall not be in too great a hurry to get well," she said to Rachel. +"If I do you will rush away to London and get married. + +"Shall I?" Rachel set down the little bottle on the mantel-piece. + +"When is Mr. Scarlett coming down?" + +"He came down to-day." + +"Then possibly he may call." + +"Such things do happen." + +"I should like to see him." + +"In a day or two, perhaps." + +"And I want to see dear Dick, too." + +"He sent you his love. Mr. Pratt was here at luncheon yesterday, and he +asked me who the old chap was who put on his clothes with a shoe-horn." + +"How like him! Has he said anything more to the Bishop on the uses of +swearing?" + +"No. But the Bishop draws him on. He delights in him." + +"Rachel, are you sure you have chosen the best man?" + +"Quite sure--I mean I never had any choice in the matter. You see I love +Hugh, and I'm only fond of Mr. Dick." + +"I always liked Mr. Scarlett," said Hester. "I've known him ever since I +came out, and that wasn't yesterday. He is so gentle and refined, and +one need not be on one's guard in talking to him. He understands what +one says, and he is charming looking." + +"Of course, I think so." + +"And this is the genuine thing, Rachel? Do you remember our talk last +summer?" + +Rachel was silent a moment. + +"All I can say is," she said, brokenly, "that I thank God, day and +night, that Mr. Tristram did not marry me--that I'm free to marry Hugh." + +Hester's uncrippled hand stole into Rachel's. + +"Everybody will think," said Rachel, "when they see the engagement in +to-morrow's papers that I give him everything because he is poor and his +place involved, and of course I am horribly wealthy. But in reality it +is I who am poor and he who is rich. He has given me a thousand times +more than I could ever give him, because he has given me back the power +of loving. It almost frightens me that I can care so much a second time. +I should not have thought it possible. But I seem to have got the hang +of it now, as Mr. Dick would say. I wish you were down-stairs, Hester, +as you will be in a day or two. You would be amused by the way he shocks +Miss Keane. She asked if he had written anything on his travels, and he +said he was on the point of bringing out a little book on 'Cannibal +Cookery,' for the use of Colonials. He said some of the recipes were +very simple. He began: 'You take a hand and close it round a yam.' But +the Bishop stopped him." + +The moment Rachel had said, "He is on the point of bringing out a book," +her heart stood still. How could she have said such a thing? But +apparently Hester took no notice. + +"He must have been experimenting on my poor hand," she said. "I'm sure I +never burned it like this myself." + +"It will soon be better now." + +"Oh! I don't mind about it now that it doesn't hurt all the time." + +"And your head does not ache to-day, does it?" + +"Nothing to matter. But I feel as if I had fallen on it from the top of +the cathedral. Dr. Brown says that is nonsense, but I think so all the +same. When you believe a thing, and you're told it's nonsense, and you +still believe it, that is an hallucination, isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"I have had a great many," said Hester, slowly. "I suppose I have been +more ill than I knew. I thought I saw, I really did see, the spirits of +the frost and the snow looking in at the window. And I talked to them a +long time, and asked them what quarrel they had with me, their sister, +that since I was a child they had always been going about to kill me. +Aunt Susan always seemed to think they were enemies who gave me +bronchitis. And I told them how I loved them and all their works. And +they breathed on the pane and wrote beautiful things in frost-work, and +I read them all. Now, Rachel, is that an hallucination about the +frost-work, because it seems to me still, now that I am better, though I +can't explain it, that I do see the meaning of it at last, and that I +shall never be afraid of them again." + +Rachel did not answer. + +She had long since realized that Hester, when in her normal condition, +saw things which she herself did not see. She had long since realized +that Hester always accepted as final the limit of vision of the person +she was with, but that that limit changed with every person she met. +Rachel had seen her adjust it to persons more short-sighted than +herself, with secret self-satisfaction, and then with sudden +bewilderment had heard Hester accept as a commonplace from some one else +what appeared to Rachel fantastic in the extreme. If Rachel had +considered her own mind as the measure of the normal of all other minds, +she could not have escaped the conclusion that Hester was a victim of +manifold delusions. But, fortunately for herself, she saw that most +ladders possessed more than the one rung on which she was standing. + +"That is quite different, isn't it," said Hester, "from thinking Dr. +Brown is a gray wolf?" + +"Quite different. That was an hallucination of fever. You see that for +yourself now that you have no fever." + +"I see that, of course, now that I have no fever," repeated Hester, her +eyes widening. "But one hallucination quite as foolish as that is always +coming back, and I can't shake it off. The wolf was gone directly, but +this is just the same now I am better, only it gets worse and worse. I +have never spoken of it to any one, because I know it is so silly. But +Rachel--I have no fever now--and yet--I know you'll laugh at me--I laugh +at my own foolish self--and yet all the time I have a horrible feeling +that"--Hester's eyes had in them a terror that was hardly human--"that +my book is burned." + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + + The soul of thy brother is a dark forest. --_Russian Proverb_. + + +"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Hugh +St. John Scarlett, of Kenstone Manor, Shropshire, only son of the late +Lord Henry Scarlett, and Rachel, only child of the late Joshua Hopkins +West, of Birmingham." + + * * * * * + +This announcement appeared in the _Morning Post_ a few days after +Christmas, and aroused many different emotions in the breasts of those +who read it. + +"She has done it to spite me," said Mr. Tristram to himself over his +morning rasher, in the little eating-house near his studio. "I knew +there was some one else in her mind when she refused me. I rather +thought it was that weedy fellow with the high nose. Will he make her +happy because he is a lord's son? That is what I should like to ask her. +Poor Rachel, if we had been able to marry five years ago we should never +have heard of this society craze. Well, it's all over now." And Mr. +Tristram henceforward took the position of a man suffering from an +indelible attachment to a woman who had thrown him over for a title. + + * * * * * + +The Gresleys were astonished at the engagement. It was so extraordinary +that they should know both persons. Now that they came to think of it, +both of them had been to tea at the Vicarage only last summer. + +"A good many people pop in and out of this house," they agreed. + +"I am as certain as that I stand here," said Mr. Gresley, who was +sitting down, "that that noisy boor, that underbred, foul-mouthed Dick +Vernon wanted to marry her." + +"Don't mention him," said Mrs. Gresley. "When I think of what he dared +to say--" + +"My love," said Mr. Gresley, "I have forgiven him. I have put from my +mind all he said, for I am convinced he was under the influence of drink +at the time. We must make allowance for those who live in hot climates. +I bear him no grudge. But I am glad that a man of that stamp should not +marry Miss West. Drunkenness makes a hell of married life. Mr. Scarlett, +though he looked delicate, had at least the appearance of being +abstemious." + + * * * * * + +Fräulein heard the news as she was packing her boxes to leave Warpington +Vicarage. She was greatly depressed. She could not be with her dear Miss +Gresley in this mysterious illness which some secret sorrow had brought +upon her; but at least Miss West could minister to her. And now it +seemed Miss West was thinking of "Braütigams" more than of Hester. + +Fräulein had been very uncomfortable at the Vicarage, but she wept at +leaving. Mrs. Gresley had never attained to treating her with the +consideration which she would have accorded to one whom she considered +her equal. The servants were allowed to disregard with impunity her +small polite requests. The nurse was consistently, ferociously jealous +of her. But the children had made up for all, and now she was leaving +them; and she did not own it to herself, for she was but five-and-thirty +and the shyest of the shy; but she should see no more that +noble-hearted, that musical Herr B-r-r-rown. + + * * * * * + +"Doll," said Sybell Loftus to her husband at breakfast, "I've made +another match. I thought at the time he liked her. You remember Rachel +West, not pretty, but with a nice expression--and what does beauty +matter? She is engaged to Mr. Scarlett." + +"Quiet, decent chap," said Doll; "and I like _her_. No nonsense about +her. Good thing he wasn't drowned." + +"Mr. Harvey will feel it. He confided to me that she was his ideal. Now +Rachel is everything that is sweet and good and dear, and she will make +a most excellent wife, but I should never have thought, would you, that +she could be anybody's ideal?" + +Doll opened his mouth to say, "That depends," but remembered that his +wife had taken an unaccountable dislike to that simple phrase, and +remained silent. + + * * * * * + +Captain Pratt, who was spending Christmas with his family, was the only +person at Warpington Towers who read the papers. On this particular +morning he came down to a late breakfast after the others had finished. +His father, who was always down at eight, secretly admired his son's +aristocratic habits, while he affected to laugh at them. "Shameful +luxurious ways, these young men in the Guards. Fashionable society is +rotten, sir; rotten to the core. Never get up till noon. My boy is as +bad as any of them." + +Captain Pratt propped up the paper open before him while he sipped his +coffee and glanced down the columns. His travelling eye reached Hugh's +engagement. + +Captain Pratt rarely betrayed any feeling except ennui, but as he read, +astonishment got the better of him. + +"By George!" he said, below his breath. + +The bit of omelette on its way to his mouth was slowly lowered again, +and remained sticking on the end of his fork. + +_What did it mean?_ He recalled that scene in Hugh's rooms _only last +week_. He had spoken of it to no one, for he intended to earn gratitude +by his discretion. Of course, Scarlett was going to marry Lady Newhaven +after a decent interval. She was a very beautiful woman, with a large +jointure, and she was obviously in love with him. The question of her +conduct was not considered. It never entered Captain Pratt's head, any +more than that of a ten-year-old child. He was aware that all the women +of the upper classes were immoral, except newly come-out girls. That was +an established fact. The only difference between the individuals, which +caused a separation as of the sheep from the goats, was whether they +were compromised or not. Lady Newhaven was not, unless he chose to +compromise her. No breath of scandal had ever touched her. + +But what was Scarlett about? Could they have quarrelled? What did it +mean? _And what would she do now?_ + +"By George!" said Captain Pratt, again, and the agate eyes narrowed down +to two slits. + +He sat a long time motionless, his untasted breakfast before him. His +mind was working, weighing, applying now its scales, now its +thermometer. + + * * * * * + +Rachel and Hugh were sitting together looking at a paragraph in the +_Morning Post_. + +"Does Miss Gresley take any interest?" said Hugh. + +He was a little jealous of Hester. This illness, the cause of which had +sincerely grieved him, had come at an inopportune moment. Hester was +always taking Rachel from him. + +"Yes," said Rachel, "a little when she remembers. But she can only think +of one thing." + +"That unhappy book." + +"Yes. I think the book was to Hester something of what you are to me. +Her whole heart was wrapped up in it--and she has lost it. Hugh, +whatever happens, you must not be lost now. It is too late. I could not +bear it." + +"I can only be lost if you throw me away," said Hugh. + +There was a long silence. + +"Lady Newhaven will know to-day," said Rachel at last. "I tried to break +it to her, but she did not believe me." + +"Rachel," said Hugh, stammering, "I meant to tell you the other day, +only we were interrupted, that _she_ came to my rooms the evening before +I came down here. I should not have minded quite so much, but Captain +Pratt came in with me and--found her there." + +"Oh Hugh, that dreadful man! Poor woman!" + +"Poor woman!" said Hugh, his eyes flashing. "It was poor you I thought +of. Poor Rachel! to be marrying a man who--" + +There was another silence. + +"I have one great compensation," said Rachel, laying her cool, strong +hand on his. "You are open with me. You keep nothing back. You need not +have mentioned this unlucky meeting, but you did. It was like you. I +trust you entirely, Hugh. I bless and thank you for loving me. If my +love can make you happy, oh Hughie, you will be happy." + +Hugh shrank from her. The faltered words were as a two-edged sword. + +She looked at the sensitive, paling face with tender comprehension. The +mother-look crept into her eyes. + +"If there is anything else that you wish to tell me, tell me now." + +A wild, overwhelming impulse to fling himself over the precipice out of +the reach of those stabbing words! A horrible nauseating recoil that +seemed to rend his whole being. + +Somebody said hoarsely: + +"There is nothing else." + +It was his own voice, but not his will, that spoke. Had any one ever +made him suffer like this woman who loved him? + + * * * * * + +Lady Newhaven had returned to Westhope ill with suspense and anxiety. +She had felt sure she should successfully waylay Hugh in his rooms, +convinced that if they could but meet the clouds between them (to borrow +from her vocabulary) would instantly roll away. They had met, and the +clouds had not rolled away. She vainly endeavored to attribute Hugh's +evident anger at the sight of her to her want of prudence, to the +accident of Captain Pratt's presence. She would not admit the thought +that Hugh had ceased to care for her, but it needed a good deal of +forcible thrusting away. She could hear the knock of the unwelcome guest +upon her door, and though always refused admittance he withdrew only to +return. She had been grievously frightened, too, at having been seen in +equivocal circumstances by such a man as Captain Pratt. The very +remembrance made her shiver. + +"How angry Edward would have been," she said to herself. "I wonder +whether he would have advised me to write a little note to Captain +Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to mention it. +But, of course, he won't repeat it. He won't want to make an enemy of me +and Hugh. The Pratts think so much of me. And when I marry Hugh"--(knock +at the mental door)--"_if ever_ I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him +and have him to stay. Edward never would, but I don't think so much of +good family, and all that, as Edward did. We will certainly ask him." + +It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after scanning the +_Ladies' Pictorial_, languidly opened the _Morning Post_. + +Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor. She seized it up +and read again the paragraph which had caught her eye. + +"No! No!" she gasped. "It is not true. It is not possible." And she read +it a third time. + +The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it remained +on the floor. + +It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known what +suffering was. She had talked freely of it to others. She had sung, as +if it were her own composition, "Cleansing Fires." She often said it +might have been written for her. + + In the cruel fire of sorrow, + [_slow, soft pedal_. + Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail, + [_both pedals down, quicker_. + Let thy hand be firm and steady, + [_loud, and hold on to last syllable_. + Do not let thy spi-rit quail, + [_bang! B natural. With resolution_. + Bu-ut. . . . + [_hurricane of false notes, etc., etc._ + +But now, poor thing, the fire had reached her, and her spirit quailed +immediately. Perhaps it was only natural that as her courage failed +something else should take its place; an implacable burning resentment +against her two betrayers, her lover and her friend. She rocked herself +to and fro. Lover and friend. "Oh, never, never trust in man's love or +woman's friendship henceforth forever!" So learned Lady Newhaven the +lesson of suffering. + +"Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me," she sobbed, "and mine +acquaintance out of my sight." + +A ring at the door-bell proved that the latter part of the text, at any +rate, was not true in her case. + +A footman entered. + +"Not at home. Not at home," she said, impatiently. + +"I said not at home, but the gentleman said I was to take up his card," +said the man, presenting a card. + +When Captain Pratt tipped, he tipped heavily. + +Lady Newhaven read it. + +"No. Yes. I will see him," she said. It flashed across her mind that she +must be civil to him, and that her eyes were not red. She had not shed +tears. + +The man picked the newspaper from the floor, put it on a side table, and +withdrew. + +Captain Pratt came in, bland, deferential, orchid in button-hole. + +It was not until he was actually in the room, his cold appraising eyes +upon her, that the poor woman realized that her position towards him had +changed. She could not summon up the nonchalant distant civility which, +according to her ideas, was sufficient for her country neighbors in +general, and the Pratts in particular. + +Captain Pratt opined that the weather, though cold, was seasonable. + +Lady Newhaven agreed. + +Captain Pratt regretted the hard frost on account of the hunting. Four +hunters eating their heads off, etc. + +Lady Newhaven thought the thaw might come any day. + +Captain Pratt had been skating yesterday on the parental flooded meadow. +Flooded with fire-engine. Men out of work. Glad of employment, etc. + +How kind of Captain Pratt to employ them. + +Not at all. It was his father. Duties of the landed gentry, etc. He +believed if the frost continued they would skate on Beaumere. + +No; no one was allowed to skate on Beaumere. The springs rendered the +ice treacherous. + +Silence. + +Captain Pratt turned the gold knob of his stick slowly in his thick, +white fingers. He looked carefully at Lady Newhaven, as a connoisseur +with intent to buy looks at a piece of valuable china. She was +accustomed to being looked at, but there was something in Captain +Pratt's prolonged scrutiny which filled her with vague alarm. She +writhed under it. He observed her uneasiness, but he did not remove his +eyes. + +Were the boys well? + +They were quite well, thanks. She was cowed. + +Were they fond of skating? + +Very fond. + +Might he suggest that they should come over and skate at Warpington +Towers to-morrow. He himself would be there, and would take charge of +them. + +He rose slowly, as one who has made up his mind. Lady Newhaven feared it +would be troubling Captain Pratt too much. + +It would be no trouble to Captain Pratt; on the contrary, a pleasure. + +His hand was now extended. Lady Newhaven had to put hers into it. + +Perhaps next week if the frost held. She tried to withdraw her hand. Oh, +well, then, to-morrow; certainly, to-morrow. + +"You may rely on me to take care of them," said Captain Pratt, still +holding her hand. He obliged her to look at him. His hard eyes met her +frightened blue ones. "You may rely on my discretion entirely--in all +matters," he said, meaningly. + +Lady Newhaven winced, and her hand trembled violently in his. + +He pressed the shrinking little hand, let it go, and went away. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + + "Le temps apporte, emporte, mais ne rapporte pas." + + +"May I come in?" said the Bishop, tapping at Hester's door. + +"Do come in." + +Hester was lying propped up by many cushions on a sofa in the little +sitting-room leading out of her bedroom. She looked a mere shadow in the +fire-light. + +She smiled at him mechanically, but her face relapsed at once into the +apathetic expression which sat so ill upon it. Her lustreless eyes fixed +themselves again on the fire. + +"And what are you going to do this afternoon?" she said, politely. It +was obvious she did not care what he did. + +"I am going to Westhope on business," he said, looking narrowly at her. +It was all very well for Dr. Brown to say she must be roused; but how +were his instructions to be carried out? + +"I am a great deal of trouble to you," said Hester. "Could not I be sent +to a home, or a place where you go through a cure, where I should be out +of the way till I'm well?" + +"Have I deserved that, Hester?" + +"No; but you know I always try to wound my best friends." + +"You don't succeed, my child, because they know you are in heavy +trouble." + +"We will not speak of that," said Hester, quickly. + +"Yes, the time has come to speak of it. Why do you shut us out of this +sorrow? Don't you see that you make our burdens heavier by refusing to +let us share yours?" + +"You can't share it," said Hester; "no one can." + +"Do you think I have not grieved over it?" + +"I know you have, but it was waste of time. It's no good--no good. +Please don't cheer me, and tell me I shall write better books yet, and +that this trial is for my good. Dear Bishop, don't try and comfort me. I +can't bear it." + +"My poor child, I firmly believe you will write better books than the +one which is lost, and I firmly believe that you will one day look back +upon this time as a stop in your spiritual life, but I had not intended +to say so. The thought was in my mind, but it was you who put the words +into my mouth." + +"I was so afraid that--" + +"That I was going to improve the occasion?" + +"Yes. Dr. Brown and the nurse are so dreadfully cheerful now, and always +talking about the future, and how celebrated I shall be some day. If you +and Rachel follow suit I shall--I think I shall--go out of my mind." + +The Bishop did not answer. + +"Dr. Brown may be right," Hester went on. "I may live to seventy, and I +may become--what does he call it?--a distinguished author. I don't know +and I don't care. But whatever happens in the future, nothing will bring +back the book which was burned." + +The Bishop did not speak. He dared not. + +"If I had a child," Hester continued, in the exhausted voice with which +he was becoming familiar, "and it died, I might have ten more, beautiful +and clever and affectionate, but they would not replace the one I had +lost. Only if it were a child," a little tremor broke the dead level of +the passionless voice, "I should meet it again in heaven. There is the +resurrection of the body for the children of the body, but there is no +resurrection that I ever heard of for the children of the brain." + +Hester held her thin right hand with its disfigured first finger to the +fire. + +"A great writer who had married and had children, whom she worshipped, +once told me that the pang of motherhood is that even your children +don't seem your very own. They are often more like some one else than +their parents, perhaps the spinster sister-in-law, whom every one +dislikes, or some entire alien. Look at Regie. He is just like me, which +must be a great trial to Minna. And they grow up bewildering their +parents at every turn by characteristics they don't understand. But she +said the spiritual children, the books, are really ours. + +"If you were other than you are," said Hester, after a long pause, "you +would reprove me for worshipping my own work. I suppose love is worship. +I loved it for itself, not for anything it was to bring me. That is what +people like Dr. Brown don't understand. It was part of myself. But it +was the better part. The side of me which loves success, and which he is +always appealing to, had no hand in it. My one prayer was that I might +be worthy to write it, that it might not suffer by contact with me. I +spent myself upon it." Hester's voice sank. "I knew what I was doing. I +joyfully spent my health, my eyesight, my very life upon it. I was +impelled to do it by what you perhaps will call a blind instinct, what +I, poor simpleton and dupe, believed at the time to be nothing less than +the will of God." + +"You will think so again," said the Bishop, "when you realize that the +book has left its mark and influence upon your character. It has taught +you a great deal. The mere fact of writing it has strengthened you. The +outward and visible form is dead, but its spirit lives on in you. You +will realize this presently." + +"Shall I? On the contrary, the only thing I realize is that it is not +God who is mocked, but His foolish children who try to do His bidding. +It seems He is not above putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his +prophets. Do you think I still blame poor James for his bonfire, or his +jealous little wife who wanted to get rid of me? Why should I? They +acted up to their lights as your beloved Jock did when he squeezed the +life out of that rabbit in Westhope Park. In all those days when I did +not say anything, it was because I felt I had been deceived. I had done +my part. God had not done His. He should have seen to it that the book +was not destroyed. You prayed by me once when you thought I was +unconscious. I heard all right. I should have laughed if I could, but it +was too much trouble." + +"These thoughts will pass away with your illness," said the Bishop. "You +are like a man who has had a blow, who staggers about giddy and dazed, +and sees the pavement rising up to strike him. The pavement is firm +under his feet all the time." + +"Half of me knows in a dim blind way that God is the same always," said +Hester, "while the other half says, 'Curse God and die.'" + +"That is the giddiness, the vertigo after the shock." + +"Is it? I dare say you are right. But I don't care either way." + +"Why trouble your mind about it, or about anything?" + +"Because I have a feeling, indeed, it would be extraordinary if I had +not, for Dr. Brown is always rubbing it in, that I ought to meet my +trouble bravely, and not sink down under it, as he thinks I am doing +now. He says others have suffered more than I have. I know that, for I +have been with them. It seems," said Hester, with the ghost of a smile, +"that there is an etiquette about these things, just as the blinds are +drawn up after a funeral. The moment has come for me, but I have not +drawn up my blinds." + +"You will draw them up presently." + +"I would draw them up now," said Hester, looking at him steadily, "if I +could. I owe it to you and Rachel to try, and I have tried, but I +can't." + +The Bishop's cheek paled a little. + +"Take your own time," he said, but his heart sank. + +He saw a little boat with torn sail and broken rudder, drifting on to a +lee shore. + +"I seem to have been living at a great strain for the last year," said +Hester. "I don't know one word from another now, but I think I mean +concentration. That means holding your mind to one place, doesn't it? +Well, now, something seems to have broken, and I can't fix it to +anything any more. I can talk to you and Rachel for a few minutes if I +hold my mind tight, but I can't really attend, and directly I am alone, +or you leave off speaking, my mind gets loose from my body and wanders +away to an immense distance, to long, dreary, desert places. And then if +you come in I make a great effort to bring it back, and to open my eyes, +because if I don't you think I'm ill. You don't mind if I shut them now, +do you?--because I've explained about them, and holding them open does +tire me so. I wish they could be propped open. And--my mind gets farther +and further away every day. I hope you and Rachel won't think I am +giving way if--sometime--I really can't bring it back any longer." + +"Dear Hester, no." + +"I will not talk any more then. If you and Rachel understand, that is +all that matters. I used to think so many things mattered, but I don't +now. And don't think I'm grieving about the book while I'm lying still. +I have grieved, but it is over. I'm too tired to be glad or sorry about +anything any more." + +Hester lay back spent and gray among her pillows. + +The Bishop roused her to take the stimulant put ready near at hand, and +then sat a long time watching her. She seemed unconscious of his +presence. At last the nurse came in, and he went out silently, and +returned to his study. Rachel was waiting there to hear the result of +the interview. + +"I can do nothing," he said. "I have no power to help her. After forty +years ministry I have not a word to say to her. She is beyond human +aid--at least, she is beyond mine." + +"You think she will die?" + +"I do not see what is going to happen to prevent it, but I am certain it +might be prevented." + +"You could not rouse her?" + +"No, she discounted anything I could have said, by asking me not to say +it. That is the worst of Hester. The partition between her mind and that +of other people is so thin that she sees what they are thinking about. +Thank God, Rachel, that you are not cursed with the artistic +temperament! That is why she has never married. She sees too much. I am +not a match-maker, but if I had had to take the responsibility, I should +have married her at seventeen to Lord Newhaven." + +"You know he asked her?" + +"No, I did not know it." + +"It was a long time ago, when first she came out. Lady Susan was anxious +for it, and pressed her. I sometimes think if she had been given time, +and if her aunt had let her alone--but he married within the year. But +what are we to do about Hester? Dr. Brown says something must be done, +or she will sink in a decline. I would give my life for her, but I can +do nothing. I have tried." + +"So have I," said the Bishop. "But it has come to this. We have got to +trust the one person whom we always show we tacitly distrust by trying +to take matters out of His hands. We must trust God. So far we have +strained ourselves to keep Hester alive, but she is past our help now. +She is in none the worse case for that. We are her two best friends save +one. We must leave her to the best Friend of all. God has her in His +hand. For the moment the greater love holds her away from the less, like +the mother who takes her sick child into her arms, apart from the other +children who are playing round her. Hester is in God's keeping, and that +is enough for us. And now take a turn in the garden, Rachel. You are too +much in-doors. I am going out on business." + +When Rachel had left him the Bishop opened his despatch-box and took out +a letter. + +It was directed to Lady Newhaven. + +"I promised to give it into her own hand a month after his death, +whenever that might happen to be," he said to himself. "There was some +trouble between them. I hope she won't confide it to me. Anyhow, I must +go and get it over. I wish I did not dislike her so much. I shall advise +her not to read it till I am gone." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + + The mouse fell from the ceiling, and the cat cried, "Allah!" + --Syrian Proverb. + + +That help should come through such a recognized channel as a Bishop +could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had had the +greatest faith in the clergy all her life, but, nevertheless, so +overwhelmed was she by despair and its physical sensations, that she +very nearly refused to see the Bishop when he called. Her faith even in +lawn sleeves momentarily tottered. Who would show her any good? Poor +Lady Newhaven was crushed into a state of prostration so frightful that +we must not blame her if she felt that even an Archbishop would have +been powerless to help her. + +She had thought, after the engagement was announced, of rushing up to +London and insisting on seeing Hugh; but always, after she had looked +out the trains, her courage had shrunk back at the last moment. There +had been a look on Hugh's face during that last momentary meeting which +she could not nerve herself to see again. She had been to London already +once to see him, without success. + +She knew Rachel was at the Palace at Southminster nursing Hester, and +twice she had ordered the carriage to drive over to see her, and make a +desperate appeal to her to give up Hugh. But she knew that she should +fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women always did over a +defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The frightful injustice of +it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the point of agony. To see her own +property deliberately stolen from her in the light of day, as it were, +in the very market-place, before everybody, without being able to raise +a finger to regain him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as +she was capable of loving anything. And her mind had grown round the +idea that he was hers as entirely as a tree will grow round a nail +fastened into it. + +And now he was to marry Rachel, and soon. Let no one think they know +pain until they know jealousy. + +But when the Bishop sent up a second time, asking to see her on +business, she consented. + +It was too soon to see callers, of course. But a Bishop was different. +And how could she refuse to admit him when she had admitted that odious +Captain Pratt only four days before. She hoped no one would become aware +of that fact. It was as well for her that she could not hear the remarks +of Selina and Ada Pratt, as they skated on the frozen meadows with half, +not the better-half, of Middleshire. + +"Poor Vi Newhaven. Yes, she won't see a creature. She saw Algy for a few +minutes last week, but then he is an old friend, and does not count. He +said she was quite heart-broken. He was quite upset himself. He was so +fond of Ted Newhaven." + +The Bishop would not even sit down. He said he was on the way to a +confirmation, and added that he had been entrusted with a letter for +her, and held it towards her. + +"It is my husband's handwriting," she said, drawing back, with +instinctive fear. + +"It is from your husband," said the Bishop, gently, softening somewhat +at the sight of the ravages which despair had made in the lovely face +since he had last seen it. "He asked me to give it into your own hand a +month after his death." + +"Then he told you that--" + +"He told me nothing, and I wish to hear nothing." + +"I should like to confess all to you, to feel myself absolved," said +Lady Newhaven in a low voice, the letter in her trembling hand. + +He looked at her, and he saw that she would not say all. She would +arrange details to suit herself, and would omit the main point +altogether, whatever it might be, if, as it was more than probable, it +told against herself. He would at least save her from the hypocrisy of a +half-confession. + +"If in a month's time you wish to make a full confession to me," he +said, "I will hear it. But I solemnly charge you in the meanwhile to +speak to no one of this difficulty between you and your husband. +Whatever it may have been, it is past. If he sinned against you, he is +dead, and the least you can do is to keep silence. If you wronged +him"--Lady Newhaven shook her head vehemently--"if you wronged him," +repeated the Bishop, his face hardening, "be silent for the sake of the +children. It is the only miserable reparation you can make him." + +"You don't understand," she said, feebly. + +"I know that he was a kindly, gentle-natured man, and that he died a +hard and bitter one," said the Bishop. "God knows what is in that +letter, but your husband said it would be of the greatest comfort and +assistance to you in a difficulty which he foresaw for you. I will leave +you to read it." + +And he left the room. + +The early December twilight was creeping over everything. Lady Newhaven +took the letter to the window, and after several futile attempts +succeeded in opening it. + +It ran as follows: + + "It is irreligious to mourn too long for the dead. 'I shall go to + him, but he shall not return to me'--II. Sam. xii. 23. In the + meanwhile, until you rejoin me, I trust you will remember that it + is my especial wish that you should allow one who is in every way + worthy of you to console you for my loss, who will make you as + happy as you both deserve to be. That I died by my own hand you and + your so-called friend Miss West are of course aware. That 'the one + love of your life' drew the short lighter you are perhaps not + aware. I waited two days to see if he would fulfil the compact, and + as he did not--I never thought he would--I retired in his place. I + present to you this small piece of information as a + wedding-present, which, if adroitly handled, may add to the harmony + of domestic life. And if by any chance he should have conceived the + dastardly, the immoral idea of deserting you in favor of some + mercenary marriage--of which I rather suspect him--you will find + this piece of information invaluable in restoring his allegiance at + once. He is yours by every sacred tie, and no treacherous female + friend must wrest him from you. + + "NEWHAVEN." + +Lady Newhaven put the letter in her pocket, and then fainted away, with +her fair head on the window-ledge. + + + + +CHAPTER L + + "There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is." + + +The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy of +mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district +visitors' working party in the drawing-room at the Palace. The ladies +knitted and stitched, while one of their number heaped fuel on the flame +of their enthusiasm by reading aloud the "History of the Diocese of +Southminster." + +Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in +her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem, as +a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them, +but her heart was where her treasure was--namely, in her escritoire, +with her list of Bible-classes, and servants' choral unions, and the +long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had +started. + +When she had been up to Hester's room, invariably at hours when Hester +could not see her, and when she had entered Rachel's sledge-hammer +subscriptions in her various account-books, her attention left her +visitors. She considered them superficial, and wondered how it was that +her brother could find time to spend hours talking to both of them, +while he had rarely a moment in which to address her chosen band in the +drawing-room. She was one of those persons who find life a very prosaic +affair, quite unlike the fiction she occasionally read. + +She often remarked that nothing except the commonplace happened. +Certainly she never observed anything else. + +So Hester lay in the room above, halting feebly between two opinions, +whether to live or to die, and Rachel sat in the Bishop's study beneath, +waiting to make tea for him on his return from the confirmation. + +If she did not make it, no one else did. Instead of ringing for it he +went without it. + +Rachel watched the sun set--a red ball dropping down a frosty sky. It +was the last day of the year. The new year was bringing her everything. + +"Good-bye, good-bye," she said, looking at the last rim of the sun as he +sank. And she remembered other years when she had watched the sun set on +the last day of December, when life had been difficult--how difficult! + +"If Hester could only get better I should have nothing left to wish +for," she said, and she prayed the more fervently for her friend, +because she knew that even if Hester died, life would still remain +beautiful; the future without her would still be flooded with happiness. + +"A year ago if Hester had died I should have had nothing left to live +for," she said to herself. "Now this newcomer, this man whom I have +known barely six months, fills my whole life. Are other women as narrow +as I am? Can they care only for one person at a time like me? Ah, +Hester! forgive me, I can't help it." + +Hugh was coming in presently. He had been in that morning, and the +Bishop had met him, and had asked him to come in again to tea. Rachel +did not know what the Bishop thought of him, but he had managed to see a +good deal of Hugh. + +Rachel waited as impatiently as most of us, when our happiness lingers +by us, loth to depart. + +At last she heard the footman bringing some one across the hall. + +Would Hugh's coming ever become a common thing? Would she ever be able +to greet him without this tumult of emotion, ever be able to take his +hand without turning giddy on the sheer verge of bliss? + +The servant announced, "Lady Newhaven." + +The two women stood looking at each other. Rachel saw the marks of +suffering on the white face, and her own became as white. Her eyes fell +guiltily before Lady Newhaven's. + +"Forgive me," she said. + +"Forgive you?" said Lady Newhaven, in a hoarse voice. "It is no use +asking me for forgiveness." + +"You are right," said Rachel, recovering herself, and meeting Lady +Newhaven's eyes fully. "But what is the use of coming here to abuse me? +You might have spared yourself and me this at least. It will only +exhaust you and--wound me." + +"You must give him up," said Lady Newhaven, her hands fumbling under her +crape cloak. "I've come to tell you that you must let him go." + +The fact that Hugh had drawn the short lighter, and had not taken the +consequences, did not affect Lady Newhaven's feelings towards him in the +least, but she was vaguely aware that somehow it would affect Rachel's, +and now it would be Rachel's turn to suffer. + +Rachel paused a moment, and then said, slowly: + +"He does not wish to be let go." + +"He is mine." + +"He was yours once," said Rachel, her face turning from white to gray. +That wound was long in healing. "But he is mine now." + +"Rachel, you cannot be bad all through." Lady Newhaven was putting the +constraint upon herself which that tightly clutched paper, that poisoned +weapon in reserve, enabled her to assume. For Hugh's sake she would only +use it if other means failed. "You must know that you ought to look upon +him as a married man. Don't you see"--wildly--"that we _must_ marry, to +put right what was wrong? He owes it to me. People always do." + +"Yes, they generally do," said Rachel; "but I don't see how it makes the +wrong right." + +"I look upon Hugh as my husband," said Lady Newhaven. + +"So do I." + +"Rachel, he loves me. He is only marrying you for your money." + +"I will risk that." + +"I implore you on my knees to give him back to me." + +And Lady Newhaven knelt down with bare, white outstretched hands. +(Tableau number one. New Series.) + +Rachel shrank back involuntarily. + +"Listen, Violet," she said, "and get up. I will not speak until you get +up." Lady Newhaven obeyed. "If I gave back Hugh to you a hundred times +it would not make him love you any more, or make him marry you. I am not +keeping him from you. This marriage is his own doing. Oh! Violet, I'm +not young and pretty. I've no illusions about myself; but I believe he +really does love me, in spite of that, and I know I love him." + +"I don't believe it," said Lady Newhaven. "I mean about him. Not about +you, of course." + +"Here he is. Let him decide," said Rachel. + +Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that +concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the +heart and gleams up into the eyes. + +His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the other. +Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, but she could +not. + +"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, "Lady +Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best if she +heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from +mine." + +"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will desert me +now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you will cast me +aside for another woman." + +Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her +hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless +reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to +gunpowder. + +Rachel kept his hand. + +"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, holding +convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. He will cast +you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are you sure you want +to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He murdered my husband." + +Rachel's hand tightened on Hugh's. + +"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must abide by +the drawing." + +"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew the short +lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part when the time was +up? Tell me that." + +"You are mad," said Rachel. + +"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in her +shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not him, he +would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his writing, written to +tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn the short lighter, but +that, as he had not killed himself when the time came, he, Edward, did +so instead. That was why he was late. We always wondered, Rachel, why he +was two days late. Read it! Read it!" + +"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do not +believe a word of it." + +"You shall believe it. Ask him to deny it, if he can." + +"You need not trouble to deny it," said Rachel, looking full at Hugh. + +The world held only her and him. And as Hugh looked into her eyes his +soul rose up and scaled the heights above it till it stood beside hers. + +There is a sacred place where, if we follow close in Love's footsteps, +we see him lay aside his earthly quiver and his bitter arrows, and turn +to us as he is, with the light of God upon him, one with us as one with +God. In that pure light lies cease to be. We know them no more, neither +remember them, for love and truth are one. + +Hugh strode across to Lady Newhaven, took the letter from her, and threw +it into the heart of the fire. Then he turned to Rachel. + +"I drew the short lighter," he said. "I meant to take the consequences +at first, but when the time came--I did not. Partly I was afraid, and +partly I could not leave you." + +If Lady Newhaven yearned for revenge she had it then. They had both +forgotten her. But she saw Rachel's eyes change as the eyes of a man at +the stake might change when the fire reached him. She shrank back from +the agony in them. Hugh's face became pinched and thin as a dead man's. +A moment ago he saw no consequences. He saw only that he could not lie +to her. His mind fell headlong from its momentary foothold. What mad +impulse had betrayed him to his ruin? + +"You drew the short lighter, and you let me think all the time he had," +said Rachel, her voice almost inaudible in its fierce passion. "You drew +it, and you let him die instead of you, as any one who knew him would +know he would. And when he was dead you came to me, and kept me in +ignorance even--that time--when I said I trusted you." + +The remembrance of that meeting was too much. + +Rachel turned her eyes on Lady Newhaven, who was watching her +terror-stricken. + +"I said I would not give him up, but I will," she said, violently. "You +can take him if you want him. What was it you said to me, Hugh? That if +you had drawn the short lighter you would have had to abide by it. Yes, +that was it. Your whole intercourse with me has been one lie from first +to last. You were right, Violet, when you said he ought to marry you. It +will be another lie on the top of all the others." + +"It was what Edward wished," faltered his widow. "He says so in the +letter that has just been burned." + +"Lord Newhaven wished it," said Rachel, looking at the miserable man +between them. "Poor Lord Newhaven! First his honor. Then his life. You +have taken everything he had. But there are still his shoes." + +"Rachel!" said Hugh, suddenly, and he fell on his knees before her, +clasping the hem of her gown. + +She pushed him violently from her, tearing her gown in releasing it from +his frenzied grasp. + +"Leave me," she whispered. Her voice was almost gone. "Coward and liar, +I will have nothing more to do with you." + +He got upon his feet somehow. The two gray desperate faces spent with +passion faced each other. They were past speech. + +He read his death-warrant in her merciless eyes. She looked at the +despair in his without flinching. + +He stood a moment, and then feeling his way, like one half blind, left +the room, unconsciously pushing aside Lady Newhaven, whom both had +forgotten. + +She gave one terrified glance at Rachel, and slipped out after him. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + + I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such + As God made women, to save men by love-- + By just my love I might have saved this man." + --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. + + +"Has Lady Newhaven been here?" said the Bishop, coming into the study, +his hands full of papers. "I thought I saw her carriage driving away as +I came up." + +"She has been here." + +The Bishop looked up suddenly, his attention arrested by Rachel's voice. +There is a white heat of anger that mimics the pallor of a fainting fit. +The Bishop thought she was about to swoon, until he saw her eyes. Those +gentle faithful eyes were burning. He shrank as one who sees the glare +of fire raging inside familiar windows. + +"My poor child," he said, and he sat down heavily in his leather +arm-chair. + +Rachel still stood. She looked at him, and her lips moved, but no sound +came forth. + +The Bishop looked intently at her. + +"Where is Scarlett?" he said. + +"Hugh is gone," she said, stammering. "I have broken off my engagement +with him. He will never come back." + +And she fell suddenly on her knees, and hid her convulsed face against +the arm of a chair. + +The Bishop did not move. He waited for this paroxysm of anger to +subside. He had never seen Rachel angry before in all the years he had +known her, but he watched her without surprise. Only stupid people think +that coal cannot burn as fiercely as tow. + +She remained a long time on her knees, her face hidden. The Bishop did +not hurry her. At last she began to sob silently, shuddering from head +to foot. + +Then he came and sat down near her, and took the cold clinched hands in +his. + +"Rachel, tell me," he said, gently. + +She tried to pull her hands away, but he held them firmly. He obliged +her to look up at him. She raised her fierce, disfigured face for a +moment, and then let it fall on his hands and hers. + +"I am a wicked woman," she said. "Don't trouble about me. I'm not worth +it. I thought I would have kept all suffering from him, but now--if I +could make him suffer--I would." + +"I have no doubt he is suffering." + +"Not enough. Not like me. And I loved him and trusted him. And he is +false, too, like that other man I loved; like you, only I have not found +you out yet; like Hester; like all the rest. I will never trust any one +again. I will never be deceived again. This is--the--second time." + +And Rachel broke into a passion of tears. + +The Bishop released her hands and felt for his own handkerchief. + +Then he waited, praying silently. The clock had made a long circuit +before she raised herself. + +"I am very selfish," she said, looking with compunction at the kind, +tired face. "I ought to have gone to my room instead of breaking down +here. Dear Bishop, forgive me. It is past now. I shall not give way +again." + +"Will you make me some tea?" he said. + +She made the tea with shaking hands and awkward, half-blind movements. +It was close on dinner-time, but she did not notice it. He obliged her +to drink some, and then he settled himself in his leather arm-chair. He +went over his engagements for the evening. In half an hour he ought to +be dining with Canon Glynn to meet an old college friend. At eleven he +had arranged to see a young clergyman whose conscience was harrying +him. He wrote a note on his knee without moving, saying he could not +come, and touched the bell at his elbow. When the servant had taken the +note he relapsed into the depths of his arm-chair and sipped his tea. + +"I think, Rachel," he said at last, "that I ought to tell you that I +partly guess at your reason for breaking off your engagement. I have +known for some time that there was trouble between the Newhavens. From +what Lady Newhaven said to me to-day, and from the fact that she has +been here, and that immediately after seeing her you broke your +engagement with Scarlett, I must come to the conclusion that Scarlett +had been the cause of this trouble." + +Rachel had regained her composure. Her face was white and hard. + +"You are right," she said. "He was at one time--her lover." + +"And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become your +husband?" + +"No. He told me about it before he asked me to marry him. I accepted +him, knowing it." + +"Then he was trying to retrieve himself. He acted towards you, at any +rate, like an honorable man." + +Rachel laughed. "So I thought at the time." + +"If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don't see why you should +have thrown him over. One dishonorable action sincerely repented does +not make a dishonorable man." + +"I did not know all," said Rachel. "I do now." + +The Bishop looked into the fire. + +Her next words surprised him. + +"You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?" + +"I did." + +"Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal for the +sake of his children--namely, his wife's misconduct--I think I had +better tell you the rest." + +So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the drawing of +lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained ignorant as to which +had drawn the short lighter. How Hugh had drawn it; how when the time +came he had failed to fulfil the agreement; how two days later Lord +Newhaven had killed himself; and how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of +course, concluded that Lord Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter. + +Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little. + +"Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married woman. +I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he risked losing +me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more. I thought he was, +at any rate, an upright man. After Lord Newhaven's death he asked me to +marry him, and I accepted him. And when we were talking quietly one +day"--Rachel's face became, if possible, whiter than before--"I told him +that I knew of the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except +the dead man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself +for Lord Newhaven's death. He had brought it on himself. I said to +him"--Rachel's voice trembled more and more-"'It was an even chance. You +might have drawn the short lighter yourself.' And--he--said that if he +had, he should have had to abide by it." + +The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand. It seemed cruel to look at +Rachel, as it is cruel to watch a man drown. + +"And how do you know he did draw it?" he said. + +"It seems Lord Newhaven left his wife a letter, which she has only just +received, telling her so. She brought it here to-day to show me." + +"Ah! A letter! And you read it?" + +"No," said Rachel, scornfully, "I did not read it. I did not believe a +word she said about it. Hugh was there, and I told him I trusted him; +and he took the letter from her, and put it in the fire." + +"And did he not contradict it?" + +"No. He said it was true. He has lied to me over and over again; but I +saw he was speaking the truth for once." + +There was a long silence. + +"I don't know how other people regard those things," said Rachel at +last, less harshly--she was gradually recovering herself--"but I know to +me it was much worse that he could deceive me than that he should have +been Lady Newhaven's lover. I did feel that dreadfully. I had to choke +down my jealousy when he kissed me. He had kissed her first. He had made +that side of his love common and profane; but the other side remained. I +clung to that. I believed he really loved me, and that supported me and +enabled me to forgive him, though men don't know what that forgiveness +costs us. Only the walls of our rooms know that. But it seems to me much +worse to have failed me on that other side as well--to have deceived +me--to have told me a lie--just when--just when we were talking +intimately." + +"It was infinitely worse," said the Bishop. + +"And it was the action of a coward to draw lots in the first instance if +he did not mean to abide by the drawing, and the action of a traitor, +once they were drawn, not to abide by them. But yet, if he had told +me--if he had only told me the whole truth--I loved him so entirely that +I would have forgiven--_even that_. But whenever I alluded to it, he +lied." + +"He was afraid of losing you." + +"He has lost me by his deceit. He would not have lost me if he had told +me the truth. I think--I know--that I could have got over anything, +forgiven anything, even his cowardice, if he had only admitted it and +been straightforward with me. A little plain dealing was all I asked, +but--I did not get it." + +The Bishop looked sadly at her. Straightforwardness is so seldom the +first requirement a woman makes of the man she loves. Women, as a rule, +regard men and their conduct only from the point of view of their +relation to women--as sons, as husbands, as fathers. Yet Rachel, it +seemed, could forgive Hugh's sin against her as a woman, but not his +further sin against her as a friend. + +"Yet it seems he did speak the truth at last," he said. + +"Yes." + +"And after he had destroyed the letter, which was the only proof against +him." + +"Yes." + +Another silence. + +"I am glad you have thrown him over," said the Bishop, slowly, "for you +never loved him." + +"I deceived myself in that case," said Rachel, bitterly. "My only fear +was that I loved him too much." + +The Bishop's face had become fixed and stern. + +"Listen to me, Rachel," he said. "You fell desperately in love with an +inferior man. He is charming, refined, well-bred, and with a picturesque +mind, but that is all. He is inferior. He is by nature shallow and hard +(the two generally go together), without moral backbone, the kind of man +who never faces a difficulty, who always flinches when it comes to the +point, the stuff out of which liars and cowards are made. His one +redeeming quality is his love for you. I have seen men in love before. I +have never seen a man care more for a woman than he cares for you. His +love for you has taken entire possession of him, and by it he will sink +or swim." + +The Bishop paused. Rachel's face worked. + +"He deceived you," said the Bishop, "not because he wished to deceive +you, but because he was in a horrible position, and because his first +impulse of love was to keep you at any price. But his love for you was +raising him even while he deceived you. Did he spend sleepless nights +because for months he vilely deceived Lord Newhaven? No. Rectitude was +not in him. His conscience was not awake. But I tell you, Rachel, he has +suffered like a man on the rack from deceiving you. I knew by his face +as soon as I saw him that he was undergoing some great mental strain. I +did not understand it, but I do now." + +Rachel's mind, always slow, moved, stumbled to its bleeding feet. + +"It was remorse," she said, turning her face away. + +"It was not remorse. It was repentance. Remorse is bitter. Repentance is +humble. His love for you has led him to it. Not your love for him, +Rachel, which breaks down at the critical moment; his love for you which +has brought him for the first time to the perception of the higher life, +to the need of God's forgiveness, which I know from things he has said, +has made him long to lead a better life, one worthier of you." + +"Don't," said Rachel. "I can't bear it." + +The Bishop rose, and stood facing her. + +"And at last," he went on--"at last, in a moment, when you showed your +full trust and confidence in him, he shook off for an instant the clogs +of the nature which he brought into the world, and rose to what he had +never been before--your equal. And his love transcended the lies that +love itself on its lower plane had prompted. He reached the place where +he could no longer lie to you. And then, though his whole future +happiness depended on one more lie, he spoke the truth." + +Rachel put out her hand as if to ward off what was coming. + +"And how did you meet him the first time he spoke the truth to you?" +continued the Bishop, inexorably. "You say you loved him, and yet--you +spurned him from you, you thrust him down into hell. You stooped to him +in the beginning. He was nothing until your fancied love fell upon him. +And then you break him. It is women like you who do more harm in the +world than the bad ones. The harm that poor fool Lady Newhaven did him +is as nothing compared to the harm you have done him. You were his god, +and you have deserted him. And you say you loved him. May God preserve +men from the love of women if that is all that a good woman's love is +capable of." + +"I can do nothing," said Rachel, hoarsely. + +"Do nothing!" said the Bishop, fiercely. "You can do nothing when you +are responsible for a man's soul God will require his soul at your +hands. Scarlett gave it into your keeping, and you took it. You had no +business to take it if you meant to throw it away. And now you say you +can do nothing!" + +"What can I do?" said Rachel, faintly. + +"Forgive him." + +"Forgiveness won't help him. The only forgiveness he would care for is +to marry me." + +"Of course. It is the only way you can forgive him." + +Rachel turned away. Her stubborn, quivering face showed a frightful +conflict. + +The Bishop watched her. + +"My child," he said, gently, "we all say we follow Christ, but most of +us only follow him and his cross--part of the way. When we are told that +our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for our transgressions, I +suppose that meant that He felt as if they were His own in His great +love for us. But when you shrink from bearing your fellow-creature's +transgressions, it shows that your love is small." + +Rachel was silent. + +"If you really love him you will forgive him." + +Rachel clinched and unclinched her hands. + +"You are appealing to a nobility and goodness which are not in me," she +said, stubbornly. + +"I appeal to nothing but your love. If you really love him you will +forgive him." + +"He has broken my heart." + +"I thought that was it. It is yourself you are thinking of. But what is +he suffering at this moment? You do not know or care. Where is he now, +that poor man who loves you? Rachel, if you had ever known despair, you +would not thrust a fellow creature down into it." + +"I have known it," said Rachel, hoarsely. + +"Were not you deserted once? You were deserted to very little purpose, +if after that you can desert another. Go back in your mind, +and--remember. Where you stood once he stands now. You and his sin have +put him there. You and his sin have tied him to his stake. Will you +range yourself for ever on the side of his sin? Will you stand by and +see him perish?" + +Silence; like the silence round a death-bed. + +"He is in a great strait. Only love can save him." + +Rachel flung out her arms with an inarticulate cry. + +"I will forgive him," she said. "I will forgive him." + + + + +CHAPTER LII + + "Les âmes 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 endeavored 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 forever." + +"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 color 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 clinched 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. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + + Ueber allen Gipfeln + Ist Ruh; + In allen Wipfeln + Spürest Du + Kaum einen Hauch; + Die Vögelein 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 carriage 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 stand-still. + +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 +splendor 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 parlor. + +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, unrecognizing 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 hawk-eyes. 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 parlor 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 parlor, 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 passed. 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 splendor 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 Fräulein, and now Algy Pratt and Lady Newhaven." + +"I was so dreadfully afraid that Fräulein 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 Fräulein. 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 passed, 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 +Fräulein 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." + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + + +We turn the pages of the Book of Life with impatient hands. And if we +shut up the book at a sad page we say, hastily, "Life is sad." But it is +not so. There are other pages waiting to be turned. I, who have copied +out one little chapter of the lives of Rachel and Hester, cannot see +plainly, but I catch glimpses of those other pages. I seem to see Rachel +with children round her, and Dick not far off, and the old light +rekindled in Hester's eyes. For Hope and Love and Enthusiasm never die. +We think in youth that we bury them in the graveyards of our hearts, but +the grass never yet grew over them. How, then, can life be sad, when +they walk beside us always in the growing light towards the Perfect Day. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Pottage, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED POTTAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 14885-8.txt or 14885-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/8/8/14885/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Red Pottage + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: February 2, 2005 [EBook #14885] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED POTTAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>Red Pottage</h1> +<h3>By</h3> +<h2>Mary Cholmondeley</h2> +<h5>AUTHOR OF</h5> +<h4>"THE DANVERS JEWELS"</h4> +<div class='center'>"<i>After the Red Pottage comes the exceeding +bitter cry</i>"</div> +<div class="figcenter"><br /> +<img src="images/002.png" width="10%" alt="" title="" /> +<br /></div> +<div class='center'>NEW YORK AND LONDON<br /> +<br /> +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> +<br /> +1900<br /> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +TO<br /> +<br /> +VICTORIA<br /> +<br /> +Good things have not kept aloof,<br /> +<br /> +I have not lack'd thy mild reproof,<br /> +Nor golden largesse of thy praise. +<br /> +<br /> +</div> +<div class='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>CHAPTER XXV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXVI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXVII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXVIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXIX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>CHAPTER XXX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>CHAPTER XXXI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>CHAPTER XXXII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXXIV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>CHAPTER XXXV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI"><b>CHAPTER XXXVI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII"><b>CHAPTER XXXVIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX"><b>CHAPTER XXXIX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XL"><b>CHAPTER XL</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLI"><b>CHAPTER XLI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLII"><b>CHAPTER XLII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII"><b>CHAPTER XLIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV"><b>CHAPTER XLIV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLV"><b>CHAPTER XLV</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI"><b>CHAPTER XLVI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII"><b>CHAPTER XLVII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII"><b>CHAPTER XLVIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX"><b>CHAPTER XLIX</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_L"><b>CHAPTER L</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_LI"><b>CHAPTER LI</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_LII"><b>CHAPTER LII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_LIII"><b>CHAPTER LIII</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CONCLUSION"><b>CONCLUSION</b></a><br /> +<a href="#POSTSCRIPT"><b>POSTSCRIPT</b></a></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>RED POTTAGE</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> +<div class='blockquot'><span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">In tragic +life, God wot,</span><br /> +No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:<br /> +We are betray'd by what is false within.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">—GEORGE +MEREDITH.</span></div> +<p>"I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the +bars of his cage.</p> +<p>"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, +but half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his +hansom took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he +had been dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, +whither his thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing +the <i>trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop</i> of the horse.</p> +<p>It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, +and the throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared +to see, "the glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and +shirt front, surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their +owner, leaning back with his hat tilted over his eyes.</p> +<p><i>Trip-clip-clop</i> went the horse.</p> +<p>A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an +hour, especially if it has been long eluded.</p> +<p>"I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient +movement. It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue +which had been so new and alluring a year ago. He did not own it to +himself, but he was tired of it. Perhaps the reason why good +resolutions have earned for themselves such an evil repute as +paving-stones is because they are often the result, not of +repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs an evaporating +pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and his shame +for many months. But now it was becoming something more—which +it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till +lately—a fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off +and pushed out of sight. Decidedly the moment for the good +resolution had arrived.</p> +<p>"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul +has ever guessed it."</p> +<p>How could any one have guessed it?</p> +<p>He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and +had looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other +days, and the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. +He had added a stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it +became—a prison. Had he been tempter or tempted? He did not +know. He did not care. He wanted only to be out of it. His better +feelings and his conscience had been awakened by the first touch of +weariness. His brief infatuation had run its course. His judgment +had been whirled—he told himself it had been whirled, but it +had really only been tweaked—from its centre, had performed +its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back to +the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was merely a +pretty woman.</p> +<p>"I will break with her gradually," he said, like the tyro he +was, and he pictured to himself the wretched scenes in which she +would abuse him, reproach him, probably compromise herself, the +letters she would write to him. At any rate, he need not read them. +Oh! how tired he was of the whole thing beforehand. Why had he been +such a fool? He looked at the termination of the liaison as a bad +sailor looks at an inevitable sea passage at the end of a journey. +It must be gone through, but the prospect of undergoing it filled +him with disgust.</p> +<p>A brougham passed him swiftly on noiseless wheels, and the woman +in it caught a glimpse of the high-bred, clean-shaved face, half +savage, half sullen, in the hansom.</p> +<p>"Anger, impatience, and remorse," she said to herself, and +finished buttoning her gloves.</p> +<p>"Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever guessed it," repeated Hugh, +fervently, as the hansom came suddenly to a stand-still.</p> +<p>In another moment he was taking Lady Newhaven's hand as she +stood at the entrance of her amber drawing-room beside a grove of +pink orchids.</p> +<p>He chatted a moment, greeted Lord Newhaven, and passed on into +the crowded rooms. How could any one have guessed it? No breath of +scandal had ever touched Lady Newhaven. She stood beside her pink +orchids, near her fatigued-looking, gentle-mannered husband, a very +pretty woman in white satin and diamonds. Perhaps her blond hair +was a shade darker at the roots than in its waved coils; perhaps +her blue eyes did not look quite in harmony with their blue-black +lashes; but the whole effect had the delicate, conventional +perfection of a cleverly touched-up chromo-lithograph. Of course, +tastes differ. Some people like chromo-lithographs, others don't. +But even those who do are apt to become estranged. They may inspire +love, admiration, but never fidelity. Most of us have in our time +hammered nails into our walls which, though they now decorously +support the engravings and etchings of our maturer years, were +nevertheless originally driven in to uphold the cherished, the long +since discarded chromos of our foolish youth.</p> +<p>The diamond sun upon Lady Newhaven's breast quivered a little, a +very little, as Hugh greeted her, and she turned to offer the same +small smile and gloved hand to the next comer, whose name was +leaping before him from one footman to another.</p> +<p>"Mr. Richard Vernon."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven's wide blue eyes looked vague. Her hand hesitated. +This strongly built, ill-dressed man, with his keen, brown, deeply +scarred face and crooked mouth, was unknown to her.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven darted forward.</p> +<p>"Dick!" he exclaimed, and Dick shot forth an immense mahogany +hand and shook Lord Newhaven's warmly.</p> +<p>"Well," he said, after Lord Newhaven had introduced him to his +wife, "I'm dashed if I knew who either of you were. But I found +your invitation at my club when I landed yesterday, so I decided to +come and have a look at you. And so it is only you, Cackles, after +all"—(Lord Newhaven's habit of silence had earned for him the +sobriquet of "Cackles")—"I quite thought I was going +into—well, ahem!—into society. I did not know you had +got a handle to your name. How did you find out I was in +England?"</p> +<p>"My dear fellow, I didn't," said Lord Newhaven, gently drawing +Dick aside, whose back was serenely blocking a stream of new +arrivals. "I fancy—in fact, I'm simply delighted to see you. +How is the wine getting on? But I suppose there must be other Dick +Vernons on my wife's list. Have you the card with you?"</p> +<p>"Rather," said Dick; "always take the card with me since I was +kicked out of a miner's hop at Broken Hill because I forgot it. 'No +gentleman will be admitted in a paper shirt' was mentioned on it, I +remember. A concertina, and candles in bottles. Ripping while it +lasted. I wish you had been there."</p> +<p>"I wish I had." Lord Newhaven's tired, half-closed eye opened a +little. "But the end seems to have been unfortunate."</p> +<p>"Not at all," said Dick, watching the new arrivals with his head +thrown back. "Fine girl that; I'll take a look at the whole mob of +them directly. They came round next day to say it had been a +mistake, but there were four or five cripples who found that out +the night before. Here is the card."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven glanced at it attentively, and then laughed.</p> +<p>"It is four years old," he said; "I must have put you on my +mother's list, not knowing you had left London. It is in her +writing."</p> +<p>"I'm rather late," said Dick, composedly; "but I am here at +last. Now, Cack—Newhaven, if that's your noble name—as +I am here, trot out a few heiresses, would you? I want to take one +or two back with me. I say, ought I to put my gloves on?"</p> +<p>"No, no. Clutch them in your great fist as you are doing +now."</p> +<p>"Thanks. I suppose, old chap, I'm all right? Not had on an +evening-coat for four years."</p> +<p>Dick's trousers were too short for him, and he had tied his +white tie with a waist to it. Lord Newhaven had seen both details +before he recognized him.</p> +<p>"Quite right," he said, hastily. "Now, who is to be the happy +woman?"</p> +<p>Dick's hawk eye promenaded over the crowd in the second room, in +the door-way of which he was standing.</p> +<p>"That one," he said; "the tall girl in the green gown talking to +the Bishop."</p> +<p>"You have a wonderful eye for heiresses. You have picked out the +greatest in London. That is Miss Rachel West. You say you want +two."</p> +<p>"One at a time, thanks. I shall take her down to supper. I +suppose—er—there is supper at this sort of thing, isn't +there?"</p> +<p>"Of a kind. You need not be afraid of the claret; it isn't +yours."</p> +<p>"Catch you giving your best at a crush," retorted Dick. "The +Bishop's moving. Hurry up."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>But as he groped against the wall, two hands +upon him fell,<br /> +The King behind his shoulder spake: "Dead man, thou dost not +well."<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 24.5em;">—RUDYARD +KIPLING.</span></div> +<p>Hugh had gone through the first room, and, after a quarter of an +hour, found himself in the door-way of the second. He had arrived +late, and the rooms were already thinning.</p> +<p>A woman in a pale-green gown was standing near the open window, +her white profile outlined against the framed darkness, as she +listened with evident amusement to the tall, ill-dressed man beside +her.</p> +<p>Hugh's eyes lost the veiled scorn with which it was their wont +to look at society and the indulgent patronage which lurked in them +for pretty women.</p> +<p>Rachel West slowly turned her face towards him without seeing +him, and his heart leaped. She was not beautiful except with the +beauty of health, and a certain dignity of carriage which is the +outcome of a head and hands and body that are at unity with each +other, and with a mind absolutely unconscious of self. She had not +the long nose which so frequently usurps more than its share of the +faces of the well-bred, nor had she, alas! the short upper lip +which redeems everything. Her features were as insignificant as her +coloring. People rarely noticed that Rachel's hair was brown, and +that her deep-set eyes were gray. But upon her grave face the word +"Helper" was plainly written—and something else. What was +it?</p> +<p>Just as in the faces of seamen we trace the onslaught of storm +and sun and brine, and the puckering of the skin round the eyes +that comes of long watching in half-lights, so in some faces, calm +and pure as Rachel's, on which the sun and rain have never beaten, +there is an expression betokening strong resistance from within of +the brunt of a whirlwind from without. The marks of conflict and +endurance on a young face—who shall see them unmoved! The +Mother of Jesus must have noticed a great difference in her Son +when she first saw Him again after the temptation in the +wilderness.</p> +<p>Rachel's grave, amused glance fell upon Hugh. Their eyes met, +and he instantly perceived, to his astonishment, that she +recognized him. But she did not bow, and a moment later left the +nearly empty rooms with the man who was talking to her.</p> +<p>Hugh was excited out of recognition of his former half-scornful, +half-<i>blasé</i> self. That woman must be his wife. She +would save him from himself, this cynical, restless self, which +never remained in one stay. The half-acknowledged weakness in his +nature unconsciously flung itself upon her strength, a strength +which had been tried. She would love him, and uphold him. There +would be no more yielding to circumstances if that pure, strong +soul were close beside him. He would lean upon her, and the ugly +by-paths of these last years would know him no more. Her presence +would leaven his whole life. In the momentary insanity, which was +perhaps, after all, only a prophetic intuition, he had no fears, no +misgivings. He thought that with that face it was not possible that +she could be so wicked as to refuse him.</p> +<p>"She will marry me," he said to himself. "She must."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven touched him gently on the arm.</p> +<p>"I dared not speak to you before," she said. "Nearly every one +has gone. Will you take me down to supper? I am tired out."</p> +<p>He stared at her, not recognizing her.</p> +<p>"Have I vexed you?" she faltered.</p> +<p>And with a sudden horrible revulsion of feeling he remembered. +The poor chromo had fallen violently from its nail. But the nail +remained—ready. He took her into the supper-room and got her +a glass of champagne. She subsided on to a sofa beside another +woman, vaguely suspecting trouble in the air. He felt thankful that +Rachel had already gone. Dick, nearly the last, was putting on his +coat, arranging to meet Lord Newhaven the following morning at his +club. They had been in Australia together, and were evidently old +friends.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven's listless manner returned as Dick marched out. +Hugh had got one arm in his coat. An instinct of flight possessed +him, a vague horror of the woman in diamonds furtively watching him +under her lowered eyelids through the open door.</p> +<p>"Oh, Scarlett!" said Lord Newhaven, detaining him languidly, "I +want three minutes of your valuable time. Come into my study."</p> +<p>"Another cross-bow for Westhope Abbey?" said Hugh, trying to +speak unconcernedly, as he followed his host to a back room on the +ground floor. Lord Newhaven was collecting arms for the hall of his +country-house.</p> +<p>"No; much simpler than those elaborate machines," said the older +man, turning on the electric light. Hugh went in, and Lord Newhaven +closed the door.</p> +<p>Over the mantel-shelf were hung a few old Japanese inlaid +carbines, and beneath them an array of pistols.</p> +<p>"Useless now," said Lord Newhaven, touching them affectionately. +"But," he added, with a shade more listlessness than before, +"Society has become accustomed to do without them, and does ill +without them, but we must conform to her." Hugh started slightly, +and then remained motionless. "You observe these two paper +lighters, Scarlett? One is an inch shorter than the other. They +have been waiting on the mantel-shelf for the last month, till I +had an opportunity of drawing your attention to them. I am sure we +perfectly understand each other. No name need be mentioned. All +scandal is avoided. I feel confident you will not hesitate to make +me the only reparation one man can make another in the somewhat +hackneyed circumstances in which we find ourselves."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven took the lighters out of the glass. He glanced +suddenly at Hugh's stunned face and went on:</p> +<p>"I am sorry the idea is not my own. I read it in a magazine. +Though comparatively modern, it promises soon to become as +customary as the much-to-be-regretted pistols for two and coffee +for four. I hold the lighters thus, and you draw. Whoever draws or +keeps the short one is pledged to leave this world within four +months, or shall we say five, on account of the pheasant shooting? +Five be it. Is it agreed? Just so! Will you draw?"</p> +<p>A swift spasm passed over Hugh's face, and a tiger glint leaped +into Lord Newhaven's eyes, fixed intently upon him.</p> +<p>There was a brief second in which Hugh's mind wavered, as the +flame of a candle wavers in a sudden draught. Lord Newhaven's eyes +glittered. He advanced the lighters an inch nearer.</p> +<p>If he had not advanced them that inch Hugh thought afterwards +that he would have refused to draw.</p> +<p>He backed against the mantel-piece, and then put out his hand +suddenly and drew. It seemed the only way of escape.</p> +<p>The two men measured the lighters on the table under the +electric light.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven laughed.</p> +<p>Hugh stood a moment, and then went out.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband?"</p> +</div> +<p>When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her +husband and Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did +not follow them with the deliberate intention of eavesdropping, but +from a vague impulse of suspicious anxiety. Yet she crouched in her +white satin gown against the door listening intently.</p> +<p>Neither man moved within, only one spoke. There was no other +sound to deaden her husband's distinct, low voice. The silence that +followed his last words, "Will you draw?" was broken by his laugh, +and she had barely time to throw herself back from the door into a +dark recess under the staircase before Hugh came out. He almost +touched her as he passed. He must have seen her, if he had been +capable of seeing anything; but he went straight on unheeding. And +as she stole a few steps to gaze after him, she saw him cross the +hall and go out into the night without his hat and coat, the amazed +servants staring after him.</p> +<p>She drew back to go up-stairs, and met her husband coming slowly +out of the study. He looked steadily at her, as she clung trembling +to the banisters. There was no alteration in his glance, and she +suddenly perceived that what he knew now he had always known. She +put her hand to her head.</p> +<p>"You look tired," he said, in the level voice to which she was +accustomed. "You had better go to bed."</p> +<p>She stumbled swiftly up-stairs, catching at the banisters, and +went into her own room.</p> +<p>Her maid was waiting for her by the dressing-table with its +shaded electric lights. And she remembered that she had given a +party, and that she had on her diamonds.</p> +<p>It would take a long time to unfasten them. She pulled at the +diamond sun on her breast with a shaking hand. Her husband had +given it to her when her eldest son was born. Her maid took the +tiara gently out of her hair, and cut the threads that sewed the +diamonds on her breast and shoulders. Would it never end? The lace +of her gown, cautiously withdrawn through its hundred eyelet-holes, +knotted itself.</p> +<p>"Cut it," she said, impatiently. "Cut it."</p> +<p>At last she was in her dressing-gown and alone. She flung +herself face downwards on the sofa. Her attitude had the touch of +artificiality which was natural to her.</p> +<p>The deluge had arrived, and unconsciously she met it, as she +would have made a heroine meet it had she been a novelist, in a +white dressing-gown and pink ribbons in a stereotyped attitude of +despair on a divan.</p> +<p>Conscience is supposed to make cowards of us all, but it is a +matter of common experience that the unimaginative are made cowards +of only by being found out.</p> +<p>Had David qualms of conscience when Uriah fell before the +besieged city? Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious +parallel of the prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently +he remained serenely obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art +the man" unexpectedly nailed him to the cross of his sin.</p> +<p>And so it was with Lady Newhaven. She had gone through the +twenty-seven years of her life believing herself to be a religious +and virtuous person. She was so accustomed to the idea that it had +become a habit, and now the whole of her self-respect was in one +wrench torn from her. The events of the last year had not worn it +down to its last shred, had not even worn the nap off. It was +dragged from her intact, and the shock left her faint and +shuddering.</p> +<p>The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to +conceal his knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than +the probability that she had been seen by some of the servants +kneeling listening at a keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant +people make is to assume that others are as unobservant as +themselves.</p> +<p>By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this +catastrophe come about? She thought of all the obvious incidents +which would have revealed the secret to herself—the dropped +letter, the altered countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She +was convinced her secret had been guarded with minute, with +scrupulous care. The only thing she had forgotten in her +calculations was her husband's character, if, indeed, she could be +said to have forgotten that which she had never known.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven was in his wife's eyes a very quiet man of few +words. That his few words did not represent the whole of him had +never occurred to her. She had often told her friends that he +walked through life with his eyes shut. He had a trick of half +shutting his eyes which confirmed her in this opinion. When she +came across persons who were after a time discovered to have +affections and interests of which they had not spoken, she +described them as "cunning." She had never thought Edward "cunning" +till to-night. How had he, of all men, discovered +this—this—? She, had no words ready to call her conduct +by, though words would not have failed her had she been denouncing +the same conduct in another wife and mother.</p> +<p>Gradually "the whole horror of her situation"—to borrow +from her own vocabulary—forced itself upon her mind like damp +through a gay wall-paper. What did it matter how the discovery had +been made! It was made, and she was ruined. She repeated the words +between little gasps for breath. Ruined! Her reputation lost! +Hers—Violet Newhaven's. It was a sheer impossibility that +such a thing could have happened to a woman like her. It was some +vile slander which Edward must see to. He was good at that sort of +thing. But no, Edward would not help her. She had +committed—She flung out her hands, panic-stricken, as if to +ward off a blow. The deed had brought with it no shame, but the +word—the word wounded her like a sword.</p> +<p>Her feeble mind, momentarily stunned, pursued its groping +way.</p> +<p>He would divorce her. It would be in the papers. But no. What +was that he had said to Hugh—"No names to be mentioned; all +scandal avoided."</p> +<p>She shivered and drew in her breath. It was to be settled some +other way. Her mind became an entire blank. Another way! What way? +She remembered now, and an inarticulate cry broke from her. They +had drawn lots.</p> +<p><i>Which had drawn the short lighter?</i></p> +<p>Her husband had laughed. But then he laughed at everything. He +was never really serious, always shallow and heartless. He would +have laughed if he had drawn it himself. Perhaps he had. Yes, he +certainly had drawn it. But Hugh? She saw again the white, set face +as he passed her. No; it must be Hugh who had drawn it—Hugh, +whom she loved. She wrung her hands and moaned, half aloud:</p> +<p>"Which? Which?"</p> +<p>There was a slight movement in the next room, the door was +opened, and Lord Newhaven appeared in the door-way. He was still in +evening dress.</p> +<p>"Did you call?" he said, quietly. "Are you ill?" He came and +stood beside her.</p> +<p>"No," she said, hoarsely, and she sat up and gazed fixedly at +him. Despair and suspense were in her eyes. There was no change in +his, and she remembered that she had never seen him angry. Perhaps +she had not known when he was angry.</p> +<p>He was turning away, but she stopped him. "Wait," she said, and +he returned, his cold, attentive eye upon her. There was no +contempt, no indignation in his bearing. If those feelings had +shaken him, it must have been some time ago. If they had been met +and vanquished in secret, that also must have been some time ago. +He took up an <i>Imitation of Christ</i>, bound in the peculiar +shade of lilac which at that moment prevailed, and turned it in his +hand.</p> +<p>"You are overwrought," he said, after a moment's pause, "and I +particularly dislike a scene."</p> +<p>She did not heed him.</p> +<p>"I listened at the door," she said, in a harsh, unnatural +voice.</p> +<p>"I am perfectly aware of it."</p> +<p>A sort of horror seemed to have enveloped the familiar room. The +very furniture looked like well-known words arranged suddenly in +some new and dreadful meaning.</p> +<p>"You never loved me," she said.</p> +<p>He did not answer, but he looked gravely at her for a moment, +and she was ashamed.</p> +<p>"Why don't you divorce me if you think me so wicked?"</p> +<p>"For the sake of the children," he said, with a slight change of +voice.</p> +<p>Teddy, the eldest, had been born in this room. Did either +remember that gray morning six years ago?</p> +<p>There was a silence that might be felt.</p> +<p>"Who drew the short lighter?" she whispered, before she knew +that she had spoken.</p> +<p>"I am not here to answer questions," he replied. "And I have +asked none. Neither, you will observe, have I blamed you. But I +desire that you will never again allude to this subject, and that +you will keep in mind that I do not intend to discuss it with +you."</p> +<p>He laid down the <i>Imitation</i> and moved towards his own +room.</p> +<p>With a sudden movement she flung herself upon her knees before +him and caught his arm. The attitude suggested an amateur.</p> +<p>"Which drew the short lighter?" she gasped, her small upturned +face white and convulsed.</p> +<p>"You will know in five months' time," he said. Then he +extricated himself from her trembling clasp and left the room, +closing the door quietly behind him.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay +for one by one!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;">—RUDYARD +KIPLING.</span></div> +<p>When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day +was already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. +For a few seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of +morphia, who feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea +of rest, but is conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter +shores of pain, and who stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of +hastening the touch of the encircling, aching sands on which he is +so soon to be cast in agony once more.</p> +<p>His mind cleared a little. Rachel's grave face stood out against +a dark background—a background darker surely than that of the +summer night. He remembered with self-contempt the extravagant +emotion which she had aroused in him.</p> +<p>"Absurd," Hugh said to himself, with the distrust of all sudden +springs of pure emotion which those who have misused them rarely +escape. And then another remembrance, which only a sleeping-draught +had kept at bay, darted upon him like a panther on its prey.</p> +<p>He had drawn the short lighter.</p> +<p>He started violently, and then fell back trembling.</p> +<p>"Oh, my God!" he said, involuntarily.</p> +<p>He lay still, telling himself that this dreadful nightmare would +pass, would fade in the light of common day.</p> +<p>His servant came in noiselessly with a cup of coffee and a +little sheaf of letters.</p> +<p>He pretended to be asleep; but when the man had gone he put out +his shaking hand for the coffee and drank it.</p> +<p>The mist before his mind gradually lifted. Gradually, too, the +horror on his face whitened to despair, as a twilight meadow +whitens beneath the evening frost. He had drawn the short lighter. +Nothing in heaven or earth could alter that fact.</p> +<p>He did not stop to wonder how Lord Newhaven had become aware of +his own dishonor, or at the strange weapon with which he had +avenged himself. He went over every detail of his encounter with +him in the study. His hand had been forced. He had been thrust into +a vile position. He ought to have refused to draw. He did not agree +to draw. Nevertheless, he had drawn. And Hugh knew that, if it had +to be done again, he should again have been compelled to draw by +the iron will before which his was as straw. He could not have met +the scorn of those terrible half-closed eyes if he had refused.</p> +<p>"There was no help for it," said Hugh, half aloud. And yet to +die by his own hand within five months! It was incredible. It was +preposterous.</p> +<p>"I never agreed to it," he said, passionately.</p> +<p><i>Nevertheless, he had drawn</i>. The remembrance ever returned +to lay its cold hand upon his heart, and with it came the grim +conviction that if Lord Newhaven had drawn the short lighter he +would have carried out the agreement to the letter. Whether it was +extravagant, unchristian, whatever might have been truly said of +that unholy compact, Lord Newhaven would have stood by it.</p> +<p>"I suppose I must stand by it, too," said Hugh to himself, the +cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. "I suppose I am bound in +honor to stand by it, too."</p> +<p>He suffered his mind to regard the alternative.</p> +<p>To wrong a man as deeply as he had wronged Lord Newhaven; to +tacitly accept. That was where his mistake had been. Another man, +that mahogany-faced fellow with the colonial accent, would have +refused to draw, and would have knocked Lord Newhaven down and half +killed him, or would have been knocked down and half killed by him. +But to tacitly accept a means by which the injured man risked his +life to avenge his honor, and then afterwards to shirk the fate +which a perfectly even chance had thrown upon him instead of on his +antagonist! It was too mean, too despicable. Hugh's pale cheek +burned.</p> +<p>"I am bound," he said slowly to himself over and over again. +There was no way of escape.</p> +<p>Yesterday evening, with some intuition of coming peril, he had +said, "I will get out." The way of retreat had been open behind +him. Now, by one slight movement, he was cut off from it +forever.</p> +<p>"I can't get out," said the starling, the feathers on its breast +worn away with beating against the bars.</p> +<p>"I can't get out," said Hugh, coming for the first time in +contact with the bars which he was to know so well—the bars +of the prison that he had made with his own hands.</p> +<p>He looked into the future with blank eyes. He had no future now. +He stared vacantly in front of him like a man who looks through his +window at the wide expanse of meadow and waving wood and distant +hill which has met his eye every morning of his life and finds +it—gone. It was incredible. He turned giddy. His reeling +mind, shrinking back from the abyss, struck against a fixed point, +and, clutching it, came violently to a stand-still.</p> +<p><i>His mother!</i></p> +<p>His mother was a widow and he was her only son. If he died by +his own hand it would break her heart. Hugh groaned, and thrust the +thought from him. It was too sharp. He could not suffer it.</p> +<p>His sin, not worse than that of many another man, had found him +out. He had done wrong. He admitted it, but this monstrous judgment +on him was out of all proportion to his offence. And, like some +malignant infectious disease, retribution would fall, not on him +alone, but on those nearest him, on his innocent mother and sister. +It was unjust, unjust, unjust!</p> +<p>A very bitter look came into his face. Hugh had never so far +hated any one, but now something very like hatred welled up in his +heart against Lady Newhaven. She had lured him to his destruction. +She had tempted him. This was undoubtedly true, though not probably +the view which her guardian angel would take of the matter.</p> +<p>Among the letters which the servant had brought him he suddenly +recognized that the topmost was in Lady Newhaven's handwriting. +Anger and repulsion seized him. No doubt it was the first of a +series. "Why was he so altered? What had she done to offend him?" +etc., etc. He knew the contents beforehand, or thought he knew +them. He got up deliberately, threw the unopened note into the +empty fireplace, and put a match to it. He watched it burn.</p> +<p>It was his first overt act of rebellion against her yoke, the +first step along the nearest of the many well-worn paths that a man +takes at random to leave a woman. It did not occur to him that Lady +Newhaven might have written to him about his encounter with her +husband. He knew Lord Newhaven well enough to be absolutely certain +that he would mention the subject to no living creature, least of +all to his wife.</p> +<p>"Neither will I," he said to himself; "and as for her, I will +break with her from this day forward."</p> +<p>The little pink notes with the dashing, twirly handwriting +persisted for a week or two and then ceased.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Hugh was a man of many social engagements. His first impulse, +when later in the day he remembered them, was to throw them all up +and leave London. But Lord Newhaven would hear of his departure, +and would smile. He decided to remain and to go on as if nothing +had happened. When the evening came he dressed with his usual care, +verified the hour of his engagement, and went out to dine with the +Loftuses.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>What the <i>Bandar-log</i> think now the +jungle will think later.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">—Maxim of the +<i>Bandar-log</i>, RUDYARD KIPLING.</span></div> +<p>It was Sybell Loftus's first season in London since her second +marriage with Mr. Doll Loftus. After a very brief sojourn in that +city of frivolity she had the acumen to discover that London +society was hopelessly worldly and mercenary; that people only met +to eat and to abuse each other; that the law of cutlet for cutlet +was universal; that young men, especially those in the Guards, were +garrisoned by a full complement of devils; that London girls lived +only for dress and the excitement of husband-hunting. In short, to +use her own expression, she "turned London society inside out."</p> +<p>London bore the process with equanimity, and presently Sybell +determined to raise the art of dinner-giving from the low estate to +which she avowed it had fallen to a higher level. She was young, +she was pretty, she was well-born, she was rich. All the social +doors were open to her. But one discovery is often only the prelude +to another. She soon made the further one that in order to raise +the tone of social gatherings it is absolutely necessary to infuse +into them a leaven of "clever people." Further light on this +interesting subject showed her that most of the really "clever +people" did not belong to her set. The discovery which all who love +adulation quickly make—namely, that the truly appreciative +and sympathetic and gifted are for the greater part to be found in +a class below their own—was duly made and registered by +Sybell. She avowed that class differences were nothing to her with +the enthusiasm of all those who since the world began have +preferred to be first in the society which they gather round +them.</p> +<p>Fortunately for Sybell she was not troubled by doubts respecting +the clearness of her own judgment. Eccentricity was in her eyes +originality; a wholesale contradiction of established facts was a +new view. She had not the horrid perception of difference between +the real and the imitation which spoils the lives of many. She was +equally delighted with both, and remained in blissful ignorance of +the fact that her "deep" conversation was felt to be exhaustingly +superficial if by chance she came across the real artist or thinker +instead of his counterfeit.</p> +<p>Consequently to her house came the <i>raté</i> in all his +most virulent developments; the "new woman" with stupendous +lopsided opinions on difficult Old Testament subjects; the "lady +authoress" with a mission to show up the vices of a society which +she knew only by hearsay. Hither came, unwittingly, simple-minded +Church dignitaries, who, Sybell hoped, might influence for his good +the young agnostic poet who had written a sonnet on her muff-chain, +a very daring sonnet, which Doll, who did not care for poetry, had +not been shown. Hither, by mistake, thinking it was an ordinary +dinner-party, came Hugh, whom Sybell said she had discovered, and +who was not aware that he was in need of discovery. And hither also +on this particular evening came Rachel West, whom Sybell had +pronounced to be very intelligent a few days before, and who was +serenely unconscious that she was present on her probation, and +that if she did not say something striking she would never be asked +again.</p> +<p>Doll Loftus, Sybell's husband, was standing by Rachel when Hugh +came in. He felt drawn towards her because she was not "clever," as +far as her appearance went. At any rate, she had not the touzled, +ill-groomed hair which he had learned to associate with female +genius.</p> +<p>"This sort of thing is beyond me," he said, mournfully, to +Rachel, his eyes travelling over the assembly gathered round his +wife, whose remarks were calling forth admiring laughter. "I don't +understand half they say, and when I do I sometimes wish I didn't. +But I suppose—" tentatively—"You go in for all this +sort of thing?"</p> +<p>"I?" said Rachel, astonished. "I don't go in for anything. But +what sort of thing do you mean?"</p> +<p>"There is Scarlett," said Doll, with relief, who hated +definitions, and felt the conversation was on the slippery verge of +becoming deep. "Do you know him? Looks as if he'd seen a ghost, +doesn't he?"</p> +<p>Rachel's interest, never a heavy sleeper, was instantly awakened +as she saw Sybell piloting Hugh towards her. She recognized +him—the man she had seen last night in the hansom and +afterwards at the Newhavens. A glance showed her that his trouble, +whatever it might be, had pierced beyond the surface feelings of +anger and impatience and had reached the quick of his heart. The +young man, pallid and heavy-eyed, bore himself well, and Rachel +respected him for his quiet demeanor and a certain dignity, which, +for the moment, obliterated the slight indecision of his face, and +gave his mouth the firmness which it lacked. It seemed to Rachel as +if he had but now stood by a death-bed, and had brought with him +into the crowded room the shadow of an inexorable fate.</p> +<p>The others only perceived that he had a headache. Hugh did not +deny it. He complained of the great heat to Sybell, but not to +Rachel. Something in her clear eyes told him, as they told many +others, that small lies and petty deceits might be laid aside with +impunity in dealing with her. He felt no surprise at seeing her, no +return of the sudden violent emotion of the night before. He had +never spoken to her till this moment, but yet he felt that her eyes +were old friends, tried to the uttermost and found faithful in some +forgotten past. Rachel's eyes had a certain calm fixity in them +that comes not of natural temperament, but of past conflict, long +waged, and barely but irrevocably won. A faint ray of comfort stole +across the desolation of his mind as he looked at her. He did not +notice whether she was handsome or ugly, any more than we do when +we look at the dear familiar faces which were with us in their +childhood and ours, which have grown up beside us under the same +roof, which have rejoiced with us and wept with us, and without +which heaven itself could never be a home.</p> +<p>In a few minutes he was taking her in to dinner. He had imagined +that she was a woman of few words, but after a faint attempt at +conversation he found that he had relapsed into silence, and that +it was she who was talking. Presently the heavy cloud upon his +brain lifted. His strained face relaxed. She glanced at him, and +continued her little monologue. Her face had brightened.</p> +<p>He had dreaded this dinner-party, this first essay to preserve +his balance in public with his frightful invisible burden; but he +was getting through it better than he had expected.</p> +<p>"I have come back to what is called society," Rachel was saying, +"after nearly seven years of an exile something like +Nebuchadnezzar's, and there are two things which I find as +difficult as Kipling's 'silly sailors' found their harps 'which +they twanged unhandily.'"</p> +<p>"Is small talk one of them?" asked Hugh. "It has always been a +difficulty to me."</p> +<p>"On the contrary," said Rachel. "I plume myself on that. Surely +my present sample is not so much below the average that you need +ask me that."</p> +<p>"I did not recognize that it <i>was</i> small talk," said Hugh, +with a faint smile. "If it really is, I can only say I shall have +brain fever if you pass on to what <i>you</i> might call +conversation."</p> +<p>It was to him as if a miniature wavelet of a great ocean +somewhere in the distance had crept up to laugh and break at his +feet. He did not recognize that this tiniest runlet which fell back +at once was of the same element as the tidal wave which had swept +over him yesternight.</p> +<p>"But are you aware," said Rachel, dropping her voice a little, +"it is beginning to dawn upon me that this evening's gathering is +met together for exalted conversation, and perhaps we ought to be +practising a little. I feel certain that after dinner you will be +'drawn through the clefts of confession' by Miss Barker, the woman +in the high dinner gown with orange velvet sleeves. Mrs. Loftus +introduced her to me when I arrived as the 'apostle of +humanity.'"</p> +<p>"Why should you fix on that particular apostle for me?" said +Hugh, looking resentfully at a large-faced woman who was talking in +an "intense" manner to a slightly bewildered Bishop.</p> +<p>"It is a prophetic instinct, nothing more."</p> +<p>"I will have a prophetic instinct, too, then," said Hugh, +helping himself at last to the dish which was presented to him, to +Rachel's relief. "I shall give you the—" looking slowly down +the table.</p> +<p>"The Bishop?"</p> +<p>"Certainly not, after your disposal of me."</p> +<p>"Well, then, the poet? I am sure he is a poet because his tie is +uneven and his hair is so long. Why do literary men wear their hair +long, and literary women wear it short. I should <i>like</i> the +poet."</p> +<p>"You shall not have him," said Hugh, with decision. "I am +hesitating between the bald young man with the fat hand and the +immense ring and the old professor who is drawing plans on the +table-cloth."</p> +<p>"The apostle told me with bated breath that the young man with +the ring is Mr. Harvey, the author of <i>Unashamed</i>."</p> +<p>Hugh looked at his plate to conceal his disgust.</p> +<p>There was a pause in the buzz of conversation, and into it fell +straightway the voice of the apostle like a brick through a +skylight.</p> +<p>"The need of the present age is the realization of our +brotherhood with sin and suffering and poverty. West London in +satin and diamonds does not hear her sister East London in rags +calling to her to deliver her. The voice of East London has been +drowned in the dance-music of the West End."</p> +<p>Sybell gazed with awed admiration at the apostle.</p> +<p>"What a beautiful thought," she said.</p> +<p>"Miss Gresley's <i>Idyll of East London</i>," said Hugh, "is a +voice which, at any rate, has been fully heard."</p> +<p>The apostle put up a <i>pince-nez</i> on a bone leg and looked +at Hugh.</p> +<p>"I entirely disapprove of that little book," she said. "It is +misleading and wilfully one-sided."</p> +<p>"Hester Gresley is a dear friend of mine," said Sybell, "and I +must stand up for her. She is the sister of our clergyman, who is a +very clever man. In fact, I am not sure he isn't the cleverest of +the two. She and I have great talks. We have so much in common. How +strange it seems that she who lives in the depths of the country +should have written a story of the East End!"</p> +<p>"That is always so," said the author of <i>Unashamed</i>, in a +sonorous voice. "The novel has of late been dwarfed to the scope of +the young English girl"—he pronounced it gurl—"who +writes from her imagination and not from her experience. What true +art requires of us is a faithful rendering of a great +experience."</p> +<p>He looked round, as if challenging the world to say that +<i>Unashamed</i> was not a lurid personal reminiscence.</p> +<p>Sybell was charmed. She felt that none of her previous +dinner-parties had reached such a high level as this one.</p> +<p>"A faithful rendering of a great experience," she repeated. "How +I wish Hester were here to hear that. I often tell her she ought to +see life, and cultivated society would do so much for her. I found +her out a year ago, and I'm always begging people to read her book, +and I simply long to introduce her to clever people and oblige the +world to recognize her talent."</p> +<p>"I agree with you, it is not yet fully recognized," said Hugh, +in a level voice; "but if <i>The Idyll</i> received only partial +recognition, it was, at any rate, enthusiastic. And it is not +forgotten."</p> +<p>Sybell felt vaguely uncomfortable, and conceived a faint dislike +of Hugh as an uncongenial person.</p> +<p>The apostle and the poet began to speak simultaneously, but the +female key was the highest, and prevailed.</p> +<p>"We all agree in admiring Miss Gresley's delicate piece of +workmanship," said the apostle, both elbows on the table after the +manner of her kind, "but it is a misfortune to the cause of +suffering humanity—to <i>our</i> cause—when the books +which pretend to set forth certain phases of its existence are +written by persons entirely ignorant of the life they +describe."</p> +<p>"How true!" said Sybell. "I have often thought it, but I never +could put it into words as you do. Oh! how I agree with you and Mr. +Harvey! As I often say to Hester, 'How can you describe anything if +you don't go anywhere or see anything? I can't give you my +experience. No one can.' I said that to her only a month ago, when +she refused to come up to London with me."</p> +<p>Rachel's white face and neck had taken on them the pink +transparent color that generally dwelt only in the curves of her +small ears.</p> +<p>"Why do you think Miss Gresley is ignorant of the life she +describes?" she said, addressing the apostle.</p> +<p>The author and the apostle both opened their mouths at the same +moment, only to register a second triumph of the female tongue.</p> +<p>Miss Barker was in her element. The whole table was listening. +She shrugged her orange-velvet shoulders.</p> +<p>"Those who have cast in their lot with the poor," she said, +sententiously, "would recognize at once the impossibility of Miss +Gresley's characters and situations."</p> +<p>"To me they seem real," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"Ah, my dear Miss West, you will excuse me, but a young lady +like yourself, nursed in the lap of luxury, can hardly be expected +to look at life with the same eyes as a poor waif like myself, who +has penetrated to the very core of the city, and who has heard the +stifled sigh of a vast perishing humanity."</p> +<p>"I lived in the midst of it for six years," said Rachel. "I did +not cast in my lot with the poor, for I was one of them, and earned +my bread among them. Miss Gresley's book may not be palatable in +some respects, the district visitor and the woman missionary are +certainly treated with harshness, but, as far as my experience +goes, <i>The Idyll</i> is a true word from first to last."</p> +<p>There was in Rachel's voice a restrained force that vaguely +stirred all the occupants of the room. Every one looked at her, and +for a moment no one spoke. She became quite colorless.</p> +<p>"Very striking. Just what I should have said in her place," said +Sybell to herself. "I will ask her again."</p> +<p>"I can hear it raining," said Doll's voice from the head of the +table to the company in general. "If it will only go on for a week +without stopping there may be some hope for the crops yet."</p> +<p>The conversation buzzed up again, and Rachel turned instantly to +Hugh, before Mr. Harvey, leaning forward with his ring, had time to +address her.</p> +<p>Hugh alone saw what a superhuman effort it had been to her to +overcome her shrinking from mentioning, not her previous poverty, +but her personal experience. She had sacrificed her natural +reserve, which he could see was great; she had even set good taste +at defiance to defend Hester Gresley's book. Hugh had shuddered as +he heard her speak. He felt that he could not have obtruded himself +on so mixed an assembly. Yet he saw that it had cost her more to do +so than it would have cost him.</p> +<p>He began to remember having heard people speak of an +iron-master's daughter, whose father had failed and died, and who, +after several years of dire poverty, had lately inherited a vast +fortune from her father's partner. It had been talked about at the +time, a few months ago. This must be she.</p> +<p>"You have a great affection for Miss Gresley," he said, in a low +voice.</p> +<p>"I have," said Rachel, her lip still quivering. "But if I +disliked her I hope I should have said the same. Surely it is not +necessary to love the writer in order to defend the book."</p> +<p>Hugh was silent. He looked at her, and wished that she might +always be on his side.</p> +<p>"About two courses ago I was going to tell you," said Rachel, +smiling, "of one of my chief difficulties on my return to the +civilized world and 'Society.' But now you have had an example of +it. I am trying to cure myself of the trick of becoming interested +in conversation. I must learn to use words as counters, not as +coins. I need not disbelieve what I say, but I must not speak of +anything to which I attach value. I perceive that to do this is an +art and a means of defence from invasion. But I, on the contrary, +become interested, as you have just seen. I forget that I am only +playing a game, and I rush into a subject like a bull into a +china-shop, and knock about all the crockery until—as I am +not opposed by my native pitchfork—I suddenly return to my +senses, and discover that I have mistaken a game for real +earnest."</p> +<p>"We were all in earnest five minutes ago," said Hugh; "at least, +I was. I could not bear to hear Miss Gresley patronized by all +these failures and amateurs. But, unless I am very much mistaken, +you will find several pitchforks laid up for you in the +drawing-room."</p> +<p>"I don't mean to smash any more china," said Rachel.</p> +<p>Another wavelet skimmed in and broke a little further up the +sand. A sense of freshness, of expectation was in the air. The +great gathered ocean was stirring itself in the distance. Hugh had +forgotten his trouble.</p> +<p>He turned the conversation back to Hester Gresley and her +writing. He spoke of her with sympathy and appreciation, and +presently detected a softness in Rachel's eyes which made him +jealous of Hester.</p> +<p>By the time the evening was over the imperceptible travelling of +the summer sea had reached as far as the tidal wave.</p> +<p>Hugh left when Rachel did, accompanying her to her carriage. At +the door were the darkness and the rain. At the door with them the +horror and despair of the morning were in wait for him, and laid +hold upon him. Hugh shuddered, and turned instinctively to +Rachel.</p> +<p>She was holding out her hand to him. He took it and held it +tightly in his sudden fear and desolation.</p> +<p>"When shall I meet you again?" he said, hoarsely.</p> +<p>A long look passed between them. Hugh's tortured soul, full of +passionate entreaty, leaped to his eyes. Hers, sad and steadfast, +met the appeal in his, and recognized it as a claim. There was no +surprise in her quiet face.</p> +<p>"I ride early in the Row," she said. "You can join me there if +you wish. Good-night."</p> +<p>She took her hand with great gentleness out of his and drove +away.</p> +<p>And the darkness shut down again on Hugh's heart.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Ici bas tous les hommes pleurent<br /> +Leurs amitiés et leurs amours.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12.5em;">—BOURGET.</span></div> +<p>Many sarcastic but true words have been said by man, and in no +jealous spirit, concerning woman's friendship for woman. The +passing judgment of the majority of men on such devotion might be +summed up in the words, "Occupy till I come." It does occupy till +they do come. And if they don't come the hastily improvised +friendship may hold together for years, like an unseaworthy boat in +a harbor, which looks like a boat but never goes out to sea.</p> +<p>But, nevertheless, here and there among its numberless +counterfeits a friendship rises up between two women which sustains +the life of both, which is still young when life is waning, which +man's love and motherhood cannot displace nor death annihilate; a +friendship which is not the solitary affection of an empty heart, +nor the deepest affection of a full one, but which nevertheless +lightens the burdens of this world and lays its pure hand upon the +next.</p> +<p>Such a friendship, very deep, very tender, existed between +Rachel West and Hester Gresley. It dated back from the nursery +days, when Hester and Rachel solemnly eyed each other, and then +made acquaintance in the dark gardens of Portman Square, into which +Hester introduced a fortified castle with a captive princess in it, +and a rescuing prince and a dragon, and several other ingredients +of romance to the awed amazement of Rachel—stolid, solid, +silent Rachel—who loved all two and four legged creatures, +but who never made them talk to each other as Hester did. And +Hester, in blue serge, told Rachel, in crimson velvet, as they +walked hand in hand in front of their nursery-maids, what the +London sparrows said to each other in the gutters, and how they +considered the gravel path in the square was a deep river suitable +to bathe in. And when the spring was coming, and the prince had +rescued the princess so often from the dungeon in the laurel-bushes +that Hester was tired of it, she told Rachel how the elms were +always sighing because they were shut up in town, and how they went +out every night with their roots into the green country to see +their friends, and came back, oh! so early in the morning, before +any one was awake to miss them. And Rachel's heart yearned after +Hester, and she gave her her red horse and the tin duck and magnet, +and Hester made stories about them all.</p> +<p>At last the day came when Rachel's mother, who had long viewed +the intimacy with complacency, presented her compliments, in a +note-sheet with two immense gilt crests on it, to Hester's aunt, +and requested that her little niece might be allowed to come to tea +with her little daughter. And Lady Susan Gresley, who had never met +the rich iron-master's wife in this world, and would probably be +equally exclusive in the next, was about to refuse, when Hester, +who up to that moment had apparently taken no interest in the +matter, suddenly cast herself on the floor in a paroxysm of despair +and beat her head against the carpet. The tearful entreaties of her +aunt gradually elicited the explanation, riddled by sobs, that +Hester could never take an interest in life again, could never +raise herself even to a sitting position, nor dry her eyes on her +aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go to tea with +Rachel and see her dormouse.</p> +<p>Lady Susan, much upset herself, and convinced that these +outbursts were prejudicial to Hester's health, gave way at once, +and a few days later Hester, pale, shy, in a white muffler, +escorted by mademoiselle, went to tea in the magnificent house on +the other side of the square, and saw Rachel's round head without a +feathered hat on it, and both children were consumed by shyness +until the two mademoiselles withdrew into another room, and Rachel +showed Hester the dormouse which she had found in the woods in the +country, and which ate out of her hand. And Hester made a little +poem on it, beginning,</p> +<div class='blockquot'>"There was a mouse in Portman Square";</div> +<p>and so, with many breaks, the friendship attained a surer +footing, and the intimacy grew with their growth, in spite of the +fact that Lady Susan had felt unable (notwithstanding the marked +advances of Mrs. West, possibly because of them) to enlarge her +visiting-list, in spite of many other difficulties which were only +in the end surmounted by the simplicity of character which Rachel +had not inherited from her parents.</p> +<p>And then, after both girls had danced through one London season +in different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, +and then—by accident—her father, leaving behind him an +avalanche of unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast +fortune was engulfed.</p> +<p>Hard years followed for Rachel. She ate the bread of carefulness +in the houses of poor relations not of high degree, with whom her +parents had quarrelled when they had made their money and began to +entertain social ambitions. She learned what it was to be the +person of least importance in families of no importance. She +essayed to teach, and failed. She had no real education. She made +desperate struggles for independence, and learned how others failed +besides herself. She left her relations and their bitter bread and +came to London, and struggled with those who struggled, and saw how +Temptation spreads her net for bleeding feet. Because she loved +Hester she accepted from her half her slender pin-money. Hester had +said, "If I were poor, Rachel, how would you bear it if I would not +let you help me?" And Rachel had wept slow, difficult tears, and +had given Hester the comfort of helping her. The greater generosity +was with Rachel, and Hester knew it.</p> +<p>And as Rachel's fortunes sank, Hester's rose. Lady Susan Gresley +had one talent, and she did not lay it up in a napkin. She had the +art of attracting people to her house, that house to which Mrs. +West had never forced an entrance. Hester was thrown from the first +into a society which her clergyman brother, who had never seen it, +pronounced to be frivolous, worldly, profane, but which no one has +called dull. There were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady +Susan had managed to place her where they caught the light. Was she +witty? Was she attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to +"cleverness" in a woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to +steel himself against wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. +She refused several offers, one so brilliant that no woman ever +believed that it was really made.</p> +<p>Lady Susan saw that her niece, without a fortune, with little +beauty save that of high breeding, with weak health, was becoming a +personage. "What will she become?" people said. And in the +meanwhile Hester did nothing beyond dressing extremely well. And +everything she saw and every person she met added fuel to an unlit +fire in her soul.</p> +<p>At last Rachel was able to earn a meagre living by type-writing, +and for four years, happy by contrast with those when despair and +failure had confronted her, she lived by the work of her hands +among those poor as herself. Gradually she had lost sight of all +her acquaintances. She had been out of the school-room for too +short a time to make friends. And, alas! in the set in which she +had been launched poverty was a crime; no, perhaps not quite that, +but as much a bar to intercourse as in another class a want of the +letter <i>h</i> is found to be.</p> +<p>It was while Rachel was still struggling for a livelihood that +the event happened which changed the bias of her character, as a +geranium transplanted from the garden changes its attitude in a +cottage window.</p> +<p>On one of the early days of her despair she met on the dreary +stairs of the great rabbit-warren in which she had a room, a man +with whom she had been acquainted in the short year of her social +life before the collapse of her fortunes. He had paid her +considerable attention, and she had thought once or twice, with +momentary bitterness, that, like the rest, he had not cared to find +out what had become of her. She greeted him with shy but evident +pleasure. She took for granted he had come to see her, and he +allowed her to remain under that delusion. In reality he had been +hunting up an old model whom he wanted for his next picture, and +who had silently left Museum Buildings some months before without +leaving his address. He had genuinely admired her, though he had +forgotten her, and he was unaffectedly delighted to see her +again.</p> +<p>That one chance meeting was the first of many. Flowers came to +Rachel's little room, and romance came with them. Rachel's proud, +tender heart struggled, and then gave way before this radiant first +love blossoming in the midst of her loneliness. At last, on a March +afternoon, when the low sun caught the daffodils he had brought +her, he told her he loved her.</p> +<p>Days followed, exquisite days, which have none like them in +later life whatever later life may bring. That year the spring came +early, and they went often together into the country. And that year +when all the world was white with blossom the snow came and laid +upon earth's bridal veil a white shroud. Every cup of May blossom, +every petal of hawthorn, bent beneath its burden of snow. And so it +was in the full spring-tide of Rachel's heart. The snow came down +upon it. She discovered at last that though he loved her he did not +wish to marry her; that even from the time of that first meeting he +had never intended to marry her. That discovery was a shroud. She +wrapped her dead love in it, and would fain have buried it out of +her sight.</p> +<p>But only after a year of conflict was she suffered to bury +it—after a year during which the ghost of her dead ever came +back, and came back to importune her vainly with its love. Rachel's +poor neighbors grew accustomed to see the tall, handsome, waiting +figure which always returned and returned, but which at last, after +one dreadful day, was seen no more in Museum Buildings. Rachel had +laid the ghost at last. But the conflict remained graven in her +face.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>On a certain cold winter morning Hester darted across the wet +pavement from the brougham to the untidy entrance of Museum +Buildings where Rachel still lived. It was a miserable day. The +streets and bare trees looked as if they had been drawn in in ink, +and the whole carelessly blotted before it was dry. All the +outlines were confused, blurred. The cold penetrated to the very +bones of the shivering city.</p> +<p>Rachel had just come in, wet and tired, bringing with her a roll +of manuscript to be transcribed. A woman waiting for her on the +endless stone stairs had cursed her for taking the bread out of her +mouth.</p> +<p>"He always employed me till you came," she shrieked, shaking her +fist at her, "and now he gives it all to you because you're younger +and better-looking."</p> +<p>She gave the woman as much as she dared spare, the calculation +did not take long, and went on climbing the stairs.</p> +<p>Something in the poor creature's words, something vague but +repulsive in her remembrance of the man who paid her for the work +by which she could barely live, fell like lead into Rachel's heart. +She looked out dumbly over the wilderness of roofs. The suffering +of the world was eating into her soul; the suffering of this vast +travailing East London, where people trod each other down to +live.</p> +<p>"If any one had told me," she said to herself, "when I was rich, +that I lived on the flesh and blood of my fellow-creatures, that my +virtue and ease and pleasure were bought by their degradation and +toil and pain, I should not have believed it, and I should have +been angry. If I had been told that the clothes I wore, the food I +ate, the pen I wrote with, the ink I used, the paper I wrote +on—all these, and everything I touched, from my soap to my +match-box, especially my match-box, was the result of sweated +labor, I should not have believed it, I should have laughed. But +yet it is so. If I had not been rich once myself I should think as +all these people do, that the rich are devils incarnate to let such +things go on. They have the power to help us. We have none to help +ourselves. But they never use it. The rich grind the poor for their +luxuries with their eyes shut, and we grind each other for our +daily bread with our eyes open. I have got that woman's work. I +have struggled hard enough to get it, but, though I did not realize +it, I might have known that I had only got on to the raft by +pushing some one else off it."</p> +<p>Rachel looked out across the miles of roofs which lay below her +garret window. The sound was in her ears of that great whirlpool +wherein youth and beauty and innocence go down quick day by day. +The wilderness of leaden roofs turned suddenly before her eyes into +a sullen furrowed sea of shame and crime which, awaiting no future +day of judgment, daily gave up its awful dead.</p> +<p>Presently Hester came in, panting a little after the long ascent +of worn stairs, and dragging with her a large parcel. It was a +fur-lined cloak. Hester spread it mutely before her friend, and +looked beseechingly at her. Then she kissed her, and the two girls +clung together for a moment in silence.</p> +<p>"Dearest," said Rachel, "don't give me new things. It isn't +that—you know I did take it when I was in need. But, oh, +Hester, I know you can't afford it. I should not mind if you were +rich, at least, I would try not, but—if you would only give +me some of your old clothes instead. I should like them all the +better because you had worn them." And Rachel kissed the lapel of +Hester's coat.</p> +<p>"I can't," whispered Hester into Rachel's hair. "The best is +only just good enough."</p> +<p>"Wouldn't it be kinder to me?"</p> +<p>Hester trembled, and then burst into tears.</p> +<p>"I will wear it, I will wear it," said Rachel, hurriedly. "Look, +Hester! I have got it on. How deliciously warm! and—do +look!—it has two little pockets in the fur lining."</p> +<p>But Hester wept passionately, and Rachel sat down by her on the +floor in the new cloak till the paroxysm was over.</p> +<p>How does a subtle affinity find a foothold between natures which +present an obvious, a violent contrast to each other? Why do the +obvious and the subtle forget their life-long feud at intervals and +suddenly appear for a moment in each other's society?</p> +<p>Rachel was physically strong. Hester was weak. The one was calm, +patient, practical, equable, the other imaginative, unbalanced, +excitable.</p> +<p>Life had not spoiled Rachel. Lady Susan Gresley had done her +best to spoil Hester. The one had lived the unprotected life, and +showed it in her bearing. The other had lived the sheltered life, +and bore its mark upon her pure forehead and youthful face.</p> +<p>"I cannot bear it," said Hester at last. "I think and think, and +I can't think of anything. I would give my life for you, and you +will hardly let me give you £3 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> That is +all it cost. It is only frieze, that common red frieze, and the +lining is only rabbit." A last tear fell at the word rabbit. "I +wanted to get you a velvet one, just the same as my new one, lined +with chinchilla, but I knew it would only make you miserable. I +wish," looking vindictively at the cloak—"I wish rabbits had +never been born."</p> +<p>Rachel laughed. Hester was evidently recovering.</p> +<p>"Mr. Scarlett was saying last night that no one can help any +one," continued Hester, turning her white, exhausted face to her +friend. "He said that we are always so placed that we can only look +on. And I told him that could not be true, but, oh, in my heart, +Rachel, I have felt it was true all these long, long five years +since you have lived here."</p> +<p>Rachel came and stood beside her at the little window. There was +just room for them between the type-writer and the bed.</p> +<p>Far below, Hester's brougham was pacing up and down.</p> +<p>"Then are love and sympathy nothing?" she said. "Those are the +real gifts. If I were rich to-morrow I should look to you just as I +do now for the things which money can't buy. And those are the +things"—Rachel's voice shook—"which you have always +given me, and which I can't do without. You feel my poverty more +than I do myself. It crushed me at first when I could not support +myself. Now that I can—and in everything except money I am +very rich—I am comparatively happy."</p> +<p>There was a long silence.</p> +<p>"Perhaps," said Rachel at last, with difficulty, "if I had +remained an heiress Mr. Tristram might have married me. I feel +nearly sure he would have married me. In that case I lost my money +only just in time to prevent a much greater misfortune, and I am +glad I am as I am."</p> +<p>Rachel remembered that conversation often in after-years with a +sense of thankfulness that for once she, who was so reticent, had +let Hester see how dear she was to her.</p> +<p>The two girls stood long together cheek against cheek.</p> +<p>And as Hester leaned against Rachel the yearning of her soul +towards her suddenly lit up something which had long lain colossal, +but inapprehended, in the depths of her mind. Her paroxysm of +despair at her own powerlessness was followed by a lightning flash +of self-revelation. She saw, as in a dream, terrible, beautiful, +inaccessible, but distinct, where her power lay, of which restless +bewildering hints had so often mocked her. She had but to touch the +houses and they would fall down. She held her hands tightly +together lest she should do it. The strength as of an infinite +ocean swept in beneath her weakness, and bore it upon its surface +like a leaf.</p> +<p>"You must go home," said Rachel gently, remembering Lady Susan's +punctual habits.</p> +<p>Hester kissed her absently and went out into the new world which +had been pressing upon her all her life, the gate of which Love had +opened for her. For Love has many keys besides that of her own +dwelling. Some who know her slightly affirm that she can only open +her own cheap patent padlock with a secret word on it that +everybody knows. But some who know her better hold that hers is the +master-key which will one day turn all the locks in all the +world.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>A year later Hester's first book, <i>An Idyll of East +London</i>, was reaping its harvest of astonished indignation and +admiration, and her acquaintances—not her friends—were +still wondering how she came to know so much of a life of which +they decided she could know nothing, when suddenly Lady Susan +Gresley died, and Hester went to live in the country with her +clergyman brother.</p> +<p>A few months later still, and on a mild April day, when the poor +London trees had black buds on them, Rachel brushed and folded away +in the little painted chest of drawers her few threadbare clothes, +and put the boots—which the cobbler, whose wife she had +nursed, had patched for her—under the shelf which held her +few cups and plates and the faithful tin kettle, which had always +been a cheerful boiler. And she washed her seven coarse +handkerchiefs, and put them in the washhandstand drawer. And then +she raked out the fire and cleaned the grate, and set the room in +order. It was quickly done. She took up her hat, which lay beside a +bundle on the bed. Her hands trembled as she put it on. She looked +wistfully round her, and her face worked. The little room which had +looked so alien when she came to it six years ago had become a +home. She went to the window and kissed the pane through which she +had learned to see so much. Then she seized up the bundle and went +quickly out, locking the door behind her, and taking the key with +her.</p> +<p>"I am going away for a time, but I shall come back," she said to +the cobbler's wife on the same landing.</p> +<p>"No one comes back as once goes," said the woman, without +raising her eyes from the cheap blouse which she was finishing, +which kept so well the grim secret of how it came into being that +no one was afraid of buying it.</p> +<p>"I am keeping on the room."</p> +<p>The woman smiled incredulously, giving one sharp glance at the +bundle. She had seen many flittings. She should buy the kettle when +Rachel's "sticks" were sold by the landlord in default of the +rent.</p> +<p>"Well, you was a good neighbor," she said. "There's a-many as +'ull miss you. Good-bye, and good luck to ye. I sha'n't say as +you've left."</p> +<p>"I shall come back," said Rachel, hoarsely, and she slipped +down-stairs like a thief. She felt like a thief. For she was rich. +The man who had led her father into the speculations which had +ruined him had died childless, and had bequeathed to her a colossal +fortune.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, +civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the +debauchee of sentiment?—EMERSON.</p> +</div> +<p>A fortnight had passed since the drawing of lots, and Lady +Newhaven remained in ignorance as to which of the two men had +received his death-warrant. Few have found suspense easy to bear; +but for the self-centred an intolerable element is added to it, +which unselfish natures escape. From her early youth Lady Newhaven +had been in the habit of viewing life in picturesque <i>tableaux +vivants</i> of which she invariably formed the central figure. At +her confirmation the Bishop, the white-robed clergy, and the other +candidates had served but as a nebulous background against which +her own white-clad, kneeling figure, bowed in reverent devotion, +stood out in high relief.</p> +<p>When she married Lord Newhaven he took so slight a part, though +a necessary one, in the wedding groups that their completeness had +never been marred by misgivings as to his exact position in them. +When, six years later, after one or two mild flirtations which only +served as a stimulus to her love of dress—when at last she +met, as she would have expressed it, "the one love of her life," +her first fluctuations and final deviation from the path of honor +were the result of new arrangements round the same centre.</p> +<p>The first groups in which Hugh took part had been prodigies of +virtue. The young mother with the Madonna face—Lady Newhaven +firmly believed that her face, with the crimped fringe drawn down +to the eyebrows, resembled that of a Madonna—with her +children round her, Lord Newhaven as usual somewhat out of focus in +the background; and Hugh, young, handsome, devoted, heartbroken, +and ennobled for life by the contemplation of such impregnable +virtue.</p> +<p>"You accuse me of coldness," she had imagined herself saying in +a later scene, when the children and the husband would have made +too much of a crowd, and were consequently omitted. "I wish to +Heaven I were as cold as I appear."</p> +<p>And she had really said it later on. Hugh never did accuse her +of coldness, but that was a detail. Those words, conned over many +times, had nevertheless actually proceeded out of her mouth. Few of +us have the power of saying anything we intend to say. But Lady +Newhaven had that power, and enjoyed also in consequence a profound +belief in her prophetic instincts; while others, Hugh not excepted, +detected a premeditated tone in her conversation, and a sense of +incongruity between her remarks and the occasion which called them +forth.</p> +<p>From an early date in their married life Lord Newhaven had been +in the habit of discounting these remarks by making them in rapid +rotation himself before proceeding to the matter in hand.</p> +<p>"Having noticed that a mother—I mean a young +mother—is never really happy in the absence of her children, +and that their affection makes up for the carelessness of their +father, may I ask, Violet, what day you wish to return to +Westhope?" he said one morning at breakfast.</p> +<p>"Any day," she replied. "I am as miserable in one place as in +another."</p> +<p>"We will say Friday week, then," returned Lord Newhaven, +ignoring, as he invariably did, any allusions to their relative +position, and because he ignored them she made many. "The country," +he added, hurriedly, "will be very refreshing after the glare and +dust and empty worldly society of London."</p> +<p>She looked at him in anger. She did not understand the reason, +but she had long vaguely felt that all conversation seemed to dry +up in his presence. He mopped it all into his own sponge, so to +speak, and left every subject exhausted.</p> +<p>She rose in silent dignity, and went to her boudoir and lay down +there. The heat was very great, and another fire was burning within +her, withering her round cheek, and making her small, plump hand +look shrunk and thin. A fortnight had passed, and she had not heard +from Hugh. She had written to him many times, at first only +imploring him to meet her, but afterwards telling him she knew what +had happened, and entreating him to put her out of suspense, to +send her one line that his life was not endangered. She had +received no answer to any of her letters. She came to the +conclusion that they had been intercepted by Lord Newhaven, and +that no doubt the same fate had befallen Hugh's letters to herself. +For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed +that Hugh's letters had become less frequent and shorter in length. +She understood the reason now. Half of them had been intercepted. +How that fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may +not be immediately apparent to the prosaic mind, but it was obvious +to Lady Newhaven. That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not +force the narrow entrance to her mind. Such a possibility had never +been even considered in the pictures of the future with which her +imagination busied itself. But what would the future be? The road +along which she was walking forked before her eyes, and her usual +perspicacity was at fault. She knew not in which of those two +diverging paths the future would lie.</p> +<p>Would she in eighteen months' time—she should certainly +refuse to marry within the year—be standing at the altar in a +"confection" of lilac and white with Hugh; or would she be a +miserable wife, moving ghostlike about her house, in colored +raiment, while a distant grave was always white with flowers sent +by a nameless friend of the dead? "How some one must have loved +him!" she imagined Hugh's aged mother saying. And once, as that +bereaved mother came in the dusk to weep beside the grave, did she +not see a shadowy figure start up, black-robed, from the +flower-laden sod, and, hastily drawing a thick veil over a +beautiful, despairing face, glide away among the trees? At this +point Lady Newhaven always began to cry. It was too heart-rending. +And her mind in violent recoil was caught once more, and broken on +the same wheel. "Which? <i>Which</i>?"</p> +<p>A servant entered.</p> +<p>"Would her ladyship see Miss West for a few minutes?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said Lady Newhaven, glad to be delivered from herself, if +only by the presence of an acquaintance.</p> +<p>"It is very charitable of you to see me," said Rachel. +"Personally, I think morning calls ought to be a penal offence. But +I came at the entreaty of a former servant of yours. I feel sure +you will let me carry some message of forgiveness to her, as she is +dying. Her name is Morgan. Do you remember her?"</p> +<p>"I once had a maid called Morgan," said Lady Newhaven. "She was +drunken, and I had to part with her in the end; but I kept her as +long as I could in spite of it. She had a genius for +hair-dressing."</p> +<p>"She took your diamond heart pendant," continued Rachel. "She +was never found out. She can't return it, for, of course, she sold +it and spent the money. But now at last she feels she did wrong, +and she says she will die easier for your forgiveness."</p> +<p>"Oh! I forgive her," said Lady Newhaven, indifferently. "I often +wondered how I lost it. I never cared about it." She glanced at +Rachel, and added tremulously, "My husband gave it me."</p> +<p>A sudden impulse was urging her to confide in this grave, +gentle-eyed woman. The temptation was all the stronger because +Rachel, who had only lately appeared in society, was not connected +with any portion of her previous life. She was as much a chance +acquaintance as a fellow-passenger in a railway carriage.</p> +<p>Rachel rose and held out her hand.</p> +<p>"Don't go," whispered Lady Newhaven, taking her outstretched +hand and holding it.</p> +<p>"I think if I stay," said Rachel, "that you may say things you +will regret later on when you are feeling stronger. You are +evidently tired out now. Everything looks exaggerated when we are +exhausted, as I see you are."</p> +<p>"I am worn out with misery," said Lady Newhaven. "I have not +slept for a fortnight. I feel I must tell some one." And she burst +into violent weeping.</p> +<p>Rachel sat down again, and waited patiently for the hysterical +weeping to cease. Those in whom others confide early learn that +their own engagements, their own pleasures and troubles, are liable +to be set aside at any moment. Rachel was a punctual, exact person, +but she missed many trains. Those who sought her seldom realized +that her day was as full as, possibly fuller, than their own. +Perhaps it was only a very small pleasure to which she had been on +her way on this particular morning, and for which she had put on +that ethereal gray gown for the first time. At any rate, she +relinquished it without a second thought.</p> +<p>Presently Lady Newhaven dried her eyes and turned impulsively +towards her.</p> +<p>The strata of impulsiveness and conventional feeling were always +so mixed up after one of these emotional upheavals that it was +difficult to guess which would come uppermost. Sometimes fragments +of both appeared on the surface together.</p> +<p>"I loved you from the first moment I saw you," she said. "I +don't take fancies to people, you know. I am not that kind of +person. I am very difficult to please, and I never speak of what +concerns myself. I am <i>most</i> reserved. I dare say you have +noticed how reserved I am. I live in my shell. But directly I saw +you I felt I could talk to you. I said to myself, 'I will make a +friend of that girl.' Although I always feel a married woman is so +differently placed from a girl. A girl only thinks of herself. I am +not saying this the least unkindly, but, of course, it is so. Now a +married woman has to consider her husband and family in all she +says and does. How will it affect <i>them?</i> That is what I so +often say to myself, and then my lips are sealed. But, of course, +being unmarried, you would not understand that feeling."</p> +<p>Rachel did not answer. She was inured to this time-honored +conversational opening.</p> +<p>"And the temptations of married life," continued Lady +Newhaven—"a girl cannot enter into them."</p> +<p>"Then do not tell me about them," said Rachel, smiling, +wondering if she might still escape. But Lady Newhaven had no +intention of letting her go. She only wished to indicate to her her +true position. And gradually, not without renewed outbursts of +tears, not without traversing many layers of prepared conventional +feelings, in which a few thin streaks of genuine emotion wore +embedded, she told her story—the story of a young, +high-minded, and neglected wife, and of a husband callous, +indifferent, a scorner of religion, unsoftened even by the advent +of the children—"such sweet children, such little +darlings"—and the gradual estrangement. Then came the +persistent siege to the lonely heart of one not pretty, perhaps, +but fatally attractive to men; the lonely heart's unparalleled +influence for good over the besieger.</p> +<p>"He would do anything," said Lady Newhaven, looking earnestly at +Rachel. "My influence over him is simply boundless. If I said, as I +sometimes did at balls, how sorry I was to see some plain girl +standing out, he would go and dance with her. I have seen him do +it."</p> +<p>"I suppose he did it to please you."</p> +<p>"That was just it, simply to please me."</p> +<p>Rachel was not so astonished as Lady Newhaven expected. She +certainly was rather wooden, the latter reflected. The story went +on. It became difficult to tell, and, according to the teller, more +and more liable to misconstruction. Rachel's heart ached as bit by +bit the inevitable development was finally reached in floods of +tears.</p> +<p>"And you remember that night you were at an evening party here," +sobbed Lady Newhaven, casting away all her mental notes and +speaking extempore. "It is just a fortnight ago, and I have not +slept since, and <i>he</i> was here, looking so +miserable"—(Rachel started slightly)—"he sometimes did, +if he thought I was hard upon him. And afterwards, when every one +had gone, Edward took him to his study and told him he had found us +out, and they drew lots which should kill himself within five +months—and I listened at the door."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven's voice rose half strangled, hardly human, in a +shrill grotesque whimper above the sobs which were shaking her. +There was no affectation about her now.</p> +<p>Rachel's heart went out to her the moment she was natural. She +knelt down and put her strong arms round her. The poor thing clung +to her, and, leaning her elaborate head against her, wept tears of +real anguish upon her breast.</p> +<p>"And which drew the short lighter?" said Rachel at last.</p> +<p>"I don't know," almost shrieked Lady Newhaven. "It is that which +is killing me. Sometimes I think it is Edward, and sometimes I +think it is Hugh."</p> +<p>At the name of Hugh, Rachel winced. Lady Newhaven had mentioned +no name in the earlier stages of her story while she had some +vestige of self-command; but now at last the Christian name slipped +out unawares.</p> +<p>Rachel strove to speak calmly. She told herself there were many +Hughs in the world.</p> +<p>"Is Mr. Hugh Scarlett the man you mean?" she asked. If she had +died for it, she must have asked that question.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>A shadow fell on Rachel's face, as on the face of one who +suddenly discovers, not for the first time, an old enemy advancing +upon him under the flag of a new ally.</p> +<p>"I shall always love him," gasped Lady Newhaven, recovering +herself sufficiently to recall a phrase which she had made up the +night before. "I look upon it as a spiritual marriage."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>A square-set man and honest.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">—TENNYSON.</span></div> +<p>"Dick," said Lord Newhaven, laying hold of that gentleman as he +was leaving Tattersall's, "what mischief have you been up to for +the last ten days?"</p> +<p>"I lay low till I got my clothes," said Dick, "and then I went +to the Duke of ——. I've just been looking at a hack for +him. He says he does not want one that takes a lot of sitting on. I +met him the first night I landed. In fact, I stepped out of the +train on to his royal toe travelling incog. I was just going to +advise him to draw in his feelers a hit and give the Colonies a +chance, when he turned round and I saw who it was. I knew him when +I was A.D.C. at Melbourne before I took to the drink. He said he +thought he'd know my foot anywhere, and asked me down for +—— races."</p> +<p>"And you enjoyed it?"</p> +<p>"Rather. I did not know what to call the family at first, so I +asked him if he had any preference and what was the right thing, +and he told me how I must hop up whenever he came in, and all that +sort of child's play. There was a large party and some uncommonly +pretty women. And I won a tenner off his Royal Highness, and here I +am."</p> +<p>"And what are you going to do now?"</p> +<p>"Go down to the city and see what Darneil's cellars are like +before I store my wine in them. It won't take long. Er!—I +say, Cack—Newhaven?"</p> +<p>"Well?"</p> +<p>"Ought I to—how about my calling on Miss—? I never +caught her name."</p> +<p>"Miss West, the heiress?"</p> +<p>"Yes. Little attention on my part."</p> +<p>"Did she ask you to call?"</p> +<p>"No, but I think it was an oversight. I expect she would like +it."</p> +<p>"Well, then, go and be—snubbed."</p> +<p>"I don't want snubbing. A little thing like me wants +encouragement."</p> +<p>"A good many other people are on the lookout for encouragement +in that quarter."</p> +<p>"That settles it," said Dick; "I'll go at once. I've got to call +on Lady Susan Gresley, and I'll take Miss—"</p> +<p>"West. West. West."</p> +<p>"Miss West on the way."</p> +<p>"My dear fellow, Miss West does not live on the way to Woking. +Lady Susan Gresley died six months ago."</p> +<p>"Great Scot! I never heard of it. And what has become of Hester? +She is a kind of cousin of mine."</p> +<p>"Miss Gresley has gone to live in the country a few miles from +us, with her clergyman brother."</p> +<p>"James Gresley. I remember him. He's a bad egg."</p> +<p>"Now, Dick, are you in earnest, or are you talking nonsense +about Miss West?"</p> +<p>"I'm in earnest." He looked it.</p> +<p>"Then, for heaven's sake, don't put your foot in it by calling. +My wife has taken a violent fancy to Miss West. I don't think it is +returned, but that is a detail. If you want to give her a chance, +leave it to me."</p> +<p>"I know what that means. You married men are mere sieves. You'll +run straight home with your tongue out and tell Lady Newhaven that +I want to marry Miss—I can't clinch her name—and then +she'll tell her when they are combing their back hair. And then if +I find, later on, I don't like her and step off the grass, I shall +have behaved like a perfect brute, and all that sort of thing. A +man I knew out in Melbourne told me that by the time he'd taken a +little notice of a likely girl, he'd gone too far to go back, and +he had to marry her."</p> +<p>"You need not be so coy. I don't intend to mention the subject +to my wife. Besides, I don't suppose Miss West will look at you. +You're a wretched match for her. With her money she might marry a +brewery or a peerage."</p> +<p>"I'll put myself in focus anyhow," said Dick. "Hang it all! if +you could get a woman to marry you, there is hope for everybody. I +don't expect it will be as easy as falling off a log. But if she is +what I take her to be I shall go for all I'm worth."</p> +<p>Some one else was going for all he was worth. Lord Newhaven rode +early, and he had frequently seen Rachel and Hugh riding together +at foot's pace. Possibly his offer to help Dick was partly prompted +by an unconscious desire to put a spoke in Hugh's wheel.</p> +<p>Dick, whose worst enemy could not accuse him of diffidence, +proved a solid spoke but for a few days only. Rachel suddenly broke +all her engagements and left London.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Pour vivre tranquille il faut vivre loin des gens +d'église."</p> +</div> +<p>There is a little stream which flows through Middleshire which +seems to reflect the spirit of that quiet county, so slow is its +course, so narrow is its width. Even the roads don't take the +trouble to bridge it. They merely hump themselves slightly when +they feel it tickling underneath them, and go on, vouchsafing no +further notice of its existence. Yet the Drone is a local celebrity +in Middleshire, and, like most local celebrities, is unknown +elsewhere. The squire's sons have lost immense trout in the Drone +as it saunters through their lands, and most of them have duly +earned thereby the distinction (in Middleshire) of being the best +trout-rod in England. Middleshire bristles with the "best shots in +England" and the "best preachers in England" and the cleverest men +in England. The apathetic mother-country knows, according to +Middleshire, "but little of her greatest men." At present she +associates her loyal county with a breed of small black pigs.</p> +<p>Through this favored locality the Drone winds, and turns and +turns again, as if loath to leave the rich, low meadow-lands and +clustering villages upon its way. After skirting the little town of +Westhope and the gardens of Westhope Abbey, the Drone lays itself +out in comfortable curves and twists innumerable through the length +and breadth of the green country till it reaches Warpington, whose +church is so near the stream that in time of flood the water +hitches all kinds of things it has no further use for among the +grave-stones of the little church-yard. On one occasion, after +repeated prayers for rain, it even overflowed the lower part of the +vicar's garden, and vindictively carried away his bee-hives. But +that was before he built the little wall at the bottom of the +garden.</p> +<p>Slightly raised above the church, on ground held together by old +elms, the white vicarage of Warpington stands, blinking ever +through its trees at the church like a fond wife at her husband. +Indeed, so like had she become to him that she had even developed a +tiny bell-tower near the kitchen chimney, with a single bell in it, +feebly rung by a female servant on saints' days and G.F.S. +gatherings.</p> +<p>About eight o'clock on this particular morning in July the Drone +could hear, if it wanted to hear, which apparently no one else did, +the high, unmodulated voice in which Mr. Gresley was reading the +morning service to Mrs. Gresley and to a young thrush, which was +hurling its person, like an inexperienced bicyclist, now against +Lazarus and his grave-clothes, now against the legs of John the +Baptist, with one foot on a river's edge and the other firmly +planted in a distant desert, and against all the other Scripture +characters in turn which adorned the windows.</p> +<p>The service ended at last, and, after releasing his unwilling +congregation by catching and carrying it, beak agape, into the open +air, Mr. Gresley and his wife walked through the +church-yard—with its one melancholy Scotch fir, embarrassed +by its trouser of ivy—to the little gate which led into their +garden.</p> +<p>They were a pleasing couple, seen at a little distance. He, at +least, evidently belonged to a social status rather above that of +the average clergyman, though his wife may not have done so. Mr. +Gresley, with his long, thin nose and his short upper lip and tall, +well-set-up figure, bore on his whole personality the stamp of that +for which it is difficult to find the right name, so unmeaning has +the right name become by dint of putting it to low uses—the +maltreated, the travestied name of "gentleman."</p> +<p>None of those moral qualities, priggish or otherwise, are +assumed for Mr. Gresley which, we are told, distinguish the true, +the perfect gentleman, and some of which, thank Heaven! the +"gentleman born" frequently lacks. Whether he had them or not was a +matter of opinion, but he had that which some who have it not +strenuously affirm to be of no value—the right outside.</p> +<p>To any one who looked beyond the first impression of +good-breeding and a well-cut coat, a second closer glance was +discouraging. Mr. Gresley's suspicious eye and thin, compressed +lips hinted that both fanatic and saint were fighting for +predominance in the kingdom of that pinched brain, the narrowness +of which the sloping forehead betokened with such cruel plainness. +He looked as if he would fling himself as hard against a truth +without perceiving it as a hunted hare against a stone-wall. He was +unmistakably of those who only see side issues.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley took her husband's arm as he closed the gate. She +was still young and still pretty, in spite of the arduous duties of +a clergyman's wife, and the depressing fact that she seemed always +wearing out old finery. Perhaps her devotion to her husband had +served to prolong her youth, for as the ivy is to the oak, and as +the moon is to the sun, and as the river is to the sea, so was Mrs. +Gresley to Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>The fortunate couple were advancing through the garden, looking +fondly at their own vicarage, with their own sponges hanging out of +their upper windows, and their offspring waving to them from a +third, when a small, slight figure appeared on the terrace.</p> +<p>"James," said Mrs. Gresley, with decision, "it is your duty to +speak to Hester about attending early service. If she can go out in +the garden she can come to church."</p> +<p>"I have spoken to her once," said Mr. Gresley, frowning, "and +though I put it before her very plainly she showed great obstinacy. +Fond as I am of Hester, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that she +has an arrogant and callous nature. But we must remember, my love, +that Aunt Susan was most lax in all her views, and we must make +allowance for Hester, who lived with her till last year. It is only +natural that Hester, bred up from childhood in that worldly +circle—dinner-parties all through Lent, and Sunday +luncheons—should have fallen through want of solid church +teaching into freethinking and ideas of her own upon religion."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley's voice was of that peculiar metallic note which +carries farther than the owner is aware. It rose, if contradicted, +into a sort of continuous trumpet-blast which drowned all other +lesser voices. Hester's little garret was two stories above Mr. +Gresley's study on the ground floor, but, nevertheless, she often +heard confused, anxious parochial buzzings overwhelmed by that +sustained high note which knew no cessation until objection or +opposition ceased. As she came towards them, she heard with perfect +distinctness what he was saying, but it did not trouble her. Hester +was gifted with imagination, and imagination does not find it +difficult to read by the shorthand of the expressions and habitual +opinions and repressions of others what they occasionally say at +full length, and to which they fondly believe they are giving +utterance for the first time. Mr. Gresley had said all this many +times already by his manner, and it had by its vain repetitions +lost its novelty. Mr. Gresley was fortunately not aware of this, +for unimaginative persons believe themselves to be sealed books, as +hermetically sealed as the characters of others are to +themselves.</p> +<p>Hester was very like her brother. She had the same nose, +slightly too long for her small face, the same short upper lip and +light hair, only her brother's was straight and hers was crimped, +as wet sand is crimped by a placid outgoing sea. That she had an +equally strong will was obvious. But there the likeness ended. +Hester's figure was slight, and she stooped a little. Hester's eyes +were very gentle, very appealing under their long, curled lashes. +They were sad, too, as Mr. Gresley's never were, gay as his never +were. An infinite patience looked out of them sometimes, that +patience of enthusiasm which will cast away its very soul and all +its best years for the sake of an ideal. Hester showed her age in +her eyes. She was seven-and-twenty, and appeared many years younger +until she looked at you.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley looked with veiled irritation at her sister-in-law +in her clean holland gown, held in at the waist with a broad lilac +ribbon, adroitly drawn in picturesque folds through a little silver +buckle.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley, who had a waist which the Southminster dress-maker +informed her had "to be kept down," made a mental note for the +hundredth time that Hester "laced in."</p> +<p>Hester gave that impression of "finish" and sharpness of edge so +rarely found among the blurred, vague outlines of English women. +There was nothing vague about her. Lord Newhaven said she had been +cut out body and mind with a sharp pair of scissors. Her irregular +profile, her delicate, pointed speech and fingers, her manner of +picking up her slender feet as she walked, her quick, alert +movements—everything about her was neat, adjusted, perfect in +its way, yet without more apparent effort than the <i>succés +fou</i> in black and white of the water wagtail, which she so +closely resembled.</p> +<p>"Good-morning," she said, turning back with them to the house. +"Abel says it is going to be the hottest day we have had yet. And +the letter-bag is so fat that I could hardly refrain from opening +it. Really, James, you ought to hide the key, or I shall succumb to +temptation."</p> +<p>Once in the days of her ignorance, when she first came to live +at Warpington, Hester had actually turned the key in the lock of +the sacred letter-bag when the Gresleys were both late, and had +extracted her own letters. She never did it a second time. On the +contrary, she begged pardon in real regret at having given such +deep offence to her brother and his wife, and in astonishment that +so simple an action could offend. She had made an equally +distressing blunder in the early days of her life with the Gresleys +by taking up the daily paper on its arrival in the afternoon.</p> +<p>"My dear Hester," Mrs. Gresley said, really scandalized, "I am +sure you won't mind my saying so, but James has not seen his paper +yet."</p> +<p>"I have noticed he never by any chance looks at it till the +evening, and you always say you never read it," said Hester, deep +in a political crisis.</p> +<p>"That is his rule, and a very good rule it is; but he naturally +likes to be the <i>first</i> to look at it," said Mrs. Gresley, +with a great exercise of patience. She had heard Hester was clever, +but she found her very stupid. Everything had to be explained to +her.</p> +<p>Her tone recalled Hester from the Indian tribal rising and the +speech of the Prime Minister to the realities of life. It was +fortunate for her that she was quick-witted. These two flagrant +blunders were sufficient for her. She grasped the principle that +those who have a great love of power and little scope for it must +necessarily exercise it in trivial matters. She extended the +principle of the newspaper and the letter-bag over her entire +intercourse with the Gresleys and never offended in that manner +again.</p> +<p>On this particular morning she waited decorously beside her +brother as he opened the bag and dealt out the contents into three +heaps. Hester pounced on hers and subsided into her chair at the +breakfast-table.</p> +<p>"I wonder," said Mrs. Gresley, looking at Hester's pile of +letters over the top of her share of the morning's +correspondence—namely, a list of Pryce Jones—"that you +care to write so many letters, Hester. I am sure I never did such a +thing when I was a girl. I should have regarded it as a waste of +time."</p> +<p>"Ha!" said Mr. Gresley, in a gratified tone, opening a little +roll. "What have we here? Proofs! My paper upon 'Modern Dissent.' I +told Edwards I would not allow him to put it in his next number of +the <i>Southminster Advertiser</i> until I had glanced at it in +print. I don't know when I shall find time to correct it. I shall +be out all the afternoon at the chapter meeting."</p> +<p>He looked at Hester. She had laid down her letters and was +taking a cup of coffee from Mrs. Gresley. She evidently had not +heard her brother's remark.</p> +<p>"You and I must lay our heads together over this, Hester," he +said, holding up with some pride a long slip of proof. "It will be +just in your line. You might run it over after breakfast," he +continued, in high good-humor, "and put in the stops and grammar +and spelling—you're more up in that sort of thing than I +am—and then we will go through it together."</p> +<p>Hester was quite accustomed, when her help was asked as to a +composition, to receive as a reason for the request the extremely +gratifying assurance that she was "good" at punctuation and +spelling. It gave the would-be author a comfortable feeling that, +after all, he was only asking advice on the crudest technical +matters on which Hester's superiority could be admitted without a +loss of masculine self-respect.</p> +<p>"I would rather not tamper with punctuation and spelling," said +Hester, dryly. "I am so shaky on both myself. You had better ask +the school-master. He knows all that sort of ABC better than I +do."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley frowned, and looked suspiciously at her. He wanted +Hester's opinion, of which she was perfectly aware. But she +intended that he should ask for it.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley, behind the coffee-pot, felt that she was +overlooked. She had helped Mr. Gresley with his numerous literary +efforts until Hester came.</p> +<p>"I saw you correcting some one's manuscript last week," he said. +"You were at it all day in the hay-field."</p> +<p>"That was different. I was asked to criticise the style and +composition."</p> +<p>"Oh, well," said Mr. Gresley, "don't let us split hairs. I don't +want an argument about it. If you'll come into my study at ten +o'clock I'll get it off my hands at once."</p> +<p>"With pleasure," said Hester, looking at him with rueful +admiration. She had tried a hundred times to get the better of him +in conversation, but she had not yet succeeded.</p> +<p>"I have a message for you," continued Mr. Gresley, in restored +good-humor. "Mrs. Loftus writes that she is returning to +Wilderleigh at the end of the week, and that the sale of work may +take place in the Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August. +And—let me see, I will read what she says:</p> +<p>"'I am not unmindful of our conversation on the duty of those +who go annually to London to bring a spiritual influence to bear on +society'—("I impressed that upon her before she went +up.")—'We had a most interesting dinner-party last week, +nearly all celebrated and gifted persons, and the conversation was +really beyond anything I can describe to you. I thought my poor +brain would turn. I was quite afraid to join in. But Mr. +Harvey—the great Mr. Harvey—told me afterwards I was at +my best. One lady, Miss Barker, who has done so much for the East +End, is coming down to Wilderleigh shortly for a rest. I am anxious +you should talk to her. She says she has doubts, and she is tired +of the Bible. By the way, please tell Hester, with my love, that +she and Mr. Harvey attacked <i>The Idyll of East London</i>, and +showed it up entirely, and poor little me had to stand up for her +against them all."</p> +<p>"She would never do that," said Hester, tranquilly. "She might +perhaps have said, 'The writer is a friend of mine. I must stand up +for her.' But she would never have gone beyond saying it to doing +it."</p> +<p>"Hester," exclaimed Mrs. Gresley, feeling that she might just as +well have remained a spinster if she was to be thus ignored in her +own house, "I can't think how you can allow your jealousy of Sybell +Loftus, for I can attribute it to nothing else, to carry you so +far."</p> +<p>"Perhaps it had better carry me into the garden," said Hester, +rising with the others. "You must forgive me if I spoke irritably. +I have a racking headache."</p> +<p>"She looks ill," said her brother, following Hester's figure +with affectionate solicitude, as she passed the window a moment +later.</p> +<p>"And yet she does next to nothing," said the hard-worked little +wife, intercepting the glance. "I always thought she wrote her +stories in the morning. I know she is never about if the Pratt +girls call to see her before luncheon. Yet when I ran up to her +room yesterday morning to ask her to take Mary's music, as +Fräulein had the headache"—(Mrs. Gresley always spoke of +"the headache" and "the toothache")—"she was lying on her bed +doing nothing at all."</p> +<p>"She is very unaccountable," said Mr. Gresley. "Still, I can +make allowance for the artistic temperament. I share it to a +certain degree. Poor Hester. She is a spoiled child."</p> +<p>"Indeed, James, she is. And she has an enormous opinion of +herself. For my part, I think the Bishop is to blame for making so +much of her. Have you never noticed how different she is when he is +here, so gay and talkative, and when we are alone she hardly says a +word for days together, except to the children?"</p> +<p>"She talked more when she first came," said Mr. Gresley. "But +when she found I made it a rule to discourage argument"—(by +argument Mr. Gresley meant difference of opinion)—"she seemed +gradually to lose interest in conversation. Yet I have heard the +Bishop speak of her as a brilliant talker. And Lord Newhaven asked +me last spring how I liked having a celebrity for a sister. A +celebrity! Why, half the people in Middleshire don't even know of +Hester's existence." And the author of "Modern Dissent" +frowned.</p> +<p>"That was a hit at you, my dear," said Mrs. Gresley. "It was +just after your pamphlet on 'Schism' appeared. Lord Newhaven always +says something disagreeable. Don't you remember, when you were +thinking of exchanging Warpington for that Scotch living, he said +he knew you would not do it because with your feeling towards +Dissent you would never go to a country where you would be a +Dissenter yourself?"</p> +<p>"How about the proofs?" said Hester, through the open window. "I +am ready when you are, James."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Wonderful power to benumb possesses this +brother.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21em;">—EMERSON.</span></div> +<p>"Of course, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, leading the way to his +study and speaking in his lesson-for-the-day voice, "I don't +pretend to write"—("They always say that," thought +Hester)—"I have not sufficient leisure to devote to the +subject to insure becoming a successful author. And even if I had I +am afraid I should not be willing to sell my soul to obtain +popularity, for that is what it comes to in these days. The public +must be pandered to. It must be amused. The public likes smooth +things, and the great truths—the only things I should care to +write about—are not smooth, far from it."</p> +<p>"No, indeed."</p> +<p>"This little paper on 'Dissent,' which I propose to publish in +pamphlet form after its appearance as a serial—it will run to +two numbers in the <i>Southminster Advertiser</i>—was merely +thrown off in a few days when I had influenza, and could not attend +to my usual work."</p> +<p>"It must be very difficult to work in illness," said Hester, who +had evidently made a vow during her brief sojourn in the garden, +and was now obviously going through that process which the society +of some of our fellow-creatures makes as necessary as it is +fatiguing—namely, that of thinking beforehand what we are +going to say.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed +herself flat under one of these resolutions. He was wont to say +that no one was pleasanter than Hester when she was reasonable, or +made more suitable remarks. He perceived with joy that she was +reasonable now, and the brother and sister sat down close together +at the writing-table with the printed sheets between them.</p> +<p>"I will read aloud," said Mr. Gresley, "and you can follow me, +and stop me if you think—er—the sense is not quite +clear."</p> +<p>"I see."</p> +<p>The two long noses, the larger freckled one surmounted by a +<i>pince-nez</i>, the other slightly pink, as if it had absorbed +the tint of the blotting-paper over which it was so continually +poised, both bent over the sheets.</p> +<p>Through the thin wall which separated the school-room from the +study came the sound of Mary's scales. Mary was by nature a child +of wrath, as far as music was concerned, and +Fräulein—anxious, musical Fräulein—was +strenuously endeavoring to impart to her pupil the rudiments of +what was her chief joy in life.</p> +<p>"'Modern Dissent,'" read aloud Mr. Gresley, "by Veritas."</p> +<p>"<i>Veritas</i>!" repeated Hester. Astonishment jerked the word +out of her before she was aware. She pulled herself hastily +together.</p> +<p>"Certainly," said the author, looking at his sister through his +glasses, which made the pupils of his eyes look as large as the +striped marbles on which Mary and Regie spent their pennies. +"Veritas," he continued, "is a Latin word signifying Truth."</p> +<p>"So I fancied. But is not <i>Truth</i> rather a large name to +adopt as a <i>nom de guerre</i>? Might it not seem +rather—er—in a layman it would appear arrogant."</p> +<p>"I am not a layman, and I do not pretend to write on subjects of +which I am ignorant," said Mr. Gresley, with dignity. "This is not +a work of fiction. I don't imagine this, or fancy that, or invent +the other. I merely place before the public, forcibly, and in a +novel manner, a few great truths."</p> +<p>Mary was doing her finger exercises. C, C, C, with the thumb; D, +D, D, with the first finger, Fräulein was repeating. "Won! +two! free! Won! two! free!" with a new intonation of cheerful +patience at each repetition.</p> +<p>"Ah!" said Hester. "A few great truths. Then the name must be +'Veritas.' You would not reconsider it?"</p> +<p>"Certainly not," said Mr. Gresley, his eye challenging hers. "It +is the name I am known by as the author of 'Schism.'"</p> +<p>"I had momentarily forgotten 'Schism,'" said Hester, dropping +her glance.</p> +<p>"I went through a good deal of obloquy about 'Schism,'" said Mr. +Gresley with pride, "and I should not wonder if 'Modern Dissent' +caused quite a ferment in Middleshire. If it does, I am willing to +bear a little spite and ill-will. All history shows that truth is +met at first by opposition. Half the country clergy round here are +asleep. Good men, but lax. They want waking up. I said as much to +the Bishop the other day, and he agreed with me; for he said that +if some of his younger clergy could be waked up to a sense of their +own arrogance and narrowness he would hold a public thanksgiving in +the cathedral. But he added that he thought nothing short of the +last trump would do it."</p> +<p>"I agree with him," said Hester, having first said the sentence +to herself, and having decided it was innocuous.</p> +<p>The climax of the music lesson had arrived. "The Blue Bells of +Scotland"—the sole <i>Clavier Stück</i> which Mary's +rigidly extended little starfishes of hands could wrench out of the +school-room piano—was at its third bar.</p> +<p>"Well," said Mr. Gresley, refreshed by a cheering retrospect. +"Now for 'Modern Dissent.'"</p> +<p>A strenuous hour ensued.</p> +<p>Hester was torn in different directions, at one moment tempted +to allow the most flagrant passages to pass unchallenged rather +than attempt the physical impossibility of interrupting the reader +only to be drawn into a dispute with him, at another burning to +save her brother from the consequences which wait on certain +utterances.</p> +<p>Presently Mr. Gresley's eloquence, after various tortuous and +unnatural windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage +after following the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears +a villa. Hester had seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see +the villa through the trees long before we are allowed to approach +it, and she longed to save her brother from what was in her eyes as +much a degradation as a <i>tu quoque</i>. But she remembered in +time that the Gresleys considered she had no sense of humor, and +she decided to let it pass. Mr. Gresley enjoyed it so much himself +that he hardly noticed her fixed countenance.</p> +<p>Why does so deep a gulf separate those who have a sense of humor +and those who, having none, are compensated by the conviction that +they possess it more abundantly? The crevasse seems to extend far +inland to the very heights and water-sheds of character. Those who +differ on humor will differ on principles. The Gresleys and the +Pratts belonged to that large class of our fellow-creatures who, +conscious of a genius for adding to the hilarity of our sad planet, +discover an irresistible piquancy in putting a woman's hat on a +man's head, and in that "verbal romping" which playfully designates +a whiskey-and-soda as a gargle, and says "au reservoir" instead of +"au revoir."</p> +<p>At last, however, Hester nervously put her hand over the next +sheet, as he read the final words of the last.</p> +<p>"Wait a moment," she said, hurriedly. "This last page, James. +Might it not be well to reconsider it? Is it politic to assume such +great ignorance on the part of Nonconformists? Many I know are +better educated than I am."</p> +<p>"My dear," said Mr. Gresley, "ignorance is at the root of any +difference of opinion on such a subject as this. I do not say +wilful ignorance, but the want of sound Church teaching. I must cut +at the roots of this ignorance."</p> +<p>"Dear James, it is thrice killing the slain. No one believes +these fallacies which you are exposing—the Nonconformists +least of all. Those I have talked with don't hold these absurd +opinions that you put down to them. You don't even touch their real +position. You are elaborately knocking down ninepins that have +never stood up, because they have nothing to stand on."</p> +<p>"I am not proposing to play a game of mental skittles," said the +clerical author. "It is enough for me, as I said before, to cut at +the roots of ignorance wherever I see it flourishing, not to pull +off the leaves one by one as you would have me do by dissecting +their opinions. This may not be novel, it may not even be amusing, +but, nevertheless, Hester, a clergyman's duty is to wage unceasing +war against spiritual ignorance. And what," read on Mr. Gresley, +after a triumphant moment in which Hester remained silent, "is the +best means of coping against ignorance, against +darkness"—("It was a root a moment ago," thought +Hester)—"but by the infusion of light? The light shineth in +darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Half a page more +and the darkness was 'Modern Dissent.' Hester put her hand over her +mouth and kept it there.</p> +<p>The familiar drama of a clerical bull and a red rag was played +out before her eyes, and, metaphorically speaking, she followed the +example of the majority of laymen and crept up a tree to be out of +the way.</p> +<p>When it was all over she came down trembling.</p> +<p>"Well! what do you think of it?" said Mr. Gresley, rising and +pacing up and down the room.</p> +<p>"You hit very hard," said Hester, after a moment's +consideration. She did not say, "You strike home."</p> +<p>"I have no opinion of being mealy-mouthed," said Mr. Gresley, +who was always perfectly satisfied with a vague statement. "If you +have anything worth saying, say it plainly. That is my motto. Don't +hint this or that, but take your stand upon a truth and strike +out."</p> +<p>"Why not hold out our hands to our fellow-creatures instead of +striking at them?" said Hester, moving towards the door.</p> +<p>"I have no belief in holding out our hands to the enemies of +Christ," Mr. Gresley began, who in the course of his pamphlet had +thus gracefully designated the great religious bodies who did not +view Christianity through the convex glasses of his own mental +<i>pince-nez</i>. "In these days we see too much of that. I leave +that to the Broad Church, who want to run with the hare and hunt +with the hounds. I, on the contrary—"</p> +<p>But Hester had vanished.</p> +<p>There was a dangerous glint in her gray eyes, as she ran up to +her little attic.</p> +<p>"According to him, our Lord must have been the first +Nonconformist," she said to herself. "If I had stayed a moment +longer I should have said so. For once I got out of the room in +time."</p> +<p>Hester's attic was blisteringly hot. It was over the kitchen, +and through the open window came the penetrating aroma of roast +mutton newly wedded to boiled cabbage. Hester had learned during +the last six months all the variations of smells, evil, subtle, +nauseous, and overpowering, of which the preparation of +food—and, still worse, the preparation of chicken +food—is capable. She seized her white hat and umbrella and +fled out of the house.</p> +<p>She moved quickly across a patch of sunlight, looking, with her +large white, pink-lined umbrella, like a travelling mushroom on a +slender stem, and only drew rein in the shady walk near the +beehives, where the old gardener, Abel, was planting something +large in the way of "runners" or "suckers," making a separate hole +for each with his thumb.</p> +<p>Abel was a solid, pear-shaped man, who passed through life bent +double over the acre of Vicarage garden, to which he committed long +lines of seeds, which an attentive Providence brought up in due +season as "curly kebbidge" or "salary" or "sparrow-grass."</p> +<p>Abel had his back towards Hester, and only the corduroy half of +him was visible as he stooped over his work. Occasionally he could +be induced to straighten himself, and—holding himself +strongly at the hinge with earth-ingrained hands—to discourse +on polities and religion, and to opine that our policy in China was +"neither my eye nor my elber." "The little lady," as he called +Hester, had a knack of drawing out Abel; but to-day, as he did not +see her, she slipped past him, and, crossing the church-yard, sat +down for a moment in the porch to regain her breath, under the card +of printed texts offered for the consideration of his flock by +their young pastor.</p> +<p>"How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of +God," was the culling from the Scriptures which headed the +selection.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href= +"#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> Hester knew that card +well, though she never by any chance looked at it. She had offended +her brother deeply by remonstrating, or, as he called it, by +"interfering in church matters," when he nailed it up. After a few +minutes she dropped over the low church-yard wall into the meadow +below, and flung herself down on the grass in the short shadow of a +yew near at hand. What little air there was to be had came to her +across the Drone, together with the sound of the water lazily +nudging the bank and whispering to the reeds little jokelets which +they had heard a hundred times before.</p> +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href= +"#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> A card, headed +by the above text, was seen by the writer in August, 1898, in the +porch of a country church.</p> +</div> +<p>Hester's irritable nerves relaxed. She stretched out her small, +neatly shod foot in front of her, leaned her back against the wall, +and presently could afford to smile.</p> +<p>"Dear James," she said, shaking her head gently to and fro, "I +wish we were not both writers, or, as he calls it, 'dabblers with +the pen.' One dabbler in a vicarage is quite enough."</p> +<p>She took out her letters and read them. Only half of them had +been opened.</p> +<p>"I shall stay here till the luncheon bell rings," she said, as +she settled herself comfortably.</p> +<p>Rachel's letter was read last, on the principle of keeping the +best to the end.</p> +<p>"And so she is leaving London—isn't this rather +sudden?—and coming down at once—to-day—no, +yesterday, to Southminster, to the Palace. And I am to stay in this +afternoon, as she will come over, and probably the Bishop will come +too. I should be glad if I were not so tired."</p> +<p>Hester looked along the white high road which led to +Southminster. In the hot haze she could just see the two ears of +the cathedral pricking up through the blue. Everything was very +silent, so silent that she could hear the church clock of +Slumberleigh, two miles away, strike twelve. A whole hour before +luncheon!</p> +<p>The miller's old white horse, with a dip in his long back and a +corresponding curve in his under outline, was standing motionless +in the sun, fast asleep, his front legs bent like a sailor's.</p> +<p>A little bunch of red and white cows, knee-deep in the water, +were swishing off the flies with the wet tufts of their tails. +Hester watched their every movement. She was no longer afraid of +cows. Presently, as if with one consent, they all made up their +minds to relieve the tedium of the contemplative life by an +exhibition of humor, and, scrambling out of the water, proceeded to +canter along the bank with stiff raised tails, with an artificial +noose sustained with difficulty just above the tuft.</p> +<p>"How like James and the Pratts!" Hester said to herself, +watching the grotesque gambols and nudgings of the dwindling +humorists. "It must be very fatiguing to be so comic."</p> +<p>Hester had been up since five o'clock, utilizing the quiet hours +before the house was astir. She was tired out. A bumblebee was +droning sleepily near at hand. The stream talked and talked and +talked about what he was going to do when he was a river. "How +tired the banks must be of listening to him!" thought Hester, with +closed eyes.</p> +<p>And the world melted slowly away in a delicious sense of +well-being, from which the next moment, as it seemed to her, she +was suddenly awakened by Mr. Gresley's voice near at hand.</p> +<p>"Hester! <i>Hester</i>! HESTER!"</p> +<p>"Here! here!" gasped Hester, with a start, upsetting her lapful +of letters as she scrambled hastily to her feet.</p> +<p>The young vicar drew near, and looked over the church-yard wall. +A large crumb upon his upper lip did not lessen the awful severity +of his countenance.</p> +<p>"We have nearly finished luncheon," he observed. "The servants +could not find you anywhere. I don't want to be always finding +fault, Hester, but I wish, for your own sake as well as ours, you +would be more punctual at meals."</p> +<p>Hester had never been late before, but she felt that this was +not the moment to remind her brother of that fact.</p> +<p>"I beg pardon," she said, humbly. "I fell asleep."</p> +<p>"You fell asleep!" said Mr. Gresley, who had been wrestling all +the morning with platitudes on "Thy will be done." "All I can say, +Hester, is that it is unfortunate you have no occupation. I cannot +believe it is for the good of any of us to lead so absolutely idle +a life that we fall asleep in the morning."</p> +<p>Hester made no reply.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of +ignorance as to whip the fog.—GEORGE ELIOT.</p> +</div> +<p>The children, who had reached the pear stage, looked with round, +awed eyes at "Auntie Hester" as she sat down at the luncheon-table +beside the black bottle which marked her place. The Gresleys were +ardent total abstainers, and were of opinion that Hester's health +would be greatly benefited by following their example. But Hester's +doctor differed from them—he was extremely +obstinate—with the result that the Gresleys were obliged to +tolerate the obnoxious bottle on their very table. It was what Mrs. +Gresley called a "cross," and Mr. Gresley was always afraid that +the fact of its presence might become known and hopelessly +misconstrued in Warpington and the world at large.</p> +<p>The children knew that Hester was in disgrace, as she vainly +tried to eat the congealed slice of roast mutton, with blue slides +in it, which had been put before her chair half an hour ago, when +the joint was sent out for the servants' dinner. The children liked +"Auntie Hester," but without enthusiasm, except Regie, the eldest, +who loved her as himself. She could tell them stories, and make +butterflies and horses and dogs out of paper, but she could never +join in their games, not even in the delightful new ones she +invented for them. She was always tired directly. And she would +never give them rides on her back, as the large, good-natured Pratt +girls did. And she was dreadfully shocked if they did not play +fair, so much so that on one occasion Mr. Gresley had to interfere, +and to remind her that a game was a game, and that it would be +better to let the children play as they liked than to be +perpetually finding fault with them.</p> +<p>Perhaps nothing in her life at the Vicarage was a greater trial +to Hester than to see the rules of fair play broken by the children +with the connivance of their parents. Mr. Gresley had never been to +a public school, and had thus missed the ABC of what in its later +stages is called "honor." He was an admirable hockey-player, but he +was not in request at the frequent Slumberleigh matches, for he +never hit off fair, or minded being told so.</p> +<p>"Auntie Hester is leaving all her fat," said Mary, suddenly, in +a shrill voice, her portion of pear held in her left cheek as she +spoke. She had no idea that she ought not to draw attention to the +weakness of others. She was only anxious to be the first to offer +interesting information.</p> +<p>"Never mind," said Mrs. Gresley, admiring her own moderation. +"Finish your pear."</p> +<p>If there was one thing more than another in Hester's behavior +that annoyed Mrs. Gresley—and there were several +others—it was Hester's manner of turning her food over on her +plate and leaving half of it.</p> +<p>Hester did it again now, and Mrs. Gresley, already irritated by +her unpunctuality, tried to look away so as not to see her, and +prayed for patience. The hundred a year which Hester contributed to +the little establishment had eased the struggling household in many +ways; but Mrs. Gresley sometimes wondered if the money, greatly +needed as it was, counterbalanced the perpetual friction of her +sister-in-law's presence.</p> +<p>"Father!"</p> +<p>"Yes, my son."</p> +<p>"Isn't it wrong to drink wine?"</p> +<p>Yes, my son."</p> +<p>"Then why does Auntie Hester drink it?"</p> +<p>Hester fixed her eyes intently on her brother. Would he uphold +her before the children?</p> +<p>"Because she thinks it does her good," said Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>She withdrew her eyes. Her hand, holding a spoonful of cold rice +pudding, shook. A delicate color flooded her face, and finally +settled in the tip of her nose. In her own way she loved the +children.</p> +<p>"Ach, mein Herr," almost screamed Fräulein, who adored +Hester, and saw the gravity of the occasion, "aber Sie vergessen +that the Herr Doctor Br-r-r-r-r-own has so strong—so very +strong command—"</p> +<p>"I cannot allow a discussion as to the merits or demerits of +alcohol at my table," said Mr. Gresley. "I hold one opinion, Dr. +Brown holds another. I must beg to be allowed to differ from him. +Children, say grace."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>It was Wednesday and a half-holiday, and Mrs. Gresley had +arranged to take the children in the pony-carriage to be measured +for new boots. These expeditions to Westhope were a great event. At +two o'clock exactly the three children rushed down-stairs, Regie +bearing in his hand his tin money-box, in which a single coin could +be heard to leap. Hester produced a bright threepenny-piece for +each child, one of which was irretrievably buried in Regie's +money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the +pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside +their white gloves, and the expedition started, accompanied by +Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French extraction. +Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a certain +hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. He +was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who wear +their tails high.</p> +<p>Hester saw them drive off, and a few minutes later Mr. Gresley +started on his bicycle for a ruridecanal chapter meeting in the +opposite direction. She heard the Vicarage gate "clink" behind him +as she crossed the little hall, and then she suddenly stopped short +and wrung her hands. She had forgotten to tell either of them that +the Bishop of Southminster was going to call that afternoon. She +knew he was coming on purpose to see her, but this would have been +incredible to the Gresleys. She had not read Rachel's letter +announcing his coming till she had taken refuge in the field where +she had fallen asleep, and her mental equilibrium had been so +shaken by the annoyance she felt she had caused the Gresleys at +luncheon that she had entirely forgotten the subject till this +moment.</p> +<p>She darted out of the house and flew down the little drive. But +Fortune frowned on Hester to-day. She reached the turn of the road +only to see the bent figure of Mr. Gresley whisk swiftly out of +sight, his clerical coat-tails flowing gracefully out behind like a +divided skirt on each side of the back wheel.</p> +<p>Hester toiled back to the house breathless and dusty, and ready +to cry with vexation. "They will never believe I forgot to tell +them," she said to herself. "Everything I do is wrong in their eyes +and stupid in my own." And she sat down on the lowest step of the +stairs and leaned her head against the banisters.</p> +<p>To her presently came a ministering angel in the shape of +Fräulein, who had begged an egg from the cook, had boiled it +over her spirit-lamp, and now presented it with effusion to her +friend on a little tray, with two thin slices of +bread-and-butter.</p> +<p>"You are all goodness, Fräulein," said Hester, raising her +small, haggard face out of her hands. "It is wrong of me to give so +much trouble." She did not want the egg, but she knew its oval was +the only shape in which Fräulein could express her silent +sympathy. So she accepted it gratefully, and ate it on the stairs, +with the tenderly severe Fräulein watching every mouthful.</p> +<p>Life did not seem quite such a hopeless affair when the little +meal was finished. There were breaks in the clouds, after all. +Rachel was coming to see her that afternoon. Hester was, as +Fräulein often said, "easy cast down and easy cast up." The +mild stimulant of the egg "cast her up" once more. She kissed +Fräulein and ran up to her room, where she divested her small +person of every speck of dust contracted on the road, smoothed out +an invisible crease in her holland gown, put back the little ring +of hair behind her ear which had become loosened in her rush after +her brother, and then came down, smiling and composed, to await her +friend in the drawing-room.</p> +<p>Hester seldom sat in the drawing-room, partly because it was her +sister-in-law's only sitting-room and partly because it was the +regular haunt of the Pratt girls, who (with what seemed to Hester +dreadful familiarity) looked in at the windows when they came to +call, and, if they saw any one inside, entered straightway by the +same, making retreat impossible.</p> +<p>The Miss Pratts had been willing, when Hester first came into +the neighborhood, to take a good-natured though precarious interest +in "their Vicar's sister." Indeed, Mrs. Gresley had felt obliged to +warn Hester not to count too much on their attentions, "as they +sometimes dropped people as quickly as they took them up."</p> +<p>Hester was ignorant of country life, of its small society, its +inevitable relations with unsympathetic neighbors just because they +were neighbors; and she was specially ignorant of the class to +which Mrs. Gresley and the Pratts belonged, and from which her aunt +had in her lifetime unwisely guarded her niece as from the plague. +She was amazed at first at the Pratts calling her by her Christian +name without her leave, until she discovered that they spoke of the +whole county by their Christian names, even designating Lord +Newhaven's two younger brothers—with whom they were not +acquainted—as Jack and Harry, though they were invariably +called by their own family John and Henry.</p> +<p>When, after her aunt's death, she had, by the advice of her few +remaining relatives, taken up her abode with her brother, as much +on his account as her own, for he was poor and with an increasing +family, she journeyed to Warpington accompanied by a pleasant +feeling that, at any rate, she was not going among strangers. She +had often visited in Middleshire, at Wilderleigh, in the elder Mr. +Loftus's time, for whom she had entertained an enthusiastic +reverence; at Westhope Abbey, where she had a firm ally in Lord +Newhaven, and at several other Middleshire houses. She was silly +enough to think she knew Middleshire fairly well, but after she +settled at Warpington she gradually discovered the existence of a +large undercurrent of society of which she knew nothing at all, in +which, whether she were willing or not, she was plunged by the fact +that she was her brother's sister.</p> +<p>Hester perceived clearly enough that her brother did not by +birth belong to this set, though his profession brought him in +contact with it, but he had evidently, though involuntarily, +adopted it for better for worse; perhaps because a dictatorial +habit is generally constrained to find companionship in a social +grade lower than its own, where a loud voice and a tendency to +monologue checkered by prehistoric jokes and tortured puns may meet +with a more patient audience. Hester made many discoveries about +herself during the first months of her life at Warpington, and the +first of the series amazed her more than any of the later ones.</p> +<p>She discovered that she was proud. Perhaps she had not the +enormous opinion of herself which Mrs. Gresley so frequently +deplored, for Hester's thoughts seldom dwelt upon herself. But the +altered circumstances of her life forced them momentarily upon +herself nevertheless, as a burst pipe will spread its waters down a +damask curtain.</p> +<p>So far, during the eight years since she had left the +school-room, she had always been "Miss Gresley," a little personage +treated with consideration wherever she went, and +<i>choyée</i> for her delicate humor and talent for +conversation. She now experienced the interesting sensation, as +novel to her as it is familiar to most of us, of being nobody, and +she disliked it. The manners of the set in which she found herself +also grated continually on her fastidious taste. She was first +amazed and then indignant at hearing her old Middleshire friends, +whose simplicity far surpassed that of her new acquaintance, +denounced by the latter—without being acquainted with them +except officially—as "fine," as caring only for "London +people," and as being "tuft-hunters," because they frequently +entertained at their houses persons of rank, to half of whom they +were related. All this was new to Hester. She discovered that, +though she might pay visits at these houses, she must never mention +them, as it was considered the height of vulgarity to speak of +people of rank.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley, who had been quite taken aback when the first of +these invitations came, felt it her duty to warn Hester against a +love of rank, reminding her that it was a very bad thing to get a +name for running after titled people.</p> +<p>"James and I have always kept clear of that," she remarked, with +dignity. "For my part, I dare say you will think me very +old-fashioned, but I must own I never can see that people with +titles or wealth are one bit nicer or pleasanter than those without +them."</p> +<p>Hester agreed.</p> +<p>"And," continued Mrs. Gresley, "it has always been our aim to be +independent, not to bow down before any one. If I am unworldly, it +is because I had the advantage of parents who impressed on me the +hollowness of all social distinctions. If the Pratts were given a +title to-morrow I should behave exactly the same to them as I do +now."</p> +<p>If Lady Susan Gresley had passed her acquaintance through a less +exclusive sieve, Hester might have had the advantage of hearing all +these well-worn sentiments, and of realizing the point of view of a +large number of her fellow-creatures before she became an +inconspicuous unit in their midst.</p> +<p>But if Mrs. Gresley was pained by Hester's predilection for the +society of what she called "swells" (the word, though quite extinct +in civilized parts, can occasionally be found in country +districts), she was still more pained by the friendships Hester +formed with persons whom her sister-in-law considered "not +quite."</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley was always perfectly civil, and the Pratts +imperfectly so, to Miss Brown, the doctor's invalid sister. But +Hester made friends with her, in spite of the warnings of Mrs. +Gresley that kindness was one thing and intimacy another.</p> +<p>"The truth is," Mrs. Gresley would say, "Hester loves adulation, +and as she can't get it from the Pratts and us, she has to go to +those below her in the social scale, like Miss Brown, who will give +it to her. Miss Brown may be very cultivated. I dare say she is, +but she makes up to Hester."</p> +<p>Sybell Loftus, who lived close at hand at Wilderleigh, across +the Prone, was one of the very few besides Miss Brown among her new +acquaintances who hailed Hester at once as a kindred spirit, to the +unconcealed surprise of the Pratts and the Gresleys. Sybell adored +Hester's book, which the Gresleys and Pratts considered rather +peculiar "as emanating from the pen of a clergyman's sister." She +enthusiastically suggested to Hester several improvements which +might easily be made in it, which would have changed its character +altogether. She even intrenched on the sacred precinct of a married +woman's time to write out the openings of several romances, which +she was sure Hester, with her wonderful talent, could build up into +magnificent works of art. She was always running over to the +Vicarage to confide to Hester the unique thoughts which had been +vouchsafed to her while contemplating a rose, or her child, or her +husband, or all three together.</p> +<p>Hester was half amused, half fascinated, and ruefully lost many +of the mornings still left her by the Pratts and Gresleys in +listening to the outpourings of this butterfly soul, which imagined +every flower it involuntarily alighted on and drew honey from to be +its own special production.</p> +<p>But Hester's greatest friend in Middleshire was the Bishop of +Southminster, with whom Rachel was staying, and whom she was +expecting this afternoon.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>The depth and dream of my desire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The bitter paths wherein I +stray,</span><br /> +Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou knowest Who hast made the +clay!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">—RUDYARD +KIPLING.</span></div> +<p>The unbalanced joys and sorrows of emotional natures are apt to +arouse the pity of the narrow-hearted and the mild contempt of the +obtuse of their fellow-creatures.</p> +<p>But perhaps it is a mistake to feel compassion for persons like +Hester, for if they have many evil days and weeks in their usually +short lives, they have also moments of sheer bliss, hours of awed +contemplation and of exquisite rapture which, possibly, in the long +run, equal the more solid joys of a good income and a good +digestion, nay, even the perennial glow of that happiest of happy +temperaments which limits the nature of others by its own, which +sees no uncomfortable difference between a moral and a legal right, +and believes it can measure life with the same admirable accuracy +with which it measures its drawing-room curtains.</p> +<p>As Hester and Rachel sat together in the Vicarage drawing-room, +Rachel's faithful, doglike eyes detected no trace of tears in +Hester's dancing, mischievous ones. They were alone, for the Bishop +had dropped Rachel on his way to visit a sick clergyman, and had +arranged to call at the Vicarage on his way back.</p> +<p>Hester quickly perceived that Rachel did not wish to talk of +herself, and drew a quaint picture of her own life at Warpington, +which she described "not wisely but too well." But she was faithful +to her salt. She said nothing of the Gresleys to which those +worthies could have objected had they been present. Indeed, she +spoke of them in what they would have termed "a very proper +manner," of their kindness to her when she had been ill, of how Mr. +Gresley had himself brought up her breakfast-tray every morning, +and how, in the spring, he had taught her to bicycle.</p> +<p>"But, oh! Rachel," added Hester, "during the last nine months my +self-esteem has been perforated with wounds, each large enough to +kill the poor creature. My life here has shown me horrible faults +in myself of which I never dreamed. I feel as if I had been ironed +all over since I came here, and all kinds of ugly words in +invisible ink are coming out clear in the process."</p> +<p>"I am quite alarmed," said Rachel, tranquilly.</p> +<p>"You ought to be. First of all I did think I cared nothing about +food. I don't remember ever giving it a thought when I lived with +Aunt Susan. But here I—I am difficult about it. I do try to +eat it, but often I really can't. And then I leave it on my plate, +which is a disgusting habit, which always offends me in other +people. Now I am as bad as any of them; indeed, it is worse in me +because I know poor James is not very rich."</p> +<p>"I suppose the cooking is vile?"</p> +<p>"I don't know. I never noticed what I ate till I came here, so I +can't judge. Perhaps it is not very good. But the dreadful part is +that I should mind. I could not have believed it of myself. James +and Minna never say anything, but I know it vexes them, as of +course it must."</p> +<p>Rachel looked critically at Hester's innocent, childlike face. +When Hester was not a cultivated woman of the world she was a +child. There was, alas! no medium in her character. Rachel noticed +how thin her face and hands had become, and the strained look in +the eyes. The faint color in her cheek had a violet tinge.</p> +<p>She did not waste words on the cookery question. She saw plainly +enough that Hester's weak health was slipping further down the +hill.</p> +<p>"And all this time you have been working?"</p> +<p>"If you call it working. I used to call it so once, but I never +do now. Yes, I manage about four hours a day. I have made another +pleasant discovery about myself—that I have the temper of a +fiend if I am interrupted."</p> +<p>"But surely you told the Gresleys when first you came that you +must not be interrupted at certain hours?"</p> +<p>"I did. I did. But, of course—it is very +natural—they think that rather self-important and silly. I am +thought very silly here, Rachel. And James does not mind being +interrupted in writing his sermons. And the Pratts have got the +habit of running in in the mornings."</p> +<p>"Who on earth are the Pratts?"</p> +<p>"They are what <i>they</i> call 'county people.' Their father +made a fortune in oil, and built a house covered with turrets near +here a few years ago. I used to know Captain Pratt, the son, very +slightly in London. I never would dance with him. He used to come +to our 'At Homes,' but he was never asked to dinner. He is a great +'parti' among a certain set down here. His mother and sisters were +very kind to me when I came, but I was not so accustomed then as I +am now to be treated familiarly and called 'Hessie,' which no one +has ever called me before, and I am afraid I was not so responsive +as I see now I ought to have been. Down here it seems your friends +are the people whom you live near, not the ones you like. It seems +a curious arrangement. And as the Pratts are James's and Minna's +greatest friends, I did not wish to offend them. And then, of +course, I did offend them mortally at last by losing my temper when +they came up to my room to what they called 'rout me out,' though I +had told them I was busy in the mornings. I was in a very difficult +place, and when they came in I did not know who they were, because +only the people in the book were real just then. And then when I +recognized them, and the scene in my mind which I had been waiting +for for weeks was shattered like a pane of glass, I became quite +giddy and spoke wildly. And then—I was so ashamed +afterwards—I burst into tears of rage and despair."</p> +<p>Even the remembrance was too much. Hester wiped away two large +tears onto a dear little handkerchief just large enough to receive +them, and went on with a quaver in her voice.</p> +<p>"I was so shocked at myself that I found it quite easy to tell +them next day that I was sorry I had lost my temper; but they have +not been the same since. Not that I wanted them to be the same. I +would rather they were different. But I was anxious to keep on +cordial terms with Minna's friends. She quarrels with them herself, +but that is different. I suppose it is inevitable if you are on +terms of great intimacy with people you don't really care for."</p> +<p>"At any rate, <i>they</i> have not interrupted you again?"</p> +<p>"N—no. But still, I was often interrupted. Minna has too +much to do, and she is not strong just now, and she often sends up +one of the children, and I was so nearly fierce with one of +them—poor little things!—that I felt the risk was +becoming too great, so I have left off writing between breakfast +and luncheon, and I get up directly it is light instead. It is +light very early now. Only the worst part of it is that I am so +tired for the rest of the day that I can hardly drag myself +about."</p> +<p>Rachel said nothing. She seldom commented on the confidences +that were made to her. She saw that Hester, always delicate, was +making an enormous effort under conditions which would be certain +to entail disastrous effects on her health. The book was sapping +her strength like a vampire, and the Gresleys were evidently +exhausting it still further by unconsciously strewing her path with +difficulties. Rachel did not know them, but she supposed they +belonged to that large class whose eyes are holden.</p> +<p>"And the book itself? Is it nearly finished?"</p> +<p>Hester's face changed. Eagerly, shyly, enthusiastically she +talked to her friend about the book, as a young girl talks of her +lover. Everything else was forgotten. Hester's eyes burned. Her +color came and went. She was transfigured.</p> +<p>The protecting, anxious affection died out of Rachel's face as +she looked at Hester, and gave place to a certain wistful, +half-envious admiration. She had once been shaken by all these +emotions herself, years ago, when she was in love. She had regarded +them as a revelation while they lasted; and afterwards, as a steep +step—a very steep step—upon the stair of life. But she +realized now that such as Hester live constantly in the world which +the greater number of us can only enter when human passion lends us +the key; the world at which, when the gates are shut against us, +the coarser minded among us are not ashamed to level their ridicule +and contempt.</p> +<p>Hester spoke brokenly with awe and reverence of her book, as of +some mighty presence, some constraining power outside herself. She +saw it complete, beautiful—an entrancing vision, +inaccessible, as a sunset.</p> +<p>"I cannot reach up to it. I cannot get near it," she said. "When +I try to write it, it is like drawing an angel with spread wings +with a bit of charcoal. I understate everything. Yet I labor day by +day travestying it, caricaturing the beautiful thoughts that come +into my mind. I make everything commonplace and vulgar by putting +it into words. I go alone into the woods and sit for hours quite +still with the trees. And gradually I understand and know. And I +listen, and Nature speaks, really speaks—not a +<i>façon de parler</i>, as some people think who explain to +you that you mean this or that by your words which you don't +mean—and her spirit becomes one with my spirit. And I feel I +can never again misunderstand her, never again fail to interpret +her, never again wander so far away from her that every white +anemone and every seedling fern disowns me, and waits in silence +till the alien has gone from among them. And I come home, Rachel, +and I try, sometimes I try for half the night, to find words to +translate it into. But there are no words, or, if there are, I +cannot find them, and at last I fall back on some coarse simile, +and in my despair I write it down. And, oh! Rachel, the worst is +that presently, when I have forgotten what it ought to have been, +when the vision fades, I know I shall <i>admire</i> what I have +written. It is that that breaks my heart."</p> +<p>The old, old lament of those who worship art, that sternest +mistress in the world, fell into the silence of the little +drawing-room. Rachel understood it in part only, for she had always +vaguely felt that Hester idealized Nature, as she idealized her +fellow-creatures, as she idealized everything, and she did not +comprehend why Hester was in despair because she could not speak +adequately of Life or Nature as she saw them. Rachel thought, with +bewilderment, that that was just what she could do.</p> +<p>At this moment a carriage drew up at the door, and after a long +interval, during which the wrathful voice of the cook could be +distinctly heard through the kitchen window recalling "Hemma" to a +sense of duty from the back yard, "Hemma" breathlessly ushered in +the Bishop of Southminster.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Originality irritates the religious classes, who will not be +taken out of their indolent ways of thinking; who have a standing +grievance against it, and "heresy" and "heterodoxy" are bad words +ready for it.—W.W. PEYTON.</p> +</div> +<p>The Bishop was an undersized, spare man, with a rugged, +weather-beaten face and sinewy frame. If you had seen him working a +crane in a stone-mason's yard, or leading a cut-and-thrust +forlorn-hope, or sailing paper boats with a child, you would have +felt he was the right man in the right place. That he was also in +his right place as a bishop had never been doubted by any one. Mr. +Gresley was the only person who had occasionally had misgivings as +to the Bishop's vocation as a true priest, but he had put them +aside as disloyal.</p> +<p>Jowett is believed to have said, "A bishop without a sense of +humor is lost." Perhaps that may have been one of the reasons why, +by Jowett's advice, the See of Southminster was offered to its +present occupant. The Bishop's mouth, though it spoke of an +indomitable will, had a certain twist of the lip, his deep-set, +benevolent eyes had a certain twinkle which made persons like Lord +Newhaven and Hester hail him at once as an ally, but which ought to +have been a danger-signal to some of his clerical brethren—to +Mr. Gresley in particular.</p> +<p>The Bishop respected and upheld Mr. Gresley as a clergyman, but +as a conversationalist the young vicar wearied him. If the truth +were known (which it never was), he had arranged to visit Hester +when he knew Mr. Gresley would be engaging the reluctant attention +of a ruridecanal meeting.</p> +<p>He gave a sigh of relief as he became aware that Hester and +Rachel were the only occupants of the cool, darkened room. Mrs. +Gresley, it seemed, was also out.</p> +<p>Hester made tea, and presently the Bishop, who looked much +exhausted, roused himself. He had that afternoon attended two +death-beds—one the death-bed of a friend, and the other that +of the last vestige of peace, expiring amid the clamor of a +distracted Low Church parish and High Church parson, who could only +meet each other after the fashion of cymbals. For the moment even +his courageous spirit had been disheartened.</p> +<p>"I met a son of Anak the other night at the Newhavens'," he said +to Hester, "who claimed you as a cousin—a Mr. Richard Vernon. +He broke the ice by informing me that I had confirmed him, and that +perhaps I should like to know that he had turned out better than he +expected."</p> +<p>"How like Dick!" said Hester.</p> +<p>"I remembered him at last. His father was the squire of Farlow, +where I was rector before I came to Southminster. Dick was not a +source of unmixed pleasure to his parents. As a boy of eight he +sowed the parental billiard-table with mustard and cress in his +father's absence, and raised a very good crop, and performed other +excruciating experiments. I believe he beat all previous records of +birch rods at Eton. I remember while he was there he won a bet from +another boy who could not pay, and he foreclosed on the loser's +cricketing trousers. His parents were distressed about it when he +brought them home, and I tried to make him see that he ought not to +have taken them. But Dick held firm. He said it was like tithe, and +if he could not get his own in money, as I did, he must collect it +in trousers. I must own he had me there. I noticed that he wore the +garment daily as long as any question remained in his parents' +minds as to whether they ought to be returned. After that I felt +sure he would succeed in life."</p> +<p>"I believe he is succeeding in Australia."</p> +<p>"I advised his father to send him abroad. There really was not +room for him in England, and, unfortunately for the army, the +examiners jibbed at his strictly phonetic spelling. He tells me he +has given up being an A.D.C. and has taken to vine-growing, because +if people are up in the world they always drink freely, and if they +are 'down on their luck' they drink all the more to drown care. The +reasoning appeared to me sound."</p> +<p>"He and James used to quarrel frightfully in the holidays," said +Hester. "It was always the same reason, about playing fair. Poor +James did not know that games were matters of deadly importance, +and that a rule was a sacred thing. I wonder why it is that +clergymen so often have the same code of honor as women; quite a +different code from that of the average man."</p> +<p>"I think," said the Bishop, "it is owing to that difference of +code that women clash so hopelessly with men when they attempt to +compete or work with them. Women have not to begin with the +<i>esprit de corps</i> which the most ordinary men possess. With +what difficulty can one squeeze out of a man any fact that is +detrimental to his friend, or even to his acquaintance, however +obviously necessary it may be that the information should be asked +for and given. Yet I have known many good and earnest and +affectionate women, who lead unselfish lives, who will 'give away' +their best woman friend at the smallest provocation, or without any +provocation at all; will inform you, <i>à propos</i> of +nothing, that she was jilted years ago, or that her husband married +her for her money. The causes of humiliation and disaster in a +woman's life seem to have no sacredness for her women friends. Yet +if that same friend whom she has run down is ill, the runner down +will nurse her day and night with absolutely selfless +devotion."</p> +<p>"I have often been puzzled by that," said Rachel. "I seem to be +always making mistakes about women, and perhaps that is the reason. +They show themselves capable of some deep affection or some great +self-sacrifice, and I respect and admire them, and think they are +like that all through. And the day comes when they are not quite +straightforward, or are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man +who is not fit to black their boots would never stoop to."</p> +<p>Hester's eyes fixed on her friend.</p> +<p>"Do you tell them? Do you show them up to themselves," she +asked, "or do you leave them?"</p> +<p>"I do neither," said Rachel. "I treat them just the same as +before."</p> +<p>"Then aren't you a hypocrite, too?"</p> +<p>Hester's small face was set like a flint.</p> +<p>"I think not," said Rachel, tranquilly, "any more than they are. +The good is there for certain, and the evil is there for certain. +Why should I take most notice of the evil, which is just the part +which will be rubbed out of them presently, while the good will +remain?"</p> +<p>"I think Rachel is right," said the Bishop.</p> +<p>"I don't think she is, at all," said Hester, her plumage +ruffled, administering her contradiction right and left to her two +best friends like a sharp peck from a wren. "I think we ought to +believe the best of people until they prove themselves unworthy, +and then—"</p> +<p>"Then what?" said the Bishop, settling himself in his chair.</p> +<p>"Then leave them in silence."</p> +<p>"I only know of a woman's silence by hearsay. I have never met +it. Do you mean bitterly reproach the thistle for not bearing +grapes?"</p> +<p>"I do not. It is my own fault if I idealize a thistle until the +thistle and I both think it is a vine. But if people appear to love +and honor certain truths which they know are everything to me, and +claim kinship with me on that common ground, and then desert when +the pinch comes, as it always does come, and act from worldly +motives, then I know that they have never really cared for what +they professed to love, that what I imagined to be a principle was +only a subject of conversation—and—I withdraw."</p> +<p>"You withdraw!" echoed the Bishop. "This is terrible."</p> +<p>"Just as I should," continued Hester, "if I were in political +life. If a man threw in his lot with me, and then, when some means +of worldly advancement seemed probable from the other side, +deserted to it, I should not in consequence think him incapable of +being a good husband and father and landlord. But I should never +again believe that he cared for what I had staked my all on. And +when he began to talk as if he cared (as they always do, as if +nothing had happened) I should not show him up to himself. I have +tried that and it is no use. I should—"</p> +<p>"Denounce him as an apostate?" suggested the Bishop.</p> +<p>"No. He should be to me thenceforward as a heathen."</p> +<p>"Thrice miserable man!"</p> +<p>"You would not have me treat him as a brother after that?"</p> +<p>"Of course not, because he would probably dislike that still +more."</p> +<p>At this moment a hurricane seemed to pass through the little +house, and the three children rushed into the drawing-room, +accompanied by Boulou, in a frantic state of excitement. Boulou, +like Hester, had no happy medium in his character. He was what Mrs. +Gresley called "very Frenchy," and he now showed his Frenchyness by +a foolish exhibition of himself in coursing round and round the +room with his silly foreign tail crooked the wrong way.</p> +<p>"Mother got out at Mrs. Brown's," shrieked Regie, in his highest +voice, "and I drove up."</p> +<p>"Oh, Regie!" expostulated Mary the virtuous, the invariable +corrector of the statements of others. "You held the reins, but +William walked beside."</p> +<p>Hester made the children shake hands with her guests, and then +they clustered round her to show what they had bought.</p> +<p>Though the Bishop was fond of children, he became suddenly +restive. He took out his watch, and was nervously surprised at the +lapse of time. The carriage was sent for, and in a few minutes that +dignified vehicle was bowling back to Southminster.</p> +<p>"I am not satisfied about Hester," said the Bishop. "She looks +ill and irritable, and she has the tense expression of a person who +is making a colossal effort to be patient, and whose patience, +after successfully meeting twenty calls upon it in the course of +the day, collapses entirely at the twenty-first. That is a +humiliating experience."</p> +<p>"She spoke as if she were a trial to her brother and his +wife."</p> +<p>"I think she is. I have a sort of sympathy with Gresley as +regards his sister. He has been kind to her according to his +lights, and if she could write little goody-goody books he would +admire her immensely, and so would half the neighborhood. It would +be felt to be suitable. But Hester jars against the preconceived +ideas which depute that clergymen's sisters and daughters should, +as a matter of course, offer up their youth and hair and teeth and +eyesight on the altar of parochial work. She does and is nothing +that long custom expects her to do and be. Originality is out of +place in a clergyman's family, just because it is so urgently +needed. It is a constant source of friction. But, on the other +hand, the best thing that could happen to Hester is to be thrown +for a time among people who regard her as a nonentity, who have no +sense of humor, and to whom she cannot speak of any of the subjects +she has at heart. If Hester had remained in London after the +success of her <i>Idyll</i> she would have met with so much +sympathy and admiration that her next book would probably have +suffered in consequence. She is so susceptible, so expansive, that +repression is positively necessary to her to enable her, so to +speak, to get up steam. There is no place for getting up steam like +a country vicarage with an inner cordon of cows round it and an +outer one of amiable country neighbors, mildly contemptuous of +originality in any form. She cannot be in sympathy with them in her +present stage. It is her loss, not theirs. At forty she will be in +sympathy with them, and appreciate them as I do; but that is +another story. She has been working at this new book all winter +with a fervor and concentration which her isolation has helped to +bring about. She owes a debt of gratitude to her surroundings, and +some day I shall tell her so."</p> +<p>"She says her temper has become that of a fiend."</p> +<p>"She is passionate, there is no doubt. She nearly fell on us +both this afternoon. She is too much swayed by every little +incident. Everything makes a vivid impression on her and shakes her +to pieces. It is rather absurd and disproportionate now, like the +long legs of a foal, but it is a sign of growth. My experience is +that people without that fire of enthusiasm on the one side and +righteous indignation on the other never achieve anything except in +domestic life. If Hester lives, she will outgrow her passionate +nature, or at least she will grow up to it and become passive, +contemplative. Then, instead of unbalanced anger and excitement, +the same nature which is now continually upset by them will have +learned to receive impressions calmly and, by reason of that +receptiveness and insight, she will go far."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Only those who know the supremacy of the Intellectual +life—the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and +purpose within it—can understand the grief of one who falls +from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle +with worldly annoyances.—GEORGE ELIOT.</p> +</div> +<p>Hester in the meanwhile was expressing wonder and astonishment +at the purchases of the children, who, with the exception of Mary, +had spent their little all on presents for Fräulein, whose +birthday was on the morrow. After Mary's tiny white bone umbrella +had been discovered to be a needle-case, and most of the needles +had been recovered from the floor, Regie extracted from its paper a +little china cow. But, alas! the cow's ears and horns remained in +the bag, owing possibly to the incessant passage of the parcel from +one pocket to another on the way home. Regie looked at the remnants +in the bag, and his lip quivered, while Mary, her own umbrella +safely warehoused, exclaimed, "Oh, Regie!" in tones of piercing +reproach.</p> +<p>But Hester quickly suggested that she could put them on again +quite easily, and Fräulein would like it just as much. Still, +it was a blow. Regie leaned his head against Hester's shoulder.</p> +<p>Hester pressed her cheek against his little dark head. Sybell +Loftus had often told Hester that she could have no idea of the +happiness of a child's touch till she was a mother; that she +herself had not an inkling till then. But perhaps some poor +substitute for that exquisite feeling was vouchsafed to Hester.</p> +<p>"The tail is still on," she whispered, not too cheerfully, but +as one who in darkness sees light beyond.</p> +<p>The cow's tail was painted in blue upon its side.</p> +<p>"When I bought it," said Regie, in a strangled voice, "and it +was a great-deal-of-money cow, I did wish its tail had been out +behind; but I think now it is safer like that."</p> +<p>"All the best cows have their tails on the side," said Hester. +"And to-morrow morning, when you are dressed, run up to my room, +and you will find it just like it was before." And she carefully +put aside the bits with the injured animal.</p> +<p>"And now what has Stella got?"</p> +<p>Stella produced a bag of "bull's-eyes," which, in striking +contrast with the cow, had, in the course of the drive home, +cohered so tightly together that it was doubtful if they would ever +be separated again.</p> +<p>"Fräulein never eats bull's-eyes," said Mary, who was what +her parents called "a very truthful child."</p> +<p>"I eats them," said Stella, reversing her small cauliflower-like +person on the sofa till only a circle of white rims with a nucleus +of coventry frilling, with two pink legs kicking gently upward, +were visible.</p> +<p>Stella always turned upsidedown if the conversation took a +personal turn. In later and more conventional years we find a poor +equivalent for marking our disapproval by changing the subject.</p> +<p>Hester had hardly set Stella right side upward when the door +opened once more and Mrs. Gresley entered, hot and exhausted.</p> +<p>"Run up-stairs, my pets," she said. "Hester, you should not keep +them down here now. It is past their tea-time."</p> +<p>"We came ourselves, mother," said Regie. "Fruälein said we +might, to show Auntie Hester our secrets."</p> +<p>"Well, never mind; run away now," said the poor mother, sitting +down heavily in a low chair, "and take Boulou."</p> +<p>"You are tired out," said Hester, slipping on to her knees and +unlacing her sister-in-law's brown boots.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley looked with a shade of compunction at the fragile +kneeling figure, with its face crimsoned by the act of stooping and +by the obduracy of the dust-ingrained boot-laces. But as she looked +she noticed the flushed cheeks, and, being a diviner of spirits, +wondered what Hester was ashamed of now.</p> +<p>As Hester rose her sister-in-law held out, with momentary +hesitation, a thin paper bag, in which an oval form allowed its +moist presence to be discerned by partial adhesion to its +envelope.</p> +<p>"I saw you ate no luncheon, Hester, so I have brought you a +little sole for supper."</p> +<p>Some of us poor Marthas spend all our existence, so to speak, in +the kitchens of life. We never get so far as the drawing-room. Our +conquests, our self-denials, are achieved through the medium of +suet and lard and necks of mutton. We wrestle with the dripping, +and rise on stepping-stones—not of our dead selves, but of +sheep and oxen—to higher things.</p> +<p>The sole was a direct answer to prayer. Mrs. Gresley had been +enabled to stifle her irritation against this delicate, whimsical, +fine lady of a sister-in-law—laced in, too, we must not +forget that—who, in Mrs. Gresley's ideas, knew none of the +real difficulties of life, its butcher's bills, its monthly nurses, +its constant watchfulness over delicate children, its long, long +strain at two ends which won't meet. We must know but little of our +fellow-creatures if the damp sole in the bag appears to us other +than the outward and homely sign of an inward and spiritual +conquest.</p> +<p>As such Hester saw it, and she kissed Mrs. Gresley and thanked +her, and then ran, herself, to the kitchen with the peace offering, +and came back with her sister-in-law's down-at-heel in-door +shoes.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley was stabling his bicycle in the hall as she crossed +it. He was generally excessively jocose with his bicycle. He +frequently said, "Whoa, Emma!" to it. But to-day he, too, was +tired, and put Emma away in silence.</p> +<p>When Hester returned to the drawing-room Mrs. Gresley had +recovered sufficiently to notice her surroundings. She was sitting +with her tan-stockinged feet firmly planted on the carpet instead +of listlessly outstretched, her eyes ominously fixed on the +tea-table and seed-cake.</p> +<p>Hester's silly heart nudged her side like an accomplice.</p> +<p>"Who has been here to tea?" said Mrs. Gresley. "I met the Pratts +and the Thursbys in Westhope."</p> +<p>Hester was frightened. We need to be in the presence of those +who judge others by themselves.</p> +<p>"The Bishop was here and Rachel West," she said, coloring. "They +left a few minutes ago."</p> +<p>"Well, of all unlucky things, that James and I should have been +out. James, do you hear that? The Bishop's been while we were away. +And I do declare, Hester," looking again at the table, "you never +so much as asked for the silver teapot."</p> +<p>"I never thought of it," said Hester, ruefully. It was almost +impossible to her to alter the habit of a lifetime, and to remember +to dash out and hurriedly change the daily routine if visitors were +present. Lady Susan had always used her battered old silver teapot +every day, and for the life of her Hester could not understand why +there should be one kind one day and one kind another. She glanced +resentfully at the little brown earthen-ware vessel which she had +wielded so carefully half an hour ago. Why did she never remember +the Gresleys' wishes?</p> +<p>"Hester," said Mrs. Gresley, suddenly, taking new note of +Hester's immaculate brown holland gown, which contrasted painfully +with her own dilapidated pink shirt with hard collars and cuffs and +imitation tie, tied for life in the shop where it was born. "You +are so smart; I do believe you knew they were coming."</p> +<p>If there was one thing more than another which offended Hester, +it was being told that she was <i>smart</i>.</p> +<p>"I trust I am never smart," she replied, not with any touch of +the haughtiness that some ignorant persons believe to be the grand +manner, but with a subtle change of tone and carriage which seemed +instantly to remove her to an enormous distance from the other +woman with her insinuation and tan stockings. Mrs. Gresley +unconsciously drew in her feet. "I did not know when I dressed this +morning that the Bishop was coming to-day."</p> +<p>"Then you <i>did</i> know later that he was coming?"</p> +<p>"Yes, Rachel West wrote to tell me so this morning, but I did +not open her letter at breakfast, and I was so vexed at being late +for luncheon that I forgot to mention it then. I remembered as soon +as James had started, and ran after him, but he was too far off to +hear me call to him."</p> +<p>It cost Hester a good deal to give this explanation, as she was +aware that the Bishop's visit had been to her and to her alone.</p> +<p>"Come, come," said Mr. Gresley, judicially, with the natural +masculine abhorrence of a feminine skirmish.</p> +<p>"Don't go on making foolish excuses, Hester, which deceive no +one; and you, Minna, don't criticise Hester's clothes. It is the +Bishop's own fault for not writing his notes himself. He might have +known that Miss West would have written to Hester instead of to me. +I can't say I think Hester behaved kindly towards us in acting as +she did, but I won't hear any more argument about it. I desire the +subject should now <i>drop</i>."</p> +<p>The last words were uttered in the same tone in which Mr. +Gresley closed morning service, and were felt to be final. He was +not in reality greatly chagrined at missing the Bishop, whom he +regarded with some of the suspicious distrust with which a certain +class of mind ever regards that which is superior to it. Hester +left the room, closing the door gently behind her.</p> +<p>"James," said Mrs. Gresley, looking at her priest with tears of +admiration in her eyes, "I shall never be good like you, so you +need not expect it. How you can be so generous and patient with her +I don't know. It passes me."</p> +<p>"We must learn to make allowances for each other," said Mr. +Gresley, in his most affectionate cornet, drawing his tired, +tearful little wife down beside him on the sofa. And he made some +fresh tea for her, and waited on her, and she told him about the +children's boots and the sole, and he told her about a remarkable +speech he had made at the chapter meeting, and a feeling that had +been borne in on him on the way home that he should shortly write +something striking about Apostolic Succession. And they were happy +together; for though he sometimes reproved her as a priest if she +allowed herself to dwell on the probability of his being made a +Bishop, he was very kind to her as a husband.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Beware of a silent dog and still water."</p> +</div> +<p>If you are travelling across Middleshire on the local line +between Southminster and Westhope, after you have passed +Wilderleigh with its gray gables and park wall, close at hand you +will perceive to nestle (at least, Mr. Gresley said it nestled) +Warpington Vicarage; and perhaps, if you know where to look, you +will catch a glimpse of Hester's narrow bedroom window under the +roof. Half a mile farther on Warpington Towers, the gorgeous +residence of the Pratts, bursts into view, with flag on turret +flying, and two tightly bitted rustic bridges leaping high over the +Drone. You cannot see all the lodges of Warpington Towers from the +line, which is a source of some regret to Mr. Pratt; but if he +happens to be travelling with you he will point out two of them, +chaste stucco Gothic erections with church windows, and inform you +that the three others are on the northern and eastern sides, +vaguely indicating the directions of Scotland and Ireland.</p> +<p>And the Drone, kept in order on your left by the low line of the +Slumberleigh hills, will follow you and leave you, leave you and +return all the way to Westhope. You are getting out at Westhope, of +course, if you are a Middleshire man; for Westhope is on the verge +of Middleshire, and the train does not go any farther—at +least, it only goes into one of the insignificant counties which +jostle each other to hold on to Middleshire, unknown Saharas, where +passengers who oversleep themselves wake to find themselves cast +away.</p> +<p>Westhope Abbey stands in its long, low meadows and level +gardens, close to the little town, straggling red roof above red +roof, up its steep cobbled streets.</p> +<p>Down the great central aisle you may walk on mossy stones +between the high shafts of broken pillars under the sky. God's +stars look down once more where the piety of man had for a time +shut them out. Through the slender tracery of what was once the +east window, instead of glazed saint and crucifix, you may see the +little town clasping its hill.</p> +<p>The purple clematis and the small lizard-like leaf of the ivy +have laid tender hands on all that is left of that stately house of +prayer. The pigeons wheel round it, and nest in its niches. The +soft, contented murmur of bird praise has replaced the noise of +bitter human prayer. A thin wind-whipped grass holds the summit of +the broken walls against all corners. The fallen stones, quaintly +carved with angel and griffin, are going slowly back year by year, +helped by the rain and hindered by the frost, slowly back through +the sod to the generations of human hands that held and hewed them, +and fell to dust below them hundreds of years ago. The spirit +returns to the God who gave it, and the stone to the hand that +fashioned it.</p> +<p>The adjoining monastery had been turned into a dwelling-house, +without altering it externally, and it was here that Lord Newhaven +loved to pass the summer months. Into its one long upper passage +all the many rooms opened, up white stone steps through arched +doors, rooms which had once been monks' dormitories, abbots' cells, +where Lady Newhaven and her guests now crimped their hair and slept +under down quilts till noon.</p> +<p>It was this long passage, with its interminable row of low +latticed windows, that Lord Newhaven was turning into a depository +for the old English weapons which he was slowly collecting. He was +standing now gazing lovingly at them, drawing one finger slowly +along an inlaid arquebus, when a yell from the garden made him turn +and look out.</p> +<p>It was not a yell of anguish, and Lord Newhaven remained at the +window leaning on his elbows and watching at his ease the little +scene which was taking place below him.</p> +<p>On his bicycle on the smooth-shaven lawn was Dick, wheeling +slowly in and out among the stone-edged flower-beds, an apricot in +each broad palm, while he discoursed in a dispassionate manner to +the two excited little boys who were making futile rushes for the +apricots. The governess and Rachel were looking on. Rachel had +arrived at Westhope the day before from Southminster. "Take your +time, my son," said Dick, just eluding by a hair's-breadth a charge +through a geranium-bed on the part of the eldest boy. "If you are +such jolly little fools as to crack your little skulls on the +sun-dial, I shall eat them both myself. Miss Turner says you may +have them, so you've only got to take them. I can't keep on +offering them all day long. My time"—(Dick ran his bicycle up +a terrace, and, as soon as the boys were up, glided down +again)—"my time is valuable. You don't want them?" A shrill +disclaimer and a fresh onslaught. "Miss Turner, they thank you very +much, but they don't care for apricots."</p> +<p>Half a second more and Dick skilfully parted from his bicycle +and was charged by his two admirers and severely pummelled as high +as they could reach. When they had been led away by Miss Turner, +each biting an apricot and casting longing backward looks at their +friend, Rachel and Dick wandered to the north side of the abbey and +sat down there in the shade.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven could still see them, could still note her amused +face under her wide white hat. He was doing his best for Dick, and +Dick was certainly having his chance, and making the most of it +according to his lights.</p> +<p>"But, all the same, I don't think he has a chance," said Lord +Newhaven to himself. "That woman, in spite of her frank manner and +her self-possession, is afraid of men; not of being married for her +money, but of man himself. And whatever else he may not be, Dick is +a man. It's the best chance she will ever get, so it is probable +she won't take it."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven sauntered back down the narrow black oak staircase +to his own room on the ground-floor. He sat down at his +writing-table and took out of his pocket a letter which he had +evidently read before. He now read it slowly once more.</p> +<p>"Your last letter to me had been opened," wrote his brother from +India, "or else it had not been properly closed. As you wrote on +business, I wish you would be more careful."</p> +<p>"I will," said Lord Newhaven, and he wrote a short letter in his +small, upright hand, closed the envelope, addressed and stamped it, +and sauntered out through the low-arched door into the garden.</p> +<p>Dick was sitting alone on the high-carved stone edge of the +round pool where the monks used to wash, and where gold-fish now +lived cloistered lives. A moment of depression seemed to have +overtaken that cheerful personage.</p> +<p>"Come as far as the post-office," said Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>Dick gathered himself together, and rose slowly to his large +feet.</p> +<p>"You millionaires are all the same," he said. "Because you have +a house crawling with servants till they stick to the ceiling you +have to go to the post-office to buy a penny stamp. It's like +keeping a dog and barking yourself."</p> +<p>"I don't fancy I bark much," said Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>"No, and you don't bite <i>often</i>, but when you do you take +out the piece. Do you remember that colored chap at Broken +Hill?"</p> +<p>"He deserved it," said Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>"He richly deserved it. But you took him in, poor devil, all the +same. You were so uncommonly mild and limp beforehand, and letting +pass things you ought not to have let pass, that, like the low +beast he was, he thought he could play you any dog's trick, and +that you would never turn on him."</p> +<p>"It's a way worms have."</p> +<p>"Oh, hang worms; it does not matter whether they turn or not. +But cobras have no business to imitate them till poor rookies think +they have no poison in them, and that they can tickle them with a +switch. What a great hulking brute that man was! You ricked him +when you threw him! I saw him just before I left Adelaide. He's +been lame ever since."</p> +<p>"He'd have done for me if he could."</p> +<p>"Of course he would. His blood was up. He meant to break your +back. I saw him break a chap's back once, and it did not take so +very long either. I heard it snap. But why did you let him go so +far to start with before you pulled him up? That's what I've never +been able to understand about you. If you behaved different to +start with they would behave different to you. They would know +they'd have to."</p> +<p>"I have not your art," said Lord Newhaven, tranquilly, "of +letting a man know when he's getting out of hand that unless he +goes steady there will be a row, and he'll be in it. I'm not made +like that."</p> +<p>"It works well," said Dick. "It's a sort of peaceful way of +rubbing along and keeping friends. If you let those poor bullies +know what to expect they aren't, as a rule, over-anxious to toe the +mark. But you never <i>do</i> let them know."</p> +<p>"No," said Lord Newhaven, as he shot his letter into the brass +mouth in the cottage wall, just below a window of "bulls'-eyes" and +peppermints, "I never do. I don't defend it. But—"</p> +<p>"But what?"</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven's face underwent some subtle change. His eyes +fixed themselves on a bottle of heart-shaped peppermints, and then +met Dick's suddenly, with the clear, frank glance of a +schoolboy.</p> +<p>"But somehow, for the life of me, until things get +serious—<i>I can't</i>."</p> +<p>Dick, whose perceptions were rather of a colossal than an acute +order, nevertheless perceived that he had received a confidence, +and changed the subject.</p> +<p>"Aren't you going to buy some stamps?" he asked, perfectly aware +that Lord Newhaven had had his reasons for walking to the +post-office.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven, who was being watched with affectionate interest +from behind the counter by the grocer postmaster, went in, hit his +head against a pendent ham, and presently emerged with brine in his +hair and a shilling's worth of stamps in his hand.</p> +<p>Later in the day, when he and Dick were riding up the little +street, with a view to having a look at the moor—for +Middleshire actually has a grouse moor, although it is in the +Midlands—the grocer in his white apron rushed out and waylaid +them.</p> +<p>"Very sorry about the letter, my lord," he repeated volubly, +touching his forelock. "Hope her la'ship told you as I could not +get it out again, or I'm sure I would have done to oblige your +lordship, and her la'ship calling on purpose. But the post-office +is that mean and distrustful as it don't leave me the key, and once +hanything is in, in it is."</p> +<p>"Ah!" said Lord Newhaven, slowly. "Well, Jones, it's not your +fault. I ought not to have changed my mind. I suppose her ladyship +gave you my message that I wanted it back?"</p> +<p>"Yes, my lord, and her la'ship come herself, not ten minutes +after you was gone. But I've no more power over that there +receptacle than a hunlaid hegg, and that's the long and short of +it. I've allus said, and I say it again, 'Them as have charge of +the post-office should have the key.'"</p> +<p>"When I am made postmaster-general you <i>shall</i> have it," +said Lord Newhaven, smiling. "It is the first reform that I shall +bring about." And he nodded to the smiling, apologetic man and +trotted on, Dick beside him, who was apparently absorbed in the +action of his roan cob.</p> +<p>But Dick's mind had sustained a severe shock. That Lady +Newhaven, "that jolly little woman," the fond mother of those two +"jolly little chaps," should have been guilty of an underhand +trick, was astonishing to him.</p> +<p>Poor Dick had started life with a religious reverence for woman; +had carried out his brittle possession to bush-life in Australia, +from thence through two A.D.C.-ships, and, after many vicissitudes, +had brought it safely back with a large consignment of his own +Burgundy to his native land. It was still sufficiently +intact—save for a chip or two—to make a pretty +wedding-present to his future wife. But it had had a knock since he +mounted the roan cob. For, unfortunately, the kind of man who has +what are called "illusions" about women is too often the man whose +discrimination lies in other directions, in fields where little +high-heeled shoes are not admitted.</p> +<p>Rachel had the doubtful advantage of knowing that, in spite of +Dick's shrewdness respecting shades of difference in muscatels, she +and Lady Newhaven were nevertheless ranged on the same pedestal in +Dick's mind as flawless twins of equal moral beauty. But after this +particular day she observed that Lady Newhaven had somehow slipped +off the pedestal, and that she, Rachel, had the honor of occupying +it alone.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Une grande passion malheureaux est un grand moyen de +sagesse."</p> +</div> +<p>Rachel had left London precipitately after she had been the +unwilling confidante of Lady Newhaven's secret, and had taken +refuge with that friend of all perplexed souls, the Bishop of +Southminster. She felt unable to meet Hugh again without an +interval of breathing-time. She knew that if she saw much more of +him he would confide in her, and she shrank from receiving a +confidence the ugliest fact of which she already knew. Perhaps she +involuntarily shrank also from fear lest he should lower himself in +her eyes by only telling her half the truth. Sad confessions were +often poured into Rachel's ears which she had known for years. She +never alluded to that knowledge, never corrected the half-lie which +accompanies so many whispered self—accusations. Confidences +and confessions are too often a means of evasion of justice—a +laying of the case for the plaintiff before a judge without +allowing the defendant to be present or to call a witness. Rachel, +by dint of long experience, which did slowly for her the work of +imagination, had ceased to wonder at the faithfully chronicled +harsh words and deeds of generous souls. She knew or guessed at the +unchronicled treachery or deceit which had brought about that +seemingly harsh word or deed.</p> +<p>She had not the exalted ideas about her fellow-creatures which +Hester had, but she possessed the rare gift of reticence. She +exemplified the text—"Whether it be to friend or foe, talk +not of other men's lives." And in Rachel's quiet soul a vast love +and pity dwelt for these same fellow-creatures. She had lived and +worked for years among those whose bodies were half starved, half +clothed, degraded. When she found money at her command she had +spent sums (as her lawyer told her) out of all proportion on that +poor human body, stumbling between vice and starvation. But now, +during the last year, when her great wealth had thrown her +violently into society, she had met, until her strong heart +flinched before it, the other side of life—the starved soul +in the delicately nurtured, richly clad body, the atrophied +spiritual life in hideous contrast with the physical ease and +luxury which were choking it. The second experience was harder to +bear than the first. And just as in the old days she had shared her +bread and cheese with those hungrier than herself, and had taken +but little thought for those who had bread and to spare, so now she +felt but transient interest in those among her new associates who +were successfully struggling against the blackmail of luxury, the +leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins the +soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually +starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose +names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke—the +little world which is called "Society."</p> +<p>She longed to comfort them, to raise them up, to wipe from their +hands and garments the muddy gold stains of the gutter into which +they had fallen, to smooth away the lines of mean care from their +faces. But it had been far simpler in her previous life to share +her hard-earned bread with those who needed it than it was now to +share her equally hard-earned thoughts and slow gleanings of +spiritual knowledge, to share the things which belonged to her +peace.</p> +<p>Rachel had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming +passion of love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had +devastated the little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, +involving its hospitable dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in +one common ruin. Out of that desolation she was unconsciously +rebuilding her city, but it was still rather gaunt and bare, the +trees had not had time to grow in the streets, and there was an +ugly fortification round it of defaced, fire-seared stones, which +had once stood aloft in minaret and tower, and which now served +only as a defence against all corners.</p> +<p>If Dick had been in trouble, or rather if she had known the +troubles he had been through, and which had made his crooked mouth +shut so firmly, Rachel might possibly have been able to give him +something more valuable than the paper money of her friendship. But +Dick was obviously independent. He could do without her, while Hugh +had a claim upon her. Rachel's thoughts turned to Hugh again and +ever again. Did he see his conduct as she saw it? A haunting fear +was upon her that he did not. And she longed with an intensity that +outbalanced for the time every other feeling that he should confess +his sin fully, entirely—see it in all its ugliness, and +gather himself together into a deep repentance before he went down +into silence, or before he made a fresh start in life. She would +have given her right hand to achieve that.</p> +<p>And in a lesser degree she was drawn towards Lady Newhaven. Lady +Newhaven was conscious of the tender compassion which Rachel felt +for her, and used it to the uttermost; but unfortunately she +mistook it for admiration of her character, mixed with sympathetic +sorrow for her broken heart. If she had seen herself as Rachel saw +her, she would have conceived, not for herself, but for Rachel, +some of the aversion which was gradually distilling, bitter drop by +drop, into her mind for her husband. She would not have killed him. +She would have thought herself incapable of an action so criminal, +so monstrous. But if part of the ruin in the garden were visibly +trembling to its fall, she would not have warned him if he had been +sitting beneath it, nor would her conscience have ever reproached +her afterwards.</p> +<p>"I wish Miss Gresley would come and stay here instead of taking +you away from me," she said, plaintively, to Rachel one morning, +when she made the disagreeable discovery that Rachel and Hester +were friends. "I don't care much about her myself, she is so +profane and so dreadfully irreligious. But Edward likes to talk to +her. He prefers artificial people. I wonder he did not marry her. +That old cat, Lady Susan Gresley, was always throwing her at his +head. I wish she was not always persuading you to leave me for +hours together. I get so frightened when I am left alone with +Edward. I live in perpetual dread that he will say something before +the children or the servants. He is quite cruel enough."</p> +<p>"He will never say anything."</p> +<p>"You are always so decided, Rachel. You don't see possibilities, +and you don't know him as I do. He is capable of anything. I will +write a note now, and you can take it to Miss Gresley, if you +<i>must</i> go there to-day."</p> +<p>"I wish to go very much."</p> +<p>"And you will stay another week whether she comes or not?"</p> +<p>There was a momentary pause before Rachel said, cheerfully, "I +will stay another week, with pleasure. But I am afraid Lord +Newhaven will turn restive at taking me in to dinner."</p> +<p>"Oh! he likes you. He always prefers people who are not of his +own family."</p> +<p>Rachel laughed. "You flatter me."</p> +<p>"I never flatter any one. He does like you, and, besides, there +are people coming next week for the grouse-shooting. I suppose that +heavy young Vernon is going to lumber over with you. It's not my +fault if he is always running after you. Edward insisted on having +him. I don't want him to dance attendance on <i>me</i>."</p> +<p>"He and I are going to bicycle to Warpington together. The +Gresleys are cousins of his. If it turns very hot we will wait till +after sunset to return, if we may."</p> +<p>"Just as you like," said Lady Newhaven with asperity. "But I +advise you to be careful, my dear Rachel. It never seems to occur +to you what on-lookers see at a glance, namely, that Mr. Vernon is +in love with your fortune."</p> +<p>"According to public opinion that is a very praiseworthy +attachment," said Rachel, who had had about enough. "I often hear +it commended."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven stared. That her conversation could have the +effect of a mustard leaf did not strike her. She saw that Rachel +was becoming restive, and, of course, the reason was obvious. She +was thinking of marrying Dick.</p> +<p>"Well, my dear," she said, lying down on a low couch near the +latticed window, and opening a novel, "you need not be vexed with +me for trying to save you from a mercenary marriage. I only speak +because I am fond of you. But one marriage is as good as another. I +was married for love myself; I had not a farthing. And yet you see +my marriage has turned out a tragedy—a bitter, bitter +tragedy."</p> +<p><i>Tableau</i>.—A beautiful, sad-faced young married woman +in white, reclining among pale-green cushions near a bowl of pink +carnations, endeavoring to rouse the higher feelings of an +inexperienced though not youthful spinster in a short bicycling +skirt. Decidedly, the picture was not flattering to Rachel.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"On s'ennuie presque toujours avec ceux qu'on ennuie."</p> +</div> +<p>Hester did not fail a second time to warn the Gresleys of the +arrival of guests. She mentioned it in time to allow of the making +of cakes, and Mr. Gresley graciously signified his intention of +returning early from his parochial rounds on the afternoon when +Dick and Rachel were expected, while Mrs. Gresley announced that +the occasion was a propitious one for inviting the Pratts to +tea.</p> +<p>"Miss West will like to meet them," she remarked to Hester, +whose jaw dropped at the name of Pratt. "And it is very likely if +they take a fancy to her they will ask her to stay at the Towers +while she is in the neighborhood. If the captain is at home I will +ask him to come too. The Pratts are always so pleasant and +hospitable."</p> +<p>Hester was momentarily disconcerted at the magnitude of the +social effort which Rachel's coming seemed to entail. But for once +she had the presence of mind not to show her dismay, and she helped +Mrs. Gresley to change the crewel-work antimacassars, with their +washed-out kittens swinging and playing leap-frog, for the best +tussore-silk ones.</p> +<p>The afternoon was still young when all the preparations had been +completed, and Mrs. Gresley went up-stairs to change her gown, +while Hester took charge of the children, as Fräulein had many +days previously arranged to make music with Dr. and Miss Brown on +this particular afternoon. And very good music it was which +proceeded out of the open windows of the doctor's red brick house +opposite Abel's cottage. Hester could just hear it from the bottom +of the garden near the church-yard wall, and there she took the +children, and under the sycamore, with a bench round it, the dolls +had a tea-party. Hester had provided herself with a lump of sugar +and a biscuit, and out of these many dishes were made, and were +arranged on a clean pocket-handkerchief spread on the grass. Regie +carried out his directions as butler with solemn exactitude; and +though Mary, who had inherited the paternal sense of humor, thought +fit to tweak the handkerchief and upset everything, she found the +witticism so coldly received by "Auntie Hester," although she +explained that father always did it, that she at once suited +herself to her company, and helped to repair the disaster.</p> +<p>It was very hot. The dolls, from the featureless midshipman to +the colossal professional beauty sitting in her own costly +perambulator (a present from Mrs. Pratt), felt the heat, and showed +it by their moist countenances. The only person who was cool was a +small, nude, china infant in its zinc bath, the property of Stella, +whose determination to reach central facts, and to penetrate to the +root of the matter, at present took the form of tearing or licking +off all that could be torn or licked from objects of interest. +Hester, who had presented her with the floating baby in the bath, +sometimes wondered, as she watched Stella conscientiously work +through a well-dressed doll down to its stitched sawdust +compartments, what Mr. Gresley would make of his daughter when she +turned her attention to theology.</p> +<p>They were all sitting in a tight circle round the handkerchief, +Regie watching Hester cutting a new supply of plates out of smooth +leaves with her little gilt scissors, while Mary and Stella tried +alternately to suck an inaccessible grain of sugar out of the +bottom of an acorn cup.</p> +<p>Rachel and Dick had come up on their silent wheels, and were +looking at them over the wall before Hester was aware of their +presence.</p> +<p>"May we join the tea-party?" asked Rachel, and Hester started +violently.</p> +<p>"I am afraid the gate is locked," she said. "But perhaps you can +climb it."</p> +<p>"We can't leave the bicycles outside, though," said Dick, and he +took a good look at the heavy padlocked gate. Then he slowly lifted +it off its hinges, wheeled in the bicycles, and replaced the gate +in position.</p> +<p>Rachel looked at him.</p> +<p>"Do you always do what you want to do?" she said, +involuntarily.</p> +<p>"It saves trouble," he said, "especially as no one can be such a +first-class fool as to think a padlock will keep a gate shut. He +would expect it to be opened."</p> +<p>"But father said no one could come in there now," explained +Regie, who had watched, open-mouthed, the upheaval of the gate. +"Father said it could not be opened any more. He told mother."</p> +<p>"Did he, my son?" said Dick, and he kissed every one, beginning +with Hester and finishing with the dolls. Then they all sat down to +the tea-party, and partook largely of the delicacies, and after tea +Dick solemnly asked the children if they had seen the flying +half-penny he had brought back with him from Australia. The +children crowded round him, and the half-penny was produced and +handed round. Each child touched it, and found it real. Auntie +Hester and Auntie Rachel examined it. Boulou was requested to smell +it. And then it was laid on the grass, and the pocket-handkerchief +which had done duty as a table-cloth was spread over it.</p> +<p>The migrations of the half-penny were so extraordinary that even +Rachel and Hester professed amazement. Once it was found in +Rachel's hand, into which another large hand had gently shut it. +But it was never discovered twice in the same place, though all the +children rushed religiously to look for it where it was last +discovered.</p> +<p>Another time, after a long search, the doll in the bath was +discovered to be sitting upon it, and once it actually flew down +Regie's back; and amid the wild excitement of the children its cold +descent was described by Regie in piercing minuteness until the +moment when it rolled out over his stocking at his knee.</p> +<p>"Make it fly down my back too, Uncle Dick," shrieked Mary. +"Regie, give it to me."</p> +<p>But Regie danced in a circle round Dick, holding aloft the +wonderful half-penny.</p> +<p>"Make it fly down my throat," he cried, too excited to know what +he was doing, and he put the half-penny in his mouth.</p> +<p>"Put it out this instant," said Dick, without moving.</p> +<p>A moment's pause followed, in which the blood ebbed away from +the hearts of the two women.</p> +<p>"I can't," said Regie; "I've swallowed it." And he began to +whimper, and then suddenly rolled on the grass screaming.</p> +<p>Dick pounced upon him like a panther, and held him by the feet +head downward, shaking him violently. The child's face was terrible +to see.</p> +<p>Hester hid her face in her hands. Rachel rose and stood close to +Dick.</p> +<p>"I think the shaking is rather too much for him," she said, +watching the poor little purple face intently. "I'm bound to go +on," said Dick, fiercely. "Is it moving, Regie?"</p> +<p>"It's going down," screamed Regie, suddenly.</p> +<p>"That it's not," said Dick, and he shook the child again, and +the half-penny flew out upon the grass. "Thank God," said Dick, and +he laid the gasping child on Hester's lap and turned away.</p> +<p>A few minutes later Regie was laughing and talking, and feeling +himself a hero. Presently he slipped off Hester's knee and ran to +Dick, who was lying on the grass a few paces off, his face hidden +in his hands.</p> +<p>"Make the half-penny fly again, Uncle Dick," cried all the +children, pulling at him.</p> +<p>Dick raised an ashen face for a moment and said, hoarsely, "Take +them away."</p> +<p>Hester gathered up the children and took them back to the house +through the kitchen garden.</p> +<p>"Don't say we have arrived," whispered Rachel to her. "I will +come on with him presently." And she sat down near the prostrate +vine-grower. The president of the South Australian Vine-Growers' +Association looked very large when he was down.</p> +<p>Presently he sat up. His face was drawn and haggard, but he met +Rachel's dog-like glance of silent sympathy with a difficult, +crooked smile.</p> +<p>"He is such a jolly little chap," he said, winking his hawk +eyes.</p> +<p>"It was not your fault."</p> +<p>"That would not have made it any better for the parents," said +Dick. "I had time to think of that while I was shaking that little +money-box. Besides, it was my fault, in a way. I'll never play with +other people's children again. They are too brittle. I've had +shaves up the Fly River and in the South Sea Islands, but never +anything as bad as this, in this blooming little Vicarage garden +with a church looking over the wall."</p> +<p>Hester was skimming back towards them.</p> +<p>"Don't mention it to James and his wife," she said to Dick. "He +has to speak at a temperance meeting to-night. I will tell them +when the meeting is over."</p> +<p>"That's just as well," said Dick, "for I know if James jawed +much at me I should act on the text that it is more blessed to give +than to receive."</p> +<p>"In what way?"</p> +<p>"Either way," said Dick. "Tongue or fist. It does not matter +which, so long as you give more than you get. And the text is quite +right. It is blessed, for I've tried it over and over again, and +found it true every time. But I don't want to try it on James if +he's anything like what he was as a curate."</p> +<p>"He is not much altered," said Hester.</p> +<p>"He is the kind of man that would not alter much," said Dick. "I +expect God Almighty likes him as he is."</p> +<p>Mr. and Mrs. Gresley, meanwhile, were receiving Mrs. Pratt and +the two Misses Pratt in the drawing-room. Selina and Ada Pratt were +fine, handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their +smart sailor hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and +whose muff-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and +sequin belts and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the +highest pinnacle of the world of fashion.</p> +<p>Selina was the most popular, being liable to shrieks of laughter +at the smallest witticisms, and always ready for that species of +amusement termed "bally-ragging" or "hay-making." But Ada was the +most admired. She belonged to that type which in hotel society and +country towns is always termed "queenly." She "kept the men at a +distance." She "never allowed them to take liberties," etc., etc. +She held her chin up and her elbows out, and was considered by the +section of Middleshire society in which she shone to be very +distinguished. Mrs. Pratt was often told that her daughter looked +like a duchess; and this facsimile of the aristocracy, or rather of +the most distressing traits of its latest recruits, had a manner of +lolling with crossed legs in the parental carriage and pair which +was greatly admired. "Looks as if she was born to it all," Mr. +Pratt would say to his wife.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley was just beginning to fear her other guests were +not coming when two tall figures were seen walking across the lawn, +with Hester between them.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley sallied forth to meet them, and blasts of surprised +welcome were borne into the drawing-room by the summer air.</p> +<p>"But it was locked. I locked it myself." Inaudible reply.</p> +<p>"Padlocked. Only opens to the word Moon. Key on my own +watch-chain."</p> +<p>Inaudible reply.</p> +<p>"Hinges! ha! ha! ha! Very good, Dick. Likely story that. I see +you're the same as ever. Travellers' tales. But we are not so +easily taken in, are we, Hester?"</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the +Pratts were concerned. Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected "fancy" to +Rachel, and pressed her to stay at "The Towers" while she was in +the neighborhood, and make further acquaintance with her "young +ladies."</p> +<p>"Ada is very pernickety," she said, smiling towards that +individual conversing with Dick. "She won't make friends with +everybody, and she gives it me" (with maternal pride) "when I ask +people to stay whom she does not take to. She says there's a very +poor lot round here, and most of the young ladies so ill-bred and +empty she does not care to make friends with them. I don't know +where she gets all her knowledge from. I'm sure it's not from her +mother. Ada, now you come and talk a little to Miss West."</p> +<p>Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel +made room for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself +behind the tea-table with Mrs. Gresley.</p> +<p>The conversation turned on bicycling.</p> +<p>"I bike now and then in the country," said Ada, "but I have not +done much lately. We have only just come down from town, and, <i>of +course</i>, I never bike in London."</p> +<p>Rachel had just said that she did.</p> +<p>"Perhaps you are nervous about the traffic," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"Oh! I'm not the least afraid of the traffic, but it's such bad +form to bike in London."</p> +<p>"That, of course, depends on how it's done," said Rachel; "but I +am sure in your ease you need not be afraid."</p> +<p>Ada glared at Rachel, and did not answer.</p> +<p>When the Pratts had taken leave she said to her mother:</p> +<p>"Well, you can have Rachel West if you want to, but if you do I +shall go away. She is only Birmingham, and yet she's just as stuck +up as she can be."</p> +<p>The Pratts were "Liverpool."</p> +<p>"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt with natural pride, "it's well +known no one is good enough for you. But I took to Miss West, and +an orphan and all, with all that money, poor thing!"</p> +<p>"She has no style," said Selina, "but she has a nice face; and +she's coming to stay with Sibbie Loftus next week, when she leaves +Vi Newhaven. She may be Birmingham, Ada, but she's just as thick +with county people as we are."</p> +<p>"I did not rightly make out," said Mrs. Pratt, reflectively, +"whether that tall gentleman, Mr. Vernon, was after Miss West or +Hessie Gresley."</p> +<p>"Oh, ma! You always think some one's after somebody else," said +Ada, impatiently, whose high breeding obliged her to be rather +peremptory with her simple parent. "Mr. Vernon is a pauper, and so +is Hessie. And, besides, Hessie is not the kind of girl anybody +would want to marry."</p> +<p>"Well, I'm not so sure of that," said Selina. "But if she had +had any chances I know she would have told me, because I told her +all about Captain Cobbett and Mr. Baxter."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER +XVIII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas +plus sages.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 20em;">—LA FONTAINE.</span></div> +<p>If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a +word with Hester, she was doomed to disappointment. Mr. Gresley +took the seat on the sofa beside Rachel which Ada Pratt had +vacated, and after a few kindly eulogistic remarks on the Bishop of +Southminster and the responsibilities of wealth, he turned the +conversation into the well-worn groove of Warpington.</p> +<p>Rachel proved an attentive listener, and after Mr. Gresley had +furnished her at length with nutritious details respecting +parochial work, he went on:</p> +<p>"I am holding this evening a temperance meeting in the Parish +Room. I wish, Miss West, that I could persuade you to stay for it, +and thus enlist your sympathies in a matter of vital +importance."</p> +<p>"They have been enlisted in it for the last ten years," said +Rachel, who was not yet accustomed to the invariable assumption on +the part of Mr. Gresley that no one took an interest in the most +obvious good work until he had introduced and championed it. "But," +she added, "I will stay with pleasure."</p> +<p>Dick, who was becoming somewhat restive under Mrs. Gresley's +inquiries about the Newhavens, became suddenly interested in the +temperance meeting.</p> +<p>"I've seen many a good fellow go to the dogs through drink in +the Colonies, more's the pity," Dick remarked. "I think I'll come +too, James. And if you want a few plain words you call on me."</p> +<p>"I will," said Mr. Gresley, much gratified. "I always make a +point of encouraging the laity—at least, those among them who +are thoroughly grounded in Church teaching—to express +themselves. Hear both sides, that is what I always say. The Bishop +constantly enjoins on his clergy to endeavor to elicit the lay +opinion. The chair this evening will be taken by Mr. Pratt, a +layman."</p> +<p>The temperance meeting was to take place at seven o'clock, and +possibly Rachel may have been biassed in favor of that +entertainment by the hope of a quiet half-hour with Hester in her +own room. At any rate, she secured it.</p> +<p>When they were alone Rachel produced Lady Newhaven's note.</p> +<p>"Do come to Westhope," she said. "While you are under this roof +it seems almost impossible to see you, unless we are close to it," +and she touched the sloping ceiling with her hand. "And yet I came +to Westhope, and I am going on to Wilderleigh, partly in order to +be near you."</p> +<p>Hester shook her head.</p> +<p>"The book is nearly finished," she said, the low light from the +attic window striking sideways on the small face with its tightly +compressed lips.</p> +<p>A spirit indomitable, immortal, looked for a moment out of +Hester's gray eyes. The spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh +was becoming weaker day by day.</p> +<p>"When it is finished," she went on, "I will go anywhere and do +anything, but stay here I must till it is done. Besides, I am not +fit for society at present. I am covered with blue mould. Do you +remember how that horrid Lady Carbury used to laugh at the country +squires' daughters for being provincial? I have gone a peg lower +than being provincial—I have become parochial."</p> +<p>A knock came at the door, and Fräulein's mild, musical face +appeared in the aperture.</p> +<p>"I fear to disturb you," she said, "but Regie say he cannot go +to sleep till he see you."</p> +<p>Hester introduced Fräulein to Rachel, and slipped +down-stairs to the night nursery.</p> +<p>Mary and Stella were already asleep in their high-barred cribs. +The blind was down, and Hester could only just see the white figure +of Regie sitting up in his night-gown. She sat down on the edge of +the bed and took him in her arms.</p> +<p>"What is it; my treasure?"</p> +<p>"Auntie Hester, was I naughty about the flying half-penny?"</p> +<p>"No, darling. Why?"</p> +<p>"Because mother always says not to put pennies in my mouth, and +I never did till to-day. And now Mary says I have been very +naughty."</p> +<p>"It does not matter what Mary says," said Hester, with a +withering glance towards the sleeping angel in the next crib, who +was only Mary by day. "But you must never do it again, and you will +tell mother all about it to-morrow."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Regie; "but, but—"</p> +<p>"But what?"</p> +<p>"Uncle Dick did say it was a flying half-penny, and you said so, +too, and that other auntie. And I thought it did not matter putting +in flying half-pennies, only common ones."</p> +<p>Hester saw the difficulty in Regie's mind.</p> +<p>"It felt common when it was inside," said Regie, doubtfully, +"and yet you and Uncle Dick <i>did</i> say it was a flying +one."</p> +<p>Regie's large eyes were turned upon her with solemn inquiry in +them. It is crises like this that our first ideals are laid +low.</p> +<p>Regie had always considered Hester as the very soul of honor, +that mysterious honor which he was beginning to dimly apprehend +through her allegiance to it, and which, in his mind, belonged as +exclusively to her as the little bedroom under the roof.</p> +<p>"Regie," said Hester, tremulously, seeing that she had +unwittingly put a stumbling-block before the little white feet she +loved, "when we played at the doll's tea-party, and you were the +butler, I did not mean you were <i>really</i> a butler, did I? I +knew, and you knew, and we all knew, that you were Regie all the +time."</p> +<p>"Ye-es."</p> +<p>"It was a game. And so when Uncle Dick found us playing the +tea-party game he played another game about the flying +half-penny."</p> +<p>"Then it was a common half-penny, after all," said Regie, with a +deep sigh.</p> +<p>"Yes, it was a common half-penny, only the game was that it +could fly, like the other game was that the acorn cups were real +teacups. So Uncle Dick and all of us were not saying what was not +true. We were all playing at a game. Do you understand, my little +mouse?"</p> +<p>"Yes," said Regie, with another voluminous sigh, and Hester +realized, with thankfulness, that the half-penny and not herself +had fallen from its pedestal. "I see now; but when he said, Hi! +Presto! and it flew away, I thought I saw it flying. Mary said she +did. And I suppose the gate was only a game, too."</p> +<p>Hester felt that the subject would be quite beyond her powers of +explanation if once the gate were introduced into it.</p> +<p>She laid Regie down and covered him.</p> +<p>"And you will go to sleep now. And I will ask Uncle Dick when +next he comes to show us how he did the game with the +half-penny."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Regie, dejectedly. "I'd rather know what there is to +be known. Only I <i>thought</i> it was a flying one. Good-night, +Auntie Hester."</p> +<p>She stayed beside him a few minutes until his even breathing +showed her he was asleep, and then slipped back to her own room. +The front-door bell was ringing as she came out of the nursery. The +temperance deputation from Liverpool had arrived. Mr. Gresley's +voice of welcome could be heard saying that it was only ten minutes +to seven.</p> +<p>Accordingly, a few minutes before that hour, Mr. Gresley and his +party entered the Parish Room. It was crammed. The back benches +were filled with a large contingent of young men, whose +half-sheepish, half-sullen expression showed that their presence +was due to pressure. Why the parishioners had come in such numbers +it would be hard to say. Perhaps even a temperance meeting was a +change in the dreary monotony of rural life at Warpington. Many of +the faces bore the imprint of this monotony, Rachel thought, as she +refused the conspicuous front seat pointed out to her by Mrs. +Gresley, and sat down near the door with Hester.</p> +<p>Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a +moment later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his +eye travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking +for her. Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five +deep by the last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and +the wall, but it was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding +the anxious church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick +disappeared among the young men at the back, and Rachel thought no +more of him until a large Oxford shoe descended quietly out of +space upon the empty seat near her, and Dick, who had persuaded the +young men to give him foot-room on their seats, and had stepped +over the high backs of several "school forms," sat down beside +her.</p> +<p>It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling. But the +thought darted through her mind that Dick was the kind of man who, +somehow or other, would succeed where he meant to succeed, and +would marry the woman he intended to marry. There was no doubt that +she was that woman, and as he sat tranquilly beside her she wished, +with a nervous tremor, that his choice had fallen on some one +else.</p> +<p>The meeting opened with nasal and fervent prayer on the part of +a neighboring Archdeacon. No one could kneel down except the +dignitaries on the platform, but every one pretended to do so. Mr. +Pratt, who was in the chair, then introduced the principal speaker. +Mr. Pratt's face, very narrow at the forehead, became slightly +wider at the eyes, widest when it reached round the corners of the +mouth, and finally split into two long, parti-colored whiskers. He +assumed on these occasions a manner of pontifical solemnity towards +his "humble brethren," admirably suited to one who, after wrestling +for many years with a patent oil, is conscious that he has +blossomed out into a "county family."</p> +<p>The Warpington parishioners listened to him unmoved.</p> +<p>The deputation from Liverpool followed, a thin, ascetic-looking +man of many bones and little linen, who spoke with the concentrated +fury of a fanatic against alcohol in all its varieties. Dick, who +had so far taken more interest in Rachel's gloves, which she had +dropped, and with which he was kindly burdening himself, than in +the proceedings, drew himself up and fixed his steel eyes on the +speaker.</p> +<p>A restive movement in the audience followed the speech, which +was loudly clapped by Mr. Gresley and the Pratts.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley then mounted the platform.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley had an enormous advantage as a platform speaker, and +as a preacher in the twin pulpits of church and home, owing to the +conviction that he had penetrated to the core of any subject under +discussion, and could pronounce judgment upon it in a conclusive +manner. He was wont to approach every subject by the preliminary +statement that he had "threshed it out." This threshing-out had +been so thorough that there was hardly a subject even of the +knottiest description which he was unable to dismiss with a few +pregnant words. "Evolution! Ha! ha! Descended from an ape. I don't +believe that for one." While women's rights received their +death-blow from a jocose allusion to the woman following the plough +while the man sat at home and rocked the cradle.</p> +<p>With the same noble simplicity he grappled with the difficult +and complex subject of temperance, by which he meant total +abstinence. He informed his hearers, "in the bigoted tones of a +married teetotaler," that he had gone to the root of the +matter—the roots were apparently on the surface—and +that it was no use calling black white and white black. He for one +did not believe in muddling up black and white, as some lukewarm +people advocated, till they were only a dirty gray. No; either +drink was right or it was wrong. If it was not wrong to get drunk, +he did not know what was wrong. He was not a man of compromise. +Alcohol was a servant of the devil, and to tamper with it was to +tamper with the Evil One himself. Touch not. Taste not. Handle not. +He for his part should never side with the devil.</p> +<p>This lofty utterance having been given time to sink in, Mr. +Gresley looked round at the sea of stolid, sullen faces, and +concluded with saying that the chairman would now call upon his +cousin, Mr. Vernon, to speak to them on the shocking evils he +himself had witnessed in Australia as the results of drink.</p> +<p>Dick was not troubled by shyness. He extricated himself from his +seat with the help of the young men, and slowly ascended the +platform. He looked a size too large for it, and for the other +speakers, and his loose tweed suit and heather stockings were as +great a contrast to the tightly buttoned-up black of the other +occupants as were his strong, keen face and muscular hands to those +of the previous speakers.</p> +<p>"That's a man," said a masculine voice behind Rachel. "He worn't +reared on ditch-water, you bet."</p> +<p>"Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen," said Dick. "You've +only got to listen to me for half a minute, and you'll find out +without my telling you that Nature did not cut me out for a +speaker. I'm no talker. I'm a workingman"—an admission which +Mr. Pratt would rather have been boiled in his own oil than have +made. "For the last seven years I've done my twelve hours a day, +and I've come to think more of what a man gets through with his +hands than the sentiments which he can wheeze out after a heavy +meal. But Mr. Gresley has asked me to tell you what I know about +drink, as I have seen a good many samples of it in Australia."</p> +<p>Dick then proceeded, with a sublime disregard of grammar, and an +earnestness that increased as he went on, to dilate on the evil +effects of drink as he himself had witnessed them. He described how +he had seen men who could not get spirits make themselves drunk on +"Pain-killer"; how he had seen strong, young station hands, who had +not tasted spirits for months, come down from the hills with a +hundred pounds in their pockets, and drink themselves into +"doddery" old men in a fortnight in the nearest township, where +they were kept drunk on drugged liquor till all their hard-earned +wages were gone.</p> +<p>The whole room listened in dead silence. No feet shuffled. Mr. +Gresley looked patronizingly at Dick's splendid figure and large, +outstretched hand, with the crooked middle finger, which he had cut +off by mistake in the bush and had stuck on again himself. Then the +young Vicar glanced smiling at the audience, feeling that he had +indeed elicited a "lay opinion" of the best kind.</p> +<p>"Now what are the causes of all these dreadful things?" +continued Dick. "I'm speaking to the men here, not the women. What +are the causes of all this poverty and vice and scamped +workmanship, and weak eyes and shaky hands, on the top of high +wages? I tell you they come from two things, and one is as bad as +the other. One is drinking too much, and the other is drinking bad +liquor. Every man who's worth his salt," said Dick, balancing his +long bent finger on the middle of his other palm, "should know when +he has had enough. Some can carry more, some less." Mr. Gresley +started and signed to Dick, but Dick did not notice. "Bad liquor is +at the root of half the drunkenness I know. I don't suppose there +are many publicans here to-night, for this meeting isn't quite in +their line; and if there are, they can't have come expecting +compliments. But if you fellows think you get good liquor at the +publics round here, I tell you you are jolly well mistaken."</p> +<p>"Hear! hear!" shouted several voices.</p> +<p>"I've been in the course of the last week to most of the +public-houses in Southminster and Westhope and Warpington to see +what sort of stuff they sold, and upon my soul, gentlemen, if I +settled in Warpington I'd, I'd"—Dick hesitated for a simile +strong enough—"I'd turn teetotaler until I left it again, +rather than swallow the snake poison they serve out to you."</p> +<p>There was a general laugh, in the midst of which Mr. Gresley, +whose complexion had deepened, sprang to his feet and endeavored to +attract Dick's attention, but Dick saw nothing but his audience. +Mr. Gresley began to speak in his high, "singsong" voice.</p> +<p>"My young friend," he said, "has mistaken the object of this +meeting. In short I must—"</p> +<p>"Not a bit," said Dick—"not a bit; but if the people have +had enough of me I'll take your chair while you have another +innings."</p> +<p>In a moment the room was in an uproar.</p> +<p>Shouts of "No, no," "Go on," "Let him speak."</p> +<p>In the tumult Mr. Gresley's voice, instead of being the solo, +became but as one instrument—albeit a trombone—in an +orchestra.</p> +<p>"But I thoroughly agree with the gentlemen who spoke before me," +said Dick, when peace was restored. "Total abstinence is a long +chalk below temperance, but it's better than drunkenness any day. +And if a man can't get on without three-finger nips, let him take +the pledge. There are one or two here to-night who would be the +better for it. But, to my thinking, total abstinence is like a +water mattress. It is good for a sick man, and it's good for a man +with a weak will, which is another kind of illness. But temperance +is for those who are in health. There is a text in the Bible about +wine making glad the heart of man. That's a good text, and one to +go on. As often as not texts are like bags, and a man crams all his +own rubbish into them, and expects you to take them together. There +are some men, who ought to know better, who actually get out of +that text by saying the Bible means unfermented liquor"—Mr. +Gresley became purple. "Does it? Then how about the other place +where we hear of new wine bursting old bottles. What makes them +burst? Fermentation, of course, as every village idiot knows. No, I +take it when the Bible says wine it means wine. Wine's fermented +liquor, and what's unfermented liquor? Nothing but 'pop.'"</p> +<p>Dick pronounced the last word with profound contempt, which was +met with enthusiastic applause.</p> +<p>"My last word to you, gentlemen," continued Dick, "is, keep in +mind two points: first, look out for an honest publican, if there +is such an article, who will buy only the best liquor from the best +sources, and is not bound by the breweries to sell any stuff they +send along. Join together, and make it hot for a bound publican. +Kick him out, even if he is the Squire's butler." Mr. Pratt's +complexion became apoplectic. "And the second point is, Remember +some men have heads and some haven't. It is no use for a lame man +entering for a hurdle-race. A strong man can take his +whack—if it's with his food—and it will do him good, +while a weak man can't hang up his hat alter the first smile."</p> +<p>A storm of applause followed, which was perhaps all the heartier +by reason of the furious face of Mr. Gresley. Dick was clapped +continuously as he descended the platform and slowly left the room, +feeling in his pockets for his tobacco-pouch. A squad of young men +creaked out after him, and others followed by twos and threes, so +that the mellifluous voice of Mr. Pratt was comparatively lost, +who, disregarding his position as chairman, now rose to pour +oil—of which, in manner alone, he had always a large +supply—on the troubled waters. Mr. Pratt had felt a +difficulty in interrupting a member of a county family, which with +the eye of faith he plainly perceived Dick to be, and at the same +time a guest of "Newhaven's." The Pratts experienced in the rare +moments of their intercourse with the Newhavens some of that +sublime awe, that subdued rapture, which others experience in +cathedrals. Mr. Pratt had also taken a momentary pleasure in the +defeat of Mr. Gresley, who did not pay him the deference which he +considered due to him and his "seat." Mr. Pratt always expected +that the Vicar should, by reason of his small income, take the +position of a sort of upper servant of the Squire; and he had seen +so many instances of this happy state of things that he was +perpetually nettled by Mr. Gresley's "independent" attitude; while +Mr. Gresley was equally irritated by "the impatience of clerical +control" and shepherding which Mr. Pratt, his largest and woolliest +sheep, too frequently evinced.</p> +<p>As the chairman benignly expressed his approval of both views, +and toned down each to meet the other, the attention of the +audience wandered to the occasional laughs and cheers which came +from the school play-ground. And when, a few minutes later, Rachel +emerged with the stream, she saw Dick standing under the solitary +lamp-post speaking earnestly to a little crowd of youths and men. +The laughter had ceased. Their crestfallen appearance spoke for +itself.</p> +<p>"Well, good-night, lads," said Dick, cordially, raising his cap +to them, and he rejoined Rachel and Hester at the gate.</p> +<p>When Dick and Rachel had departed on their bicycles, and when +the deputation, after a frugal supper, had retired to rest, and +when the drawing-room door was shut, then, and not till then, did +Mr. Gresley give vent to his feelings.</p> +<p>"And he would not stop," he repeated over and over again almost +in hysterics, when the total-abstinence hose of his wrath had been +turned on Dick until every reservoir of abuse was exhausted. "I +signed to him; I spoke to him. You saw me speak to him, Minna, and +he would not stop."</p> +<p>Hester experienced that sudden emotion which may result either +in tears or laughter at the cruel anguish brought upon her brother +by the momentary experience of what he so ruthlessly inflicted.</p> +<p>"He talked me down," said Mr. Gresley, his voice shaking. "He +opposed me in my own school-room. Of course, I blame myself for +asking him to speak. I ought to have inquired into his principles +more thoroughly, but he took me in entirely by saying one thing in +this room and the exact opposite on the platform."</p> +<p>"I thought his views were the same in both places," said Hester, +"and, at the time, I admired you for asking him to speak, +considering he is a vine-grower."</p> +<p>"A what?" almost shrieked Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>"A vine-grower. Surely you know he has one of the largest +vineyards in South Australia?"</p> +<p>For a moment Mr. Gresley was bereft of speech.</p> +<p>"And you knew this and kept silence," he said at last, while +Mrs. Gresley looked reproachfully, but without surprise, at her +sister-in-law.</p> +<p>"Certainly. What was there to speak about? I thought you +knew."</p> +<p>"I never heard it till this instant. That quite accounts for his +views. He wants to push his own wines. Of course, drunkenness is +working for his interests. I understand it all now. He has undone +the work of years by that speech for the sake of booking a few +orders. It is contemptible. I trust, Hester, he is not a particular +friend of yours, for I shall feel it my duty to speak very strongly +to him if he comes again."</p> +<p>But Dick did not appear again. He was off and away before the +terrors of the Church could be brought to bear on him.</p> +<p>But his memory remained green at Warpington.</p> +<p>"They do say," said Abel to Hester a few days later, planting +his spade on the ground, and slowly scraping off upon it the clay +from his nailed boots, "as that Muster Vernon gave 'em a dusting in +the school-yard as they won't forget in a hurry. He said he could +not speak out before the women folk, but he was noways nesh to pick +his words onst he was outside. Barnes said as his tongue 'ud 'ave +raised blisters on a hedge stake. But he had a way with him for all +that. There was a deal of talk about him at market last Wednesday, +and Jones and Peg is just silly to go back to Australy with 'im. I +ain't sure," continued Abel, closing the conversation by a vigorous +thrust of his spade into the earth, "as one of the things that +fetched 'em all most wasn't his saying that since he's been in a +hot climate he knowed what it was to be tempted himself when he was +a bit down on his luck or a bit up. Pratts would never have owned +to that." The village always spoke of Mr. Pratt in the plural +without a prefix. "I've been to a sight of temperance meetings, +because," with indulgence, "master likes it, tho' I always has my +glass, as is natural. But I never heard one of the speakers kind of +settle to it like that. That's what the folks say; that for all he +was a born gentleman he spoke to 'em as man to man, not as if we +was servants or childer."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Le bruit est pour le fat.<br /> +La plainte est pour le sot.<br /> +L'honnête homme trompé<br /> +S'en va et ne dit mot.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">—M. DELANONI</span></div> +<p>"And so you cannot persuade Miss Gresley to come to us next +week?" said Lord Newhaven, strolling into the dining-room at +Westhope Abbey, where Rachel and Dick were sitting at a little +supper-table laid for two in front of the high altar. The +dining-room had formerly been the chapel, and the carved stone +altar still remained under the east window.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven drew up a chair, and Rachel felt vaguely relieved +at his presence. He had a knack of knowing when to appear and when +to efface himself.</p> +<p>"She can't leave her book," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"Her first book was very clever," said Lord Newhaven, "and, what +was more, it was true. I hope for her own sake she will outgrow her +love of truth, or it will make deadly enemies for her."</p> +<p>"And good friends," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"Possibly," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at her, and +almost obliged to believe that she had spoken without +self-consciousness. "But if she outgrows all her principles, I +hope, at any rate, she won't outgrow her sharp tongue. I liked her +ever since she first came to this house, ten years ago, with Lady +Susan Gresley. I remember saying that Captain Pratt; who called +while she was here, was a 'bounder.' And Miss Gresley said she did +not think he was quite a bounder, only on the boundary-line. If you +knew Captain Pratt, that describes him exactly."</p> +<p>"I wish she had not said it," said Rachel, with a sigh. "She +makes trouble for herself by saying things like that. Is Lady +Newhaven in the drawing-room?"</p> +<p>"Yes, I heard her singing 'The Lost Chord' not ten minutes +ago."</p> +<p>"I will go up to her," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"I do believe," said Lord Newhaven, when Rachel had departed, +"that she has an affection for Miss Gresley."</p> +<p>"It is not necessary to be a detective in plain clothes to see +that," said Dick.</p> +<p>"No. It generally needs to be a magnifying-glass to see a +woman's friendship, and then they are only expedients till we +arrive, Dick. You need not he jealous of Miss Gresley. Miss West +will forget all about her when she is Mrs. Vernon."</p> +<p>"She does not seem very keen about that," said Dick, grimly. +"I'm only marking time. I'm no forwarder than I was."</p> +<p>"Well, it's your own fault for fixing your affections on a woman +who is not anxious to marry. She has no objection to you. It is +marriage she does not like."</p> +<p>"Oh, that's bosh!" said Dick. "All women wish to be married, and +if they don't they ought to."</p> +<p>He felt that an invidious reflection had been east on +Rachel.</p> +<p>"All the same, a man with one eye can see that women with money, +or anything that makes them independent of us, don't flatter us by +their alacrity to marry us. They will make fools of themselves for +love—none greater—and they will marry for love. But +their different attitude towards us, their natural lords and +masters, directly we are no longer necessary to them as +stepping-stones to a home and a recognized position, revolts me. If +you had taken my advice at the start, you would have made up to one +among the mob of women who are dependent on marriage for their very +existence. If a man goes into that herd he will not be refused. And +if he is it does not matter. It is the blessed custom of piling +everything on to the eldest son, and leaving the women of the +family almost penniless, which provides half of us with wives +without any trouble to ourselves. Whatever we are, they have got to +take us. The average dancing young woman living in luxury in her +father's house is between the devil and the deep sea. We are +frequently the devil; but it is not surprising that she can't face +the alternative—a poverty to which she was not brought up, +and in which she has seen her old spinster aunts. But I suppose in +your case you really want the money?"</p> +<p>Dick looked rather hard at Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>"I should not have said that unless I had known it to be a lie," +continued the latter, "because I dislike being kicked. But, Dick, +listen to me. You have not," with sudden misgiving, "laid any +little matrimonial project before her this evening, have you?"</p> +<p>"No; I was not quite such a fool as that."</p> +<p>"Well! Such things do occur. Moonlight, you know, etc. I was +possessed by a devil once, and proposed by moonlight, as all my +wife's friends know, and probably her maid. But, seriously, Dick, +you are not making progress, as you say yourself."</p> +<p>"Well!" rather sullenly.</p> +<p>"Well, on-lookers see most of the game. Miss West may—I +don't say she is—but if things go on as they are for another +week she may become slightly bored. That was why I joined you at +supper. She had had, for the time, enough."</p> +<p>"Of me?" said Dick, reddening under his tan.</p> +<p>"Just so. It is a matter of no importance after marriage, but it +should be avoided beforehand. Are you really in earnest about +this?"</p> +<p>Dick delivered himself slowly and deliberately of certain +platitudes.</p> +<p>"Well, I hope I shall hear you say all that again some day in a +condensed form before a clergyman. In the meanwhile—"</p> +<p>"In the meanwhile I had better clear out."</p> +<p>"Yes; I don't enjoy saying so in the presence of my own +galantine and mayonnaise, but that is it. Go, and—come +back."</p> +<p>"If you have a Bradshaw," said Dick, "I'll look out my train +now. I think there is an express to London about seven in the +morning, if you can send me to the station."</p> +<p>"But the post only comes in at eight."</p> +<p>"Well, you can send my letters after me."</p> +<p>"I dare say I can, my diplomatist. But you are not going to +leave till the post has arrived, when you will receive business +letters requiring your immediate presence in London. You are not +going to let a woman know that you leave on her account."</p> +<p>"You are very sharp, Cackles," said Dick, drearily. "And I'll +take a leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right +thing. But I expect she will know very well that the same business +which took me to that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to +London."</p> +<p>Rachel was vaguely relieved when Dick went off next morning. She +was not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from +young men, which in due season became "marked," and then resulted +in proposals neatly or clumsily expressed. But she was disturbed +when she thought of Dick, and his departure was like the removal of +a weight, not a heavy, but still a perceptible one. For Rachel was +aware that Dick was in deadly earnest, and that his love was +growing steadily, almost unconsciously, was accumulating like snow, +flake by flake, upon a mountain-side. Some day, perhaps not for a +long time, but some day, there would be an avalanche, and, in his +own language, she "would be in it."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; +c'est le pardon qu'elle a fait naître dans votre âme. . +. . Mais si la trahison n'a pas accru la simplicité, la +confiance plus haute, l'étendue de l'amour, on vous aura +trahi bien inutilement, et vous pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien +arrivé.—MAETERLINCK.</p> +</div> +<p>Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard +wall where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous +occasion. It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and +Mrs. Gresley did not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk +secrets," as they would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was +felt by the Gresleys to be the appropriate moment to momentarily +lay aside their daily avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in +the garden for social intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. +Listeners are generally liked. Perhaps also her gentle, unassuming +manner was not an unpleasant change after the familiar nonchalance +of the Pratts.</p> +<p>The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, +and then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain +obtuse persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and +outwitting them, just as the really wicked people, who give +<i>vivâ voce</i> invitations, goad us into crevasses of lies, +for which, if there is any justice anywhere, they will have to +answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley gave the last shove to Hester +and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on what he called socialism. +Finding they were discussing some phase of it, he drew up a chair +and informed them that he had "threshed out" the whole subject.</p> +<p>"Socialism," he began, delighted with the polite resignation of +his hearers, which throughout life he mistook for earnest +attention. "Community of goods. People don't see that if everything +were divided up to-day, and everybody was given a shilling, by next +week the thrifty man would have a sovereign, and the spendthrift +would be penniless. Community of goods is impossible as long as +human nature remains what it is. But I can't knock that into +people's heads. I spoke of it once to Lord Newhaven, after his +speech in the House of Lords. I thought he was more educated and a +shade less thoughtless than the idle rich usually are, and that he +would see it if it was put plainly before him. But he only said my +arguments were incontrovertible, and slipped away."</p> +<p>It was after this conversation, or rather monologue, that Hester +and Rachel arranged to meet by stealth.</p> +<p>They were sitting luxuriously in the short grass, with their +backs against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over +their eyes.</p> +<p>"I wish I had met this Mr. Dick five or six years ago," said +Rachel, with a sigh.</p> +<p>Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love +disaster.</p> +<p>"Dick always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. +"I should offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a +lot of trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end."</p> +<p>Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put +into words a latent conviction of her own which troubled her.</p> +<p>"Dick is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester, +dispassionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not +high praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his +goodness does not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care +for such things, he has a thorough-going respect for women, which +he carries about with him in a little patent safe of his own."</p> +<p>"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental +furniture," said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. +Dick."</p> +<p>There was a short silence.</p> +<p>"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how +commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of +second-rate novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when +things go wrong, promptly turn into marble statues, and go through +life with hearts of stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I +know it's despicable. I have straggled against it. It is idiotic to +generalize from one personal experience. I keep before my mind that +other men are <i>not</i> like <i>him</i>. I know they aren't, but +yet—somehow I think they are. I am frightened."</p> +<p>Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend.</p> +<p>"Do you still consider, after these four years, that <i>he</i> +did you an injury?"</p> +<p>Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of +midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of +the distant hills.</p> +<p>"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw +it away. I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is +because I am naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, +"that it seems now, looking back, such a dreadful waste."</p> +<p>"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks +like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a +relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But +it is not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste +of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not +used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, +shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the +poorer in the long-run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all +the length of all the reins.'"</p> +<p>"You mean it did me good," said Rachel, "and that <i>he</i> was +a kind of benefactor in disguise. I dare say you are right, but you +see I don't take a burning interest in my own character. I don't +find my mental stand-point—isn't that what Mrs. Loftus calls +it?—very engrossing."</p> +<p>"He was a benefactor, all the same," said Hester, with decision. +"I did not think so at the time, and if I could have driven over +him in an omnibus I would have done so with pleasure. But I believe +that the day will come when you will cover that grave with a +handsome monument, erected out of gratitude to him for not marrying +you. And now, Rachel, will you forgive me beforehand for what I am +going to say?"</p> +<p>"Oh!" said Rachel, ruefully. "When you say that I know it is the +prelude to something frightful. You are getting out a dagger, and I +shall be its sheath directly."</p> +<p>"You are a true prophet, Rachel."</p> +<p>"Yes, executioner."</p> +<p>"My dear, dear friend, whom I love best in the world, when that +happened my heart was wrung for you. I would have given everything +I had, life itself—not that that is saying much—to have +saved you from that hour."</p> +<p>"I know it."</p> +<p>"But I should have been the real enemy if I had had power to +save you, which, thank God! I had not. That hour had to be. It was +necessary. You may not care about your own character, but I do. +There is something stubborn and inflexible in you—the seamy +side of your courage and steadfastness—which cannot readily +enter into the feelings of others or put itself in their place. I +think it is want of imagination—I mean the power of seeing +things as they are. You are the kind of woman who, if you had +married comfortably some one you rather liked, might have become +like Sybell Loftus, who never understands any feeling beyond her +own microscopic ones, and who measures love by her own small +preference for Doll. You would have had no more sympathy than she +has. People, like Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what +one has experienced. That is why they are always saying, 'as a +mother,' or 'as a wife.' If that were true the world would have to +get on without sympathy, for no two people have the same +experience. Only a shallow nature believes that a resemblance in +two cups means that they both contain the same wine. Sybell +believes it, and you would have been very much the same, not from +lack of perception, as in her case, but from want of using your +powers of perception. If you had not undergone an agonized +awakening, all the great realities of life—love, hatred, +temptation, enthusiasm—would have remained for you as they +have remained for Sybell, merely pretty words to string on light +conversation. That is why I can't bear to hear her speak of them, +because every word she says proves she has not known them. But the +sword that pierced your heart forced an entrance for angels, who +had been knocking where there was no door—until then."</p> +<p>Silence.</p> +<p>"Since when is it that people have turned to you for comfort and +sympathy?"</p> +<p>No answer.</p> +<p>"Rachel, on your oath, did you ever really care for the London +poor until you became poor yourself, and lived among them?"</p> +<p>"No."</p> +<p>"But they were there all the time. You saw them in the streets. +It was not as if you only heard of them. You saw them. Their agony, +their vice, was written large on their faces. There was a slum +almost at the back of that great house in Portman Square where you +lived many years in luxury with your parents."</p> +<p>"Don't," said Rachel, her lip trembling.</p> +<p>"I must. You did not care then. If a flagrant case came before +you you gave something like other uncharitable people who hate +feeling uncomfortable. But you care <i>now</i>. You seek out those +who need you. Answer me. Were they cheaply bought or not, that +compassion and love for the degraded and the suffering which were +the outcome of your years of poverty in Museum Buildings?"</p> +<p>"They were cheaply bought," said Rachel, with conviction, +speaking with difficulty.</p> +<p>"Would you have learned them if you had gone on living in +Portman Square?"</p> +<p>"Oh, Hester! would anybody?"</p> +<p>"Yes, they would. But that is not the question. Would +<i>you?</i>"</p> +<p>"N—no," said Rachel.</p> +<p>There was a long silence.</p> +<p>Rachel's mind took its staff and travelled slowly, humbly, a few +more difficult steps up that steep path where "Experience is +converted into thought as a mulberry-leaf is converted into +satin."</p> +<p>At last she turned her grave eyes upon her friend.</p> +<p>"I see what you mean," she said; "I have not reached the place +yet; but I can believe that I shall come to it some day, when I +shall feel as thankful for that trouble as I do feel now for having +known poverty. Yes, Hester, you are right. I was a hard woman, +without imagination. I have been taught in the only way I could +learn—by experience. I have been very fortunate."</p> +<p>Hester did not answer, but bent down and kissed Rachel's hands. +It was as if she had said, "Forgive me for finding fault with one +so far above me." And the action was so understood.</p> +<p>Rachel colored, and they sat for a moment hand close in hand, +heart very near to heart.</p> +<p>"How is it you are so sure of these things, Hester?" said +Rachel, in a whisper. "When you say them I see they are true, and I +believe them, but how do you <i>know</i> them?"</p> +<p>A shadow, a very slight one, fell across Hester's face. "'Love +knows the secret of grief.' But can Love claim that knowledge if he +is asked how he came by it by one who should have known?" The +question crept in between the friends and moved them apart. +Hester's voice altered.</p> +<p>"Minna would say that I picked them up from the conversation of +James. You know the Pratts are perfectly aware of what I have, of +course, tried to conceal, namely, that the love-scenes in the +<i>Idyll</i> were put together from scraps I had collected of +James's engagement to Minna. And all the humorous bits are claimed +by a colony of cousins in Devonshire who say that any one 'who had +heard them talk' could have written the <i>Idyll.</i> And any one +who had not heard them apparently. The so-called profane passages +are all that are left to me as my own."</p> +<p>"You are profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly +wounded by the flippancy which she had brought upon herself.</p> +<p>A distant whoop distracted their attention, and they saw Regie +galloping towards them, imitating a charger, while Fräulein +and the two little girls followed.</p> +<p>Regie stopped short before Rachel, and looked suspiciously at +her.</p> +<p>"Where is Uncle Dick?" he said.</p> +<p>"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and +her eyes falling guiltily before her questioner.</p> +<p>"Then he has not come with you?"</p> +<p>Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. +Gresley often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that +was quick-witted and flashy.</p> +<p>"No, he has not come with me."</p> +<p>"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come."</p> +<p>"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I +knew he was somewhere else."</p> +<p>Dear little Mary was naturally the Gresleys' favorite child. +However thoroughly they might divest themselves of parental +partiality, they could not but observe that she was as sensible as +a grown-up person.</p> +<p>"I thought he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a +tree or something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell +with a conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever +Mary may say?"</p> +<p>"Mary is generally wrong," said Hester, "but she is right for +once."</p> +<p>Mary, who was early acquiring the comfortable habit of hearing +only the remarks that found an echo in her own breast, heard she +was right, and said, shrilly:</p> +<p>"I told Regie when we was still on the road that Uncle Dick +wasn't there. Mother doesn't always go with father, but he said +he'd run and see."</p> +<p>"We shall be ver'r late for luncheon," said Fräulein, +hastily, blushing down to the onyx brooch at her turn-down collar, +and drawing Mary away.</p> +<p>"Perhaps he left the half-penny with you," said Regie. +"Fräulein would like to see it."</p> +<p>"No, no," said Fräulein, the tears in her eyes. "I do not +vish at all. I cry half the night when I hear of it."</p> +<p>"I only cry when baby beats me," said Mary, balancing on one +leg.</p> +<p>"I have not got the half-penny," said Rachel, the three elders +studiously ignoring Mary's personal reminiscences.</p> +<p>The children were borne away by Fräulein, and the friends +kissed and parted.</p> +<p>"I am coming to Wilderleigh to-morrow," said Rachel. "I shall be +much nearer to you then."</p> +<p>"It is no good contending against Dick and fate," said Hester, +shaking her finger at her. "You see it is all decided for you. Even +the children have settled it."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>If a fool be associated with a wise man all his life, he will +perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of +soup.—<i>Buddhist Dhammapada</i>.</p> +</div> +<p>"I can't think what takes you to Wilderleigh," said Lady +Newhaven to Rachel. "I am always bored to death when I go there. +Sybell is so self-centred."</p> +<p>Perhaps one of the reasons why Lady Newhaven and Sybell Loftus +did not "get on" was owing to a certain superficial resemblance +between them.</p> +<p>Both exacted attention, and if they were in the same room +together it seldom contained enough attention to supply the needs +of both. Both were conscious, like "Celia Chettam," that since the +birth of their first child their opinions respecting literature, +politics, and art had acquired additional weight and solidity, and +that a wife and mother could pronounce with decision on important +subjects where a spinster would do well to hold her peace. Each was +fond of saying, "As a married woman I think this or that"; yet each +was conscious of dislike and irritation when she heard the other +say it. And there is no doubt that Sybell had been too unwell to +appear at Lady Newhaven's garden-party the previous summer, because +Lady Newhaven had the week before advanced her cherished theory of +"one life one love," to the delight of Lord Newhaven and the +natural annoyance of Sybell, whose second husband was at that +moment handing tea and answering "That depends" when appealed +to.</p> +<p>"As if," as Sybell said afterwards to Hester, "a woman can help +being the ideal of two men."</p> +<p>"Sybell is such a bore now," continued Lady Newhaven, "that I +don't know what she will be when she is older. I don't know why you +go to Wilderleigh, of all places."</p> +<p>"I go because I am asked," said Rachel, "and partly because I +shall be near Hester Gresley."</p> +<p>"I don't think Miss Gresley can be very anxious to see you, or +she would have come here when I invited her. I told several people +she was coming, and that Mr. Carstairs, who thinks so much of +himself, came on purpose to meet her. It is very tiresome of her to +behave like that, especially as she did not say she had any +engagement. You make a mistake, Rachel, in running after people who +won't take any trouble to come and see you. It is a thing I never +do myself."</p> +<p>"She is buried in her book at present."</p> +<p>"I can't think what she has to write about. But I suppose she +picks up things from other people."</p> +<p>"I think so. She is a close observer."</p> +<p>"I think you are wrong there, Rachel, for when she was here some +years ago she never looked about her at all. And I asked her how +she judged of people, and she said, 'By appearances.' Now that was +very silly, because, as I explained to her, appearances were most +deceptive, and I had often thought a person with a cold manner was +cold-hearted, and afterwards found I was quite mistaken."</p> +<p>Rachel did not answer. She wondered in what the gift consisted, +which Lady Newhaven and Sybell both possessed, of bringing all +conversation to a stand-still.</p> +<p>"It seems curious," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause, "how the +books are mostly written by the people who know least of life. Now, +the <i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>. People think so much of +them. I was looking at them the other day. Why, they are nothing to +what I have felt. I sometimes think if <i>I</i> wrote a +book—I don't mean that I have any special talent—but if +I really sat down and wrote a book with all the deep side of life +in it, and one's own religious feelings, and described love and +love's tragedy as they really are, what a sensation it would make! +It would take the world by storm."</p> +<p>"Any book dealing sincerely with one of those subjects could not +fail to be a great success."</p> +<p>"Oh yes. I am not afraid I should fail. I do wish you were not +going, Rachel. We have so much in common. And it is such a comfort +to be with some one who knows what one is going through. I believe +you feel the suspense, too, for my sake."</p> +<p>"I do feel it—deeply."</p> +<p>"I sometimes think," said Lady Newhaven, her face aging suddenly +under an emotion so disfiguring that Rachel's eyes fell before +it—"I am sometimes almost certain that Edward drew the short +lighter. Oh! do you think if he did he will really <i>act up to +it</i> when the time comes?"</p> +<p>"If he drew it he will certainly take the consequences."</p> +<p>"Will he, do you think? I am almost sure he drew it. He is doing +so many little things that look as if he knew he were not going to +live. I heard Mr. Carstairs ask him to go to Norway with him next +spring, and Edward laughed, and said he never looked more than a +few months ahead."</p> +<p>"I am afraid he may have said that intending you to hear +it."</p> +<p>"But he did not intend me to hear it. I overheard it." Rachel's +face fell.</p> +<p>"You did promise after you told me about the letter that you +would never do that kind of thing again."</p> +<p>"Well, Rachel, I have not. I have not even looked at his letters +since. I could not help it that once, because I thought he might +have told his brother in India. But don't you think his saying that +to Mr. Carstairs looks—"</p> +<p>Rachel shook her head.</p> +<p>"He is beyond me," she said. "There may be something more behind +which we don't know about."</p> +<p>"I have a feeling, it has come over me again and again lately, +that I shall be released, and that Hugh and I shall be happy +together yet."</p> +<p>And Lady Newhaven turned her face against the high back of her +carved oak chair and sobbed hysterically.</p> +<p>"Could you be happy if you had brought about Lord Newhaven's +death?" said Rachel.</p> +<p>Her voice was full of tender pity, not for the crouching +unhappiness before her, but for the poor atrophied soul. Could she +reach it? She would have given everything she possessed at that +moment for one second of Christ's power to touch those blind eyes +to sight.</p> +<p>"How can you say such things? I should <i>not</i> have brought +it about. I did not even know of that dreadful drawing of lots till +the thing was done. That was all his own doing."</p> +<p>Rachel sighed. The passionate yearning towards her companion +shrank back upon herself.</p> +<p>"The fault is in me," she said to herself. "If I were purer, +humbler, more loving, I might have been allowed to help her."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven rose, and held Rachel tightly in her arms.</p> +<p>"I count the days," she said, hoarsely, shaking from head to +foot. "It is two months and three weeks to-day. November the +twenty-ninth. You will promise faithfully to come to me and be with +me then? You will not desert me? Whatever happens you will be +sure—to come?"</p> +<p>"I will come. I promise," said Rachel. And she stooped and +kissed the closed eyes. She could at least do that.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Brother, thy tail hangs down behind.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">—<i>Song of the +Bandar-log</i>.</span></div> +<p>Rachel arrived after tea at Wilderleigh, and went straight to +her room on a plea of fatigue. It was a momentary cowardice that +tempted her to yield to her fatigue. She felt convinced that she +should meet Hugh Scarlett at Wilderleigh. She had no reason for the +conviction beyond the very inadequate one that she had met him at +Sybell's London house. Nevertheless, she felt sure that he would be +among the guests, and she longed for a little breathing-space after +parting with Lady Newhaven before she met him. Presently Sybell +flew in and embraced her with effusion.</p> +<p>"Oh! what you have missed!" she said, breathlessly. "But you do +look tired. You were quite right to lie down before dinner, only +you aren't lying down. We have had such a conversation down-stairs. +The others are all out boating with Doll but Mr. Harvey, the great +Mr. Harvey, you know."</p> +<p>"I am afraid I don't know."</p> +<p>"Oh yes, you do. The author of <i>Unashamed</i>."</p> +<p>"I remember now."</p> +<p>"Well, he is here, resting after his new book, <i>Rahab</i>. And +he has been reading us the opening chapters, just to Miss Barker +and me. It is quite wonderful. So painful, you know. He does not +spare the reader anything; he thinks it wrong to leave out +anything—but so powerful!"</p> +<p>"Is it the same Miss Barker whom I met at your house in the +season, who denounced <i>The Idyll?</i>"</p> +<p>"Yes. How she did cut it up! You see, she knows all about East +London, and that sort of thing. I knew you would like to meet her +again because you are philanthropic, too. She hardly thought she +could spare the time to come, but she thought she would go back +fresher if the wail were out of her ears for a week. The wail! +Isn't it dreadful? I feel we ought to do more than we do, don't +you?"</p> +<p>"We ought, indeed."</p> +<p>"But then, you see, as a married woman, I can't leave my husband +and child and bury myself in the East End, can I?"</p> +<p>"Of course not. But surely it is an understood thing that +marriage exempts women from all impersonal duties."</p> +<p>"Yes, that is just it. How well you put it! But others could. I +often wonder why, after writing <i>The Idyll</i>, Hester never goes +near East London. I should have gone straight off, and have cast in +my lot with them if I had been in her place."</p> +<p>"Do you ever find people do what you would have done if you had +been in their place?"</p> +<p>"No, never. They don't seem to see it. It's a thing I can't +understand the way people don't act up to their convictions. And I +do know, though I would not tell Hester so for worlds, that the +fact that she goes on living comfortably in the country after +bringing out that book makes thoughtful people, not me, of course, +but other earnest-minded people, think she is a humbug."</p> +<p>"It would—naturally," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"Well, now I am glad you agree with me, for I said something of +the same kind to Mr. Scarlett last night, and he could not see it. +He's rather obtuse. I dare say you remember him?"</p> +<p>"Perfectly."</p> +<p>"I don't care about him, he is so superficial, and Miss Barker +says he is very lethargic in conversation. I asked him +because—don't breathe a word of it—but because, as a +married woman, one ought to help others, and—do you remember +how he stood up for Hester that night in London?"</p> +<p>"For her book, you mean."</p> +<p>"Well, it's all one. Men are men, my dear. Let me tell you he +would never have done that if he had not been in love with +her."</p> +<p>"Do you mean that men never defend obvious truths unless they +are in love?"</p> +<p>"Now you are pretending to misunderstand me," said Sybell, +joyously, making her little squirrel face into a becoming pout. +"But it's no use trying to take me in. And it's coming right. He's +there at this moment!"</p> +<p>"At the Vicarage?"</p> +<p>"Where else? I asked him to go. I urged him. I said I felt sure +she expected him. One must help on these things."</p> +<p>"But if he is obtuse and lethargic and superficial, is he likely +to suit Hester?"</p> +<p>"My dear, the happiest lot for a woman is marriage. And you and +I are Hester's friends. So we ought to do all we can for her +happiness. That is why I just mentioned this."</p> +<p>The dressing-gong began to boom.</p> +<p>"I must fly," said Sybell, depositing a butterfly kiss on +Rachel's forehead. And she flew.</p> +<p>"I wish I knew what I felt about him," said Rachel to herself. +"I don't much like hearing him called obtuse and superficial, but I +suppose I should like still less to hear Sybell praise him. I have +never heard her praise anything but mediocrity yet."</p> +<p>If Rachel had been at all introspective she might have found a +clew as to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she +arranged her hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard +the pale-green gown lying in state on the bed for a white satin one +embroidered at long intervals with rose-colored carnations. The +gown was a masterpiece, designed especially for her by a great +French milliner. Rachel often wondered whose eyesight had been +strained over those marvellous carnations, but to-night she did not +give them a thought. She looked with grave dissatisfaction at her +pale, nondescript face and nondescript hair and eyes. She did not +know that only women with marriageable daughters saw her as she saw +herself in the glass.</p> +<p>As she left her room a door opened at the farther end of the +same wing, and a tall man came out. The middle-class element in her +said, "Superfine." His fastidious taste said, "A plain woman."</p> +<p>In another instant they recognized each other.</p> +<p>"Superfine! What nonsense," she thought, as she met his eager, +tremulous glance.</p> +<p>"A plain woman. Rachel plain!" He had met the welcome in her +eyes, and there was beauty in every movement, grace in every fold +of her white gown.</p> +<p>As they met the gong suddenly boomed out close beneath them, and +they could only smile at each other as they shook hands. The +butler, who was evidently an artist in his way, proved the gong to +the uttermost; and they had descended the staircase together, and +had crossed the hall before its dying tremors allowed them to +speak.</p> +<p>As he was about to do so he saw her wince suddenly. She was +looking straight in front of her at the little crowd in the +drawing-room. For an instant her face turned from white to gray, +and she involuntarily put out her hand as if to ward off something. +Then a lovely color mounted to her cheek; she drew herself up and +entered the room, while Hugh, behind her, looked fiercely at each +man in succession.</p> +<p>It is always the unexpected that happens. As Rachel's +half-absent eyes passed over the group in the brilliantly lighted +drawing-room her heart reared, without warning, and fell back upon +her. She had only just sufficient presence of mind to prevent her +hand pressing itself against her heart. He was there; he was before +her—the man whom she had loved with passion for four years, +and who had tortured her.</p> +<p>Mr. Harvey (the great Mr. Harvey) strode forward, and Rachel +found her hand engulfed in a large soft hand, which seemed to have +a poached egg in the palm.</p> +<p>"This is a pleasure to which I have long looked forward," +murmured the great man, all cuff and solitaire, bending in what he +would have termed a "chivalrous manner" over Rachel's hand; while +Doll, standing near, wondered drearily "why these writing chaps +were always such bounders."</p> +<p>Rachel passed on to greet Miss Barker, standing on the +hearthrug, this time in magenta velveteen, but presumably still +tired of the Bible, conversing with Rachel's former lover, whose +eyes were on the floor and whose hand gripped the mantel-piece. He +had seen her—recognized her.</p> +<p>"May I introduce Mr. Tristram?" said Sybell to Rachel.</p> +<p>"We have met before," said Rachel, gently, as he bowed without +looking at her, and she put out her hand.</p> +<p>He was obliged to touch it, obliged to meet for one moment the +clear, calm eyes that had once held boundless love for him, +boundless trust in him; that had, as he well knew, wept themselves +half blind for him.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram was one of the many who judge their actions in the +light of after-circumstances, and who towards middle-age discover +that the world is a treacherous world. He had not been "in a +position to marry" when he had fallen in love with Rachel. But he +had been as much in love with her as was consistent with a +permanent prudential passion for himself and his future—that +future which the true artist must ever preserve untrammelled. "High +hopes faint on a warm hearthstone," etc. He had felt keenly +breaking with Rachel. Later on, when a tide of wealth flowed up to +the fifth floor of Museum Buildings, he had recognized, for the +first time, that he had made a great mistake in life. To the smart +of baffled love had been added acute remorse, not so much for +wealth missed as for having inflicted upon himself and upon her a +frightful and unnecessary pain. But how could he have foreseen such +a thing? How could he tell? he had asked himself, in mute +stupefaction, when the news reached him. What a cheat life was! +What a fickle jade was Fortune!</p> +<p>Since the memorable day when Rachel had found means to lay the +ghost that haunted her he had made no sign.</p> +<p>"I hardly expected you would remember me," he said, catching at +his self-possession.</p> +<p>"I have a good memory," she said, aware that Miss Barker was +listening and that Hugh was bristling at her elbow. "And the little +Spanish boy whom you were so kind to, and who lodged just below me +in Museum Buildings, has not forgotten either. He still asks after +the 'Cavalier.'"</p> +<p>"Mr. Tristram is positively blushing at being confronted with +his good deeds," said Sybell, intervening on discovering that the +attention of some of her guests had been distracted from herself. +"Yes, darling"—to her husband—"you take in Lady Jane. +Mr. Scarlett, will you take in Miss West?"</p> +<p>"I have been calling on your friend, Miss Gresley," said Hugh, +after he had overcome his momentary irritation at finding Mr. +Harvey was on Rachel's other side. "I did not know until her +brother dined here last night that she lived so near."</p> +<p>"Did not Mrs. Loftus tell you?" said Rachel, with a remembrance +of Sybell's remarks before dinner.</p> +<p>"She told me after I had mentioned my wish to go and see her. +She even implored me so repeatedly to go that I—"</p> +<p>"Nearly did not go at all."</p> +<p>"Exactly. But in this case I persevered because I am, or hope I +am, a friend of hers. But I was not rewarded."</p> +<p>"I thought you said you had seen her."</p> +<p>"Oh yes, I saw her, and I saw that she looked very ill. But I +found it impossible to have any conversation with her in the +presence of Mr. and Mrs. Gresley. Whenever I spoke to her Mr. +Gresley answered, and sometimes Mrs. Gresley also. In fact, Mr. +Gresley considered the call as paid to himself. Mrs. Loftus tells +me he is much cleverer than his sister, but I did not gain that +impression. And after I had given tongue to every platitude I could +think of I had to take my leave."</p> +<p>"Hester ought to have come to the rescue."</p> +<p>"She did try. She offered to show me the short cut to +Wilderleigh across the fields. But unluckily—"</p> +<p>"I can guess what you are going to say."</p> +<p>"I am sure you can. Mr. Gresley accompanied us, and Miss Gresley +turned back at the first gate."</p> +<p>"You have my sympathy."</p> +<p>"I hope I have, for I have had a severe time of it. Mr. Gresley +was most cordial," continued Hugh, ruefully, "and said what a +pleasure it was to him to meet any one who was interested in +intellectual subjects. I suppose he was referring to my platitudes. +He said living in the country cut him off almost entirely from the +society of his mental equals, so much so that at times he had +thoughts of moving to London and making a little centre for +intellectual society. According to him the whole neighborhood was +sunk in a state of hopeless apathy, with the exception of Mrs. +Loftus. He said she was the only really clever, cultivated person +in Middleshire."</p> +<p>"Did he? How about the Bishop of Southminster?"</p> +<p>"He did not mention him. My acquaintance with Mrs. Loftus is of +the slightest," added Hugh, interrogatively, looking at his +graceful, animated hostess.</p> +<p>"I imagined you knew her fairly well, as you are staying +here."</p> +<p>"No. She asked me rather late in the day. I fancy I was a 'fill +up.' I accepted in the hope, rather a vague one, that I might meet +you here."</p> +<p>To Rachel's surprise her heart actually paid Hugh the compliment +of beating a shade faster than its wont. She looked straight in +front of her, and her absent eyes fell on Mr. Tristram sitting +opposite, talking somewhat sulkily to Miss Barker. Rachel looked +steadily at him.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram had been handsome once, and four years had altered +him but little in that respect. He had not yet grown stout, but it +was evident that Nature had that injury in reserve for him. To grow +stout is not necessarily to look common, but if there is an element +of inherent commonness in man or woman, a very little additional +surface will make it manifest, as an enlarged photograph magnifies +its own defects. The "little more and how much it is" had come upon +the unhappy Tristram, once the slimmest of the slim. Life had +evidently not gone too well with him. Self-pity and the harassed +look which comes of annoyance with trifles had set their mark upon +him. His art had not taken possession of him. "High hopes faint on +a warm hearthstone." But they sometimes faint also in bachelor +lodgings. The whole effect of the man was second-rate, mentally, +morally, socially. He seemed exactly on a par with the second-rate +friends with whom Sybell loved to surround herself. Hugh and Dick +were taking their revenge on the rival who blocked their way. +Whatever their faults might be, they were gentlemen, and Mr. +Tristram was only "a perfect gentleman." Rachel had not known the +difference when she was young. She saw it now.</p> +<p>"I trust, Miss West," said the deep voice of Mr. Harvey, +revolving himself and his solitaire slowly towards her, that I have +your sympathy in the great cause to which I have dedicated myself, +the emancipation of woman."</p> +<p>"I thought the new woman had effected her own emancipation," +said Rachel.</p> +<p>Mr. Harvey paid no more attention to her remark than any one +with a theory to propound which must be delivered to the world as a +whole.</p> +<p>"I venture to think," he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes +coming to a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all +reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated +in <i>The Princess</i>, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless +I advance beyond him in that respect. I hold"—in a voice +calculated to impress the whole table—"that woman is man's +superior, and that she degrades herself when she endeavors to place +herself on an equality with him."</p> +<p>There was a momentary silence, like that which travellers tell +us succeeds the roar of the lion in his primeval forest, silencing +even the twitter of the birds.</p> +<p>"How true that is!" said Sybell, awed by the lurid splendor of +Mr. Harvey's genius. "Woman is man's superior, not his equal. I +have felt that all my life, but I never quite saw how until this +moment. Don't you think so, too, Miss Barker?"</p> +<p>"I have never lost an opportunity of asserting it," said the +Apostle, her elbow on Mr. Tristram's bread, looking at Mr. Harvey +with some asperity for poaching on her manor.</p> +<p>"All sensible women have been agreed for years on that +point."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER +XXIII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>With aching hands and bleeding feet<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We dig and heap, lay stone on +stone,</span><br /> +We bear the burden and the heat<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the long day, and wish 'twere +done!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">Not till the hours of light +return</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;">All we have built do we +discern.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15.5em;">—MATTHEW +ARNOLD.</span></div> +<p>It was Sunday morning. The night was sinking out of the sky to +lean faint unto death upon the bosom of the earth. The great forms +of the trees, felt rather than seen, were darkness made visible. +Among the night of high elms round Warpington a single yellow light +burned in an upper window. It had been burning all night. And now, +as the night waned, the little light waned with it. At least, it +was suddenly blown out.</p> +<p>Hester came to the window and looked out. There was light, but +there was no dawn as yet. In the gray sky over the gray land the +morning-star, alone and splendid, kept watch in the east.</p> +<p>She sat down and leaned her brow against the pane. She did not +know that it was aching. She did not know that she was cold, +exhausted; so exhausted that the morning-star in the outer heaven +and the morning-star in her soul were to her the same. They stooped +together, they merged into one great light, heralding a perfect day +presently to be.</p> +<p>The night was over, and that other long night of travail and +patience and faith, and strong rowing in darkness against the +stream, was over, too, at last—at last. <i>The book was +finished</i>.</p> +<p>The tears fell slowly from Hester's eyes on to her clasped +hands, those blessed tears which no human hand shall ever intervene +to wipe away.</p> +<p>To some of us Christ comes in the dawn of the spiritual life +walking upon the troubled waves of art. And we recognize Him, and +would fain go to meet Him. But our companions and our own fears +dissuade us. They say it is only a spirit, and that Christ does not +walk on water, that the land whither we are rowing is the place He +has Himself appointed for us to meet Him. So our little faith keeps +us in the boat, or fails us in the waves of that windswept sea.</p> +<p>It seemed to Hester as if once, long ago, shrinking and +shivering, she had stood in despair upon the shore of a great sea, +and had heard a voice from the other side say, "Come over." She had +stopped her ears; she had tried not to go. She had shrunk back a +hundred times from the cold touch of the water that each time she +essayed let her trembling foot through it. And now, after an +interminable interval, after she had trusted and doubted, had +fallen and been sustained, had met the wind and the rain, after she +had sunk in despair and risen again, she knew not how, now at +length a great wave—the last—had cast her up half +drowned upon the shore. A miracle had happened. She had reached the +other side, and was lying in a great peace after the storm upon the +solemn shore under a great white star.</p> +<p>Hester sat motionless. The star paled and paled before the +coming of a greater than he. Across the pause which God has set +'twixt night and day came the first word of the robin. It reached +Hester's ear as from another world—a world that had been left +behind. The fragmentary notes floated up to her from an +immeasurable distance, like scattered bubbles through deep +water.</p> +<p>The day was coming. God's creatures of tree and field and hill +took form. Man's creature, the little stout church in their midst, +thrust once more its plebeian outline against God's sky. Dim shapes +moved athwart the vacancy of the meadows. Voices called through the +gray. Close against the eaves a secret was twittered, was passed +from beak to beak. In the nursery below a little twitter of waking +children broke the stillness of the house.</p> +<p>But Hester did not hear it. She had fallen into a deep sleep in +the low window-seat, with her pale forehead against the pane; a +sleep so deep that even the alarum of the baby did not rouse her, +nor the entrance of Emma with the hot water.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"James," said Mrs. Gresley, an hour later; as she and her +husband returned through the white mist from early celebration, +"Hester was not there. I thought she had promised to come."</p> +<p>"She had."</p> +<p>There was a moment's silence.</p> +<p>"Perhaps she is not well," said Mr. Gresley, closing the +church-yard gate into the garden.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley's heart swelled with a sense of injustice. She had +often been unwell, often in feeble health before the birth of her +children, but had she ever pleaded ill-health as an excuse for +absenting herself from one of the many services which her husband +held to be the main-spring of the religious life?</p> +<p>"I do not think she can be very unwell. She is standing by the +magnolia now," she said, her lip quivering, and withdrawing her +hand from her husband's arm. She almost hated the slight, graceful +figure, which was not of her world, which was, as she thought, +coming between her and her husband.</p> +<p>"I will speak seriously to her," said Mr. Gresley, dejectedly, +who recollected that he had "spoken seriously" to Hester many times +at his wife's instigation without visible result. And as he went +alone to meet his sister he prayed earnestly that he might be given +the right word to say to her.</p> +<p>A ray of sunlight, faint as an echo, stole through the lingering +mist, parting it on either hand, and fell on Hester.</p> +<p>Hester, standing in a white gown under the veiled trees in a +glade of silver and trembling opal, which surely mortal foot had +never trod, seemed infinitely removed from him. Dimly he felt that +she was at one with this mysterious morning world, and that he, the +owner, was an alien and a trespasser in his own garden.</p> +<p>But a glimpse of his cucumber-frames in the background reassured +him. He advanced with a firmer step, as one among allies.</p> +<p>Hester did not hear him.</p> +<p>She was gazing with an absorption that shut out all other sights +and sounds at the solitary blossom on the magnolia-tree. Yesterday +it had been a bud; but to-day the great almond-white petals which +guarded it, overlapping each other so jealously, had opened wide, +and the perfect flower, keeping nothing back, had laid bare all its +pure white soul before its God.</p> +<p>As Mr. Gresley stopped beside her, Hester turned her little +pinched, ravaged face towards him and smiled. Something of the +passionate self-surrender of the flower was reflected in her +eyes.</p> +<p>"Dear Hester," he said, seeing only the wan, drawn face. "Are +you ill?"</p> +<p>"Yes—no. I don't think so," said Hester, tremulously, +recalled suddenly to herself. She looked hastily about her. The +world of dew and silver had deserted her, had broken like an +iridescent bubble at a touch. The magnolia withdrew itself. Hester +found herself suddenly transplanted into the prose of life, +emphasized by a long clerical coat and a bed of Brussels +sprouts.</p> +<p>"I missed you," said Mr. Gresley, with emphasis.</p> +<p>"Where? When?" Hester's eyes had lost their fixed look and +stared vacantly at him.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley tried to subdue his rising annoyance.</p> +<p>Hester was acting, pretending not to understand, and he saw +through it.</p> +<p>"At God's altar," he said, gravely, the priest getting the upper +hand of the man.</p> +<p>"Have you not found me there?" said Hester, below her breath, +but so low that fortunately her brother did not catch the words, +and was spared their profanity.</p> +<p>"I will appeal to her better feelings," he said to himself. +"They must be there, if I can only touch them."</p> +<p>He did not know that in order to touch the better feelings of +our fellow-creatures we must be able to reach up to them, or by +reason of our low stature we may succeed only in appealing to the +lowest in them, in spite of our tiptoe good intentions. Is that why +such appeals too often meet with bitter sarcasm and +indignation?</p> +<p>But fortunately a robust belief in the assiduities of the devil +as the cause of all failures, and a conviction that who-so opposed +Mr. Gresley opposed the Deity, supported and blindfolded the young +Vicar in emergencies of this kind.</p> +<p>He spoke earnestly and at length to his sister. He waved aside +her timid excuse that she had overslept herself after a sleepless +night, and had finished dressing but the moment before he found her +in the garden. He entreated her to put aside such insincerity as +unworthy of her. He reminded her of the long months she had spent +at Warpington with its peculiar spiritual opportunities; that he +should be to blame if he did not press upon her the first +importance of the religious life, the ever-present love of God, and +the means of approaching Him through the sacraments. He entreated +her to join her prayers with his that she might be saved from the +worship of her own talent, which had shut out the worship of God, +from this dreadful indifference to holy things, and the impatience +of all religious teaching which he grieved to see in her.</p> +<p>He spoke well, the earnest, blind, would-be leader endeavoring +to guide her to the ditch from which he knew not how she had +emerged, passionately distressed at the opposition he met with as +he would have drawn her lovingly towards it.</p> +<p>The tears were in Hester's eyes, but the eyes themselves were as +flint seen through water. She stifled many fierce and cruel +impulses to speak as plainly as he did, to tell him that it was not +religion that was abhorent to her, but the form in which he +presented it to her, and that the sin against the Holy Ghost was +disbelief, like his, in the religion of others. But when have such +words availed anything? When have they been believed? Hester had a +sharp tongue, and she was slowly learning to beware of it as her +worst enemy. She laid down many weapons before she trusted herself +to speak.</p> +<p>"It is good of you to care what becomes of me," she said, +gently, but her voice was cold. "I am sorry you regard me as you +do. But from your point of view you were right to +speak—as—as you have done. I value the affection that +prompted it."</p> +<p>"She can't meet me fairly," said Mr. Gresley to himself, with +sudden anger at the meanness of such tactics. "They say she is so +clever, and she can't refute a word I say. She appears to yield and +then defies me. She always puts me off like that."</p> +<p>The sun had vanquished the mist, and in the brilliant light the +two figures moved silently, side by side, back to the house, one +with something very like rage in his heart, the rage that in bygone +days found expression in stake and fagot.</p> +<p>Perhaps the heaviest trouble which Hester was ever called upon +to bear had its mysterious beginnings on that morning of opal and +gossamer when the magnolia opened.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et +irréfutables, de ces arguments qui fondent devant la raison +comme la neige an feu, et qu'on ne peut saisir, des arguments +absurdes et triomphants, de curé de campagne qul +démontre Dieu.—Guy DE MAUPASSANT.</p> +</div> +<p>Sybell's party broke up on Saturday, with the exception of +Rachel and Mr. Tristram, who had been unable to finish by that date +a sketch he was making of Sybell. When Doll discovered that his +wife had asked that gentleman to stay over Sunday he entreated +Hugh, in moving terms, to do the same.</p> +<p>"I am not literary," said Doll, who always thought it necessary +to explain that he was not what no one thought he was. "I hate all +that sort of thing. Utter rot, I call it. For goodness' sake, +Scarlett, sit tight. I must be decent to the beast in my own house, +and if you go I shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all +hours of the night in the smoking-room."</p> +<p>Hugh was easily persuaded, and so it came about that the morning +congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching +Hugh and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved +Wilderleigh pew, with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it, and Doll +at the other. No one looked at Rachel. Her hat attracted a +momentary attention, but her face none.</p> +<p>The Miss Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man +milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the +sparse congregation. The spectator of so many points, all made the +most of, unconsciously felt with a sense of oppression that +everything that could be done had been done. No stone had been left +unturned.</p> +<p>Their brother, Captain Algernon Pratt, sitting behind them, +looked critically at them, and owned that they were smart women. +But he was not entirely satisfied with them, as he had been in the +old days, before he went into the Guards and began the real work of +his life, raising himself in society.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt was a tall, pale young man—<i>assez beau +garçon</i>—faultlessly dressed, with a quiet acquired +manner. He was not ill-looking, the long upper lip concealed by a +perfectly kept mustache, but the haggard eye and the thin line in +the cheek, which did not suggest thought and overwork as their +cause, made his appearance vaguely repellent.</p> +<div class='blockquot'>"Jesu, lover of my soul,"</div> +<p>sang the shrill voices of the choir-boys, echoed by Regie and +Mary, standing together, holding their joint hymnbook exactly +equally between them, their two small thumbs touching.</p> +<p>Fräulein, on Hester's other side, was singing with her +whole soul, accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body:</p> +<div class='blockquot'>"Cover my defenceless 'ead,<br /> +Wiz ze sadow of Zy wing."</div> +<p>Mr. Gresley, after baying like a blood-hound through the opening +verses, ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer. The congregation +amened and settled itself. Mary leaned her blond head against her +mother, Regie against Hester.</p> +<p>The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>He gave out the text:</p> +<p>"Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the +ditch?"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a +period admirably suited for quiet reflection.</p> +<p>"A good woman loves but once," said Mr. Tristram to himself, in +an attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a +pillar in front of him. Some of us would be as helpless without a +Bowdlerized generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the +invalid would be without his peptonized beef-tea.</p> +<p>"Rachel is a good woman, a saint. Such a woman does not love in +a hurry, but when she does she loves forever." What was that poem +he and she had so often read together? Tennyson, wasn't it? About +love not altering "when it alteration finds," but bears it out even +to the crack of doom. Fine poet, Tennyson; he knew the human heart. +She had certainly adored him four years ago, just in the devoted +way in which he needed to be loved. And how he had worshipped her! +Of course he had behaved badly. He saw that now. But if he had it +was not from want of love. She had been unable to see that at the +time. Good women were narrow, and they were hard, and they did not +understand men. Those were their faults. Had she learned better by +now? Did she realize that she had far better marry a man who had +loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than some +fortune-hunter, like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram +called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and +ask for forgiveness. He glanced for a moment at the gentle, +familiar face beside him.</p> +<p>"She will forgive me," he said, reassuring himself, in spite of +an inward qualm of misgiving. "I am glad I arranged to stay on. I +will speak to her this afternoon. She has become much softened, and +we will bury the past and make a fresh start together."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon," said Doll, +stretching a leg outside the open end of the pew. "I wish Gresley +would not call the Dissenters worms. They are some of my best +tenants, and they won't like it when they hear of it. And I'll go +round the young pheasants. (Doll did this, or something similar, +every Sunday afternoon of his life, but he always rehearsed it +comfortably in thought on Sunday mornings.) And if Withers is about +I'll go out in the boat—the big one, the little one +leaks—and set a trimmer or two for to-morrow. I'm not sure +I'll set one under the south bank, for there was the devil to pay +last time, when that beast of an eel got among the roots. I'll ask +Withers what he thinks. I wish Gresley would not call the +Dissenters blind leaders of the blind. It's such bad form, and I +don't suppose the text meant that to start with, and what's the use +of ill-feeling in a parish? And I'll take Scarlett with me. We'll +slip off after luncheon, and leave that bounder to bound by +himself. And poor old Crack shall come too. Uncle George always +took him."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"James is simply surpassing himself," said Mrs. Gresley to +herself, her arm round her little daughter. "Worms what a splendid +comparison! The Churchman, the full-grown man after the stature of +Christ, and the Dissenter invertebrate (I think dear James means +inebriate), like a worm cleaving to the earth. But possibly God in +His mercy may let them slip in by a back-door to heaven! How like +him to say that, so generous, so wide-minded, taking the hopeful +view of everything! How noble he looks! These are days in which we +should stick to our colors. I wonder how he can think of such +beautiful things. For my part, I think the duty of the true priest +is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right wrong +for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson +to the Bishop, if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as +if right and wrong were mere matters of opinion! What a gift he +has! I know he will eat nothing for luncheon. If only we were +somewhere else where the best joints were a little cheaper, and his +talents more appreciated." And Mrs. Gresley closed her eyes and +prayed earnestly, a tear sliding down her cheek on to Mary's +floss-silk mane, that she might become less unworthy to be the wife +of one so far above her, that the children might all grow up like +him, and that she might be given patience to bear with Hester even +when she vexed him.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Captain Pratt's critical eye travelled over the congregation. It +absolutely ignored Mrs. Gresley and Fräulein. It lingered +momentarily on Hester. He knew what he called "breeding" when he +saw it, and he was aware that Hester possessed it, though his +sisters would have laughed at the idea. He had seen many well-bred +women on social pinnacles look like that, whose houses were at +present barred against him. The Pratt sisters were fixed into their +smartness as some faces are fixed into a grin. It was not +spontaneous, fugitive, evanescent as a smile, gracefully worn, or +lightly laid aside, as in Hester's case. He had known Hester +slightly in London for several years. He had seen her on terms of +intimacy, such as she never showed to his sisters, with +inaccessible men and women with whom he had achieved a bare +acquaintance, but whom, in spite of many carefully concealed +advances, he had found it impossible to know better. Captain Pratt +had reached that stage in his profession of raising himself when he +had become a social barometer. He was excessively careful whom he +knew, what women he danced with, what houses he visited; and any of +his acquaintances who cared to ascertain their own social status to +a hair's-breadth had only to apply to it the touchstone of Captain +Pratt's manner towards them.</p> +<p>Hester, who grasped many facts of that kind, was always amused +by the cold consideration with which he treated her on his rare +visits to the parental Towers; and which his sisters could only +construe as a sign that "Algy was gone on Hessie."</p> +<p>"But he will never marry her," they told each other. "Algy looks +higher."</p> +<p>It was true. If Hester had been Lady Hester, it is possible that +the surname of Pratt, if frequently refused by stouter women, might +eventually have been offered to her. But Captain Pratt was +determined to marry rank, and nothing short of a Lady Something was +of any use to him. An Honorable was better than nothing, but it did +not count for much with him. It had a way of absenting itself when +wanted. No one was announced as an Honorable. It did not even +appear on cards. It might he overlooked. Rank, to be of any +practical value, must be apparent, obvious. Lady Georgiana Pratt, +Lady Evelina Pratt! Any name would do with that prefix. His eye +travelled as far as Sybell and stopped again. She was "the right +sort" herself, and she dressed in the right way. Why could not Ada +and Selina imitate her? But he had never forgiven her the fact that +he had met "a crew of cads" at her house, whom he had been obliged +to cut afterwards in the Row. No, Sybell would not have done for +him. She surrounded herself with vulgar people.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt was far too well-mannered to be guilty of staring, +except at pretty maid-servants or shop-girls, and his eye was moved +on by the rigid police of etiquette which ruled his every movement. +It paused momentarily on Rachel. He knew about her, as did every +bachelor in London. A colossal heiress. She was neither plain nor +handsome. She had a good figure, but not good enough to +counterbalance her nondescript face. She had not the air of +distinction which he was so quick to detect and appraise. She was a +social nonentity. He did not care to look at her a second time. "I +would not marry her with twice her fortune," he said to +himself.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Regie's hand had stolen into Hester's. His even breathing, felt +rather than heard, as he dropped asleep against her shoulder, +surrounded Hester with the atmosphere of peace and comfort which +his father had broken earlier in the day. Regie often brought back +to her what his father wrested from her.</p> +<p>She listened to the sermon as from a warm nest safely raised +above the quaggy ground of personal feeling.</p> +<p>"Dear James! How good he is! how much in earnest! But worms +don't go in at back-doors. Why are not clergymen taught a few +elementary rules of composition before they are ordained? But +perhaps no one will notice it except myself. James is certainly a +saint. He has the courage of his opinions. I believe he loves God +and the Church with his whole heart, and would go to the stake for +them, or send me there if he thought it was for the good of my +soul. Why has he no power? Why is he so much disliked in the parish +and neighborhood? I am sure it is not because he has small +abilities, and makes puns, and says cut-and-dried things. How many +excellent clergymen who do the same are beloved? Is it because he +deals with every one as he deals with me? What dreadful things he +thinks of me. I don't wonder he is anxious about me. What unworthy +motives of wilful blindness and arrogance he is attributing to the +Nonconformists! Oh, James, James! will you never see that it is +disbelief in the sincerity of the religion of others, because it is +not in the same narrow form as your own, which makes all your zeal +and earnestness of none effect! You think the opposition you meet +with everywhere is the opposition of evil to good, of indifference +to piety. When will you learn that it is the good in your hearers +which opposes you, the love of God in them which is offended by +your representation of Him?"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Hugh's eyes were fixed on the same pillar as Mr. Tristram's, but +if he had been aware of that fact he would have chosen another +pillar. His thin, handsome face was beginning to show the marks of +mental strain. His eyes had the set, impassive look of one who, +hedged in on both sides, sees a sharp turn ahead of him on an +unknown road.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Rachel! Rachel! Rachel! Don't you hear me calling to you? Don't +you hear me telling you that I can't live without you? The hymn was +right—'Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on +Thee'—only it was written of you, not of that far, far away +God who does not care. Only care for me. Only love me. Only give me +those cool hands that I may lean my forehead against them. No help +can come to me except through you. Stoop down to me and raise me +up, for I love you."</p> +<p>The sun went in suddenly, and a cold shadow fell on the pillar +and on Hugh's heart.</p> +<p>Love and marriage were not for him. That far-away God, that +Judge in the black cap, had pronounced sentence against him, had +doomed that he should die in his sins. When he had sat in his own +village church only last Sunday between his mother and sister, he +had seen the empty place on his chancel wall where the tablet to +his memory would be put up. When he walked through the church-yard, +his mother leaning on his arm, his step regulated by her feeble +one, he had seen the vacant space by his father's grave already +filled by the mound of raw earth which would shortly cover him. His +heart had ached for his mother, for the gentle, feeble-minded +sister, who had transferred the interest in life, which keeps body +and soul together, from her colorless existence to that of her +brother. Hughie was the romance of her gray life: what Hughie said, +what Hughie thought, Hughie's wife—oh, jealous thought, only +to be met by prayer! But later on—joy of joys—Hughie's +children! He realized it, now and then, vaguely, momentarily, but +never as fully as last Sunday. He shrank from the remembrance, and +his mind wandered anew in the labyrinth of broken, twisted thought, +from which he could find no way out.</p> +<p><i>There must be some way out!</i> He had stumbled callously +through one day after another of these weeks in which he had not +seen Rachel towards his next meeting with her, as a half-blind man +stumbles towards the light. But the presence of Rachel afforded no +clew to the labyrinth. What vain hope was this that he had +cherished unconsciously that she could help him. There was no help +for him. There was no way out. He was in a trap. He must die, and +soon, by his own hand. Incredible, preposterous fate! He shuddered, +and looked around him involuntarily.</p> +<p>His glance, reverent, full of timid longing, fell on Rachel, and +his heart cried aloud, suddenly, "If she loves me, I shall not be +able to leave her."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Look in my face! my name is +Might-have-been;<br /> +I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12.5em;">—DANTE GABRIEL +ROSSETTI.</span></div> +<p>It was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Tristram leaned on the stone +balustrade that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was +watching two distant figures, followed by a black dot, stroll away +across the park. One of them seemed to drag himself unwillingly. +Mr. Tristram congratulated himself on the acumen which had led him +to keep himself concealed until Doll and Hugh had started for +Beaumere.</p> +<p>Sybell had announced at luncheon, in the tone of one who +observes a religious rite, that she should rest till four o'clock, +and would be ready to sit for the portrait of her upper lip at that +hour.</p> +<p>It was only half-past two now. Mr. Tristram had planted himself +exactly in front of Rachel's windows, with his back to the house. +"She will keep me waiting, but she will come out in time," he said +to himself, nervous and self-confident by turns, resting his head +rather gracefully on his hand. His knowledge of womankind supported +him like a life-belt, but it has been said that life-belts +occasionally support their wearers upsidedown. Theories have been +known to exhibit the same spiteful tendency towards those who place +their trust in them.</p> +<p>"Of course, she has got to show me that she is offended with +me," he reflected, gazing steadily at the Welsh hills. "She would +not have come out if I had asked her, but she will certainly come +as I did not. I will give her half an hour."</p> +<p>Rachel, meanwhile, was looking fixedly at Mr. Tristram from her +bedroom window with that dispassionate scrutiny to avoid which the +vainest would do well to take refuge in noisome caves.</p> +<p>"I wonder," she said to herself, "whether Hester always saw him +as I see him now. I believe she did."</p> +<p>Rachel put on her hat and took up her gloves. "If this is really +I, and that is really he, I had better go down and get it over," +she said to herself.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram had given her half an hour. She appeared in the low +stone doorway before the first five minutes of the allotted time +had elapsed, and he gave a genuine start of surprise as he heard +her step on the gravel. His respect for her fell somewhat at this +alacrity.</p> +<p>"I have been waiting in the hope of seeing you," he said, after +a moment's hesitation. "I am anxious to have a serious conversation +with you."</p> +<p>"Certainly," she said.</p> +<p>They walked along the terrace, and presently found themselves in +the little coppice adjoining it. They sat down together on a wooden +seat round an old cedar, in the heart of the golden afternoon.</p> +<p>It was an afternoon the secret of which Autumn and Spring will +never tell to Winter and Summer, when the wildest dreams of love +might come true, when even the dead might come down and put warm +lips to ours, and we should feel no surprise.</p> +<p>A kingfisher flashed across the open on his way back to the +brook near at hand, fleeing from the still splendor of the +sun-fired woods, where he was but a courtier, to the little winding +world of gray stones and water, where he was a jewelled king.</p> +<p>When the kingfisher had left them +<i>tête-à-tête</i>, Mr. Tristram found himself +extremely awkwardly placed on the green bench. He felt that he had +not sufficiently considered beforehand the peculiar difficulties +which, in the language of the law, "had been imported into his +case."</p> +<p>Rachel sat beside him in silence. If it could be chronicled that +sympathetic sorrow for her companion's predicament was the +principal feeling in her mind, she would have been an angel.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram halted long between two opinions. At last he said, +brokenly:</p> +<p>"Can you forgive me?"</p> +<p>What woman, even with her white hair, even after a lifetime +spent out of ear-shot, ever forgets the tone her lover's voice +takes when he is in trouble? Rachel softened instantly.</p> +<p>"I forgave you long ago," she said, gently.</p> +<p>Something indefinable in the clear, full gaze that met his +daunted him. He stared apprehensively at her. It seemed to him as +if he were standing in cold and darkness looking in through the +windows of her untroubled eyes at the warm, sunlit home which had +once been his, when it had been exceeding well with him, but of +which he had lost the key.</p> +<p>A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came +sailing on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel's +knee.</p> +<p>"I was angry at first," she said, her voice falling across the +silence like another leaf. "And then, after a time, I forgave you. +And later still, much later, I found out that you had never injured +me—that I had nothing to forgive."</p> +<p>He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained +volubly—for here he felt he was on sure ground—that, on +the contrary, she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an +infernal blackguard, that men were coarse brutes, not fit to kiss a +good woman's shoe-latchet, etc., etc. He identified his conduct +with that of the whole sex, without alluding to it as that of the +individual Tristram. He made it clear that he did not claim to have +behaved better than most men.</p> +<p>Rachel listened attentively. "And I actually loved him," she +said to herself.</p> +<p>"But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her +love raises a man, transfigures him, ennobles his whole life," +etc., etc.</p> +<p>"My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at +the time," said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were +spoken.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last; was the reproach he +had been expecting.</p> +<p>He assured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once +more. He denounced the accursed morals of the day, above which he +ought to have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all +unmarried men.</p> +<p>"That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett," she said, scornfully, to +herself, and then her cheek blanched as she remembered that Hugh +was not exempt, after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient; +but she waited quietly for the inevitable proposal.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic and facile utterance, +which the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, +had become so entangled in the morals of the age that it took him +some time to extricate himself from the subject before he could +pass on to plead, in an impassioned manner, the cause of the man, +unworthy though he might be, who had long loved her, loved her now, +and would always love her, in this world and the next.</p> +<p>It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had +many. But if the proposal was long, the refusal was longer. Rachel, +who had a good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic +life made great demands, that the true artist must live entirely +for his art, that domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had +read somewhere that high hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. +Tristram demolished these objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck +their own ducklings if they have not seen them for a day or +two.</p> +<p>Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at +first impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally +reject him. But the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that +she had loved him devotedly could not at last prevail against the +odious conviction that she was determined not to marry him.</p> +<p>"Then, in that case, you never loved me?"</p> +<p>"I do not love you now."</p> +<p>"You are determined not to marry?"</p> +<p>"On the contrary, I hope to do so."</p> +<p>Rachel's words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that +moment that she hoped anything of the kind.</p> +<p>"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth."</p> +<p>"I prefer several others."</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not +tally with his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he +had set his docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his +absence, and she had learned it.</p> +<p>"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an +aristocrat than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever +his faults may be, loves you for yourself."</p> +<p>Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is +as offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman?</p> +<p>Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly.</p> +<p>"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that +touch of <i>hauteur</i> which, when the vulgar have at last drawn +it upon themselves by the insolence which is the under side of +their courtesy, always has the same effect on them as a red rag on +a bull.</p> +<p>In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. +Tristram stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his +voice, causing two rabbits to hurry back into their holes.</p> +<p>Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one +again. His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high +elms close at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded +as the first among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of +rank, now that her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was +incredible. He should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if +he had not heard it from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to +the life she had chosen. It only remained for him to thank her for +stripping his last illusions from him and to bid her good-bye.</p> +<p>"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and +looking very much the same without his illusions as he did when he +had them on. He had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman's +No," which at the last moment meant "Yes." And then there was +another which chronicled how, after several stanzas of upbraiding, +"we rushed into each other's arms." Both recurred to him now. He +had often thought how true they were.</p> +<p>"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who +apparently had an unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake +that we have met this once, and have had this conversation. I think +we owed it to each other and to our—former attachment."</p> +<p>"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful +she would lose him.</p> +<p>"Good-bye."</p> +<p>"You understand it is for always?"</p> +<p>"I do."</p> +<p>He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she +really let him go?</p> +<p>"I am not the kind of man to be whistled back," he said, +fiercely. It was an appeal and a defiance, for he was just the kind +of man, and they both knew it.</p> +<p>"Of course not."</p> +<p>"That is your last word?"</p> +<p>"My last word."</p> +<p>He dropped her hand and half turned to go.</p> +<p>She made no sign.</p> +<p>Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind +him. At the little gate he stopped a moment, listening intently. No +recalling voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were +talking about. With a trembling hand he slammed the gate and +departed.</p> +<p>Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long +that the stooping sun found out the solemn, outstretched arms of +the cedar, and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle's +wing. Each little twig and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold +against the twilight that lurked beneath the heavy boughs.</p> +<p>She sat so still that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, +and struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at +her, first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, +with the other, and decided that she was harmless.</p> +<p>Presently a robin dropped down close to her, flashing up his +gray under wing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, +and from its sun-stirred depths said his say.</p> +<p>The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons, when the +shadows are lengthening, he sings sadness into your heart. If you +are joyful shut your ears against him, for you may keep peace, but +never joy, while he is singing. He knows all about it, "love's +labor lost," the gray face of young Love dead, the hard-wrought +grave in the live rock where he is buried. And he tells of it again +and again and again, as if Love's sharp sword had indeed reddened +his little breast, until the heart aches to hear him. But he tells +also that consolation is folded not in forgetfulness, but in +remembrance. That is why he sings in the silence of the autumn +dawn, before Memory closes her eyes, and again near sunset, when +Memory wakes.</p> +<p>Still Rachel sat motionless.</p> +<p>She had labored with dumb unreasoning passion to forget, as a +man works his hand to the bone night after night, week after week, +month after month, to file through the bars of his prison. She +found at last that forgetfulness came not of prayer and fasting; +that it was not in her to forget. The past had seemed to stretch +its cruel, desecrating hand over all the future, cutting her off +from the possibility of love and marriage, and from the children +whom in dreams she held in her arms. As she had said to Hester, she +thought she "had nothing left to give."</p> +<p>But now the dead past had risen from its grave in her meeting +with her former lover, and in a moment, in two short days and +wakeful nights, the past relinquished its false claim upon her +life. She saw that it was false, that she had been frightened where +no fear was, that her deliverance lay in remembrance itself, not in +the handcuffs with which until now she had bound her deliverer.</p> +<p>Mr. Tristram had come back into her life, and with his own hands +had destroyed the overthrown image of himself, which lay like a +barrier across her heart. He had replaced it by an accurate +presentment of himself as he really was.</p> +<p>"Only that which is replaced is destroyed," and it is often our +real self in its native rags, and not, as we jealously imagine, +another king in richer purple who has replaced us in the +throne-room of the heart that loved us. To the end of life Rachel +never forgot Mr. Tristram, any more than the amber forgets its fly. +But she was vaguely conscious as he left her that he had set her +free. She listened to his retreating step hardly daring to breathe. +It was too good to be true. At last there was dead silence. No echo +of a footfall. Quite gone. He had departed not only out of her +presence, but out of her life.</p> +<p>She breathed again. A tremor, like that which shakes the first +green leaf against the March sky, stole across her crushed heart, +empty at last, empty at last. She raised her hand timidly in the +sunshine. She was free. She looked round dazzled, bewildered. The +little world of sunshine and the turquoises of sky strewn among the +golden net-work of the trees smiled at her, as one who brings good +tidings.</p> +<p>A certain familiar hold on life and nature, so old that it was +almost new, which she had forgotten, but which her former self used +to feel, came back suddenly upon her, like a lost friend from +over-seas. Scales seemed to fall from her eyes. The light was too +much for her. She had forgotten how beautiful the world was. +Everything was possible.</p> +<p>Some, in the night of their desolation, can take comfort when +they see the morning-star shuddering white in the east, and can +say, "Courage, the day is at hand."</p> +<p>But others never realize that their night is over till the sun +is up. Rachel had sat in a long stupor. The message writ large for +her comfort in the stars that the night was surely waning had not +reached her, bowed, as she thought, beneath God's hand. And the +sure return of the sun at last came upon her like a miracle.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"'Tis not for every one to catch a salmon."</p> +</div> +<p>Every one who knows Middleshire knows that the little lake of +Beaumere is bounded on the one side by the Westhope and on the +other by the Wilderleigh property, the boundary being the +ubiquitous Drone, which traverses the mere in a desultory fashion, +and with the assistance of several springs makes Beaumere what it +is, namely (to quote from the local guide-book), "the noblest +expanse of water surrounded by some of the most picturesque scenery +in Middleshire."</p> +<p>Thither Doll and Hugh took their way in the leisurely manner of +men whose orthodoxy obliges them to regard Sunday as a day of +rest.</p> +<p>Doll pointed out to Hugh the coppice which his predecessor, Mr. +George Loftus, had planted. Hugh regarded it without excitement. +Both agreed that it was coming on nicely. Hugh thought that he +ought to do a little planting at his own place. Doll said, "You +can't do everything at once." A large new farm was the next object +of interest. "Uncle George rebuilt Greenfields from the ground," +remarked Doll, as they crossed the high road and took to the +harvesting fields, where "the ricks stood gray to the sun."</p> +<p>Hugh nodded. Doll thought he was a very decent chap, though +rather low-spirited. Hugh thought that if Mr. George Loftus had +been alive he might have consulted him. In an amicable silence, +broken occasionally by whistling for Crack, who hurried blear-eyed +and asthmatic out of rabbit-holes, the pair reached Beaumere; and, +after following the path through the wood, came suddenly upon the +little lake locked in the heart of the steeply climbing forest.</p> +<p>Doll stood still and pointed with his stick for fear Hugh might +overlook it. "I come here every Sunday," he remarked.</p> +<p>A sense of unreality and foreboding seized on Hugh, as the still +face of the water looked up at him. Where had he seen it before, +this sea of glass reflecting the yellow woods that stooped to its +very edge? What had it to do with him?</p> +<p>"I've been here before," he said, involuntarily.</p> +<p>"I dare say," said Doll. "Newhaven marches with me here. The +boundary is by that clump of silver birch. The Drone comes in +there, but you can't see it. The Newhavens are friends of yours, +aren't they?"</p> +<p>"Acquaintances," said Hugh, absently, looking hard at the water. +He had never been here before. Memory groped blindly for a lost +link, as one who momentarily recognizes a face in a crowd, and +tries to put a name to it and fails. As the face disappears, so the +sudden impression passed from Hugh's mind.</p> +<p>"I expect you have been here with them," said Doll. "Good man, +Newhaven."</p> +<p>"I used to see a good deal of them at one time," said Hugh; "but +they seem to have forgotten me of late."</p> +<p>"Oh, that's her!" said Doll. "She is always off and on with +people. Takes a fancy one day and a dislike the next. But he's not +like that. You always know where to find him. Solid man, Newhaven. +He doesn't say much, but what he says he sticks to."</p> +<p>"He gives one that impression," said Hugh.</p> +<p>"I rather think he is there now," said Doll, pointing to the +farther shore. "I see a figure moving, and two little specks. I +should not wonder if it were him and the boys. They often come here +on Sunday afternoons."</p> +<p>"You have long sight," said Hugh. He had met Lord Newhaven +several times since the drawing of lots, and they had always +greeted each other with cold civility. But Hugh avoided him when he +could without drawing attention to the fact that he did so.</p> +<p>"Are you going over to his side?" he asked.</p> +<p>"Rather not," said Doll. "I have never set a single trimmer or +fired a shot beyond that clump of birch, or Uncle George before +me."</p> +<p>The two men picked their way down the hill-side among the tall, +thin tree-trunks. There was no one except the dogs at the keeper's +cottage, in a clearing half-way down. Doll took the key of the +boat-house from a little hole under the eaves.</p> +<p>"I think Withers must be out," he remarked at last, after +knocking and calling at the locked door and peering through the +closed window. Hugh had been of that opinion for some time. "Gone +out with his wife, I expect. Never mind, we can do without +him."</p> +<p>They went slipping over the dry beech-mast to the boat-house. +Doll unlocked the door and climbed into one of the boats; Hugh and +Crack followed. They got a perch-rod off a long shelf, and half a +dozen trimmers. Then they pulled out a little way and stopped near +an archipelago of water-lily leaves.</p> +<p>Doll got out the perch-rod and float and made a cast.</p> +<p>"It's not fishing," he said, apologetically, half to his guest +and half to his Maker. "But we are bound to get some baits."</p> +<p>Hugh nodded, and gazed down at the thin forest below. He could +see the perch moving in little companies in the still water beyond +the water-trees. Presently a perch, a very small one, out alone for +the first time, came up, all stiff head and shoulders and wagging +tail, to the carelessly covered hook.</p> +<p>"Don't, don't, you young idiot!" said Hugh, below his breath. +But the perch knew that the time had come when a perch must judge +for himself.</p> +<p>The float curtesied and went under, and in another second the +little independent was in the boat.</p> +<p>"There are other fools in the world besides me, it seems," said +Hugh to himself.</p> +<p>"He'll do; but I wish he was a dace," said Doll, slipping the +victim into a tin with holes in the top. "Half a dozen will be +enough."</p> +<p>They got half a dozen, baited and set the trimmers white side +up, and were turning to row back, when Doll's eyes became suddenly +fixed.</p> +<p>"By Jove! there's something at it," he said, pointing to a +trimmer at some distance.</p> +<p>Both men looked intently at it. Crack felt that something was +happening, and left off smelling the empty fish-can.</p> +<p>The trimmer began to nod, to tilt, and then turned suddenly +upsidedown, and remained motionless.</p> +<p>"He's running the line off it," said Doll.</p> +<p>As he spoke the trimmer gave one jerk and went under. Then it +reappeared, awkwardly bustling out into the open.</p> +<p>"Oh, hang it all! it's Sunday," said Doll, with a groan. "We +can't be catching pike on a Sunday." And he caught up the oars and +rowed swiftly towards the trimmer.</p> +<p>As soon as they were within a boat's length it disappeared +again, came up again, and went pecking along the top of the water. +Doll pursued warily, and got hold of it.</p> +<p>"Gently, now," he said, as he shipped the oars. "He'll go under +the boat and break us if we don't look out. I'll play him, and you +shove the net under him. Damn!—God forgive me!—we've +come out without a landing-net. Good Lord, Scarlett, you can't gaff +him with a champagne-opener. There, you pull him in, and I'll grab +him somehow. I've done it before. Crack, lie down, you infernal +fool! Scarlett, if you pull him like that you'll lose him to a +certainty. By George, he's a big one!" Doll tore off his coat and +turned up his shirt-sleeves. "He's going under the boat. If you let +him go under the boat, I tell you, he'll break us. I'm quite +ready." Doll was rubbing his waistcoat-buttons against the gunwale. +"Bring him in gradually. For goodness' sake, keep your feet off the +line, or, if he makes a dash, he'll break you! Give him line. Keep +your elbows out. Keep your hands free. Don't let him jerk you. If +you don't give him more line when he runs, you'll lose him. He's +not half done yet. Confound you, Scarlett! hold on for all you're +worth. All right, old chap, all right. Don't mind me. You're doing +it first-class. Right as rain. Now, now. By George! did you see him +that time? He's a nailer! Steady on him! Bring him in gently. Keep +an even pull on him. Keep steady!"</p> +<p>Doll craned over the gunwale, his arms in the water. There was a +swirl, a momentary glimpse of a stolid fish, face and heavy +shoulders, and the boat righted itself.</p> +<p>"Missed him, as I live!" gasped Doll. "Bring him in again."</p> +<p>Hugh let out the slippery line, and drew it in again slowly, +hand over hand. Doll's round head was over the side, his long legs +spread adhesively in the bottom of the boat. Crack, beyond himself +with excitement, got on the seat and barked without ceasing.</p> +<p>"He's coming up again," said Doll, gutturally, sliding forward +his left hand. "I must get him by the eyes, and then I doubt if I +can lift him. He's a big brute. He's dragging the whole boat and +everything. He's about done now. Steady! Now!"</p> +<p>The great side of the pike lay heaving on the surface for a +second, and Doll's left forefinger and thumb were groping for its +eyes. But the agonized pike made a last effort. Doll had him with +his left hand, but could not raise him. "Pull him in now for all +you're worth," he roared to Hugh, as he made a grab with his right +hand. His legs began to lose their grip under the violent +contortions of the pike. The boat tilted madly. Hugh reached +forward to help him. There was a frantic effort, and it +capsized.</p> +<p>"Bad luck," said Doll, coming up spluttering, shaking his head +like a spaniel. "But we shall get him yet. He's bleeding like a +pig. He'll come up directly. Good Lord! the water's like ice. We +must be over one of the springs. I suppose you are all right, +Scarlett."</p> +<p>Hugh had come up, but in very different fashion.</p> +<p>"Yes," he said, faintly, clutching the upturned boat.</p> +<p>"I'm not sure," said Doll, keeping going with one hand, "that we +had not better get ashore and fetch the other boat. The water's +enough to freeze one."</p> +<p>"I can't swim," said Hugh, his teeth chattering.</p> +<p>He was a delicate man at the best of times, and the cold was +laying hold of him.</p> +<p>Doll looked at his blue lips and shaking hands, and his face +became grave. He measured the distance to the shore with his eye. +It had receded in a treacherous manner.</p> +<p>"I'm not much of a performer myself," he said, "since I broke my +arm last winter, but I can get to the shore. The question is, can +you hold on while I go back and bring the other boat, or shall we +have a try at getting back together?"</p> +<p>"I can hold on all right," said Hugh, instantly aware that Doll +did not think he could tow him to land, but was politely ready to +risk his existence in the attempt.</p> +<p>"Back directly," said Doll, and without a second's delay he was +gone. Hugh put out his whole strength in the endeavor to raise +himself somewhat out of the ice-cold water. But the upturned boat +sidled away from him like a skittish horse, and after grappling +with it he only slipped back again exhausted, and had to clutch it +as best he could.</p> +<p>As he clung to the gunwale he heard a faint coughing and gasping +close to his ear. Some one was drowning. Hugh realized that it must +be Crack, under the boat. He called to him; he chirruped, as if all +were well. He stretched one hand as far as he could under the boat +feeling for him. But he could not reach him. Presently the faint, +difficult sound ceased, began again, stopped, and was heard no +more.</p> +<p>A great silence seemed to rush in on the extinction of that +small sound. It stooped down and enveloped Hugh in it. Everything +was very calm, very still. The boat kept turning slowly round and +round, the only thing that moved. The sunlight quivered on the wet, +upturned keel. Already it was drying in patches. Hugh watched it. +The cold was sapping his powers as if he were bleeding.</p> +<p>"I could have built a boat in the time Loftus takes to fetch +one," he said to himself, and he looked round him. No sign of Doll. +He was alone in the world. The cold was gaining on him slowly, +surely. Why had he on such heavy gloves, which made him fumble so +clumsily. He looked at his bare cut hands, and realized that their +grip was leaving them. He felt that he was in measurable distance +of losing his hold.</p> +<p>Suddenly a remembrance flashed across him of the sinister face +of the water as it had first looked up at him through the trees. +Now he understood. This was the appointed place for him to die. +Hugh tightened his hold with his right hand, for his left was +paralyzed.</p> +<p>"I will not," he said. "Nothing shall induce me. I will live and +marry Rachel."</p> +<p>The cold advanced suddenly on him, as at the point of the +bayonet.</p> +<p>"Why not die?" said another voice. "Will it be easier in three +months' time than it is now? Will it ever be so easy again? See how +near death is to life, a wheel within a wheel, two rings linked +together. A touch, and you pass from one to the other."</p> +<p>Hugh looked wildly round him. The sun lay warm upon the +tree-tops. It could not be that he was going to die <i>here</i> and +<i>now</i>; here in the living sunshine, with the quiet, friendly +faces of the hills all around him.</p> +<p>He strengthened his numb hold fiercely, all but lost it, +regained it. Cramp, long held at bay, overcame him.</p> +<p>And the boat kept turning in the twilight. He reached the end of +his strength, and held on beyond it. He heard some one near at hand +suffocating in long-drawn gasps. Not Crack this time, but +himself.</p> +<p>The boat was always turning in the darkness.</p> +<p>The struggle was over. "It is better so," said the other voice, +through the roaring of a cataract near at hand. "Your mother will +bear it better so. And all the long difficulties are over, and pain +is past, and life is past, and sleep is best."</p> +<p>"But Rachel?"</p> +<p>She was here in the warm, swaying darkness. She was with him. +She was Death. Death was only her arms round him in a great peace. +Death was better than life. He let go the silly boat that kept him +from her and turned wholly to her, his closed eyes against her +breast.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER +XXVII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>The main difference between people seems to be that one man can +come under obligations on which you can rely—is +obligable—and another is not. As he has not a law within him, +there's nothing to tie him to.—EMERSON.</p> +</div> +<p>"Father," said Teddy to Lord Newhaven, "do—do be a horse, +and I will ride you in the water."</p> +<p>"Me, too," said Pauly.</p> +<p>"I am not anxious to be a horse, Teddy. I'm quite content as I +am."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven was stretched in an easy but undefensive attitude +on the heathery bank, with his hands behind his head. His two sons +rushed simultaneously at him and knelt on his chest.</p> +<p>"Promise!" they cried, punching him. "Two turns each." There was +a free fight, and Lord Newhaven promised.</p> +<p>"Honor bright! Two turns each, and really deep!"</p> +<p>"Honor bright," said Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>His two sons got off his chest, and Teddy climbed on his back in +readiness, as his father sat up and began to unlace his boots.</p> +<p>"Higher!" said Teddy, over his shoulder, his arms tightly +clasped round his father's neck, as Lord Newhaven rolled up his +trousers.</p> +<p>"You young slave-driver, they won't go up any higher."</p> +<p>"You said 'honor bright.'"</p> +<p>"Well, Shylock, I <i>am</i> 'honor bright.'"</p> +<p>"You had them over your knees last time."</p> +<p>"I had knickerbockers on, then."</p> +<p>"Won't these do the same?"</p> +<p>"They won't come up another inch."</p> +<p>"Then one, two, three—off!" shrieked Teddy, digging his +heels into the parental back.</p> +<p>The horse displayed surprising agility. It curveted, it kicked, +it jumped a little drain, it careered into the water, making a +tremendous splashing.</p> +<p>The two boys screamed with delight.</p> +<p>But at last the horse sat down on the bank gasping, wiped its +forehead, and, in spite of frenzied entreaties, proceeded to put on +its socks and boots.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven was not to be moved a second time. He lit a +cigarette and observed that the moment for sailing boats had +arrived.</p> +<p>The boats were accordingly sailed. Lord Newhaven tilted his hat +over his eyes and acted as umpire.</p> +<p>"It is not usual to sail boats upsidedown," he said, seeing +Teddy deliberately upset his.</p> +<p>"They are doing it out there," said Teddy, who had a reason for +most things. And he continued to sail his boat upsidedown.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven got up, and swept the water with his eye. His face +became keen. Then his glance fell anxiously on the children.</p> +<p>"Teddy and Pauly," he said, "promise me that you will both play +on this one bit of sand, and not go in the water till I come +back."</p> +<p>They promised, staring bewildered at their father.</p> +<p>In another moment Lord Newhaven was tearing through the +brushwood that fringed the water's edge.</p> +<p>As he neared the boat-house he saw another figure trying to +shove out the remaining boat.</p> +<p>It was Doll. Lord Newhaven pushed her off and jumped in.</p> +<p>Doll was almost speechless. His breath came in long gasps. The +sweat hung on his forehead. He pointed to the black, upturned +boat.</p> +<p>"This one leaks," said Lord Newhaven, sharply.</p> +<p>"It's got to go all the same, and sharp," said Doll, +hoarsely.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven seized up a fishing-tin and thrust it into Doll's +hands.</p> +<p>"You bale while I row," he said, and he rowed as he had never +rowed before.</p> +<p>"Who is it?" he said, as the boat shot out into the open.</p> +<p>Doll was baling like a madman.</p> +<p>"Scarlett," he said. "And he's over one of the springs. He'll +get cramp."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven strained at the oars.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Consciousness was coming back, was slowly climbing upwards, +upwards through immense intervals of time and space, to where at +last, with a wrench, pain met it half-way. Hugh stirred feebly in +the dark of a great forlornness and loneliness.</p> +<p>"Rachel," he said—"Rachel."</p> +<p>His head was gently raised, and a cup pressed to his lips. He +swallowed something.</p> +<p>He groped in the darkness for a window, and then opened his +eyes. Lord Newhaven withdrew a pace or two, and stood looking at +him.</p> +<p>Their eyes met.</p> +<p>Neither spoke; but Hugh's eyes, dark with the shadow of death, +said plainly, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?"</p> +<p>Then he turned them slowly, as an infant turns them to the sky, +the climbing woods, leaning over each other's shoulders to look at +him, to the warm earth on which he lay. At a little distance was +stretched a small rough-haired form. Hugh's eyes fixed on it. It +lay very still.</p> +<p>"Crack," he said, suddenly, raising himself on his elbow.</p> +<p>There was neither speech nor language. Crack's tail, that +courteous member, made no sign.</p> +<p>"He was under the boat," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at +the exhausted face of the man he had saved, and unable for the life +of him to help a momentary fellow-feeling about the little dog.</p> +<p>Hugh remembered. It all came back, the boat, Crack's dying +gasps, the agonized struggle, the strait gate of death, the +difficult passage through it, the calm beyond. He had almost got +through, and had been dragged back.</p> +<p>"Why did you interfere?" he said, in sudden passion, his eyes +flaming in his white face.</p> +<p>A dull color rose to Lord Newhaven's cheek.</p> +<p>"I thought it was an accident," he said. "If it was not, I beg +your pardon."</p> +<p>There was a moment's silence.</p> +<p>"It <i>was</i> an accident," said Hugh, hoarsely, and he turned +on his elbow and looked fixedly at the water, so that his companion +might not see the working of his face.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven walked slowly away in the direction of Doll, whose +distant figure, followed by another, was hurrying towards them.</p> +<p>"And so there is a Rachel as well, is there?" he said to +himself, vainly trying to steel himself against his adversary.</p> +<p>"How is he now?" said Doll, coming within ear-shot.</p> +<p>"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and +yourself, too."</p> +<p>"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the +keeper. "It's as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting +up! I thought when we laid into him on the bank that he was too far +gone, didn't you? I suppose"—hesitating—"Crack?"</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven shook his head.</p> +<p>"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be +getting into mischief."</p> +<p>Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get +the leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had +filled ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the +heavy, unconscious body.</p> +<p>There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had +remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim.</p> +<p>"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the +incident and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of +the remark, repeated it to the Gresleys.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his +water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he +could see in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a +log where he had left them.</p> +<p>"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud.</p> +<p>In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings +towards him had not changed, but they had been forced during the +last half-hour out of their original intrenchments into the open, +and were liable to attack from new directions.</p> +<p>It was not that he had virtually saved Hugh's life, for Doll +would never have got him into the leaking boat and kept it afloat +single-handed. That first moment of enthusiasm, when he had rubbed +the senseless limbs and breathed into the cold lips, and had felt +his heart leap when life came halting back into them, that moment +had passed and left him cold.</p> +<p>But Hugh's melancholy eyes, as they opened once more on this +world and met his unflinchingly, haunted him, and the sudden anger +at his interference. It was the intrenchment of his contempt that +Lord Newhaven missed.</p> +<p>A meaner nature would not have let him off so easily as Hugh had +done.</p> +<p>"It <i>was</i> an accident," he said to himself, unwillingly. +"He need not have admitted that, but I should have been on a +gridiron if he had not. In different circumstances that man and I +might have been friends. And if he had got into a scrape of this +kind a little further afield I might have helped to get him out of +it. He feels it. He has aged during the last two months. But as it +is—Upon my word, if he were a boy I should have had to let +him off. It would have been too bloodthirsty. But he is +seven-and-twenty. He is old enough to know better. She made a fool +of him, of course. She made a greater one of me once, for +I—married her."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven reviewed with a dispassionate eye his courtship +and marriage.</p> +<p>"A wood anemone," he said to himself; "I likened her to a wood +anemone. Good Lord! And I was thirty years of age, while this poor +devil is twenty-seven."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven stopped short with fixed eyes.</p> +<p>"I believe I should have to let him off," he said, half-aloud. +"I believe I would let him off if I was not as certain as I stand +here that he will never do it."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER +XXVIII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants +it."</p> +</div> +<p>Hester always took charge of the three elder children and +Fräulein of the baby during the six-o'clock service, so that +the nurse might go to church. On this particular Sunday afternoon +Hester and the children were waiting in the little hall till the +bell stopped, before which moment they were forbidden to leave the +house. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had just started for the church, Mr. +Gresley looking worn and harassed, for since luncheon he had +received what he called "a perfectly unaccountable letter" from one +of his principal parishioners, a Dissenter, who had been present at +the morning service, and who Mr. Gresley had confidently hoped +might have been struck by the sermon. This hope had been justified, +but not in the manner Mr. Gresley had expected. Mr. Walsh opined, +in a large round hand, that as worms (twice under-dashed) did not +usually pay voluntary church and school rates he no longer felt +himself under an obligation to do so, etc. The letter was a great, +an unexpected blow. Who could have foreseen such a result of the +morning's eloquence.</p> +<p>"The truth is," said Mr. Gresley, tremulously, "that they can't +and won't hear reason. They can't controvert what I say, so they +take refuge in petty spite like this. I must own I am disappointed +in Walsh. He is a man of some education, and liberal as regards +money. I had thought he was better than most of them, and now he +turns on me like this."</p> +<p>"It's a way worms have," said Hester.</p> +<p>"Oh, don't run a simile to death, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, +impatiently. "If you had listened to what I tried to say this +morning you would have seen I only used the word <i>worm</i> +figuratively. I never meant it literally, as any one could see who +was not determined to misunderstand me. Worms pay school-rates! +Such folly is positively sickening, if it were not malicious."</p> +<p>Hester had remained silent. She had been deeply vexed for her +brother at the incident.</p> +<p>As the church-bell stopped the swing-door opened, and Boulou +hurried in, like a great personage, conscious that others have +waited, and bearing with him an aroma of Irish stew and onions, +which showed that he had been exchanging affabilities with the +cook. For the truth must be owned. No spinster over forty could +look unmoved on Boulou. Alas! for the Vicarage cook, who "had kept +herself <i>to</i> herself" for nearly fifty years, only to fall the +victim of a "grande passion" for Boulou.</p> +<p>The little Lovelace bounded in, and the expedition started. It +was Regie's turn to choose where they should go, and he decided on +the "shrubbery," a little wood through which ran the private path +to Wilderleigh. Doll Loftus had given the Gresleys leave to take +the children there.</p> +<p>"Oh, Regie, we always go there," said Mary, plaintively, who +invariably chose the Pratts' park, with its rustic bridges and +<i>châlets</i>, which Mr. Pratt, in a gracious moment, had +"thrown open" to the Gresleys on Sundays, because, as he expressed +it, "they must feel so cramped in their little garden."</p> +<p>But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the "shrubberies" +they went. Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even +to tell them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in +the coppice near at hand.</p> +<p>As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life +leads us we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as +children in our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house +where we were born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the +underneath of every laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of +darkling branches, the green dust that our small restless bodies +rubbed off from its under twigs. We see now as strangers those +little hanging horse-tails of pink, which sad-faced elders call +<i>ribes</i>; but once long ago, when the world was young, we knew +them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on them, and +the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them. +Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that +test, just as until it had been licked the real color of any object +of interest was not ascertained. There was a certain scarlet berry, +very red without and very white within, which we were warned was +deadly poison. How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember +the bitter taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden +fruits duly essayed in later years. We ate those scarlet berries +and lived, though warned to the contrary.</p> +<p>Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead +mouse, where any one else could have found it, in the middle of the +path, and made it an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings +and shakings. The children decided to bury it, and after a becoming +silence their voices could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as +the body was being lowered into the grave previously dug by Boulou, +who had to be forcibly restrained from going on digging it after +the obsequies were over.</p> +<p>"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, +with a little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing +back to Hester.</p> +<p>As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path +towards them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which +suggested that when two is not company three may be.</p> +<p>"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified +tone, sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am +to blame. You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been +staying with us?"</p> +<p>"I know him," said Hester.</p> +<p>"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large +pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any +harm myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I +love the Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think +for one's self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to +sit for him at four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a +little—well rather—"</p> +<p>"Just so," said Hester.</p> +<p>"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A +married woman often has to deal with such things without making a +fuss about them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly +half-past four before I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room +a servant brought me a note. It was from him, saying he had been +obliged to leave Wilderleigh suddenly on urgent business, and +asking that his baggage might be sent after him."</p> +<p>Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. +Sybell's conversation always interested her.</p> +<p>"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to +herself, "is because the ground the confidence would cover is +invariably built over already by a fiction of her own which it +would not please her to see destroyed."</p> +<p>"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have +behaved in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of +course the pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because +there is no Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I +asked that. And he was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost +asked to stay over Sunday on purpose."</p> +<p>Rachel and Hester looked on the ground.</p> +<p>"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't +you, Rachel?"</p> +<p>"I said I thought he was a little nervous."</p> +<p>And what did he talk to you about?"</p> +<p>"He spoke about the low tone of the morals of the day, and about +marriage."</p> +<p>"Ah! I don't wonder he talked to you, Rachel, you are so +sympathetic. I expect lots of people confide in you about their +troubles and love affairs. Morals of the day! Marriage! Poor, poor +Mr. Tristram! I shall tell Doll quietly this evening. On the whole, +it is just as well he is gone."</p> +<p>"Just as well," said Rachel and Hester, with surprising +unanimity.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>So fast does a little leaven spread within us—so +incalculable is the effect of one personality on +another.—GEORGE ELIOT.</p> +</div> +<p>Hugh was not ill after what Mr. Gresley called "his immersion," +but for some days he remained feeble and exhausted. Sybell quite +forgot she had not liked him, insisted on his staying on +indefinitely at Wilderleigh, and, undaunted by her distressing +experience with Mr. Tristram, read poetry to Hugh in the afternoons +and surrounded him with genuine warm-hearted care. Doll was +steadily, quietly kind.</p> +<p>It was during these days that Hugh and Rachel saw much of each +other, during these days that Rachel passed in spite of herself +beyond the anxious impersonal interest which Hugh had awakened in +her, on to that slippery much-trodden ground of uncomfortable +possibilities where the unmarried meet.</p> +<p>Hugh attracted and repelled her.</p> +<p>It was, alas! easy to say why she was repelled. But who shall +say why she was attracted? Has the secret law ever been discovered +which draws one man and woman together amid the crowd? Hugh was not +among the best men who had wished to marry her, but nevertheless he +was the only man since Mr. Tristram who had succeeded in making her +think continually of him. And perhaps she half knew that though she +had been loved by better men, Hugh loved her better than they +had.</p> +<p>Which would prove the stronger, the attraction or the +repulsion?</p> +<p>"How can I?" she said to herself, over and over again.</p> +<p>"When I remember Lady Newhaven, how can I? When I think of what +his conduct was for a whole year, how can I? Can he have any sense +of honor to have acted like that? Is he even really sorry? He is +very charming, very refined, and he loves me. He looks good, but +what do I know of him except evil? He looks as if he could be +faithful, but how can I trust him?"</p> +<p>Hugh fell into a deep dejection after his narrow escape. Dr. +Brown said it was nervous prostration, and Doll rode into +Southminster and returned laden with comic papers. Who shall say +whether the cause was physical or mental? Hugh had seen death very +near for the first time, and the thought of death haunted him. He +had not realized when he drew lots that he was risking the +possibility of anything like <i>that</i>, such an entire going +away, such an awful rending of his being as the short word +<i>death</i> now conveyed to him. He had had no idea it would be +like <i>that</i>. And he had got to do it again. There was the +crux. He had got to do it again.</p> +<p>He leaned back faint and shuddering in the deck-chair in the +rose-garden where he was lying.</p> +<p>Presently Rachel appeared, coming towards him down the narrow +grass walk between two high walls of hollyhocks. She had a cup of +tea in her hand.</p> +<p>"I have brought you this," she said, "with a warning that you +had better not come in to tea. Mr. Gresley has been sighted walking +up the drive. Mrs. Loftus thought you would like to see him, but I +reminded her that Dr. Brown said you were to be kept very +quiet."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley had called every day since the accident in order to +cheer the sufferer, to whom he had been greatly attracted. Hugh had +seen him once, and afterwards had never felt strong enough to +repeat the process.</p> +<p>"Must you go back?" he asked.</p> +<p>"No," she said. "Mrs. Loftus and he are great friends. I should +be rather in the way."</p> +<p>And she sat down by him.</p> +<p>"Are you feeling ill?" she said, gently, noticing his careworn +face.</p> +<p>"No," he replied. "I was only thinking. I was thinking," he went +on, after a pause, "that I would give everything I possess not to +have done something which I have done."</p> +<p>Rachel looked straight in front of her. The confession was +coming at last. Her heart beat.</p> +<p>"I have done wrong," he said, slowly, "and I am suffering for +it, and I shall suffer more before I've finished. But the worst +is—"</p> +<p>She looked at him.</p> +<p>"The worst is that I can't bear all the consequences myself. An +innocent person will pay the penalty of my sin."</p> +<p>Hugh's voice faltered. He was thinking of his mother.</p> +<p>Rachel's mind instantly flew to Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>"Then Lord Newhaven drew the short lighter," she thought, and +she colored deeply.</p> +<p>There was a long silence.</p> +<p>"Do you think," said Hugh, smiling faintly, "that people are +ever given a second chance?"</p> +<p>"Always," said Rachel. "If not here—afterwards."</p> +<p>"If I were given another," said Hugh. "If I might only be given +another now in this life I should take it."</p> +<p>He was thinking if only he might be let off this dreadful +self-inflicted death. She thought he meant that he repented of his +sin, and would fain do better.</p> +<p>There was a sound of voices near at hand. Sybell and Mr. Gresley +came down the grass walk towards them.</p> +<p>"London society," Mr. Gresley was saying, "to live in a stuffy +street away from the beauties of Nature, its birds and flowers, to +spend half my days laying traps for invitations, and half my nights +grinning like a fool in stifling drawing-rooms, listening to vapid +talk. No, thanks! I know better than to care for London society. +Hester does, I know, but then Hester does not mind making up to big +people, and I do. In fact—"</p> +<p>"I have brought Mr. Gresley, after all, in spite of Dr. Brown," +said Sybell, "because we were in the middle of such an interesting +conversation on the snares of society that I knew you would like to +hear it. You have had such a dull day with Doll away at his County +Council."</p> +<p>That night, as Rachel sat in her room, she went over that +half-made, ruthlessly interrupted confidence.</p> +<p>"He does repent," she said to herself, recalling the careworn +face. "If he does, can I overlook the past? Can I help him to make +a fresh start? If he had not done this one dishonorable action, I +could have cared for him. Can I now?"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"A fool's mouth is his destruction."</p> +</div> +<p>The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have +forgotten, but the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an +earlier chapter a sale of work was mentioned which was to take +place in the Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August.</p> +<p>The end of August had now arrived, and with it two white tents, +which sprang up suddenly one morning, like giant mushrooms, on one +of Doll's smooth-shaven lawns. He groaned in spirit as he watched +their erection. They would ruin the turf.</p> +<p>"Might as well iron it with a hot iron," he said, disconsolately +to Hugh. "But, of course, this sort of thing—Diocesan Fund, +eh? In these days we must stand by our colors." He repeated Mr. +Gresley's phrase. Doll seldom ventured on an opinion not sanctioned +by the ages, or that he had not heard repeated till its novelty had +been comfortably rubbed off by his wife or the Gresleys.</p> +<p>The two men watched the proceedings mournfully. They could not +help, at least they were told they could not help the women busily +engaged in draping and arranging the stalls. They were still at +large, but Doll knew, as well as a dog who is going to be washed, +what was in store for him in the afternoon, and he was depressed +beforehand.</p> +<p>"Don't let yourself be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. +"You're not up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this +sort of thing. Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in +the smoking-room till it's all over."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"All I can say is," remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led +the Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the +work of many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly +badly. Here they are, the richest people by far in the parish, and +they would not even take a stall, they would not even furnish half +of one, and they said they would be away, and they are at the +Towers, after all. No one likes the Pratts more than I do, or sees +their good points as I do, but I can't shut my eyes to the fact +that they are the meanest of the mean."</p> +<p>The Pratts had only contributed two "bed-spreads," and a +"sheet-sham," and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to +know what "bed-spreads" and "sheet-shams" are, let him ask his +intended, and let him see to it that he marries a woman who cannot +tell him.</p> +<p>Mrs. Pratt had bought the antimacassars for the Towers, and +secretly adored them until Ada pronounced them to be vulgar. The +number of things which Ada discovered to be vulgar increased every +day, and included the greater part of her mother's wardrobe, much +to the distress of that poor lady. Mrs. Pratt had reached the size +when it is prudent to concentrate a love of bright colors in one's +parasol. On this particular afternoon she shed tears over the fact +that Ada refused to accompany her if her mother wore a unique +garment of orange satin, covered with what appeared to be a plague +of black worms.</p> +<p>Of course, the sale of work was combined with a garden-party, +and a little after three o'clock carriage after carriage began to +arrive, and Sybell, with a mournful, handsome, irreproachably +dressed husband, took up her position on the south front to receive +her guests.</p> +<p>The whole neighborhood had been invited, and it can generally be +gauged with tolerable accuracy by a hostess of some experience who +will respond to the call and who will stay away. Sybell and her +husband were among those who were not to be found at these +festivities, neither were the Newhavens, save at their own, nor the +Pontisburys, nor the Bishop of Southminster. Cards had, of course, +been sent to each, but no one expected them to appear.</p> +<p>Presently, among the stream of arrivals, Sybell noticed the +slender figure of Lady Newhaven, and—astonishing +vision—Lord Newhaven beside her.</p> +<p>"Wonders will never cease," said Doll, shaken for a moment out +of the apathy of endurance.</p> +<p>Sybell raised her eyebrows, and advanced with the prettiest air +of <i>empressement</i> to meet her unexpected guests. No, clearly +it was impossible that the two women should like each other. They +were the same age, about the same height and coloring; their social +position was too similar; their historic houses too near each +other. Lady Newhaven was by far the best looking, but that was not +a difference which attracted Sybell towards her. On this occasion +Sybell's face assumed its most squirrel-like expression, for, as +ill-luck would have it, they were dressed alike.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven looked very ethereal, as she came slowly across +the grass in her diaphanous gown of rich white, covered with a +flowing veil of thinnest transparent black. Her blue eyes looked +restlessly bright; her lips wore a mechanical smile. Rachel, +watching her, experienced a sudden pang at her undeniable +loveliness. It wounded her suddenly, as it never had done before. +"I am a common-looking, square-built woman compared to her," she +said to herself. "No wonder he—"</p> +<p>She instinctively drew back as Lady Newhaven turned quickly +towards her.</p> +<p>"You dear person," said Lady Newhaven, her eyes moving +restlessly over the crowd, "are you still here? Let us go and buy +something together. How nice you look," without looking at her. She +drew Rachel apart in the direction of the tents.</p> +<p>"Where is he?" she said, sharply. "I know he is here. I heard +all about the accident, though Edward never told me. I don't see +him."</p> +<p>"He is not in the gardens. He is not coming out. He is still +rather knocked up."</p> +<p>"I thought I should have died when I heard it. Ah, Rachel, never +love any one. You don't know what it's like. But I must see him. I +have come here on purpose."</p> +<p>"So I supposed."</p> +<p>"Edward would come, too. He appeared at the last moment when the +carriage came round, though I have never known him to go to a +garden-party in his life. But where is he, Rachel?"</p> +<p>"Somewhere in the house, I suppose."</p> +<p>"I shan't know where to find him. I can't be wandering about +that woman's house by myself. We must slip away together, Rachel, +and you must take me to him. I must see him alone for five +minutes."</p> +<p>Rachel shook her head.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt, tall, pale, cautious, immaculate, his cane held +along his spinal column, appeared suddenly close at hand.</p> +<p>"Mrs. Loftus is fortunate in her day," he remarked, addressing +himself to Lady Newhaven, and observing her fixedly with cold +admiration. "I seldom come to this sort of thing, but neighbors in +the country must support each other. I see you are on your way to +the tents. Pray allow me to carry your purchases for you."</p> +<p>"Oh! don't let me trouble you," said Lady Newhaven, shrinking +imperceptibly. But it was no trouble to Captain Pratt, and they +walked on together.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven, who could not have been far off, joined +Rachel.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt to Ada, "you might have let me +wear my black and orange, after all, for you see Lady Newhaven has +something very much the same, only hers is white underneath. And do +you see she has got two diamond butterflies on—the little one +at her throat and the big one holding her white carnations. And you +would not let me put on a single thing. There now, Algy has joined +her," continued Mrs. Pratt, her attention quickly diverted from her +own wrongs. "Now they are walking on together. How nice he looks in +those beautiful clothes. Algy and Lord Newhaven and Mr. Loftus all +have the same look, haven't they? All friends together, as I often +say, such a mercy among county people. You might walk a little with +Lord Newhaven, Ada. It's unaccountable how seldom we see him, but +always so pleasant when we do. Ah! he's speaking to Rachel West. +They are going to the tents, after all. Well, whatever you may say, +I do think we ought to go and buy something, too. Papa says he +won't put his hand in his pocket if the Loftuses are to get all the +credit, and we ought to have had the choice of having the sale at +the Towers, so he sha'n't do anything; but I think it would be nice +if we went and bought a little something. Just a five-pound note. +You shall spend it, my dear, if you like."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"This is sheer recklessness," said Lord Newhaven, as Rachel +bought an expensive tea-cosey from Fräulein. "In these days of +death-duties you cannot possess four teapots, and you have already +bought three teapot costumes."</p> +<p>"That is what I am here for," said Rachel, producing a +check-book. "How much did you say, Fräulein?"</p> +<p>"Twenty-seven and seex," said Fräulein.</p> +<p>"Now I see it in the full light, I have taken a fancy to it +myself," said Lord Newhaven. "I never saw anything the least like +it. I don't think I can allow you to appropriate it, Miss West. You +are sweeping up all the best things."</p> +<p>"I have a verr' pretty thing for gentlemen," said Fräulein. +"Herr B-r-r-rown has just bought one."</p> +<p>"Very elaborate, indeed. Bible-markers, I presume? Oh, braces! +Never mind, they will be equally useful to me. I'll have them. Now +for the tea-cosey. It is under-priced. I consider that, with the +chenille swallow, it is worth thirty shillings. I will give thirty +for it."</p> +<p>"Thirty-two and six," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"The landed interest is not going to be browbeaten by +coal-mines. Thirty-three and twopence."</p> +<p>"Forty shillings," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"Forty-two," said Lord Newhaven.</p> +<p>Every one in the tent had turned to watch the bidding.</p> +<p>"Forty-two and six," said Rachel.</p> +<p>Fräulein blushed. She had worked the tea-cosey. It was to +her a sonata in red plush.</p> +<p>"Three guineas," said Captain Pratt, by an infallible instinct, +perceiving, and placing himself within the focus of general +interest.</p> +<p>The bidding ceased instantly. Lord Newhaven shrugged his +shoulders and turned away. Fräulein, still shaking with +conflicting emotions, handed the tea-cosey to Captain Pratt. He +took it with an acid smile, secretly disgusted at the sudden +cessation of interest, for which he had paid rather highly, and +looked round for Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>But she had disappeared.</p> +<p>"Fancy you and Algy bidding against each other like that," said +Ada Pratt, archly, to Lord Newhaven, for though Ada was haughty in +general society she could be sportive, and even friskily +ingratiating, towards those of her fellow-creatures whom she termed +"swells." "Why, half Middleshire will be saying that you have +quarrelled next."</p> +<p>"Only those who do not know how intimate Captain Pratt and I +really are could think we have quarrelled," said Lord Newhaven, his +eyes wandering over the crowd. "But I am blocking your way and Mrs. +Pratt's. How do you do, Mrs. Pratt? Miss West, your burden is +greater than you can bear. You are dropping part of it. I don't +know what it is, but I can shut my eyes as I pick it up. I insist +on carrying half back to the house. It will give a pleasing +impression that I have bought largely. Weren't you pleased at the +money we wrung out of Captain Pratt? He never thought we should +stop bidding. It's about all the family will contribute, unless +that good old Mamma Pratt buys something. She is the only one of +the family I can tolerate. Is Scarlett still here? I ought to have +asked after him before."</p> +<p>"He's here, but he's not well. He's in hiding in the +smoking-room."</p> +<p>"He is lucky he is no worse. I should have had rheumatic fever +if I had been in his place. How cool it is in here after the glare +outside. Must you go out again? Well, I consider I have done my +duty, and that I may fairly allow myself a cigarette in peace."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Really, Mr. Loftus, I'm quite shocked. This absurd faintness! +The tent was very crowded, and there is not much air to-day, is +there? I shall be all right if I may sit quietly in the hail a +little. How deliciously cool in here after the glare outside. A +glass of water? Thanks. Yes, only I hate to be so troublesome. And +how are you after that dreadful accident in the boat?"</p> +<p>"Oh! I am all right," said Doll, who by this time hated the +subject. "It was Scarlett who was nearly frozen like New Zealand +lamb."</p> +<p>Doll had heard Mr. Gresley fire off the simile of the lamb, and +considered it sound.</p> +<p>"How absurd you are. You always make me laugh. I suppose he has +left now that he is unfrozen."</p> +<p>"Oh no. He is still here. We would not let him go till he was +better. He is not up to much. Weak chap at the best of times, I +should think. He's lying low in the smoking-room till the people +are gone."</p> +<p>"Mr. Scarlett is an old friend of ours," said Lady Newhaven, +sipping her glass of water, and spilling a little; "but I can't +quite forgive him—no, I really can't—for the danger he +caused to Edward. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that Edward +can't swim, either. Even now I can't bear to think what might have +happened."</p> +<p>She closed her eyes with evident emotion.</p> +<p>Doll's stolid garden-party face relaxed. "Good little woman," he +thought. "As fond of him as she can be."</p> +<p>"All's well that ends well," he remarked, aloud.</p> +<p>Doll did not know that he was quoting Shakespeare, but he did +know by long experience that this sentence could be relied on as +suitable to the occasion, or to any occasion that looked a little +"doddery," and finished up all right.</p> +<p>"And now, Mr. Loftus, positively I must insist on your leaving +me quietly here. I am quite sure you are wanted outside, and I +should blame myself if you wasted another minute on me. It was only +the sun which affected me. Don't mention it to Edward. He is always +so fussy about me. I will rest quietly here for a quarter of an +hour, and then rejoin you all again in the garden."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"I hope I am not disturbing any one," said Lord Newhaven, +quietly entering the smoking-room. "Well, Scarlett, how are you +getting on?"</p> +<p>Hugh, who was lying on a sofa with his arms raised and his hands +behind his head, looked up, and his expression changed.</p> +<p>"He was thinking of something uncommonly pleasant," thought Lord +Newhaven, "not of me or mine, I fancy. I have come to smoke a +cigarette in peace," he added aloud, "if you don't object."</p> +<p>"Of course not."</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven lit his cigarette and puffed a moment in +silence.</p> +<p>"Hot outside," he said.</p> +<p>Hugh nodded. He wondered how soon he could make a pretext for +getting up and leaving the room.</p> +<p>There was a faint silken rustle, and Lady Newhaven, pale, +breathless, came swiftly in and closed the door. The instant +afterwards she saw her husband, and shrank back with a little cry. +Lord Newhaven did not look at her. His eyes were fixed on Hugh.</p> +<p>Hugh's face became suddenly ugly, livid. He rose slowly to his +feet, and stood motionless.</p> +<p>"He hates her," said Lord Newhaven to himself. And he removed +his glance and came forward.</p> +<p>"You were looking for me, Violet?" he remarked. "I have no doubt +you are wishing to return home. We will go at once." He threw away +his cigarette. "Well, good-bye, Scarlett, in case we don't meet +again. I dare say you will pay Westhope a visit later on. Ah, +Captain Pratt! so you have fled, like us, from the madding crowd. I +can recommend Loftus's cigarettes. I have just had one myself. +Good-bye. Did you leave your purchases in the hall, Violet? Yes? +Then we will collect them on our way."</p> +<p>The husband and wife were half-way down the grand staircase +before Lord Newhaven said, in his usual even voice:</p> +<p>"I must ask you once more to remember that I will not have any +scandal attaching to your name. Did not you see that that white +mongrel Pratt was on your track? If I had not been there when he +came in he would have drawn his own vile conclusions, and for once +they would have been correct."</p> +<p>"He could not think worse of me than you do," said the wife, +half cowed, half defiant.</p> +<p>"No, but he could say so, which I don't; or, what is more +probable, he could use his knowledge to obtain a hold over you. He +is a dangerous man. Don't put yourself in his power."</p> +<p>"I don't want to, or in anybody's."</p> +<p>"Then avoid scandal instead of courting it, and don't repeat the +folly of this afternoon."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Captain Pratt did not remain long in the smoking-room. He had +only a slight acquaintance with Hugh, which did not appear capable +of expansion. Captain Pratt made a few efforts, proved its +inelastic properties, and presently lounged out again.</p> +<p>Hugh moved slowly to the window, and leaned his throbbing +forehead against the stone mullion. He was still weak, and the +encounter with Lady Newhaven had shaken him.</p> +<p>"What did he mean?" he said to himself, bewildered and +suspicious. "'Perhaps I should be staying at Westhope later on!' +But, of course, I shall never go there again. He knows that as well +as I do. What did he mean?"</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>The Bird of Time has but a little way<br /> +To flutter—and the Bird is on the wing.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">—OMAR +KHAYYÁM.</span></div> +<p>It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was +late, but he had come at last. There was death in the air, a +whisper of death stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side. +The birds heard it and were silent. The November wind was hurrying +round Westhope Abbey, shaking its bare trees.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the +level land to the low hills beyond. He stood so long that the day +died, and twilight began to rub out first the hills and then the +long, white lines of flooded meadow and blurred pollard willows. +Presently the river mist rose up to meet the coming darkness. In +the east, low and lurid, a tawny moon crept up the livid sky. She +made no moonlight on the gray earth.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven moved away from the window, where he had become a +shadow among the shadows, and sat down in the dark at his +writing-table.</p> +<p>Presently he turned on the electric lamp at his elbow and took a +letter out of his pocket. The circle of shaded light fell on his +face as he read—the thin, grave face, with the steady, +inscrutable eyes.</p> +<p>He read the letter slowly, evidently not for the first time.</p> +<p>"If I had not been taken by surprise at the moment I should not +have consented to the manner in which our differences were settled. +Personally, I consider the old arrangement, to which you +regretfully alluded at the time"—("pistols for two and coffee +for four," I remember perfectly)—"as preferable, and as you +appeared to think so yourself, would it not be advisable to resort +to it? Believing that the old arrangement will meet your wishes as +fully as it does mine, I trust that you will entertain this +suggestion, and that you will agree to a meeting with your own +choice of weapons, on any pretext you may choose to name within the +next week."</p> +<p>The letter ended there. It was unsigned.</p> +<p>"The time is certainly becoming short," said Lord Newhaven. "He +is right in saying there is only a week left. If it were not for +the scandal for the boys, and if I thought he would really hold to +the compact, I would meet him, but <i>he won't</i>. He flinched +when he drew lots. He won't. He has courage enough to stand up in +front of me for two minutes, and take his chance, but not to blow +his own brains out. No. And if he knew what is in store for him if +he does not, he would not have courage to face that either. Nor +should I if I were in his shoes, poor devil. The first six foot of +earth would be good enough for me."</p> +<p>He threw the letter with its envelope into the fire and watched +it burn.</p> +<p>Then he took up the gold pen, which his wife had given him, +examined the nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with +sudden swiftness.</p> +<p>"Allow me to remind you that you made no objection at the time +to the manner of our encounter and my choice of weapons, by means +of which publicity was avoided. The risk was equal. You now, at the +last moment, propose that I should run it a second time, and in a +manner to cause instant scandal. I must decline to do so, or to +reopen the subject, which had received my careful consideration +before I decided upon it. I have burned your letter, and desire you +will burn mine."</p> +<p>"Poor devil!" said Lord Newhaven, putting the letter, not in the +post-box at his elbow, but in his pocket.</p> +<p>"Loftus and I did him an ill turn when we pulled him out of the +water."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>The letter took its own time, for it had to avoid possible +pitfalls. It shunned the company of the other Westhope letters, it +avoided the village post-office, but after a day's delay it was +launched, and lay among a hundred others in a station pillar-box. +And then it hurried, hurried as fast as express train could take +it, till it reached its London address, and went softly up-stairs, +and laid itself, with a few others, on Hugh's breakfast-table.</p> +<p>For many weeks since his visit at Wilderleigh Hugh had been like +a man in a boat without oars, drifting slowly, imperceptibly on the +placid current of a mighty river, who far away hears the fall of +Niagara droning like a bumblebee in a lily cup.</p> +<p>Long ago, in the summer, he had recognized the sound, had +realized the steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, +and had struggled horribly, impotently, against the inevitable. But +of late, though the sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of +the blue distance, he had given up the useless struggle, and lay +still in the sunshine watching the summer woods slide past and the +clouds sail away, always away and away, to the birthplace of the +river, to that little fluttering pulse in the heart of the hills +which a woman's hand might cover, the infant pulse of the great +river to be.</p> +<p>Hugh's thoughts went back, like the clouds, towards that tiny +spring of passion in his own life. He felt that he could have +forgiven it—and himself—if he had been swept into the +vortex of a headlong mountain torrent leaping down its own wild +water-way, carrying all before it. Other men he had seen who had +been wrested off their feet, swept out of their own keeping by such +a torrent on the steep hill-side of their youth. But it had not +been so with him. He had walked more cautiously than they. As he +walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of water which +came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so pretty, it was +so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it, watched +it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped its +course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It +never leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe +and shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was +quickly tired of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a +commonplace country, past squalid polluting towns and villages. The +hills were long since gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, +behold, his oars were gone! He had been trapped to his +destruction.</p> +<p>Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady +Newhaven. He had been attracted, excited, partially, half-willingly +enslaved. He had thought at the time that he loved her, and that +supposition had confirmed him in his cheap cynicism about woman. +This, then, was her paltry little court, where man offered mock +homage, and where she played at being queen. Hugh had made the +discovery that love was a much overrated passion. He had always +supposed so; but when he tired of Lady Newhaven he was sure of it. +His experience was, after all, only the same as that which many men +acquire by marriage, and hold unshaken through long and useful +lives. But Hugh had not been able to keep the treasures of this +early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather +contemptible by a later one—that of falling in love with +Rachel, and the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the +first time. He had sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, +as surely as any man or woman who marries for money or liking. He +had not believed in his birthright, and holding it to be worthless, +had given it to the first person who had offered him anything in +exchange.</p> +<p>His whole soul had gradually hardened itself against Lady +Newhaven. If he had loved her, he said to himself, he could have +borne his fate. But the play had not been worth the candle. His +position was damnable; but that he could have borne—at least, +so he thought if he had had his day. But he had not had it. That +thought rankled. To be hounded out of life because he had mistaken +paper money for real was not only unfair, it was grotesque.</p> +<p>Gradually, however, Hugh forgot his smouldering hate of Lady +Newhaven, his sense of injustice and anger against fate; he forgot +everything in his love for Rachel. It became the only reality of +his life.</p> +<p>He had remained in London throughout October and November, +cancelling all his engagements because she was there. What her work +was he vaguely apprehended: that she was spending herself and part +of her colossal fortune in the East End, but he took no interest in +it. He was incapable of taking more interests into his life at this +time. He passed many quiet evenings with her in the house in Park +Lane, which she had lately bought. The little secretary who lived +with her had always a faint smile and more writing to do than usual +on the evenings when he dined with them.</p> +<p>A great peace was over all their intercourse. Perhaps it was the +hush before the storm, the shadow of which was falling, falling, +with each succeeding day across the minds of both. Once only a +sudden gust of emotion stirred the quiet air, but it dropped again +immediately. It came with the hour when Hugh confessed to her the +blot upon his past. The past was taking upon itself ever an uglier +and more repulsive aspect as he saw more of Rachel. It was hard to +put into words, but he spoke of it. The spectre of love rose like a +ghost between them, as they looked earnestly at each other, each +pale even in the ruddy fire-light.</p> +<p>Hugh was truthful in intention. He was determined he would never +lie to Rachel. He implied an intrigue with a married woman, a +deviation not only from morality, but from honor. More he did not +say. But as he looked at her strained face it seemed to him that +she expected something more. A dreadful silence fell between them +when he had finished. Had she then no word for him. Her +eyes—mute, imploring, dark with an agony of +suspense—met his for a second and fell instantly. She did not +speak. Her silence filled him with despair. He got up. "It's +getting late. I must go," he stammered.</p> +<p>She rose, mechanically, and put out her hand.</p> +<p>"May I come again?" he said, holding it more tightly than he +knew, and looking intently at her. Was he going to be +dismissed?</p> +<p>The pain he caused her hand recalled her to herself. A look of +bewilderment crossed her face, and then she realized his suspense +and said, gravely, "You may come again."</p> +<p>He kissed the hand he held, and, as he did so, he knew for the +first time that she loved him. But he could not speak of love after +what he had just told her. He looked back when he reached the door, +and saw her standing where he had left her. She had raised the hand +he had kissed to her lips.</p> +<p>That was three days ago. Since then he had not dared to go and +see her. He could not ask her to marry him when he was within a few +days of the time when he was bound in so-called honor to give Lord +Newhaven satisfaction. He certainly could not be in her presence +again without asking her. The shadows of the last weeks had +suddenly become ghastly realities once more. The roar of Niagara +drowned all other sounds. What was he going to do? What was he +going to do in the predicament towards which he had been drifting +so long, which was now actually upon him? Who shall say what +horror, what agony of mind, what frenzied searching for a way of +escape, what anguish of baffled love crowded in on Hugh's mind +during those last days? At the last moment he caught at a straw, +and wrote to Lord Newhaven offering to fight him. He did not ask +himself what he should do if Lord Newhaven refused. But when Lord +Newhaven did refuse his determination, long unconsciously fostered, +sprang full-grown into existence in a sudden access of passionate +anger and blind rage.</p> +<p>"He won't fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a +trap with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair +chance of revenging himself—I would have fired into the +air—and if he won't take it is his own look-out, damn him! He +can shoot me at sight if he likes. Let him."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER +XXXII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">On ne peut +jamais dire.</span><br /> +"Fontaine je ne boirai jamais de ton eau."</div> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"<i>Les esprits faibles ne sont jamais sincères</i>." 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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Do you not know that I love you?" she said, silently, to him, +as he kissed her hand.</p> +<p>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 honor. He owed it to +the man he had injured to preserve entire secrecy.</p> +<p>"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 <i>would</i> 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 +dishonorably once he is an honorable man. He has shown himself +upright in his dealing with me."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <i>is</i> he, surely he could not leave me without a word. If +it <i>is</i> he, he would have come to bid me good-bye. He cannot +go down into silence without a word. If it <i>is</i> he, he will +come yet."</p> +<p>She endured through the two remaining days, turning faint with +terror each time the door-bell rang, lest it might be Hugh.</p> +<p>But Hugh did not come.</p> +<p>Then, after repeated frantic telegrams from Lady Newhaven, she +left London precipitately to go to her, as she had promised, on the +twenty-eighth of November, the evening of the last day of the five +months.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER +XXXIII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"And he went out immediately, and it was night."</p> +</div> +<p>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 door-way 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>It was all unreal, except the jealousy which suddenly took +Rachel by the throat and nearly choked her.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He was amazed at the instantaneous effect of his words.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He looked studiously away from her, and continued a desultory +conversation; but his face darkened.</p> +<p>The little boys came in, and pressed themselves one on each side +of their father, their eyes glued on the crystallized 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 up-stairs +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.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven was lying on a sofa by the wood fire in the +drawing-room.</p> +<p>Rachel went straight up to her, and said, hoarsely:</p> +<p>"Lord Newhaven tells me he is going to London this evening by +the night express."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven threw up her arms.</p> +<p>"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!"</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Rachel, where are you?" said the feeble, plaintive voice.</p> +<p>Rachel rose and went unsteadily towards her. It was fortunate +the room was lit only by the fire-light.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>A distant rumbling was heard of the carriage driving under the +stable archway on its way to the front-door.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>A minute later the two listening women up-stairs heard the +carriage drive away into the darkness, and a great silence settled +down upon the house.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER +XXXIV</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"The fool saith, Who would have thought it?"</p> +</div> +<p>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 up-stairs.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley recovered slowly, and before she was down-stairs +again Regie sickened with one of those swift, sudden illnesses of +childhood, which make childless women thank God for denying them +their prayers.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley was touched, grateful.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 agonized 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.</p> +<p>At last, after an endless night, the little faltering feet came +to the dividing of the ways, and hesitated. The dawn fell gray 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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>At last Regie stretched himself and opened his eyes. The doctor +took him gently from Hester, gave him food, and laid him down.</p> +<p>"He is all right," he said. "He will sleep all day."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley, who had hardly stirred, hid his face in his +hands.</p> +<p>"Don't try to move, Miss Hester," said Doctor Brown, gently.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The old doctor picked her up, and carried her swiftly to her +room, where Fräulein ministered to her.</p> +<p>At last he came down and found Mr. Gresley waiting for him at +the foot of the stair.</p> +<p>"You are sure he is all right?" he asked.</p> +<p>"Sure. Fräulein is with, him. He got the turn at dawn."</p> +<p>"Thank God!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I had no idea she was uncomfortable," said Mr. Gresley, half +incredulous.</p> +<p>"That is one of the reasons why I always say you ought not to be +a clergyman," snapped the little doctor, and was gone.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley was not offended. He was too overwhelmed with +thankfulness to be piqued.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He had plenty of time to do so.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I added the portico myself when I came here," said Mr. Gresley, +stiffly, who had not forgotten or forgiven the enormity of Dick's +behavior at the temperance meeting.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley did not look very grateful as he led the way to his +study.</p> +<p>"I was lunching with the Bishop to-day," said Dick, "and Dr. +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."</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No one was gladder than I was when it was cleared up," said Mr. +Gresley.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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, etc. But Dick, after one glance +at her strained face, was obdurate. He would hear no reason. He +would not go away. She and Fräulein nervously cast a few +clothes into a box, Fräulein so excited by the apparition of a +young man, and a possible love affair, that she could hardly fold +Hester's tea-gowns.</p> +<p>When Hester came down with her hat on she found Dick untiring +Mr. Gresley's bicycle in the most friendly manner, while the +outraged owner stood by remonstrating.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 apologize! 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 +tire 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, Fräulein; 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."</p> +<p>"Good-bye, dear James," interrupted Hester, hastily, and the +carriage drove away.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"He is not well. I don't think I ought to have left them."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Do you always get what you want?" said Hester.</p> +<p>"Generally, if it depends on myself. But sometimes things depend +on others besides me. Then I may be beaten."</p> +<p>They were passing Westhope Abbey, wrapped in a glory of sunset +and mist.</p> +<p>"Did you know Miss West was there?" Dick said, suddenly.</p> +<p>"No," said Hester, surprised. "I thought she was in London."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"Yes."</p> +<p>"Well, she has one fault, and it is one I can't put up with. She +won't look at me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>When the sun sets, who doth not look for +night?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14.5em;">SHAKESPEARE.</span></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>Perhaps the quiet mother earth watches us, and whispers to our +deaf ears:</p> +<div class='blockquot'>Warte nur, balde<br /> +Ruhest du auch.</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +color went as it had come, swiftly ebbing across its infinite +shores of sky. And the waiting night came down suddenly.</p> +<p>"Oh, my God!" said Rachel, stretching out her hands to ward off +the darkness. "Not another night. I cannot bear another night."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Below, on the stairs, stood a clergyman and the butler.</p> +<p>"I am the bearer of sad tidings," said the clergyman. Rachel +recognized him as the Archdeacon at whom Lord Newhaven had so often +laughed. "Perhaps you would prepare Lady Newhaven before I break +them to her."</p> +<p>The door was suddenly opened, and Lady Newhaven stood in the +doorway. One small clinched 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 upward at +her colorless face. In later days this was the picture which Lady +Newhaven recalled to mind as the most striking of the whole +series.</p> +<p>"Tell her," said Rachel, sharply.</p> +<p>The Archdeacon advanced.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is he dead?" whispered Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>The Archdeacon bowed his head.</p> +<p>Every one except the children heard the scream which rang +through the house.</p> +<p>Rachel put her arms round the tottering, distraught figure, drew +it gently back into the room, and closed the door behind her.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER +XXXVI</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>And Nicanor lay dead in his harness.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11.5em;">—1 MACABEES, xv. +28.</span></div> +<p>Rachel laid down the papers which were full of Lord Newhaven's +death.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>After an interminable interval Lord Newhaven's luggage returned, +the familiar portmanteau 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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 honor. Forgive him," said Rachel, +over and over again.</p> +<p>But the unheeding face looked earnestly into the future. It had +done with the past.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>She covered the face and went out.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER +XXXVII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Le nombre des êtres qui veulent voir vrai est +extraordinairement petit. Ce qui domineles hommes, c'est la peur de +la vérité, à moins que la vérité +ne leur soit utile.—AMIEL.</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"No," she said. "He may not have cared much about them, but that +is no reason why they should forget he is their father."</p> +<p>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 play-fellow was laid. Perhaps they did not +understand. They did not cry.</p> +<p>"They are like their father. They have not much heart," Lady +Newhaven said to Rachel.</p> +<p>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 bed-time, 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.</p> +<p>Dick waited a moment after the others had gone in.</p> +<p>"It seems hard on him to have left it all," he said. "His wife +and the little chaps, and his nice home and everything."</p> +<p>Rachel could say nothing.</p> +<p>"He was very fond of the boys," he went on. "He would have done +anything for them."</p> +<p>"He did what he could," said Rachel, almost inaudibly, and then +added: "He was very fond of you."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Rachel shivered. The frost was settling white upon the +grass.</p> +<p>"I must go in," she said, holding out her hand.</p> +<p>"Are you staying much longer?" said Dick, keeping it in his.</p> +<p>"I leave to-morrow morning very early."</p> +<p>"You will be in London, perhaps."</p> +<p>"I think so for the present."</p> +<p>"May I come and see you?"</p> +<p>The expression of Dick's eyes was unmistakable. In the dusk he +seemed all eyes and hands.</p> +<p>"Dear Mr. Dick, it's no use."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>He released her hand with difficulty. It was too dark to see his +face. She hesitated a moment, and then fled into the house.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 Newhaven's death, glanced with +enthusiastic admiration at her mistress. Lady Newhaven was a +fickle, inconsiderate mistress, but at this moment her behavior 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.</p> +<p>"Have they all gone?" Lady Newhaven asked, after the little meal +was finished, and, with much coaxing, she had drunk a glass of +champagne.</p> +<p>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 were +leaving immediately after dinner by the evening express.</p> +<p>"Ask Miss West to come to me as soon as they have gone," she +said.</p> +<p>Angélique hung about the room, and was finally +dismissed.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <i>him</i>"—(Lord Newhaven was still +<i>him</i>)—"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 <i>he</i> did."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"May I come in?" said Rachel's voice.</p> +<p>"Do," said Lady Newhaven, but without enthusiasm.</p> +<p>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 color 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:</p> +<p>"Dear Rachel!"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Dearest mamma!" said Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>"So now," said Rachel, sitting down near the sofa with a set +countenance, "I shall feel quite happy about leaving you."</p> +<p>"Must you go?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I shall miss you dreadfully." Lady Newhaven perceived suddenly, +and with resentment, that Rachel was anxious to go.</p> +<p>"I do not think you will miss me."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"There is a reason why I can't stay, and why you won't wish me +to stay when I tell it you."</p> +<p>"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 a 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."</p> +<p>"I was not going to speak of Mr. Vernon."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Rachel pulled herself together.</p> +<p>"Violet," she said, "we have known each other five months, +haven't we?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I think I ought to tell you—you ought to know—that +I care for Mr. Scarlett."</p> +<p>"He is mine," said Lady Newhaven instantly, her blue eyes +dilating.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"I knew he was poor, but I did, not know he was as poor as +that," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause.</p> +<p>Rachel got up suddenly, and moved away to the fireplace. She +felt it would be horribly easy to strangle that voice.</p> +<p>"And you came down here pretending to be my friend, while all +the time you were stealing his heart from me."</p> +<p>Still Rachel did not answer. Her forehead was pressed against +the mantel-shelf. She prayed urgently that she might stay upon the +hearth-rug, that whatever happened she might not go near the +sofa.</p> +<p>"And you think he is in love with you?"</p> +<p>"I do."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>"No, he has not asked me to marry him yet. I wanted to tell you +before it happened."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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 <i>pour +passer le temps</i>, 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."</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven was quite reassured. It had been a horrible +moment, but it was past.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Rachel tried to say "I am not," but the words would not come. +She <i>was</i> 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER +XXXVIII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour."</p> +</div> +<p>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 honor 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.</p> +<p>"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—<i>remorse</i>. Would the cup of death which +he had pushed aside have been more bitter?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 realized that his worst enemy was +he who stood with him in the rain.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The play was "Julius Cæsar," 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.</p> +<p>The moment of the murder was approaching. Hugh held his breath. +Cassius knelt with the rest before Cæsar. 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's foot upon its breast.</p> +<p>For a moment the scene vanished. Hugh saw again the quiet study +with its electric reading-lamp, the pistols over the mantel-piece, +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.</p> +<p>"He shall never stand looking down on my body," said Hugh to +himself, "with his cursed foot upon me." And he realized 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?</p> +<p>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 leaped. "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.</p> +<p>Lord Newhaven looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then +disappeared.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>A soft step was coming up behind him.</p> +<p>"It will be quickly over," he said to himself. "Wait. Don't look +round."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>The following night Hugh read in the evening papers that Lord +Newhaven had been accidently 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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of +her sister Despair, trimming anew her little lamp, which the +laboring breath of Despair had wellnigh 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Repentance took his hands and locked them together.</p> +<p>"God helping me," he said, "I will lead a new life."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER +XXXIX</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Les sots sont plus à craindre que les +méchants."</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley was well again, after a fortnight at the seaside +with Regie. The sea air had blown back a faint color 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.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley had recovered that buoyancy of spirits which was the +theme of Mrs. Gresley's increasing admiration.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The jocund Vicar, with his arm round Mrs. Gresley, proceeded to +the drawing-room.</p> +<p>On the hall table was a large parcel insured for two hundred +pounds. It had evidently just arrived by rail.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"Well packed," he remarked. "Water-proof sheeting, I do declare. +Smithers is certainly a cautious man. Ha! at last!"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"This is Hester's writing," he said. "There is some +mistake."</p> +<p>He turned to the direction on the outer cover.</p> +<p>"Miss Hester Gresley, care of Rev. James Gresley." He had only +seen his own name.</p> +<p>"I do believe," he said, "that this is Hester's book, refused by +the publisher. Poor Hester! I am afraid she will feel that."</p> +<p>His turning over of the parcel dislodged an unfolded sheet of +note-paper, which made a parachute expedition to the floor. Mr. +Gresley picked it up and laid it on the parcel.</p> +<p>"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 <i>The Idyll</i>. 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—"</p> +<p>"You have. Mrs. Loftus was saying so only yesterday."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley shook his head, and put the parcel on a table in his +study.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>His wandering eye fell on Hester's book.</p> +<p>"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 dare say 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 <i>The Idyll</i> 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 <i>The Idyll</i> 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."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley lifted the heavy mass of manuscript to his +writing-table, turned up his reading-lamp, and sat down before +it.</p> +<p>The church clock struck nine. It was always wrong, but it set +the time at Warpington.</p> +<p>There were two hours before bedtime—I mean +"Bedfordshire."</p> +<p>He turned over the first blank sheet and came to the next, which +had one word only written on it.</p> +<p>"<i>Husks!</i>" 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."</p> +<p>It did not.</p> +<p>The next page had two words on it:</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"TO RACHEL."</p> +</div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>old</i> for <i>young</i>. There were +many obvious little mistakes of this kind that he corrected as he +read, but now and then he stopped short.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley crossed through the passage at once. How could +Hester write so disrespectfully of the devil?</p> +<p>"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 <i>cul-de-sac</i>. +I think she means <i>surtout</i>, but she is a good French scholar, +so she probably knows what she is talking about."</p> +<p>Whatever the book lacked it did not lack interest. Still, it +bristled with blemishes.</p> +<p>And then what could the Pratts, or indeed any one, make of such +a sentence as this:</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"She is hopelessly confused," said Mr. Gresley, without reading +to the end of the sentence, and substituting the word <i>ladder</i> +for <i>dead self</i>. "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."</p> +<p>The clock struck ten. Mr. Gresley was amazed. The hour had +seemed like ten minutes.</p> +<p>"I will just see what happens in the next chapter," he said. And +he did not hear 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.</p> +<p>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 he 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 forever in his Vicar's eyes, if she had mentioned by +whose advice and selection she read, so she refrained.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 overcoloring for the sake of effect.</p> +<p>"Ah, Hester!" he said, wiping his eyes. "If only the rest were +like that. If you would only write like that."</p> +<p>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 realization of its vast national importance, and of a desire of +its well-being.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley was outraged. "She holds nothing sacred," he said, +striking the book. "I told her after the <i>Idyll</i>, 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."</p> +<p>"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!'"</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley tore the leaf out of the manuscript and threw it in +the fire.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Dear James," she said, "is anything wrong? It is past one +o'clock. Are you never coming to bed?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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 +perseverence of the writer of those many pages.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference +of opinion.—EMERSON.</p> +</div> +<p>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 favorite language of metaphor, he "had threshed out the +whole subject of agnosticism, and could consequently meet other +minds still struggling in its turbid waves."</p> +<p>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 alms-houses in the +afternoon.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +learned to make an exception of his wife. What mind does not feel +confidence in the sentiments of its echo?</p> +<p>"I am greatly troubled about Hester," he said at last.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I feel sure it will," said Mrs. Gresley, who had not read +it.</p> +<p>"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 <i>risqué</i> 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."</p> +<p>"She can't bear even the most loving word of advice," said Mrs. +Gresley.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>There was a moment's silence.</p> +<p>"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 realize that it +is for her sake I speak."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley thought he was sincere, because he was touched.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley's cheek burned. That faithful, devoted little +heart, which lived only for her husband and children, could not +brook—<i>what?</i> That her priest should be grieved and +disregarded? Or was it any affection for and interest in another +woman that it could not brook?</p> +<p>"I have made up my mind," said Mr. Gresley, "to forbid her most +solemnly when she comes back to-morrow to publish that book."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It shall not," said Mr. Gresley, coloring darkly. "I shall not +allow it."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 washer-woman +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 a light to other feelings. They +caught. They burned. They had been drying in the oven a long +time.</p> +<p>"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 <i>Idyll</i>. +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 publishers, whatever you may +say."</p> +<p>The young couple were so absorbed in their conversation that +they had not observed the approach of a tall, clerical figure whom +the parlor-maid was escorting towards them.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Archdeacon Thursby was the clergyman who had been selected, as a +friend of Lady Newhaven's, to break to her her husband's death.</p> +<p>"It seems," he added, "that a Miss West, who was at the Abbey at +the time, is an intimate friend of the Pratts."</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley slipped away to order tea, the silver teapot, +etc.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>A long conversation now ensued on clerical matters, and Mr. +Gresley's drooping spirits revived under a refreshing <i>douche</i> +of compliments on "Modern Dissent."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>The good Archdeacon ruminated, asked a few questions, and then +said, without hesitation:</p> +<p>"I cannot see your difficulty. Your course is clear. You are +responsible—"</p> +<p>"To a certain degree."</p> +<p>"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 endeavor to bring him +to a better mind on the subject."</p> +<p>"Supposing the burning of the letter entailed a money loss?"</p> +<p>"I judge from what you say of this particular letter that any +money that accrued from it would be ill-gotten gains."</p> +<p>"Oh! decidedly."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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 was still decided to gain +it in an unscrupulous manner. Or I could help him to rewrite it. I +never thought of that before."</p> +<p>"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 endeavoring to attract our attention?"</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley was beckoning them in to tea.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>"Hester's book?"</p> +<p>"Yes."</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"Will you follow his advice?" she asked.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"She is coming home this evening," said his wife, +significantly.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley abruptly left the room, and went back to his study. +He was irritated, distressed.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>As his painful duty became clear to him, a thin veil of smoke +drifted across the little lawn.</p> +<p>Regie came dancing and caracoling round the corner.</p> +<p>"Father!" he cried, rushing to the window, "Abel has made such a +bonfire in the back-yard, and he is burning weeds and all kinds of +things, and he has given us each a ''tato' to bake, and +Fräulein has given us a band-box 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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Oh, if only Auntie Hester was here!" said Regie, clapping his +hands as the flame soared.</p> +<p>But "Auntie Hester" was too late to see it.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>And we are punished for our purest +deeds,<br /> +And chasten'd for our holiest thoughts; alas!<br /> +There is no reason found in all the creeds,<br /> +Why these things are, nor whence they come to pass.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 18em;">—OWEN MEREDITH</span></div> +<p>It was while Hester was at the Palace that Lord Newhaven died. +She had perhaps hardly realized, 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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Since I have been at Warpington," Hester said to Lord Newhaven +one day, the last time he found her in, "I have realized 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."</p> +<p>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 neighbor. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>And now Hester's visit at the Palace had come to an end, and the +Bishop's carriage was taking her back to Warpington.</p> +<p>The ten days at Southminster had brought a little color 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.</p> +<p>Her hands were full of chrysanthemums which the Bishop had +picked for her himself; her small head full of his parting words +and counsel.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>When it was published she should give Minna a new sofa for the +drawing-room, and Fräulein a fur boa and muff, and Miss Brown +a type-writer 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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>The sun was setting as she reached Warpington. All was gray, 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-tipped ripples fleeing into the darkness of +the reeds. The little bridge, so vulgar in every-day life, leaned a +mystery of darkness over a mystery of light. The white frost held +the meadows, and binding them to the gray 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 Fräulein. In another moment she was +ringing the bell, and Emma's smiling red face appeared behind the +glass door.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The old baby, luxuriously seated in his own little arm-chair, +rose, and holding it firmly against his small person to prevent any +disconnection with it, solemnly crossed the hearth-rug, and placed +the chair with himself in it by Hester.</p> +<p>"You would like some tea," said Mrs. Gresley. "It is choir +practice this evening, and we don't have supper till nine."</p> +<p>But Hester had had tea before she started.</p> +<p>"And you are not cold?"</p> +<p>Hester was quite warm. The Bishop had ordered a foot-warmer in +the carriage for her.</p> +<p>"You are looking much better."</p> +<p>Hester felt much better, thanks.</p> +<p>"And what lovely flowers!"</p> +<p>Hester suggested, with diffidence, that they would look pretty +in the drawing-room.</p> +<p>"I think," said Mrs. Gresley, who had thought the same till that +instant, "that they would look best in the hall."</p> +<p>"And the rest of the family," said Hester, whose face had fallen +a little. "Where are they?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is he busy, or may I go in and speak to him?"</p> +<p>"He is not busy. He is expecting you."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Come in," said the well-known voice.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Her spirits sank a peg lower.</p> +<p>"He is going to lecture me about something," she said to +herself, as he kissed her.</p> +<p>"Have you had tea? It is choir practice this evening, and we +don't have supper till nine."</p> +<p>Hester had had tea before she started.</p> +<p>"And you are not cold?"</p> +<p>On the contrary, Hester was quite warm, thanks. Bishop, +foot-warmer, etc.</p> +<p>"You are looking much stronger."</p> +<p>Hester felt much stronger. Certainly married people grew very +much alike by living together.</p> +<p>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 wellnigh impossible to open a certain subject.</p> +<p>Hester involuntarily came to his assistance.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It did arrive," said Mr. Gresley, "and perhaps I ought to +apologize, for I saw my name on it and I opened it by mistake. I +was expecting some more copies of my <i>Modern Dissent</i>."</p> +<p>"It does not matter. I have no doubt you put it away safely. +Where is it?"</p> +<p>"Having opened it, I glanced at it."</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley looked dully at his sister, and went on without +noticing her question.</p> +<p>"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 <i>Modern Dissent</i>. If I did not make restrictions, why +should you?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"It is my duty to speak of it."</p> +<p>Hester made an impatient movement.</p> +<p>"But it is not mine to listen," she said. "Besides, I know all +you are going to say—the same as about <i>The Idyll</i>, 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."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley was disconcerted. Your antagonist has no business to +discount all you were going to remark by saying it first.</p> +<p>His color was gradually leaving him. This was worse than an +Easter vestry meeting, and that was saying a good deal.</p> +<p>"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—"</p> +<p>"That what?"</p> +<p>"That I cannot allow this book to be published," said Mr. +Gresley, in a low voice. He hardly ever lowered his voice.</p> +<p>There was a moment's pause. Hester felt the situation was +serious. How not to wound him, yet not to yield?</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"No one will read it," said Mr. Gresley. "It was a profane, +wicked book. No one will read it."</p> +<p>"I am not so sure of that," said Hester.</p> +<p>The brother and sister looked at each other with eyes of +flint.</p> +<p>"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—burned it."</p> +<p>Hester stood motionless, like one struck by lightning, livid, +dead already—all but the eyes.</p> +<p>"You dared not," said the dead lips. The terrible eyes were +fixed on him. They burned into him.</p> +<p>He was frightened.</p> +<p>"Dear Hester," he said, "I will help you to rewrite 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.</p> +<p>"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?"</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The side gate was locked. Abel had just left for the night. She +tore it off its hinges and ran into the back-yard.</p> +<p>The bonfire was out. A thread of smoke twisted up from the +crater of gray ashes. She fell on her knees beside the dead fire, +and thrust apart the hot embers with her bare hands.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It is dead," she said in a loud voice, getting up. Her gown was +burned through where she had knelt down.</p> +<p>In the still air a few flakes of snow were falling in a great +compassion.</p> +<p>"Quite dead," said Hester. "Regie and the book."</p> +<p>And she set off running blindly across the darkening fields.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>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 burned down to a red glow. Presently he got +up, walked to the window, and drew aside the curtain.</p> +<p>"The first snow," he said, half aloud.</p> +<p>It was coming down gently, through the darkness. He could just +see the white rim on the stone sill outside.</p> +<p>"I can do no more to-night," he said, and he bent to lock his +despatch-box with the key on his watch-chain.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Hester!" he said, in amazement. "Hester!"</p> +<p>She was bareheaded. The snow was upon her hair and shoulders. +She brought in the smell of fire with her.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"They have killed my book," she said. "They have killed my book. +They burned 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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Is it well with the child?"</p> +</div> +<p>"I am not really anxious," said Mr. Gresley, looking out across +the Vicarage laurels to the white fields and hedges. All was +blurred and vague and very still. The only thing that had a +distinct outline was the garden railing, with a solitary rook on +it.</p> +<p>"I am not really anxious," he said again, sitting down at the +breakfast-table. But his face contradicted him. It was blue and +pinched, for he had just returned from reading the morning service +to himself in an ice-cold church, but there was a pucker in the +brow that was not the result of cold. The Vicarage porch had fallen +down in the night, but he was evidently not thinking of that. He +drank a little coffee, and then got up and walked to the window +again.</p> +<p>"She is with the Pratts," he said, with decision. "I am glad I +sent a note over early, if it will relieve your mind, but I am +convinced she is with the Pratts."</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley murmured something. She looked scared. She made an +attempt to eat something, but it was a mere pretence.</p> +<p>The swing door near the back staircase creaked. In the Vicarage +you could hear everything.</p> +<p>Mr. and Mrs. Gresley looked eagerly at the door. The parlor-maid +came in with a note between her finger and thumb.</p> +<p>"She is not there," said Mr. Gresley, in a shaking voice. "I +wrote Mr. Pratt such a guarded letter, saying Hester had +imprudently run across to see them on her return home, and how +grateful I was to Mrs. Pratt for not allowing her to return, as it +had begun to snow. He says he and Mrs. Pratt have not seen +her."</p> +<p>"James," said Mrs. Gresley, "where <i>is</i> she?"</p> +<p>A second step shuffled across the hail, and Fräulein stood +in the door-way. Her pale face was drawn with anxiety. In both +hands she clutched a trailing skirt plastered with snow, hitched +above a pair of large goloshed feet, into which the legs were +grafted without ankles.</p> +<p>"She has not return?"</p> +<p>"No," said Mr. Gresley, "and she is not with the Pratts."</p> +<p>"I know always she is not wiz ze Pratts," said Fräulein, +scornfully. "She never go to Pratt if she is in grief. I go out at +half seven this morning to ze Br-r-rowns, but Miss Br-r-rown know +nozing. I go to Wilderleigh, I see Mrs. Loftus still in bed, but +she is not there. I go to Evannses, I go to Smeeth, I go last to +Mistair Valsh, but she is not there."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley began to experience something of what Fräulein +had been enduring all night.</p> +<p>"She would certainly not go from my house to a Dissenter's," he +said, stiffly. "You might have saved yourself the trouble of +calling there, Fräulein."</p> +<p>"She like Mr. and Mrs. Valsh. She gives them her book."</p> +<p>Fräulein's voice drowned the muffled rumbling of a carriage +and a ring at the bell, the handle of which, uninjured amid the +chaos, kept watch above the remains of the late porch.</p> +<p>The Bishop stood a moment in the little hall, while the maid +went into the dining-room to tell the Gresleys of his arrival. His +eyes rested on the pile of letters on the table, on the dead +flowers beside them. They had been so beautiful yesterday when he +gave them to Hester. Hester herself had been so pretty +yesterday.</p> +<p>The maid came back and asked him to "step" into the +dining-room.</p> +<p>Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had risen from their chairs. Their eyes +were fixed anxiously upon him. Fräulein gave a little shriek +and rushed at him.</p> +<p>"She is viz you?" she gasped, shaking him by the arm.</p> +<p>"She is with me," said the Bishop, looking only at +Fräulein, and taking her shaking hands in his.</p> +<p>"Thank God," said Mr. Gresley, and Mrs. Gresley sat down and +began to cry.</p> +<p>Some of the sternness melted out of the Bishop's face as he +looked at the young couple.</p> +<p>"I came as soon as I could," he said. "I started soon after +seven, but the roads are heavy."</p> +<p>"This is a great relief," said Mr. Gresley. He began on his +deepest organ note, but it quavered quite away on the word relief +for want of wind.</p> +<p>"How is Regie?" said the Bishop. It was his turn to be +anxious.</p> +<p>"Regie is verr vell," said Fräulein, with decision. "Tell +her he is so vell as he vas."</p> +<p>"He is very much shaken," said Mrs. Gresley, indignant +mother-love flashing in her wet eyes. "He is a delicate child, and +she, Hester—may God forgive her!—struck him in one of +her passions. She might have killed him. And the poor child fell +and bruised his arm and shoulder. And he was bringing her a little +present when she did it. The child had done nothing whatever to +annoy her, had he, James?"</p> +<p>"Nothing," said Mr. Gresley, and his conscience pricking him, he +added, "I must own Hester had always seemed fond of Regie till last +night."</p> +<p>He felt that it would not be entirely fair to allow the Bishop +to think that Hester was in the habit of maltreating the +children.</p> +<p>"I have told him that his own mother will take care of him," +said Mrs. Gresley, "and that he need not be afraid, his aunt shall +never come back again. When I saw his little arm I felt I could +never trust Hester in the house again." As Mrs. Gresley spoke she +felt she was making certainty doubly sure that the woman of whom +she was jealous would return no more.</p> +<p>"Regie cry till his 'ead ache because you say Miss Gresley no +come back," said Fräulein, looking at Mrs. Gresley, as if she +would have bitten a piece out of her.</p> +<p>"I think, Fräulein, it is the children's lesson-time," said +Mr. Gresley, majestically.</p> +<p>Who could have imagined that unobtrusive, submissive +Fräulein, gentlest and shyest of women, would put herself +forward in this aggressive manner. The truth is, it is all very +well to talk, you never can tell what people will do. They suddenly +turn round and act exactly opposite to their whole previous +character. Look at Fräulein!</p> +<p>That poor lady, recalled thus to a sense of duty, hurried from +the room, and the Bishop, who had opened the door for her, closed +it gently behind her.</p> +<p>"You must excuse her, my lord," said Mr. Gresley; "the truth is, +we are all somewhat upset this morning. Hester would have saved us +much uneasiness, I may say anxiety, if she had mentioned to us +yesterday evening that she was going back to you. No doubt she +overtook your carriage, which put up at the inn for half an +hour."</p> +<p>"No," said the Bishop, "she came on foot. She—walked all +the way."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley smiled. "I am afraid, my lord, Hester has given you +an inaccurate account. I assure you, she is incapable of walking +five miles, much less ten."</p> +<p>"She took about five hours to do it," said the Bishop, who had +hesitated an instant, as if swallowing something unpalatable. "In +moments of great excitement nervous persons like your sister are +capable of almost anything. The question is, whether she will +survive the shock that drove her out of your house last night. Her +hands are severely burned. Dr. Brown, whom I left with her, fears +brain fever."</p> +<p>The Bishop paused, giving his words time to sink in. Then he +went on slowly in a level voice, looking into the fire.</p> +<p>"She still thinks that she has killed Regie. She won't believe +the doctor and me when we assure her she has not. She turns against +us for deceiving her."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley wrestled with a very bitter feeling towards his +sister, overcame it, and said, hoarsely:</p> +<p>"Tell her from me that Regie is not much the worse, and tell her +that I—that his mother and I—forgive her."</p> +<p>"Not me, James," sobbed Mrs. Gresley. "It is too soon. I don't. +I can't. If I said I did I should not feel it."</p> +<p>"Hester is not in a condition to receive messages," said the +Bishop. "She would not believe them. Dr. Brown says the only thing +we can do for her is to show Regie to her. If she sees him she may +believe her own eyes, and this frightful excitement may be got +under. I came to take him back with me now in the carriage."</p> +<p>"I will not let him go," said Mrs. Gresley, the mother in her +overriding her awe of the Bishop. "I am sorry if Hester is ill. I +will"—and Mrs. Gresley made a superhuman effort—"I will +come and nurse her myself, but I won't have Regie frightened a +second time."</p> +<p>"He shall not be frightened a second time. But it is very +urgent. While we are wasting time talking, Hester's life is ebbing +away as surely as if she were bleeding to death. If she were +actually bleeding in this room how quickly you two would run to her +and bind up the wound. There would be nothing you would not do to +relieve her suffering."</p> +<p>"If I would let Regie go," said Mrs. Gresley, "he would not be +willing, and we could not have him taken away by force, could we, +James?"</p> +<p>The door opened, and Regie appeared, gently pushed from behind +by Fräulein's thin hand. Boulou followed. The door was closed +again immediately, almost on Boulou's tail.</p> +<p>The Bishop and Regie looked hard at each other.</p> +<p>"I send my love to Auntie Hester," said Regie, in his catechism +voice, "and I am quite well."</p> +<p>"I should like to have some conversation with Regie alone," said +the Bishop.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley wavered, but the Bishop's eye remained fixed on Mr. +Gresley, and the latter led his wife away. The door was left ajar, +but the Bishop closed it. Then he sat down by the fire and held out +his hand.</p> +<p>Regie went up to him fearlessly, and stood between his knees. +The two faces were exactly on the same level. Boulou sat down +before the fire, his tail uncurling in the heat.</p> +<p>"Auntie Hester is very sorry," said the Bishop. "She is so sorry +that she can't even cry."</p> +<p>"Tell her not to mind," said Regie.</p> +<p>"It's no good telling her. Does your arm hurt much?"</p> +<p>"I don't know. Mother says it does, and Fräulein says it +doesn't. But it isn't that."</p> +<p>"What is it, then?"</p> +<p>"It isn't that, or the 'tato being lost, it was only crumbs +afterwards; but, Mr. Bishop, <i>I hadn't done nothing</i>."</p> +<p>Regie looked into the kind keen eyes, and his own little red +ones filled again with tears.</p> +<p>"I had not done nothing," he repeated. "And I'd kept my 'tato +for her. It's that—that—I don't mind about my arm. I'm +Christian soldiers about my arm; but it's +that—that—"</p> +<p>"That hurts you in your heart," said the Bishop, putting his arm +round him.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Regie, producing a tight little ball that had once +been a handkerchief. "Auntie Hester and I were such friends. I told +her all my secrets, and she told me hers. I knew long before, when +she gave father the silver cream-jug, and about Fräulein's +muff. If it was a mistake, like father treading on my foot at the +school-feast, I should not mind, but she did it on purpose."</p> +<p>The Bishop's brow contracted. Time was ebbing away, ebbing away +like a life. Yet Dr. Brown's warning remained in his ears. "If the +child is frightened of her, and screams when he sees her, I won't +answer for the consequences."</p> +<p>"Is that your little dog?" he said, after a moment's +thought.</p> +<p>"Yes, that is Boulou."</p> +<p>"Was he ever in a trap?" asked the Bishop, with a vague +recollection of the ways of clergymen's dogs, those "little rifts +within the lute," which so often break the harmony between a +sporting squire and his clergyman.</p> +<p>"He was once. Mr. Pratt says he hunts, but father says not, that +he could not catch anything if he tried."</p> +<p>"I had a dog once," said the Bishop, "called Jock. And he got in +a trap like Boulou did. Now, Jock loved me. He cared for me more +than anybody in the world. Yet, as I was letting him out of the +trap, he bit me. Do you know why he did that?"</p> +<p>"Why?"</p> +<p>"Because the trap hurt him so dreadfully that he could not help +biting something. He did not really mean it. He licked me +afterwards. Now, Auntie Hester was like Jock. She was in dreadful, +dreadful pain like a trap, and she hit you like Jock bit me. But +Jock loved me best in the world all the time. And Auntie Hester +loves you, and is your friend she tells secrets to, all the +time."</p> +<p>"Mother says she does not love me really. It was only pretence." +Regie's voice shook. "Mother says she must never come back, because +it might be baby next. She said so to father."</p> +<p>"Mother has made a mistake. I'm so old that I know better even +than mother. Auntie Hester loves you, and can't eat any breakfast +till you tell her you don't mind. Will you come with me and kiss +her, and tell her so? And we'll make up a new secret on the +way."</p> +<p>"Yes," said Regie, eagerly, his wan little face turning pink. +"But mother?" he said, stopping short.</p> +<p>"Run and get your coat on. I will speak to mother. Quick, +Regie."</p> +<p>Regie rushed curveting out of the room. The Bishop followed more +slowly, and went into the drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Gresley +were sitting by the fireless hearth. The drawing-room fire was +never lit till two o'clock.</p> +<p>"Regie goes with me of his own free will," he said; "so that is +settled. He will be quite safe with me, Mrs. Gresley."</p> +<p>"My wife demurs at sending him," said Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>"No, no, she does not," said the Bishop, gently. "Hester saved +Regie's life, and it is only right that Regie should save hers. You +will come over this afternoon to take him back," he continued to +Mr. Gresley. "I wish to have some conversation with you."</p> +<p>Fräulein appeared breathless, dragging Regie with her.</p> +<p>"He has not got on his new overcoat," said Mrs. Gresley. "Regie, +run up and change at once."</p> +<p>Fräulein actually said, "Bozzer ze new coat," and she swept +Regie into the carriage, the Bishop following, stumbling over the +ruins of the porch.</p> +<p>"Have they had their hot mash?" he said to the coachman, who was +tearing off the horses' clothing.</p> +<p>"Yes, my lord."</p> +<p>"Then drive all you know. Put them at the hills at a +gallop."</p> +<p>Fräulein pressed a packet of biscuits into the Bishop's +hand. "He eat no breakfast," she said.</p> +<p>"Uncle Dick said the porch would sit down, and it has," said +Regie, in an awe-struck voice, as the carriage swayed from side to +side of the road. "Father knows a great deal, but sometimes I think +Uncle Dick knows most of all. First gates and flying half-pennies, +and now porches."</p> +<p>"Uncle Dick is staying in Southminster. Perhaps we shall see +him."</p> +<p>"I should like to ask him about his finger, if it isn't a +secret."</p> +<p>"I don't think it is. Now, what secret shall we make up on the +way?" The Bishop put his head out of the window. "Drive faster," he +said.</p> +<p>It was decided that the secret should be a Christmas-present for +"Auntie Hester," to be bought in Southminster. The Bishop found +that Regie's entire capital was sixpence. But Regie explained that +he could spend a shilling, because he was always given sixpence by +his father when he pulled a tooth out. "And I've one loose now," he +said. "When I suck it it moves. It will be ready by Christmas."</p> +<p>There was a short silence. The horses' hoofs beat the muffled +ground all together.</p> +<p>"Don't you find, Mr. Bishop," said Regie, tentatively, "that +this riding so quick in carriages and talking secrets does make +people very hungry?"</p> +<p>The Bishop blushed. "It is quite true, my boy. I ought to have +thought of that before. I am uncommonly hungry myself," he said, +looking in every pocket for the biscuits Fräulein had forced +into his hand. When they were at last discovered, in a somewhat +dilapidated condition in the rug, the Bishop found they were a kind +of biscuit that always made him cough, so he begged Regie, who was +dividing them equally, as a personal favor, to eat them all.</p> +<p>It was a crumb be-sprinkled Bishop who, half an hour later, +hurried up the stairs of the Palace.</p> +<p>"What an age you have been," snapped Dr. Brown, from the +landing.</p> +<p>"How is she?"</p> +<p>"The same, but weaker. Have you got Regie?"</p> +<p>"Yes, but it took time."</p> +<p>"Is he frightened?"</p> +<p>"Not a bit."</p> +<p>"Then bring him up."</p> +<p>The doctor went back into the bedroom, leaving the door +ajar.</p> +<p>A small shrunken figure with bandaged head and hands was sitting +in an arm-chair. The eyes of the rigid, discolored face were +fixed.</p> +<p>Dr. Brown took the bandage off Hester's head, and smoothed her +hair.</p> +<p>"He is coming up-stairs now," he said, shaking her gently by the +shoulders. "Regie is coming up-stairs now to see you. Regie is +quite well, and he is coming in now to see you."</p> +<p>"Regie is dead, you old gray wolf," said Hester, in a monotonous +voice. "I killed him in the back-yard. The place is quite black, +and it smokes."</p> +<p>"Look at the door," repeated Dr. Brown, over and over again. "He +is coming in at the door now."</p> +<p>Hester trembled, and looked at the door. The doctor noticed, +with a frown, that she could hardly move her eyes.</p> +<p>Regie stood in the doorway, holding the Bishop's hand. The cold +snow light fell upon the gallant little figure and white face.</p> +<p>The doctor moved between Hester and the window. His shadow was +upon her.</p> +<p>The hearts of the two men beat like hammers.</p> +<p>A change came over Hester's face.</p> +<p>"My little Reg," she said, holding out her bandaged hands.</p> +<p>Regie ran to her, and put his arms round her neck. They clasped +each other tightly. The doctor winced to watch her hands.</p> +<p>"It's all right, Auntie Hester," said Regie. "I love you just +the same, and you must not cry any more."</p> +<p>For Hester's tears were falling at last, quenching the wild fire +in her eyes.</p> +<p>"My little treasure, my little mouse," she said, over and over +again, kissing his face and hands and little brown overcoat.</p> +<p>Then all in a moment her face altered. Her agonized eyes turned +to the doctor.</p> +<p>In an instant Dr. Brown's hand was over Regie's eyes, and he +hurried him out of the room.</p> +<p>"Take him out of hearing," he whispered to the Bishop, and +darted back.</p> +<p>Hester was tearing the bandages off her hands.</p> +<p>"I don't know what has happened," she wailed, "but my hands hurt +me so that I can't bear it."</p> +<p>"Thank God!" said the old doctor, blowing his nose.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER +XLIII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>The Devil has no stancher ally than <i>want of +perception</i>.—PHILIP H. WICKSTEED.</p> +<p>It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to +hear.—THOREAU.</p> +</div> +<p>Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. In the afternoon +all the Pratts had called, and Mr. Gresley, who departed early in +the afternoon for Southminster, had left his wife no directions as +to how to act in this unforseen occurrence, or how to parry the +questions with which she was overwhelmed.</p> +<p>After long hesitation she at last owned that Hester had returned +to Southminster in the Bishop's carriage not more than half an hour +after it had brought her back.</p> +<p>"I can't explain Hester's actions," she would only repeat over +and over again. "I don't pretend to understand clever people. I'm +not clever myself. I can only say Hester went back to Southminster +directly she arrived here."</p> +<p>Hardly had the Pratts taken their departure when Doll Loftus was +ushered in. His wife had sent him to ask where Hester was, as +Fräulein had alarmed her earlier in the day. Doll at least +asked no questions. He had never asked but one in his life, and +that had been of his wife, five seconds before he had become +engaged to her.</p> +<p>He accepted with equanimity the information that Hester had +returned to Southminster, and departed to impart the same to his +exasperated wife.</p> +<p>"But why did she go back? She had only that moment arrived," +inquired Sybell. How should Doll know. She, Sybell, had said she +could not rest till she knew where Hester was, and he, Doll, had +walked to Warpington through the snow-drifts to find out for her. +And he had found out, and now she wanted to know something else. +There was no satisfying some women. And the injured husband retired +to unlace his boots.</p> +<p>Yes, Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. She had +ventured out for a few minutes, and had found Abel, with his arms +akimbo; contemplating the little gate which led to the stables. It +was lying on the ground. He had swept the snow off it.</p> +<p>"I locked it up the same as usual last night," he said to Mrs. +Gresley. "There's been somebody about as has tampered it off its +hinges. Yet nothing hasn't been touched, the coal nor the stack. It +doesn't seem natural, twisting the gate off for nothing."</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley did not answer. She did not associate Hester with +the gate. But she was too much perturbed to care about such small +matters at the moment.</p> +<p>"His lordship's coachman tell me as Miss Gresley was at the +Palace," continued Abel, "while I was a hotting up his mash for +him, for William had gone in with a note, and onst he's in the +kitchen the hanimals might be stocks and stones for what he cares. +He said his nevvy, the footman, heard the front door-bell ring just +as he was getting into bed last night, and Miss Gresley come in +without her hat, with the snow upon her. The coachman said as she +must ha' run afoot all the way."</p> +<p>Abel looked anxiously at Mrs. Gresley.</p> +<p>"I was just thinking," he said, "as perhaps the little lady +wasn't quite right in her 'ead. They do say as too much learning +flies to the 'ead, the same as spirits to them as ain't manured to +'em. And the little lady does work desperate hard."</p> +<p>"Not as hard as Mr. Gresley," said Mrs. Gresley.</p> +<p>"Maybe not, mem, maybe not. But when I come up when red cow was +sick at four in the morning, or maybe earlier, there was always a +light in her winder, and the shadder of her face agin the blind. +Yes, she do work precious hard."</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley retreated into the house, picking her way over the +debris of the porch. At any other time its demise would have +occupied the minds of the Vicarage household for days. But, until +this moment, it had hardly claimed the tribute of a sigh. Mrs. +Gresley did sigh as she crossed the threshold. That prostrate porch +meant expense. She had understood from her husband that Dick had +wantonly torn out the clamp that supported it, and that the whole +thing had in consequence given way under the first snowfall. "He +meant no harm," Mr. Gresley had added, "but I suppose in the +Colonies they mistake horse-play for wit."</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley went back to the drawing-room, and sat down to her +needle-work. She was an exquisite needlewoman, but all the activity +of her untiring hands was hardly able to stem the tide of mending +that was for ever flowing in upon her. When was she to find time to +finish the darling little garments which the new baby required? +Fräulein had been kind in helping, but Fräulein's eyes +are not very strong, or her stitches in consequence very small. +Mrs. Gresley would have liked to sit in the school-room when +lessons were over, but Fräulein had been so distant at +luncheon about a rissole that she had not the courage to go in.</p> +<p>So she sat and stitched with a heavy heart awaiting her +husband's return. The fly was another expense. Southminster was ten +miles from Warpington, eleven according to the Loftus Arms, from +which it issued, the owner of which was not on happy terms with his +"teetotal" vicar. Yet it had been absolutely necessary to have the +fly, in order that Regie, who so easily caught cold, might return +in safety.</p> +<p>The dusk was already falling, and more snow with it.</p> +<p>It was quite dark when Mrs. Gresley at last caught the sound of +wheels, and hurried to the door.</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley came in, bearing Regie, fast asleep in a fur rug, +and laid him carefully on the sofa, and then went out to have an +altercation with the driver, who demurred in forcible language to +the arrangement, adhered to by Mr. Gresley, that the cost of the +fly should be considered as part payment of certain arrears of +tithe which in those days it was the unhappy duty of the clergyman +to collect himself. Mr. Gresley's methods of dealing with money +matters generally brought in a high rate of interest in the way of +friction, and it was a long time before the driver drove away, +turning his horse deliberately on the little patch of lawn under +the dining-room windows.</p> +<p>Regie in the meanwhile had waked up, and was having tea in the +drawing-room as a great treat.</p> +<p>He had much to tell about his expedition; how the Bishop had +given him half-a-crown, and Uncle Dick had taken him into the town +to spend it, and how after dinner he had ridden on Uncle Dick's +back.</p> +<p>"And Auntie Hester. How was she?"</p> +<p>"She was very well, only she cried a little. I did not stay +long, because Mr. Bishop was wanting to give me the half-crown, and +he kept it down-stairs. And when I went in again she was in bed, +and she was so sleepy she hardly said anything at all."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley came in wearily and dropped into a chair.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley gave him his tea, and presently took Regie +up-stairs. Then she came back and sat down in a low chair close to +her husband. It was the first drop of comfort in Mr. Gresley's cup +to-day.</p> +<p>"How is Hester?"</p> +<p>"According to Dr. Brown she is very ill," said Mr. Gresley, in +an extinguished voice. "But they would not let me see her."</p> +<p>"Not see her own brother! My dear James, you should have +insisted."</p> +<p>"I did, but it was no use. You know how angry Dr. Brown gets at +the least opposition. And the Bishop backed him up. They said it +would excite her."</p> +<p>"I never heard of such a thing. What is the matter with +her?"</p> +<p>"Shock, Dr. Brown calls it. They have been afraid of collapse +all day, but she is better this evening. They seemed to think a +great deal of her knowing Regie."</p> +<p>"Did the little lamb forgive her?"</p> +<p>"Oh yes; he kissed her, and she knew him and cried. And it seems +her hands are severely burned. They have got a nurse, and they have +telegraphed for Miss West. The Bishop was very good to Regie and +gave him that fur rug."</p> +<p>They looked at the splendid blue fox rug on the sofa.</p> +<p>"I am afraid," said Mrs. Gresley, after a pause, "that Hester +did run all the way to Southminster as the Bishop said. Abel said +the Bishop's coachman told him that she came late last night to the +Palace, and she was white with snow when the footman let her +in."</p> +<p>"My dear, I should have thought you were too sensible to listen +to servant's gossip," said Mr. Gresley, impatiently. "Your own +common-sense will tell you that Hester never performed that journey +on foot. I told Dr. Brown the same, but he lost his temper at once. +It's curious how patient he is in a sick-room, and how furious he +can be out of it. He was very angry with me, too, because when he +mentioned to the Bishop in my presence that Hester was under +morphia, I said I strongly objected to her being drugged, and when +I repeated that morphia was a most dangerous drug, with effects +worse than intoxication, in fact, that morphia was a form of +intoxication, he positively, before the Bishop, shook his fist in +my face, and said he was not going to be taught his business by +me.</p> +<p>"The Bishop took me away into the study. Dick Vernon was sitting +there, at least he was creeping about on all fours with Regie on +his back. I think he must be in love with Hester, he asked so +anxiously if there was any change. He would not speak to me, +pretended not to know me. I suppose the Bishop had told him about +the porch, and he was afraid I should come on him for repairs, as +he had tampered with it. The Bishop sent them away, and said he +wanted to have a talk with me. The Bishop himself was the only +person who was kind."</p> +<p>There was a long pause. Mrs. Gresley laid her soft cheek against +her husband's, and put her small hand in a protecting manner over +his large one. It was not surprising that on the following Sunday +Mr. Gresley said such beautiful things about women being pillows +against which weary masculine athletes could rest.</p> +<p>"He spoke very nicely of you," went on Mr. Gresley at last. "He +said he appreciated your goodness in letting Regie go after what +had happened, and your offer to come and nurse Hester yourself. And +then he spoke about me. And he said he knew well how devoted I was +to my work, and how anything I did for the Church was a real labor +of love, and that my heart was in my work."</p> +<p>"It is quite true. So it is," said Mrs. Gresley.</p> +<p>"I never thought he understood me so well. And he went on to say +that he knew I must be dreadfully anxious about my sister, but that +as far as money was concerned—I had offered to pay for a +nurse—I was to put all anxiety off my mind. He would take all +responsibility about the illness. He said he had a little fund laid +by for emergencies of this kind, and that he could not spend it +better than on Hester, whom he loved like his own child. And then +he went on to speak of Hester. I don't remember all he said when he +turned off about her, but he spoke of her as if she were a person +quite out of the common."</p> +<p>"He always did spoil her," said Mrs. Gresley.</p> +<p>"He went off on a long rigmarole about her and her talent, and +how vain he and I should be if leading articles appeared in the +<i>Spectator</i> about us as they did about her. I did not know +there had been anything of the kind, but he said every one else +did. And then he went on more slowly that Hester was under a +foolish hallucination, as groundless, no doubt, as that she had +caused Regie's death, that her book was destroyed. He said, 'It is +this idea which has got firm hold of her, but which has momentarily +passed off her mind in her anxiety about Regie, which has caused +her illness.' And then he looked at me. He seemed really quite +shaky. He held on to a chair. I think his health is breaking."</p> +<p>"And what did you say?"</p> +<p>"I said the truth, that it was no hallucination but the fact, +that much as I regretted to say so Hester had written a profane and +immoral book, and that I had felt it my duty to burn it, and a very +painful duty it had been. I said he would have done the same if he +had read it."</p> +<p>"I am glad you said that."</p> +<p>"Well, the awkward part was that he said he had read it, every +word, and that he considered it the finest book that had been +written in his day. And then he began to walk up and down and to +become rather excited, and to say that he could not understand how +I could take upon myself such a responsibility, or on what grounds +I considered myself a judge of literature. As if I ever did +consider myself a judge! But I do know right from wrong. We had got +on all right up till then, especially when he spoke so cordially of +you and me, but directly he made a personal matter of Hester's +book, setting his opinion against mine, for he repeated over and +over again it was a magnificent book, his manner seemed to change. +He tried to speak kindly, but all the time I saw that my +considering the book bad while he thought it good, gravelled him, +and made him feel annoyed with me. The truth is, he can't bear any +one to think differently from himself."</p> +<p>"He always was like that," said the comforter.</p> +<p>"I said I supposed he thought it right to run down the clergy +and hold them up to ridicule. He said, 'Certainly not, but he did +not see how that applied to anything in Hester's book.' He said, +'She has drawn us, without bias towards us, exactly as we appear to +three-quarters of the laity. It won't do us any harm to see +ourselves for once as others see us. There is in these days an +increasing adverse criticism of us in many men's minds, to which +your sister's mild rebukes are as nothing. We have drawn it upon +ourselves, not so much by our conduct, which I believe to be +uniformly above reproach, or by any lack of zeal, as by our +ignorance of our calling; by our inability to "convert life into +truth," the capital secret of our profession, as I was once told as +a divinity student. I for one believe that the Church will regain +her prestige and her hold on the heart of the nation, but if she +does, it will be mainly due to a new element in the minds of the +clergy, a stronger realization, not of our +responsibilities—we have that—but of the education, the +personal search for truth, the knowledge of human nature, which are +necessary to enable us to meet them.' He went on a long time about +that. I think he grows very wordy. But I did not argue with him. I +let him say what he liked. I knew that I must be obedient to my +Bishop, just as I should expect my clergy to be to me, if I ever am +a Bishop myself. Not that I expect I ever shall be"—Mr. +Gresley was overtired—"but it seemed to me as he talked about +the book, that all the time, though he put me down to the highest +motives—he did me that justice—he was trying to make me +own I had done wrong."</p> +<p>"You didn't say so?" said the little wife, hotly.</p> +<p>"My dear, need you ask? But I did say at last that I had +consulted with Archdeacon Thursby on the matter, and he had +strongly advised me to do as I did. The Bishop seemed +thunderstruck. And then—it really seemed +providential—who should come in but Archdeacon Thursby +himself. The Bishop went straight up to him, and said, 'You come at +a fortunate moment, for I am greatly distressed at the burning of +Miss Gresley's book, and Gresley tells me that you advised it.' And +would you believe it," said Mr. Gresley, in a strangled voice, "the +Archdeacon actually denied it then and there. He said he did not +know Hester had written a book, and had never been consulted on the +subject."</p> +<p>The tears forced themselves out of Mr. Gresley's eyes. He was +exhausted and overwrought. He sobbed against his wife's +shoulder.</p> +<p>"Wicked liar!" whispered Mrs. Gresley, into his parting. +"Wicked, wicked man! Oh, James, I never thought the Archdeacon +could have behaved like that!"</p> +<p>"Nor I," gasped Mr. Gresley, "but he did. I suppose he did not +want to offend the Bishop. And when I expostulated with him, and +reminded him of what he had advised only the day before, he said +that was about a letter, not a book, as if it mattered which it +was. It was the principle that mattered. But they neither of them +would listen to me. I said I had offered to help to rewrite it, and +the Bishop became quite fierce. He said I might as well try to +rewrite Regie if he were in his coffin. And then he mentioned, +casually, as if it were quite an afterthought, that Hester had sold +it for a thousand pounds. All through, I knew he was really trying +to hurt my feelings, in spite of his manner, but when he said +<i>that</i> he succeeded."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley groaned.</p> +<p>"A thousand pounds!" said Mrs. Gresley, turning white. "Oh, it +isn't possible!"</p> +<p>"He said he had seen the publisher's letter offering it, and +that Hester had accepted it by his advice. He seemed to know all +about her affairs. When he said that, I was so distressed I could +not help showing it, and he made rather light of it, saying the +money loss was the least serious part of the whole affair, but, of +course, it is the worst. Poor Hester, when I think that owing to me +she has lost a thousand pounds. Seventy pounds a year, if I had +invested it for her, and I know of several good investments, all +perfectly safe, at seven per cent.—when I think of it it +makes me absolutely miserable. We won't talk of it any more. The +Bishop sat with his head in his hands for a long time after the +Archdeacon had gone, and afterwards he was quite kindly again, and +said we looked at the subject from such different points of view +that perhaps there was no use in discussing it. And we talked of +the Church Congress until the fly came, only he seemed dreadfully +tired, quite knocked up. And he promised to let us know first thing +to-morrow morning how Hester was. He was cordial when we left. I +think he meant well. But I can never feel the same to Archdeacon +Thursby again. He was quite my greatest friend among the clergy +round here. I suppose I shall learn in time not to have such a high +ideal of people, but I certainly thought very highly of him until +to-day."</p> +<p>Mr. Gresley sat upright, and put away his handkerchief with +decision.</p> +<p>"One thing this miserable day has taught us," he said, "and that +is that we must part with Fräulein. If she is to become +impertinent the first moment we are in trouble, such a thing is not +to be borne. We could not possibly keep her after her behavior +to-day."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>If two lives join, there is oft a scar. —ROBERT +BROWNING.</p> +</div> +<p>Rachel left Westhope Abbey the day after Lord Newhaven's +funeral, and returned to London. And the day after that Hugh came +to see her, and proposed, and was accepted.</p> +<p>He had gone over in his mind a hundred times all that he should +say to her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully +resolved to say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well +disposed towards him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But +what he really said, in a hoarse, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, +will you marry me?" He was looking so intently into a little grove +of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps the hyacinths heard what he said; +at any rate, she did not. But she supposed, from long experience, +that he was proposing, and she said "Yes" immediately.</p> +<p>She had not intended to say so—at least, not at first. She +had made up her mind that it would be only right to inform him that +she was fourteen months older than he (she had looked him out in +Burke where she herself was not to be found); that she was "old +enough to be his mother"; also that she was of a cold, revengeful +temper not calculated to make a home happy, and several other +odious traits of character which she had never dreamed of confiding +to any of the regiment of her previous lovers.</p> +<p>But the only word she had breath to say when the time came was +"Yes."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Rachel had shivered and hesitated on the brink of a new love +long enough. Her anxiety about Hugh had unconsciously undermined +her resistance. His confession had given her instantly the +confidence in him which had been wanting. It is not perfection that +we look for in our fellow-creatures, but for what is apparently +rarer, a little plain dealing.</p> +<p>How they rise before us!—the sweet reproachful faces of +those whom we could have loved devotedly if they had been willing +to be straightforward with us; whom we have lost, not by our own +will, but by that paralysis of feeling which gradually invades the +heart at the discovery of small insincerities. Sincerity seems our +only security against losing those who love us, the only cup in +which those who are worth keeping will care to pledge us when youth +is past.</p> +<p>Rachel was not by nature <i>de celles qui se jettent dans +l'amour comme dans un précipice</i>. But she shut her eyes, +recommended her soul to God, and threw herself over. She had +climbed down once—with assistance—and she was not going +to do that again. That she found herself alive at the bottom was a +surprise to her, but a surprise that was quickly forgotten in the +constant wonder that Hugh could love her as devotedly as it was +obvious he did.</p> +<p>Women would have shared that wonder, but not men. There was a +home ready made in Rachel's faithful, dog-like eyes, which at once +appealed to the desire of expansion of empire in the heart of the +free-born Briton.</p> +<p>Hugh had, until lately, considered woman as connected with the +downward slope of life. He would have loudly disclaimed such an +opinion if it had been attributed to him; but nevertheless it was +the key-note of his behavior towards them, his belief concerning +them which was of a piece with his cheap cynicism and dilettante +views of life. He now discovered that woman was made out of +something more than man's spare rib.</p> +<p>It is probable that if he had never been in love with Lady +Newhaven, Hugh would never have loved Rachel. He would have looked +at her, as many men did, with a view to marriage and would probably +have dismissed her from his thoughts as commonplace. He knew better +now. It was Lady Newhaven who was commonplace. His worldliness was +dropping from him day by day as he learned to know Rachel +better.</p> +<p>Where was his cynicism now that she loved him?</p> +<p>His love for her, humble, triumphant, diffident, passionate, +impatient by turns, now exacting, now selfless, possessed him +entirely. He remembered once, with astonishment, that he was making +a magnificent match. He had never thought of it, as Rachel knew, as +she knew well.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>December came in bleak and dark. The snow did its poor best, +laying day after day its white veil upon the dismal streets. But it +was misunderstood. It was scraped into murky heaps. It melted and +then froze, and then melted again. And London groaned and shivered +on its daily round.</p> +<p>Every afternoon Hugh came, and every morning Rachel made her +rooms bright with flowers for him. The flower shop at the corner +sent her tiny trees of white lilac, and sweet little united +families of hyacinths and tulips. The time of azaleas was not yet. +And once he sent her a bunch of daffodils. He knew best how he had +obtained them.</p> +<p>Their wild, sweet faces peered at Rachel, and she sat down faint +and dizzy, holding them in her nerveless hands. If one daffodil +knows anything, all daffodils know it to the third and fourth +generation.</p> +<p>"Where is he?" they said. "That man whom you loved once? We were +there when he spoke to you. We saw you stand together by the attic +window. We never say, but we heard, we remember. And you cried for +joy at night afterwards. We never say. But we heard. We +remember."</p> +<p>Rachel's secretary in the little room on the ground-floor was +interrupted by a tap at the door. Rachel came in laden with +daffodils. Their splendor filled the gray room.</p> +<p>"Would you mind having them?" she said, smiling, and laying them +down by her. "And would you kindly write a line to Jones telling +him not to send me daffodils again. They are a flower I +particularly dislike."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Rachel?"</p> +<p>"Hugh!"</p> +<p>"Don't you think it would be better if we were married +immediately?"</p> +<p>"Better than what?"</p> +<p>"Oh, I don't know; better than breaking it off."</p> +<p>"You can't break it off now. I'm not a person to be trifled +with. You have gone too far."</p> +<p>"If you gave me half your attention, you would understand that I +am only expressing a wish to go a little further, but you have +become so frivolous since we have been engaged that I hardly +recognize you."</p> +<p>"I suit myself to my company."</p> +<p>"Are you going to talk to me in that flippant manner when we are +married. I sometimes fear, Rachel, you don't look upon me with +sufficient awe. I foresee I shall have to be very firm when we are +married. When may I begin to be firm?"</p> +<p>"Are these such evil days, Hugh?"</p> +<p>"I am like Oliver Twist," he said. "I want more."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>They were sitting together one afternoon in the fire-light in +silence. They often sat in silence together.</p> +<p>"A wise woman once advised me," said Rachel at last, "if I +married, never to tell my husband of any previous attachment. She +said, Let him always believe that he was the first</p> +<div class='blockquot'>That ever burst<br /> +Into that silent sea.</div> +<p>I believe it was good advice, but it seems to me to have one +drawback—to follow it may be to tell a lie. It would be in my +case."</p> +<p>Silence.</p> +<p>"I know that a lie and an adroit appeal to the vanity of man are +supposed to be a woman's recognized weapons. The same woman told me +that I might find myself mistaken in many things in this world, but +never in counting on the vanity of man. She said that was a reed +which would never pierce my hand. I don't think you are vain, +Hugh."</p> +<p>"Not vain! Why, I am so conceited at the fact that you are going +to marry me that I look down on every one else. I only long to tell +them so. When may I tell my mother, Rachel? She is coming to London +this week."</p> +<p>"You have the pertinacity of a fly. You always come back to the +same point. I am beginning to be rather bored with your marriage. +You can't talk of anything else."</p> +<p>"I can't think about anything else."</p> +<p>He drew her cheek against his. He was an ingratiating +creature.</p> +<p>"Neither can I," she whispered.</p> +<p>And that was all Rachel ever said of all she meant to say about +Mr. Tristram.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>A yellow fog. It made rings round the shaded electric lamp by +which Rachel was reading. The fire burned tawny and blurred. Even +her red gown looked dim. Hugh came in.</p> +<p>"What are you reading?" he said, sitting down by her.</p> +<p>He did not want to know, but if you are reading a book on +another person's knee you cannot be a very long way off. He glanced +with feigned interest at the open page, stooping a little, for he +was short-sighted now and then—at least now.</p> +<p>Rachel took the opportunity to look at him. You can't really +look at a person when he is looking at you. Hugh was very handsome, +especially side face, and he knew it; but he was not sure whether +Rachel thought so.</p> +<p>He read mechanically:</p> +<div class='blockquot'>"Take back your vows.<br /> +Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn;<br /> +You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn.<br /> +You lit those candles in another shrine,<br /> +Guttered and cold you offer them on mine.<br /> +Take back your vows."</div> +<p>A shadow fell across Hugh's mind. Rachel saw it fall.</p> +<p>"You do not think that of me, Rachel," he said, pointing to the +verse. It was the first time he had alluded to that halting +confession which had remained branded on the minds of both.</p> +<p>He glanced up at her, and she suffered him for a moment to look +through her clear eyes into her soul.</p> +<p>"I never thought that of you," she said, with difficulty. "I am +so foolish that I believe the candles are lit now for the first +time. I am so foolish that I believe you love me nearly as much as +I love you."</p> +<p>"It is a dream," said Hugh, passionately, and he fell on his +knees, and hid his white face against her knee. "It is a dream. I +shall wake, and find you never cared for me."</p> +<p>She sat for a moment stunned by the violence of his emotion, +which was shaking him from head to foot. Then she drew him into her +trembling arms, and held his head against her breast.</p> +<p>She felt his tears through her gown.</p> +<p>"What is past will never come between us," she said, brokenly, +at last. "I have cried over it too, Hugh; but I have put it from my +mind. When you told me about it, knowing you risked losing me by +telling me, I suddenly trusted you entirely. I had not quite up +till then. I can't say why, except that perhaps I had grown +suspicious because I was once deceived. But I do now, because you +were open with me. I think, Hugh, you and I can dare to be truthful +to each other. You have been so to me, and I will be so to you. I +knew about <i>that</i> long before you told me. Lady +Newhaven—poor thing!—confided in me last summer. She +had to tell some one. I think you ought to know that I know. And +oh, Hugh, I knew about the drawing of lots, too."</p> +<p>Hugh started violently, but he did not move.</p> +<p>Would she have recognized that ashen, convulsed face if he had +raised it?</p> +<p>"Lady Newhaven listened at the door when you were drawing lots, +and she told me. But we never knew which had drawn the short +lighter till Lord Newhaven was killed on the line. Only she and I +and you know that that was not an accident. I know what you must +have gone through all the summer, feeling you had taken his life as +well. But you must remember it was his own doing, and a perfectly +even chance. You ran the same risk. His blood is on his own head. +But oh, my darling, when I think it might have been you!"</p> +<p>Hugh thought afterwards that if her arms had not been round him, +if he had been a little distance from her, he might have told her +the truth. He owed it to her, this woman who was the very soul of +truth. But if she had withdrawn from him, however gently, in the +moment when her tenderness had, for the first time, vanquished her +natural reserve, if she had taken herself away then, he could not +have borne it. In deep repentance after Lord Newhaven's death, he +had vowed that from that day forward he would never deviate again +from the path of truth and honor, however difficult it might prove. +But this frightful moment had come upon him unawares. He drew back +instinctively, giddy and unnerved, as from a chasm yawning suddenly +among the flowers, one step in front of him. He was too stunned to +think. When he rallied they were standing together on the +hearth-rug, and she was saying—he did not know what she was +saying, for he was repeating over and over again to himself, "The +moment is past. The moment is past."</p> +<p>At last her words conveyed some meaning to him.</p> +<p>"We will never speak of this again, my friend," she said; "but +now that no harm can be done by it, it seemed right to tell you I +knew."</p> +<p>"I ought never to have drawn," said Hugh, hoarsely.</p> +<p>"No," said Rachel. "He was in fault to demand such a thing. It +was inhuman. But having once drawn he had to abide by it, as you +would have done if you had drawn the short lighter."</p> +<p>She was looking earnestly at him, as at one given back from the +grave.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Hugh, feeling she expected him to speak. "If I had +drawn it I should have had to abide by it."</p> +<p>"I thank God continually that you did not draw it. You made him +the dreadful reparation he asked. If it recoiled upon himself you +were not to blame. You have done wrong, and you have repented. You +have suffered, Hugh. I know it by your face. And perhaps I have +suffered too, but that is past. We will shut up the past, and think +of the future. Promise me that you will never speak of this +again."</p> +<p>"I promise," said Hugh, mechanically.</p> +<p>"The moment to speak is past," he said to himself.</p> +<p>Had it ever been present?</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>Dieu n'oublíe personne. Il visite tout le +monde.—VINET.</p> +</div> +<p>Hugh did not sleep that night.</p> +<p>His escape had been too narrow. He shivered at the mere thought +of it. It had never struck him as possible that Rachel and Lady +Newhaven had known of the drawing of lots. Now that he found they +knew, sundry small incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding +back to his memory. That was why Lady Newhaven had written so +continually those letters which he had burned unread. That was why +she had made that desperate attempt to see him in the smoking-room +at Wilderleigh after the boating accident. She wanted to know which +had drawn the short lighter. That explained the mysterious tension +which Hugh had noticed in Rachel during the last days in London +before—before the time was up. He saw it all now. And, of +course, they naturally supposed that Lord Newhaven had committed +suicide. They could not think otherwise. They were waiting for one +of the two men to do it.</p> +<p>"If Lord Newhaven had not turned giddy and stumbled on to the +line, if he had not died by accident when he did," said Hugh to +himself, "where should I be now?"</p> +<p>There was no answer to that question.</p> +<p>What was the use of asking it? He <i>was</i> dead. And, +fortunately, the two women firmly believed he had died by his own +hand. Hugh as firmly believed that the death was accidental.</p> +<p>But it could not be his duty to set them right, to rake up the +whole hideous story again.</p> +<p>By an extraordinary, by a miraculous chance, he was saved, as it +were, a second time. It could do no good to allude to the dreadful +subject again. Besides, he had promised Rachel never to speak of it +again.</p> +<p>He groaned, and hid his face in his hands.</p> +<p>"Oh, coward and wretch that I am," he said. "Cannot I even be +honest with myself? I lied to her to-day. I never thought I could +have told Rachel a lie, but I did. I can't live without her. I must +have her. I would rather die than lose her now. And I should have +lost her if I'd told her the truth. I felt that. I am not worthy. +It was an ill day for her when she took my tarnished life into her +white hands. She ought to have trodden me under foot. But she does +love me, and I will never deceive her again. She does love me, and, +God helping me, I will make her happy."</p> +<p>The strain of conflict was upon Hugh—the old, old conflict +of the seed with the earth, of the soul with love. How many little +fibres and roots the seed puts out, pushed by an unrecognized need +within itself, not without pain, not without a gradual rending of +its being, not without a death unto self into a higher life. Love +was dealing with Hugh's soul as the earth deals with the seed, +and—he suffered.</p> +<p>It was a man who did not look like an accepted lover who +presented himself at Rachel's door the following afternoon.</p> +<p>But Rachel was not there. Her secretary handed Hugh a little +note which she had left for him, telling him that Hester had +suddenly fallen ill, and that she had been sent for to +Southminster. The note ended: "These first quiet days are past. So +now you may tell your mother, and put our engagement in the +<i>Morning Post</i>."</p> +<p>Hugh was astonished at the despair which overwhelmed him at the +bare thought that he should not see Rachel that day and not the +next either. It was not to be borne. She had no right to make him +suffer like this. Day by day, when a certain restless fever +returned upon him, he had known, as an opium-eater knows, that at a +certain hour he should become rested and calm and sane once more. +To be in the same room with Rachel, to hear her voice, to let his +eyes dwell upon her, to lean his forehead for a moment against her +hand, was to enter, as we enter in dreams, a world of joy and +comfort, and boundless, endless, all-pervading peace.</p> +<p>And now he was suddenly left shivering in a bleak world without +her. With her he was himself, a released, freed self, growing daily +further and further away from all he had once been. Without her he +felt he was nothing but a fierce, wounded animal.</p> +<p>He tried to laugh at himself as he walked slowly away from +Rachel's house. He told himself that he was absurd, that an absence +of a few days was nothing. He turned his steps mechanically in the +direction of his mother's lodgings. At any rate, he could tell her. +He could talk about this cruel woman to her. The smart was +momentarily soothed by his mother's painful joy. He wrenched +himself somewhat out of himself as she wept the tears of jealous +love, which all mothers must weep when the woman comes who takes +their son away. "I am so glad," she kept repeating. "These are +tears of joy, Hughie. I can forgive her for accepting you, but I +should never have forgiven her if she had refused you—if she +had made my boy miserable. And you have been miserable lately. I +have seen it for a long time. I suppose it was all this coming +on."</p> +<p>He said it was. The remembrance of other causes of irritation +and moodiness had slipped entirely off his mind.</p> +<p>He stayed a long time with his mother, who pressed him to wait +till his sister, who was shopping, returned. But his sister tarried +long out-of-doors, and at last the pain of Rachel's absence +returning on him, he left suddenly, promising to return in the +evening.</p> +<p>He did not go back to his rooms. He wandered aimlessly through +the darkening streets, impatient of the slow hours. At last he came +out on the Embankment. The sun was setting redly, frostily, in a +gray world of sky-mist and river-mist and spectral bridge and +spire. A shaking path-way of pale flame came across the gray of the +hidden river to meet him.</p> +<p>He stood a long time looking at it. The low sun touched and +forsook, touched and forsook point by point the little crowded +world which it was leaving.</p> +<p>"My poor mother," said Hugh to himself. "Poor, gentle, loving +soul whom I so nearly brought down with sorrow to the grave. She +will never know what an escape she has had. I might have been more +to her. I might have made her happier, seeing her happiness is +wrapped up in me. I will make up to her for it. I will be a better +son to her in future. Rachel and I together will make her last +years happy. Rachel and I together," said Hugh, over and over +again.</p> +<p>And then he suddenly remembered that though Rachel had taken +herself away he could write to her, and—he might look out the +trains to Southminster. He leaped into a hansom and hurried back to +his rooms.</p> +<p>The porter met him in a mysterious manner in the entrance. Lady +waiting to see him. Lady said she was his sister. Had been waiting +two hours. In his rooms now.</p> +<p>Hugh laughed, and ran up the wide, common staircase. His sister +had heard the news from his mother and had rushed over at once.</p> +<p>As he stooped a little to fit the latch-key on his chain into +the lock a man, who was coming down the stairs feeling in his +pockets, stopped with a sudden exclamation. It was Captain Pratt, +pallid, smiling, hair newly varnished, resplendent in a magnificent +fur overcoat.</p> +<p>"What luck," he said. "Scarlett, I think. We met at Wilderleigh. +Have you such a thing as a match about you?"</p> +<p>Hugh felt in his pockets. He had not one.</p> +<p>"Never mind," he said, opening the door. "I've plenty inside. +Come in."</p> +<p>Hugh went in first, extricating his key. Captain Pratt followed, +murmuring, "Nice little dens, these. A pal of mine lives just +above—Streatham. You know Streatham, son of Lord—"</p> +<p>The remainder of the sentence was lost.</p> +<p>The door opened straight into the little sitting-room.</p> +<p>A woman in deep mourning rose suddenly out of a chair by the +fire and came towards them.</p> +<p>"Hughie!" she said.</p> +<p>It was Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>It is probable that none of the tableaux she had arranged were +quite so dramatic as this one, in which she had not reckoned on +that elaborate figure in the door-way.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt's opinion of Hugh, whom he had hitherto regarded +as a pauper with an involved estate, leaped from temperate to +summer heat—blood-heat. After the first instant he kept his +eyes steadily fixed on Hugh.</p> +<p>"I—er—thank you, Scarlett. I have found my matches. +A thousand thanks. Good-night."</p> +<p>He was disappearing, but Hugh, his eyes flashing in his gray +face, held him forcibly by the arm.</p> +<p>"Lady Newhaven," he said, "the porter is inexcusable. These are +my rooms which he has shown you into by mistake, not Mr. +Streatham's, your nephew. He is just above. I think," turning to +Captain Pratt, "Streatham is out of town."</p> +<p>"He is out of town," said Captain Pratt, looking with cold +admiration at Hugh. "Admirable," he said to himself; "a born +gentleman."</p> +<p>"This is not the first time Streatham's visitors have been shown +in here," continued Hugh. "The porter shall be dismissed. I trust +you will forgive me my share in the annoyance he has caused you. Is +your carriage waiting?"</p> +<p>"No," said Lady Newhaven, faintly, quite thrown off the lines of +her prepared scene by the sudden intrusion into it of a foreign +body.</p> +<p>"My hansom is below," said Captain Pratt, deferentially, +venturing, now that the situation was, so to speak, draped, to turn +his discreet agate eyes towards Lady Newhaven. "If it could be of +the least use, I myself should prefer to walk."</p> +<p>Now that he looked at her, he looked very hard at her. She was a +beautiful woman.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven's self-possession had returned sufficiently for +her to take up her fur cloak.</p> +<p>"Thank you," she said, letting Captain Pratt help her on with +it. "I shall be glad to make use of your hansom, if you are sure +you can spare it. I am shocked at having taken possession of your +rooms," turning to Hugh; "I will write to Georgie Streatham +to-night. I am staying with my mother, and I came across to ask him +to take my boys to the pantomime, as I cannot take them +myself—so soon," with a glance at her crape. "Don't come +down, Mr. Scarlett. I have given you enough trouble already."</p> +<p>Captain Pratt's arm was crooked. He conducted her in his best +manner to the foot of the staircase and helped her into his hansom. +His manner was not so unctuous as his father's, but it was slightly +adhesive. Lady Newhaven shuddered involuntarily as she took his +arm.</p> +<p>Hugh followed.</p> +<p>"I hope you will both come and see my mother," she said, with an +attempt at graciousness. "You know Lady Trentham, I +think?"—to Captain Pratt.</p> +<p>"Very slightly. No. Delighted!" murmured Captain Pratt, closing +the hansom doors in an intimate manner. "And if I could be of the +least use at any time in taking your boys to the +pantomime—er—only too glad. The glass down, +Richards!"</p> +<p>The hansom with its splendid bay horse rattled off.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt nodded to Hugh, who was still standing on the +steps, and turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing +urchin. Then he turned up his fur collar, and proceeded leisurely +on his way.</p> +<p>"Very stand-off both of them in the past," he said to himself, +"but they will have to be civil in future. I wonder if he will make +her keep her title. Deuced awkward for them both though, only a +month after Newhaven's death. I wish that sort of +<i>contre-temps</i> would happen to me when I'm bringing in a lot +of fellows suddenly. An opening like that is all I want to give me +a start, and I should get on as well as anybody. The aristocracy +all hang together, whatever Selina and Ada may say. Money don't buy +everything, as the governor thinks. But if you're once in with 'em +you're in."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Hugh went back to his room and locked himself in. He was a +delicate man, highly strung, and he had not slept the night before. +He collapsed into a chair and remained a long time, his head in his +hands.</p> +<p>It was too horrible, this woman coming back upon him suddenly, +like the ghost of some one whom he had murdered. His momentary +infatuation had been clean forgotten in his overwhelming love for +Rachel. His intrigue with Lady Newhaven seemed so long ago that it +had been relegated to the same mental shelf in his mind as the +nibbling of a certain forbidden ginger-bread when he was home for +his first holidays. He could not be held responsible for either +offence after this immense interval of time. It was not he who had +committed them, but that other embryo self, that envelope of flesh +and sense which he was beginning to abhor, through which he had +passed before he reached himself, Hugh, the real man—the man +who loved Rachel, and whom Rachel loved.</p> +<p>He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. +At the sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped +him as in one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a +weapon, and he used it. He did not greatly care about his own good +name, but the good name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to +fight for. It was for her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had +concocted the story of the mistaken rooms. He should not have had +the presence of mind if Rachel had not been concerned.</p> +<p>He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble +yet with her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead lust +would be dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly +grave.</p> +<p>He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to +marry Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. +"She will know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when +she sees my engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get +at me somehow, and make my life a hell to me, while she can. And +she will try and come between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I +deserve anything I get. But Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I +will go down to her to-morrow. I can't go on without seeing her. +And she won't mind, as the engagement will be given out next +day."</p> +<p>He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently +his lip quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to +have done it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage +with a whiter past, not to need her forgiveness on the very +threshold of their life together, not to have been unfaithful to +her before he knew her.</p> +<p>What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of +Love, and then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped +that pang?</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellowship in +thee.—SHAKESPEARE</p> +</div> +<p>"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two +later, as Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at +the Palace. "I am convinced that you have been up to some +mischief."</p> +<p>"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it +was your wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was +better."</p> +<p>"It certainly was my wish. I'm very much obliged to you. But I +remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to +Gresley when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you."</p> +<p>"I spoke to him all right," said Dick, grimly. "That was why I +was so alacritous to go."</p> +<p>The Bishop looked steadily at him.</p> +<p>"Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own +business with my clergy."</p> +<p>"Just so," said Dick, helping himself to mustard. "But, you see, +I'm his cousin, and I thought it just as well to let him know +quietly and dispassionately what I thought of him. So I told him I +was not particular about my acquaintances. I knew lots of bad eggs +out in Australia, half of them hatched in England, chaps who'd been +shaved and tubbed gratis by Government—in fact, I'd a large +visiting list, but that I drew the line at such a cad as him, and +that he might remember I wasn't going to preach for him at any more +of his little cold-water cures"—a smile hovered on Dick's +crooked mouth—"or ever take any notice of him in future. That +was what he wanted, my lord. You were too soft with him, if you'll +excuse my saying so. But that sort of chap wants it giving him hot +and strong. He doesn't understand anything else. He gets quite +beyond himself, fizzing about on his little pocket-handkerchief of +a parish, thinking he is a sort of god, because no one makes it +their business to keep him in his place, and rub it into him that +he is an infernal fool. That is why some clergymen jaw so, because +they never have it brought home to them what rot they talk. They'd +be no sillier than other men if they were only treated properly. I +was very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean +sneak, and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue +going, and that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the +right to do dishonest things with other people's property, though +it did save him from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to +interrupt; indeed, he was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but +I did not take any notice, and I wound up by saying it was men like +him who brought discredit on the Church and on the clergy, and who +made the gorge rise of decent chaps like me. Yes," said Dick, after +a pause, "when I left him he understood, I don't say entirely, but +he had a distant glimmering. It isn't often I go on these errands +of mercy, but I felt that the least I could do was to back you up, +my lord. Of course, it is in little matters like this that lay +helpers come in, who are not so hampered about their language as I +suppose the clergy are."</p> +<p>The Bishop tried, he tried hard, to look severe, but his mouth +twitched.</p> +<p>"Don't thank me," said Dick. "Nothing is a trouble where you are +concerned. It was—ahem—a pleasure."</p> +<p>"That I can believe," said the Bishop. "Well, Dick, Providence +makes use of strange instruments—the jawbone of an ass has a +certain Scriptural prestige. I dare say you reached poor Gresley +where I failed. I certainly failed. But, if it is not too much to +ask, I should regard it as a favor another time if I might be +informed beforehand what direction your diocesan aid was about to +take."</p> +<p>Dr. Brown, who often came to luncheon at the Palace, came in +now. He took off his leathern driving-gloves and held his hands to +the fire.</p> +<p>"Cold," he said. "They're skating everywhere. How is Miss +Gresley?"</p> +<p>"She knows us to-day," said Rachel, "and she is quite +cheerful."</p> +<p>"Does the poor thing know her book is burned?"</p> +<p>"No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the +spring."</p> +<p>The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the +subject.</p> +<p>"I travelled from Pontesbury this morning," he said, "with that +man who was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored +him at Wilderleigh. Tall, thin, rather a fine gentleman. I forget +his name."</p> +<p>Dr. Brown aways spoke of men above himself in the social scale +as "fine gentlemen."</p> +<p>"Mr. Redman," said Miss Keane, the Bishop's sister, a dignified +person, who had been hampered throughout life by a predilection for +the wrong name, and by making engagements in illegible handwriting +by last year's almanacs.</p> +<p>"Was it Mr. Scarlett?" said Rachel, feeling Dick's lynx eye upon +her. "I was at Wilderleigh when the accident happened."</p> +<p>"That's the man. He got out at Southminster, and asked me which +was the best hotel. No, I won't have any more, thanks. I'll go up +and see Miss Gresley at once."</p> +<p>Rachel followed the Bishop into the library. They generally +waited there together till the doctor came down.</p> +<p>"I don't know many young men I like better than Dick," said the +Bishop. "I should marry him if I were a young woman. I admire the +way he acts up to his principles. Very few of us do. Until he has a +further light on the subject, he is right to, knock a man down who +insults him. And from his point of view he was justified in +speaking to Mr. Gresley as he did. I was sorely tempted to say +something of that kind to him myself, but as one grows gray one +realizes that one can only speak in a spirit of love. A man of +Dick's stamp will always be respected, because he does not assume +virtues which belong to a higher grade than he is on at present. +But when he reaches that higher grade he will act as thoroughly +upon the convictions that accompany it as he does now on his +present convictions."</p> +<p>"He certainly would not turn the other cheek to the smiter."</p> +<p>"I should not advise the smiter to reckon on it. And unless it +is turned from that rare sense of spiritual brotherhood it would be +unmanly to turn it. To imitate the outward appearance of certain +virtues is like imitating the clothes of a certain class. It does +not make us belong to the class to dress like it. The true +foundation for the spiritual life, as far as I can see it, is in +the full development of our human nature with all its simple trusts +and aspirations. I admire Dick's solid foundation. It will carry a +building worthy of him some day. But my words of wisdom appear to +be thrown away upon you. You are thinking of something else."</p> +<p>"I was thinking that I ought to tell you that I am engaged to be +married."</p> +<p>The Bishop's face lit up.</p> +<p>"I am engaged to Mr. Scarlett. That is why he has come down +here."</p> +<p>The Bishop's face fell. Rachel had been three days at the +Palace. Dick had not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. +"That admirable promptitude," the Bishop had remarked to himself, +"deserves success."</p> +<p>"Poor, dear Dick," he said, softly.</p> +<p>"That is what Hester says. I told her yesterday."</p> +<p>"I really have a very high opinion of Dick," said the +Bishop.</p> +<p>"So have I. If I might have two I would certainly choose him +second."</p> +<p>"But this superfluous Mr. Scarlett comes first, eh?"</p> +<p>"I am afraid he does."</p> +<p>"Well," said the Bishop, with a sigh, "if you are so ungrateful +as to marry to please yourself, instead of to please me, there is +nothing more to be said. I will have a look at your Mr. Scarlett +when he comes to tea. I suppose he will come to tea. I notice the +most <i>farouche</i> men do when they are engaged. It is the first +step in the turning process. I shall, of course, bring an entirely +unprejudiced mind to bear upon him, as I always make a point of +doing, but I warn you beforehand I shan't like him."</p> +<p>"Because he is not Mr. Dick."</p> +<p>"Well, yes; because he is not Dick. I suppose his name is +Bertie."</p> +<p>"Not Bertie," said Rachel, indignantly, "Hugh."</p> +<p>"It's a poor, inefficient kind of name, only four letters, and a +duplicate at each end. I don't think, my dear, he is worthy of +you."</p> +<p>"Dick has only four letters."</p> +<p>"I make it a rule never to argue with women. Well, Rachel, I'm +glad you have decided to marry. Heaven bless you, and may you be +happy with this man. Ah! here comes Dr. Brown."</p> +<p>"Well!" said the Bishop and Rachel, simultaneously.</p> +<p>"She's better," said the little doctor, angrily; he was always +angry when he was anxious. "She's round the first corner. But how +to pull her round the next corner, that is what I'm thinking."</p> +<p>"Defer the next corner."</p> +<p>"We can't now her mind is clear. She's as sane as you or I are, +and a good deal sharper. When she asks about her book she'll have +to be told."</p> +<p>"A lie would be quite justifiable under the circumstances."</p> +<p>"Of course, of course, but it would be useless. You might +hoodwink her for a day or two, and then she would find out, first, +that the <i>magnum opus</i> is gone, and secondly, that you and +Miss West, whom she does trust entirely at present, have deceived +her. You know what she is when she thinks she is being deceived. +She abused you well, my lord, until you reinstated yourself by +producing Regie Gresley. But you can't reinstate yourself a second +time. You can't produce the book."</p> +<p>"No," said the Bishop. "That is gone forever."</p> +<p>Rachel could not trust herself to speak. Perhaps she had +realized more fully than even the Bishop had done what the loss of +the book was to Hester, at least, what it would be when she knew it +was gone.</p> +<p>"Tell her, and give her that if she becomes excitable," said Dr. +Brown, producing a minute bottle out of a voluminous pocket. "And +if you want me I shall be at Canon Wylde's at five o'clock. I'll +look in anyhow before I go home."</p> +<p>Rachel and the Bishop stood a moment in silence after he was +gone, and then Rachel took up the little bottle, read the +directions carefully, and turned to go up-stairs.</p> +<p>The Bishop looked after her, but did not speak. He was sorry for +her.</p> +<p>"You can go out till tea-time," said Rachel, to the nurse. "I +will stay with Miss Gresley till then."</p> +<p>Hester was lying on a couch by the fire in a rose-colored +wrapper. Her small face, set in its ruffle of soft lace, looked +bright and eager. Her hair had been cut short, and she looked +younger and more like Regie than ever.</p> +<p>Her thin hands lay contentedly in her lap. The principal +bandages were gone. Only three fingers of the right hand were in a +chrysalis state.</p> +<p>"I shall not be in too great a hurry to get well," she said to +Rachel. "If I do you will rush away to London and get married.</p> +<p>"Shall I?" Rachel set down the little bottle on the +mantel-piece.</p> +<p>"When is Mr. Scarlett coming down?"</p> +<p>"He came down to-day."</p> +<p>"Then possibly he may call."</p> +<p>"Such things do happen."</p> +<p>"I should like to see him."</p> +<p>"In a day or two, perhaps."</p> +<p>"And I want to see dear Dick, too."</p> +<p>"He sent you his love. Mr. Pratt was here at luncheon yesterday, +and he asked me who the old chap was who put on his clothes with a +shoe-horn."</p> +<p>"How like him! Has he said anything more to the Bishop on the +uses of swearing?"</p> +<p>"No. But the Bishop draws him on. He delights in him."</p> +<p>"Rachel, are you sure you have chosen the best man?"</p> +<p>"Quite sure—I mean I never had any choice in the matter. +You see I love Hugh, and I'm only fond of Mr. Dick."</p> +<p>"I always liked Mr. Scarlett," said Hester. "I've known him ever +since I came out, and that wasn't yesterday. He is so gentle and +refined, and one need not be on one's guard in talking to him. He +understands what one says, and he is charming looking."</p> +<p>"Of course, I think so."</p> +<p>"And this is the genuine thing, Rachel? Do you remember our talk +last summer?"</p> +<p>Rachel was silent a moment.</p> +<p>"All I can say is," she said, brokenly, "that I thank God, day +and night, that Mr. Tristram did not marry me—that I'm free +to marry Hugh."</p> +<p>Hester's uncrippled hand stole into Rachel's.</p> +<p>"Everybody will think," said Rachel, "when they see the +engagement in to-morrow's papers that I give him everything because +he is poor and his place involved, and of course I am horribly +wealthy. But in reality it is I who am poor and he who is rich. He +has given me a thousand times more than I could ever give him, +because he has given me back the power of loving. It almost +frightens me that I can care so much a second time. I should not +have thought it possible. But I seem to have got the hang of it +now, as Mr. Dick would say. I wish you were down-stairs, Hester, as +you will be in a day or two. You would be amused by the way he +shocks Miss Keane. She asked if he had written anything on his +travels, and he said he was on the point of bringing out a little +book on 'Cannibal Cookery,' for the use of Colonials. He said some +of the recipes were very simple. He began: 'You take a hand and +close it round a yam.' But the Bishop stopped him."</p> +<p>The moment Rachel had said, "He is on the point of bringing out +a book," her heart stood still. How could she have said such a +thing? But apparently Hester took no notice.</p> +<p>"He must have been experimenting on my poor hand," she said. +"I'm sure I never burned it like this myself."</p> +<p>"It will soon be better now."</p> +<p>"Oh! I don't mind about it now that it doesn't hurt all the +time."</p> +<p>"And your head does not ache to-day, does it?"</p> +<p>"Nothing to matter. But I feel as if I had fallen on it from the +top of the cathedral. Dr. Brown says that is nonsense, but I think +so all the same. When you believe a thing, and you're told it's +nonsense, and you still believe it, that is an hallucination, isn't +it?"</p> +<p>"Yes."</p> +<p>"I have had a great many," said Hester, slowly. "I suppose I +have been more ill than I knew. I thought I saw, I really did see, +the spirits of the frost and the snow looking in at the window. And +I talked to them a long time, and asked them what quarrel they had +with me, their sister, that since I was a child they had always +been going about to kill me. Aunt Susan always seemed to think they +were enemies who gave me bronchitis. And I told them how I loved +them and all their works. And they breathed on the pane and wrote +beautiful things in frost-work, and I read them all. Now, Rachel, +is that an hallucination about the frost-work, because it seems to +me still, now that I am better, though I can't explain it, that I +do see the meaning of it at last, and that I shall never be afraid +of them again."</p> +<p>Rachel did not answer.</p> +<p>She had long since realized that Hester, when in her normal +condition, saw things which she herself did not see. She had long +since realized that Hester always accepted as final the limit of +vision of the person she was with, but that that limit changed with +every person she met. Rachel had seen her adjust it to persons more +short-sighted than herself, with secret self-satisfaction, and then +with sudden bewilderment had heard Hester accept as a commonplace +from some one else what appeared to Rachel fantastic in the +extreme. If Rachel had considered her own mind as the measure of +the normal of all other minds, she could not have escaped the +conclusion that Hester was a victim of manifold delusions. But, +fortunately for herself, she saw that most ladders possessed more +than the one rung on which she was standing.</p> +<p>"That is quite different, isn't it," said Hester, "from thinking +Dr. Brown is a gray wolf?"</p> +<p>"Quite different. That was an hallucination of fever. You see +that for yourself now that you have no fever."</p> +<p>"I see that, of course, now that I have no fever," repeated +Hester, her eyes widening. "But one hallucination quite as foolish +as that is always coming back, and I can't shake it off. The wolf +was gone directly, but this is just the same now I am better, only +it gets worse and worse. I have never spoken of it to any one, +because I know it is so silly. But Rachel—I have no fever +now—and yet—I know you'll laugh at me—I laugh at +my own foolish self—and yet all the time I have a horrible +feeling that"—Hester's eyes had in them a terror that was +hardly human—"that my book is burned."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER +XLVII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>The soul of thy brother is a dark forest. —<i>Russian +Proverb</i>.</p> +</div> +<p>"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, +between Hugh St. John Scarlett, of Kenstone Manor, Shropshire, only +son of the late Lord Henry Scarlett, and Rachel, only child of the +late Joshua Hopkins West, of Birmingham."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>This announcement appeared in the <i>Morning Post</i> a few days +after Christmas, and aroused many different emotions in the breasts +of those who read it.</p> +<p>"She has done it to spite me," said Mr. Tristram to himself over +his morning rasher, in the little eating-house near his studio. "I +knew there was some one else in her mind when she refused me. I +rather thought it was that weedy fellow with the high nose. Will he +make her happy because he is a lord's son? That is what I should +like to ask her. Poor Rachel, if we had been able to marry five +years ago we should never have heard of this society craze. Well, +it's all over now." And Mr. Tristram henceforward took the position +of a man suffering from an indelible attachment to a woman who had +thrown him over for a title.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>The Gresleys were astonished at the engagement. It was so +extraordinary that they should know both persons. Now that they +came to think of it, both of them had been to tea at the Vicarage +only last summer.</p> +<p>"A good many people pop in and out of this house," they +agreed.</p> +<p>"I am as certain as that I stand here," said Mr. Gresley, who +was sitting down, "that that noisy boor, that underbred, +foul-mouthed Dick Vernon wanted to marry her."</p> +<p>"Don't mention him," said Mrs. Gresley. "When I think of what he +dared to say—"</p> +<p>"My love," said Mr. Gresley, "I have forgiven him. I have put +from my mind all he said, for I am convinced he was under the +influence of drink at the time. We must make allowance for those +who live in hot climates. I bear him no grudge. But I am glad that +a man of that stamp should not marry Miss West. Drunkenness makes a +hell of married life. Mr. Scarlett, though he looked delicate, had +at least the appearance of being abstemious."</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Fräulein heard the news as she was packing her boxes to +leave Warpington Vicarage. She was greatly depressed. She could not +be with her dear Miss Gresley in this mysterious illness which some +secret sorrow had brought upon her; but at least Miss West could +minister to her. And now it seemed Miss West was thinking of +"Braütigams" more than of Hester.</p> +<p>Fräulein had been very uncomfortable at the Vicarage, but +she wept at leaving. Mrs. Gresley had never attained to treating +her with the consideration which she would have accorded to one +whom she considered her equal. The servants were allowed to +disregard with impunity her small polite requests. The nurse was +consistently, ferociously jealous of her. But the children had made +up for all, and now she was leaving them; and she did not own it to +herself, for she was but five-and-thirty and the shyest of the shy; +but she should see no more that noble-hearted, that musical Herr +B-r-r-rown.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>"Doll," said Sybell Loftus to her husband at breakfast, "I've +made another match. I thought at the time he liked her. You +remember Rachel West, not pretty, but with a nice +expression—and what does beauty matter? She is engaged to Mr. +Scarlett."</p> +<p>"Quiet, decent chap," said Doll; "and I like <i>her</i>. No +nonsense about her. Good thing he wasn't drowned."</p> +<p>"Mr. Harvey will feel it. He confided to me that she was his +ideal. Now Rachel is everything that is sweet and good and dear, +and she will make a most excellent wife, but I should never have +thought, would you, that she could be anybody's ideal?"</p> +<p>Doll opened his mouth to say, "That depends," but remembered +that his wife had taken an unaccountable dislike to that simple +phrase, and remained silent.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Captain Pratt, who was spending Christmas with his family, was +the only person at Warpington Towers who read the papers. On this +particular morning he came down to a late breakfast after the +others had finished. His father, who was always down at eight, +secretly admired his son's aristocratic habits, while he affected +to laugh at them. "Shameful luxurious ways, these young men in the +Guards. Fashionable society is rotten, sir; rotten to the core. +Never get up till noon. My boy is as bad as any of them."</p> +<p>Captain Pratt propped up the paper open before him while he +sipped his coffee and glanced down the columns. His travelling eye +reached Hugh's engagement.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt rarely betrayed any feeling except ennui, but as +he read, astonishment got the better of him.</p> +<p>"By George!" he said, below his breath.</p> +<p>The bit of omelette on its way to his mouth was slowly lowered +again, and remained sticking on the end of his fork.</p> +<p><i>What did it mean?</i> He recalled that scene in Hugh's rooms +<i>only last week</i>. He had spoken of it to no one, for he +intended to earn gratitude by his discretion. Of course, Scarlett +was going to marry Lady Newhaven after a decent interval. She was a +very beautiful woman, with a large jointure, and she was obviously +in love with him. The question of her conduct was not considered. +It never entered Captain Pratt's head, any more than that of a +ten-year-old child. He was aware that all the women of the upper +classes were immoral, except newly come-out girls. That was an +established fact. The only difference between the individuals, +which caused a separation as of the sheep from the goats, was +whether they were compromised or not. Lady Newhaven was not, unless +he chose to compromise her. No breath of scandal had ever touched +her.</p> +<p>But what was Scarlett about? Could they have quarrelled? What +did it mean? <i>And what would she do now?</i></p> +<p>"By George!" said Captain Pratt, again, and the agate eyes +narrowed down to two slits.</p> +<p>He sat a long time motionless, his untasted breakfast before +him. His mind was working, weighing, applying now its scales, now +its thermometer.</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Rachel and Hugh were sitting together looking at a paragraph in +the <i>Morning Post</i>.</p> +<p>"Does Miss Gresley take any interest?" said Hugh.</p> +<p>He was a little jealous of Hester. This illness, the cause of +which had sincerely grieved him, had come at an inopportune moment. +Hester was always taking Rachel from him.</p> +<p>"Yes," said Rachel, "a little when she remembers. But she can +only think of one thing."</p> +<p>"That unhappy book."</p> +<p>"Yes. I think the book was to Hester something of what you are +to me. Her whole heart was wrapped up in it—and she has lost +it. Hugh, whatever happens, you must not be lost now. It is too +late. I could not bear it."</p> +<p>"I can only be lost if you throw me away," said Hugh.</p> +<p>There was a long silence.</p> +<p>"Lady Newhaven will know to-day," said Rachel at last. "I tried +to break it to her, but she did not believe me."</p> +<p>"Rachel," said Hugh, stammering, "I meant to tell you the other +day, only we were interrupted, that <i>she</i> came to my rooms the +evening before I came down here. I should not have minded quite so +much, but Captain Pratt came in with me and—found her +there."</p> +<p>"Oh Hugh, that dreadful man! Poor woman!"</p> +<p>"Poor woman!" said Hugh, his eyes flashing. "It was poor you I +thought of. Poor Rachel! to be marrying a man who—"</p> +<p>There was another silence.</p> +<p>"I have one great compensation," said Rachel, laying her cool, +strong hand on his. "You are open with me. You keep nothing back. +You need not have mentioned this unlucky meeting, but you did. It +was like you. I trust you entirely, Hugh. I bless and thank you for +loving me. If my love can make you happy, oh Hughie, you will be +happy."</p> +<p>Hugh shrank from her. The faltered words were as a two-edged +sword.</p> +<p>She looked at the sensitive, paling face with tender +comprehension. The mother-look crept into her eyes.</p> +<p>"If there is anything else that you wish to tell me, tell me +now."</p> +<p>A wild, overwhelming impulse to fling himself over the precipice +out of the reach of those stabbing words! A horrible nauseating +recoil that seemed to rend his whole being.</p> +<p>Somebody said hoarsely:</p> +<p>"There is nothing else."</p> +<p>It was his own voice, but not his will, that spoke. Had any one +ever made him suffer like this woman who loved him?</p> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<p>Lady Newhaven had returned to Westhope ill with suspense and +anxiety. She had felt sure she should successfully waylay Hugh in +his rooms, convinced that if they could but meet the clouds between +them (to borrow from her vocabulary) would instantly roll away. +They had met, and the clouds had not rolled away. She vainly +endeavored to attribute Hugh's evident anger at the sight of her to +her want of prudence, to the accident of Captain Pratt's presence. +She would not admit the thought that Hugh had ceased to care for +her, but it needed a good deal of forcible thrusting away. She +could hear the knock of the unwelcome guest upon her door, and +though always refused admittance he withdrew only to return. She +had been grievously frightened, too, at having been seen in +equivocal circumstances by such a man as Captain Pratt. The very +remembrance made her shiver.</p> +<p>"How angry Edward would have been," she said to herself. "I +wonder whether he would have advised me to write a little note to +Captain Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to +mention it. But, of course, he won't repeat it. He won't want to +make an enemy of me and Hugh. The Pratts think so much of me. And +when I marry Hugh"—(knock at the mental door)—"<i>if +ever</i> I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him and have him to +stay. Edward never would, but I don't think so much of good family, +and all that, as Edward did. We will certainly ask him."</p> +<p>It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after +scanning the <i>Ladies' Pictorial</i>, languidly opened the +<i>Morning Post</i>.</p> +<p>Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor. She +seized it up and read again the paragraph which had caught her +eye.</p> +<p>"No! No!" she gasped. "It is not true. It is not possible." And +she read it a third time.</p> +<p>The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it +remained on the floor.</p> +<p>It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known +what suffering was. She had talked freely of it to others. She had +sung, as if it were her own composition, "Cleansing Fires." She +often said it might have been written for her.</p> +<div class='blockquot'>In the cruel fire of sorrow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">[<i>slow, soft +pedal</i>.</span><br /> +Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">[<i>both pedals down, +quicker</i>.</span><br /> +Let thy hand be firm and steady,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">[<i>loud, and hold on to last +syllable</i>.</span><br /> +Do not let thy spi-rit quail,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">[<i>bang! B natural. With +resolution</i>.</span><br /> +Bu-ut. . . .<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">[<i>hurricane of false notes, etc., +etc.</i></span></div> +<p>But now, poor thing, the fire had reached her, and her spirit +quailed immediately. Perhaps it was only natural that as her +courage failed something else should take its place; an implacable +burning resentment against her two betrayers, her lover and her +friend. She rocked herself to and fro. Lover and friend. "Oh, +never, never trust in man's love or woman's friendship henceforth +forever!" So learned Lady Newhaven the lesson of suffering.</p> +<p>"Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me," she sobbed, "and +mine acquaintance out of my sight."</p> +<p>A ring at the door-bell proved that the latter part of the text, +at any rate, was not true in her case.</p> +<p>A footman entered.</p> +<p>"Not at home. Not at home," she said, impatiently.</p> +<p>"I said not at home, but the gentleman said I was to take up his +card," said the man, presenting a card.</p> +<p>When Captain Pratt tipped, he tipped heavily.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven read it.</p> +<p>"No. Yes. I will see him," she said. It flashed across her mind +that she must be civil to him, and that her eyes were not red. She +had not shed tears.</p> +<p>The man picked the newspaper from the floor, put it on a side +table, and withdrew.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt came in, bland, deferential, orchid in +button-hole.</p> +<p>It was not until he was actually in the room, his cold +appraising eyes upon her, that the poor woman realized that her +position towards him had changed. She could not summon up the +nonchalant distant civility which, according to her ideas, was +sufficient for her country neighbors in general, and the Pratts in +particular.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt opined that the weather, though cold, was +seasonable.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven agreed.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt regretted the hard frost on account of the +hunting. Four hunters eating their heads off, etc.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven thought the thaw might come any day.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt had been skating yesterday on the parental flooded +meadow. Flooded with fire-engine. Men out of work. Glad of +employment, etc.</p> +<p>How kind of Captain Pratt to employ them.</p> +<p>Not at all. It was his father. Duties of the landed gentry, etc. +He believed if the frost continued they would skate on +Beaumere.</p> +<p>No; no one was allowed to skate on Beaumere. The springs +rendered the ice treacherous.</p> +<p>Silence.</p> +<p>Captain Pratt turned the gold knob of his stick slowly in his +thick, white fingers. He looked carefully at Lady Newhaven, as a +connoisseur with intent to buy looks at a piece of valuable china. +She was accustomed to being looked at, but there was something in +Captain Pratt's prolonged scrutiny which filled her with vague +alarm. She writhed under it. He observed her uneasiness, but he did +not remove his eyes.</p> +<p>Were the boys well?</p> +<p>They were quite well, thanks. She was cowed.</p> +<p>Were they fond of skating?</p> +<p>Very fond.</p> +<p>Might he suggest that they should come over and skate at +Warpington Towers to-morrow. He himself would be there, and would +take charge of them.</p> +<p>He rose slowly, as one who has made up his mind. Lady Newhaven +feared it would be troubling Captain Pratt too much.</p> +<p>It would be no trouble to Captain Pratt; on the contrary, a +pleasure.</p> +<p>His hand was now extended. Lady Newhaven had to put hers into +it.</p> +<p>Perhaps next week if the frost held. She tried to withdraw her +hand. Oh, well, then, to-morrow; certainly, to-morrow.</p> +<p>"You may rely on me to take care of them," said Captain Pratt, +still holding her hand. He obliged her to look at him. His hard +eyes met her frightened blue ones. "You may rely on my discretion +entirely—in all matters," he said, meaningly.</p> +<p>Lady Newhaven winced, and her hand trembled violently in +his.</p> +<p>He pressed the shrinking little hand, let it go, and went +away.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER +XLVIII</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Le temps apporte, emporte, mais ne rapporte pas."</p> +</div> +<p>"May I come in?" said the Bishop, tapping at Hester's door.</p> +<p>"Do come in."</p> +<p>Hester was lying propped up by many cushions on a sofa in the +little sitting-room leading out of her bedroom. She looked a mere +shadow in the fire-light.</p> +<p>She smiled at him mechanically, but her face relapsed at once +into the apathetic expression which sat so ill upon it. Her +lustreless eyes fixed themselves again on the fire.</p> +<p>"And what are you going to do this afternoon?" she said, +politely. It was obvious she did not care what he did.</p> +<p>"I am going to Westhope on business," he said, looking narrowly +at her. It was all very well for Dr. Brown to say she must be +roused; but how were his instructions to be carried out?</p> +<p>"I am a great deal of trouble to you," said Hester. "Could not I +be sent to a home, or a place where you go through a cure, where I +should be out of the way till I'm well?"</p> +<p>"Have I deserved that, Hester?"</p> +<p>"No; but you know I always try to wound my best friends."</p> +<p>"You don't succeed, my child, because they know you are in heavy +trouble."</p> +<p>"We will not speak of that," said Hester, quickly.</p> +<p>"Yes, the time has come to speak of it. Why do you shut us out +of this sorrow? Don't you see that you make our burdens heavier by +refusing to let us share yours?"</p> +<p>"You can't share it," said Hester; "no one can."</p> +<p>"Do you think I have not grieved over it?"</p> +<p>"I know you have, but it was waste of time. It's no +good—no good. Please don't cheer me, and tell me I shall +write better books yet, and that this trial is for my good. Dear +Bishop, don't try and comfort me. I can't bear it."</p> +<p>"My poor child, I firmly believe you will write better books +than the one which is lost, and I firmly believe that you will one +day look back upon this time as a stop in your spiritual life, but +I had not intended to say so. The thought was in my mind, but it +was you who put the words into my mouth."</p> +<p>"I was so afraid that—"</p> +<p>"That I was going to improve the occasion?"</p> +<p>"Yes. Dr. Brown and the nurse are so dreadfully cheerful now, +and always talking about the future, and how celebrated I shall be +some day. If you and Rachel follow suit I shall—I think I +shall—go out of my mind."</p> +<p>The Bishop did not answer.</p> +<p>"Dr. Brown may be right," Hester went on. "I may live to +seventy, and I may become—what does he call it?—a +distinguished author. I don't know and I don't care. But whatever +happens in the future, nothing will bring back the book which was +burned."</p> +<p>The Bishop did not speak. He dared not.</p> +<p>"If I had a child," Hester continued, in the exhausted voice +with which he was becoming familiar, "and it died, I might have ten +more, beautiful and clever and affectionate, but they would not +replace the one I had lost. Only if it were a child," a little +tremor broke the dead level of the passionless voice, "I should +meet it again in heaven. There is the resurrection of the body for +the children of the body, but there is no resurrection that I ever +heard of for the children of the brain."</p> +<p>Hester held her thin right hand with its disfigured first finger +to the fire.</p> +<p>"A great writer who had married and had children, whom she +worshipped, once told me that the pang of motherhood is that even +your children don't seem your very own. They are often more like +some one else than their parents, perhaps the spinster +sister-in-law, whom every one dislikes, or some entire alien. Look +at Regie. He is just like me, which must be a great trial to Minna. +And they grow up bewildering their parents at every turn by +characteristics they don't understand. But she said the spiritual +children, the books, are really ours.</p> +<p>"If you were other than you are," said Hester, after a long +pause, "you would reprove me for worshipping my own work. I suppose +love is worship. I loved it for itself, not for anything it was to +bring me. That is what people like Dr. Brown don't understand. It +was part of myself. But it was the better part. The side of me +which loves success, and which he is always appealing to, had no +hand in it. My one prayer was that I might be worthy to write it, +that it might not suffer by contact with me. I spent myself upon +it." Hester's voice sank. "I knew what I was doing. I joyfully +spent my health, my eyesight, my very life upon it. I was impelled +to do it by what you perhaps will call a blind instinct, what I, +poor simpleton and dupe, believed at the time to be nothing less +than the will of God."</p> +<p>"You will think so again," said the Bishop, "when you realize +that the book has left its mark and influence upon your character. +It has taught you a great deal. The mere fact of writing it has +strengthened you. The outward and visible form is dead, but its +spirit lives on in you. You will realize this presently."</p> +<p>"Shall I? On the contrary, the only thing I realize is that it +is not God who is mocked, but His foolish children who try to do +His bidding. It seems He is not above putting a lying spirit in the +mouth of his prophets. Do you think I still blame poor James for +his bonfire, or his jealous little wife who wanted to get rid of +me? Why should I? They acted up to their lights as your beloved +Jock did when he squeezed the life out of that rabbit in Westhope +Park. In all those days when I did not say anything, it was because +I felt I had been deceived. I had done my part. God had not done +His. He should have seen to it that the book was not destroyed. You +prayed by me once when you thought I was unconscious. I heard all +right. I should have laughed if I could, but it was too much +trouble."</p> +<p>"These thoughts will pass away with your illness," said the +Bishop. "You are like a man who has had a blow, who staggers about +giddy and dazed, and sees the pavement rising up to strike him. The +pavement is firm under his feet all the time."</p> +<p>"Half of me knows in a dim blind way that God is the same +always," said Hester, "while the other half says, 'Curse God and +die.'"</p> +<p>"That is the giddiness, the vertigo after the shock."</p> +<p>"Is it? I dare say you are right. But I don't care either +way."</p> +<p>"Why trouble your mind about it, or about anything?"</p> +<p>"Because I have a feeling, indeed, it would be extraordinary if +I had not, for Dr. Brown is always rubbing it in, that I ought to +meet my trouble bravely, and not sink down under it, as he thinks I +am doing now. He says others have suffered more than I have. I know +that, for I have been with them. It seems," said Hester, with the +ghost of a smile, "that there is an etiquette about these things, +just as the blinds are drawn up after a funeral. The moment has +come for me, but I have not drawn up my blinds."</p> +<p>"You will draw them up presently."</p> +<p>"I would draw them up now," said Hester, looking at him +steadily, "if I could. I owe it to you and Rachel to try, and I +have tried, but I can't."</p> +<p>The Bishop's cheek paled a little.</p> +<p>"Take your own time," he said, but his heart sank.</p> +<p>He saw a little boat with torn sail and broken rudder, drifting +on to a lee shore.</p> +<p>"I seem to have been living at a great strain for the last +year," said Hester. "I don't know one word from another now, but I +think I mean concentration. That means holding your mind to one +place, doesn't it? Well, now, something seems to have broken, and I +can't fix it to anything any more. I can talk to you and Rachel for +a few minutes if I hold my mind tight, but I can't really attend, +and directly I am alone, or you leave off speaking, my mind gets +loose from my body and wanders away to an immense distance, to +long, dreary, desert places. And then if you come in I make a great +effort to bring it back, and to open my eyes, because if I don't +you think I'm ill. You don't mind if I shut them now, do +you?—because I've explained about them, and holding them open +does tire me so. I wish they could be propped open. And—my +mind gets farther and further away every day. I hope you and Rachel +won't think I am giving way if—sometime—I really can't +bring it back any longer."</p> +<p>"Dear Hester, no."</p> +<p>"I will not talk any more then. If you and Rachel understand, +that is all that matters. I used to think so many things mattered, +but I don't now. And don't think I'm grieving about the book while +I'm lying still. I have grieved, but it is over. I'm too tired to +be glad or sorry about anything any more."</p> +<p>Hester lay back spent and gray among her pillows.</p> +<p>The Bishop roused her to take the stimulant put ready near at +hand, and then sat a long time watching her. She seemed unconscious +of his presence. At last the nurse came in, and he went out +silently, and returned to his study. Rachel was waiting there to +hear the result of the interview.</p> +<p>"I can do nothing," he said. "I have no power to help her. After +forty years ministry I have not a word to say to her. She is beyond +human aid—at least, she is beyond mine."</p> +<p>"You think she will die?"</p> +<p>"I do not see what is going to happen to prevent it, but I am +certain it might be prevented."</p> +<p>"You could not rouse her?"</p> +<p>"No, she discounted anything I could have said, by asking me not +to say it. That is the worst of Hester. The partition between her +mind and that of other people is so thin that she sees what they +are thinking about. Thank God, Rachel, that you are not cursed with +the artistic temperament! That is why she has never married. She +sees too much. I am not a match-maker, but if I had had to take the +responsibility, I should have married her at seventeen to Lord +Newhaven."</p> +<p>"You know he asked her?"</p> +<p>"No, I did not know it."</p> +<p>"It was a long time ago, when first she came out. Lady Susan was +anxious for it, and pressed her. I sometimes think if she had been +given time, and if her aunt had let her alone—but he married +within the year. But what are we to do about Hester? Dr. Brown says +something must be done, or she will sink in a decline. I would give +my life for her, but I can do nothing. I have tried."</p> +<p>"So have I," said the Bishop. "But it has come to this. We have +got to trust the one person whom we always show we tacitly distrust +by trying to take matters out of His hands. We must trust God. So +far we have strained ourselves to keep Hester alive, but she is +past our help now. She is in none the worse case for that. We are +her two best friends save one. We must leave her to the best Friend +of all. God has her in His hand. For the moment the greater love +holds her away from the less, like the mother who takes her sick +child into her arms, apart from the other children who are playing +round her. Hester is in God's keeping, and that is enough for us. +And now take a turn in the garden, Rachel. You are too much +in-doors. I am going out on business."</p> +<p>When Rachel had left him the Bishop opened his despatch-box and +took out a letter.</p> +<p>It was directed to Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>"I promised to give it into her own hand a month after his +death, whenever that might happen to be," he said to himself. +"There was some trouble between them. I hope she won't confide it +to me. Anyhow, I must go and get it over. I wish I did not dislike +her so much. I shall advise her not to read it till I am gone."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>The mouse fell from the ceiling, and the cat +cried, "Allah!"<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 21.5em;">—Syrian +Proverb.</span></div> +<p>That help should come through such a recognized channel as a +Bishop could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had +had the greatest faith in the clergy all her life, but, +nevertheless, so overwhelmed was she by despair and its physical +sensations, that she very nearly refused to see the Bishop when he +called. Her faith even in lawn sleeves momentarily tottered. Who +would show her any good? Poor Lady Newhaven was crushed into a +state of prostration so frightful that we must not blame her if she +felt that even an Archbishop would have been powerless to help +her.</p> +<p>She had thought, after the engagement was announced, of rushing +up to London and insisting on seeing Hugh; but always, after she +had looked out the trains, her courage had shrunk back at the last +moment. There had been a look on Hugh's face during that last +momentary meeting which she could not nerve herself to see again. +She had been to London already once to see him, without +success.</p> +<p>She knew Rachel was at the Palace at Southminster nursing +Hester, and twice she had ordered the carriage to drive over to see +her, and make a desperate appeal to her to give up Hugh. But she +knew that she should fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women +always did over a defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The +frightful injustice of it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the +point of agony. To see her own property deliberately stolen from +her in the light of day, as it were, in the very market-place, +before everybody, without being able to raise a finger to regain +him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as she was +capable of loving anything. And her mind had grown round the idea +that he was hers as entirely as a tree will grow round a nail +fastened into it.</p> +<p>And now he was to marry Rachel, and soon. Let no one think they +know pain until they know jealousy.</p> +<p>But when the Bishop sent up a second time, asking to see her on +business, she consented.</p> +<p>It was too soon to see callers, of course. But a Bishop was +different. And how could she refuse to admit him when she had +admitted that odious Captain Pratt only four days before. She hoped +no one would become aware of that fact. It was as well for her that +she could not hear the remarks of Selina and Ada Pratt, as they +skated on the frozen meadows with half, not the better-half, of +Middleshire.</p> +<p>"Poor Vi Newhaven. Yes, she won't see a creature. She saw Algy +for a few minutes last week, but then he is an old friend, and does +not count. He said she was quite heart-broken. He was quite upset +himself. He was so fond of Ted Newhaven."</p> +<p>The Bishop would not even sit down. He said he was on the way to +a confirmation, and added that he had been entrusted with a letter +for her, and held it towards her.</p> +<p>"It is my husband's handwriting," she said, drawing back, with +instinctive fear.</p> +<p>"It is from your husband," said the Bishop, gently, softening +somewhat at the sight of the ravages which despair had made in the +lovely face since he had last seen it. "He asked me to give it into +your own hand a month after his death."</p> +<p>"Then he told you that—"</p> +<p>"He told me nothing, and I wish to hear nothing."</p> +<p>"I should like to confess all to you, to feel myself absolved," +said Lady Newhaven in a low voice, the letter in her trembling +hand.</p> +<p>He looked at her, and he saw that she would not say all. She +would arrange details to suit herself, and would omit the main +point altogether, whatever it might be, if, as it was more than +probable, it told against herself. He would at least save her from +the hypocrisy of a half-confession.</p> +<p>"If in a month's time you wish to make a full confession to me," +he said, "I will hear it. But I solemnly charge you in the +meanwhile to speak to no one of this difficulty between you and +your husband. Whatever it may have been, it is past. If he sinned +against you, he is dead, and the least you can do is to keep +silence. If you wronged him"—Lady Newhaven shook her head +vehemently—"if you wronged him," repeated the Bishop, his +face hardening, "be silent for the sake of the children. It is the +only miserable reparation you can make him."</p> +<p>"You don't understand," she said, feebly.</p> +<p>"I know that he was a kindly, gentle-natured man, and that he +died a hard and bitter one," said the Bishop. "God knows what is in +that letter, but your husband said it would be of the greatest +comfort and assistance to you in a difficulty which he foresaw for +you. I will leave you to read it."</p> +<p>And he left the room.</p> +<p>The early December twilight was creeping over everything. Lady +Newhaven took the letter to the window, and after several futile +attempts succeeded in opening it.</p> +<p>It ran as follows:</p> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"It is irreligious to mourn too long for the dead. 'I shall go +to him, but he shall not return to me'—II. Sam. xii. 23. In +the meanwhile, until you rejoin me, I trust you will remember that +it is my especial wish that you should allow one who is in every +way worthy of you to console you for my loss, who will make you as +happy as you both deserve to be. That I died by my own hand you and +your so-called friend Miss West are of course aware. That 'the one +love of your life' drew the short lighter you are perhaps not +aware. I waited two days to see if he would fulfil the compact, and +as he did not—I never thought he would—I retired in his +place. I present to you this small piece of information as a +wedding-present, which, if adroitly handled, may add to the harmony +of domestic life. And if by any chance he should have conceived the +dastardly, the immoral idea of deserting you in favor of some +mercenary marriage—of which I rather suspect him—you +will find this piece of information invaluable in restoring his +allegiance at once. He is yours by every sacred tie, and no +treacherous female friend must wrest him from you.</p> +</div> +<div class='blockquot'><span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">Your late +husband,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">"NEWHAVEN."</span></div> +<p>Lady Newhaven put the letter in her pocket, and then fainted +away, with her fair head on the window-ledge.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L</h2> +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is."</p> +</div> +<p>The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy +of mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district +visitors' working party in the drawing-room at the Palace. The +ladies knitted and stitched, while one of their number heaped fuel +on the flame of their enthusiasm by reading aloud the "History of +the Diocese of Southminster."</p> +<p>Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and +Hester in her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed +lines seem, as a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when +she remembered them, but her heart was where her treasure +was—namely, in her escritoire, with her list of +Bible-classes, and servants' choral unions, and the long roll of +contributors to the guild of work which she herself had +started.</p> +<p>When she had been up to Hester's room, invariably at hours when +Hester could not see her, and when she had entered Rachel's +sledge-hammer subscriptions in her various account-books, her +attention left her visitors. She considered them superficial, and +wondered how it was that her brother could find time to spend hours +talking to both of them, while he had rarely a moment in which to +address her chosen band in the drawing-room. She was one of those +persons who find life a very prosaic affair, quite unlike the +fiction she occasionally read.</p> +<p>She often remarked that nothing except the commonplace happened. +Certainly she never observed anything else.</p> +<p>So Hester lay in the room above, halting feebly between two +opinions, whether to live or to die, and Rachel sat in the Bishop's +study beneath, waiting to make tea for him on his return from the +confirmation.</p> +<p>If she did not make it, no one else did. Instead of ringing for +it he went without it.</p> +<p>Rachel watched the sun set—a red ball dropping down a +frosty sky. It was the last day of the year. The new year was +bringing her everything.</p> +<p>"Good-bye, good-bye," she said, looking at the last rim of the +sun as he sank. And she remembered other years when she had watched +the sun set on the last day of December, when life had been +difficult—how difficult!</p> +<p>"If Hester could only get better I should have nothing left to +wish for," she said, and she prayed the more fervently for her +friend, because she knew that even if Hester died, life would still +remain beautiful; the future without her would still be flooded +with happiness.</p> +<p>"A year ago if Hester had died I should have had nothing left to +live for," she said to herself. "Now this newcomer, this man whom I +have known barely six months, fills my whole life. Are other women +as narrow as I am? Can they care only for one person at a time like +me? Ah, Hester! forgive me, I can't help it."</p> +<p>Hugh was coming in presently. He had been in that morning, and +the Bishop had met him, and had asked him to come in again to tea. +Rachel did not know what the Bishop thought of him, but he had +managed to see a good deal of Hugh.</p> +<p>Rachel waited as impatiently as most of us, when our happiness +lingers by us, loth to depart.</p> +<p>At last she heard the footman bringing some one across the +hall.</p> +<p>Would Hugh's coming ever become a common thing? Would she ever +be able to greet him without this tumult of emotion, ever be able +to take his hand without turning giddy on the sheer verge of +bliss?</p> +<p>The servant announced, "Lady Newhaven."</p> +<p>The two women stood looking at each other. Rachel saw the marks +of suffering on the white face, and her own became as white. Her +eyes fell guiltily before Lady Newhaven's.</p> +<p>"Forgive me," she said.</p> +<p>"Forgive you?" said Lady Newhaven, in a hoarse voice. "It is no +use asking me for forgiveness."</p> +<p>"You are right," said Rachel, recovering herself, and meeting +Lady Newhaven's eyes fully. "But what is the use of coming here to +abuse me? You might have spared yourself and me this at least. It +will only exhaust you and—wound me."</p> +<p>"You must give him up," said Lady Newhaven, her hands fumbling +under her crape cloak. "I've come to tell you that you must let him +go."</p> +<p>The fact that Hugh had drawn the short lighter, and had not +taken the consequences, did not affect Lady Newhaven's feelings +towards him in the least, but she was vaguely aware that somehow it +would affect Rachel's, and now it would be Rachel's turn to +suffer.</p> +<p>Rachel paused a moment, and then said, slowly:</p> +<p>"He does not wish to be let go."</p> +<p>"He is mine."</p> +<p>"He was yours once," said Rachel, her face turning from white to +gray. That wound was long in healing. "But he is mine now."</p> +<p>"Rachel, you cannot be bad all through." Lady Newhaven was +putting the constraint upon herself which that tightly clutched +paper, that poisoned weapon in reserve, enabled her to assume. For +Hugh's sake she would only use it if other means failed. "You must +know that you ought to look upon him as a married man. Don't you +see"—wildly—"that we <i>must</i> marry, to put right +what was wrong? He owes it to me. People always do."</p> +<p>"Yes, they generally do," said Rachel; "but I don't see how it +makes the wrong right."</p> +<p>"I look upon Hugh as my husband," said Lady Newhaven.</p> +<p>"So do I."</p> +<p>"Rachel, he loves me. He is only marrying you for your +money."</p> +<p>"I will risk that."</p> +<p>"I implore you on my knees to give him back to me."</p> +<p>And Lady Newhaven knelt down with bare, white outstretched +hands. (Tableau number one. New Series.)</p> +<p>Rachel shrank back involuntarily.</p> +<p>"Listen, Violet," she said, "and get up. I will not speak until +you get up." Lady Newhaven obeyed. "If I gave back Hugh to you a +hundred times it would not make him love you any more, or make him +marry you. I am not keeping him from you. This marriage is his own +doing. Oh! Violet, I'm not young and pretty. I've no illusions +about myself; but I believe he really does love me, in spite of +that, and I know I love him."</p> +<p>"I don't believe it," said Lady Newhaven. "I mean about him. Not +about you, of course."</p> +<p>"Here he is. Let him decide," said Rachel.</p> +<p>Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that +concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep +of the heart and gleams up into the eyes.</p> +<p>His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the +other. Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, +but she could not.</p> +<p>"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, +"Lady Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best +if she heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not +believe from mine."</p> +<p>"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will +desert me now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you +will cast me aside for another woman."</p> +<p>Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and +taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a +boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy +as a match to gunpowder.</p> +<p>Rachel kept his hand.</p> +<p>"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, +holding convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. +He will cast you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are +you sure you want to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He +murdered my husband."</p> +<p>Rachel's hand tightened on Hugh's.</p> +<p>"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must +abide by the drawing."</p> +<p>"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew +the short lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part +when the time was up? Tell me that."</p> +<p>"You are mad," said Rachel.</p> +<p>"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in +her shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not +him, he would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his +writing, written to tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn +the short lighter, but that, as he had not killed himself when the +time came, he, Edward, did so instead. That was why he was late. We +always wondered, Rachel, why he was two days late. Read it! Read +it!"</p> +<p>"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do +not believe a word of it."</p> +<p>"You shall believe it. Ask him to deny it, if he can."</p> +<p>"You need not trouble to deny it," said Rachel, looking full at +Hugh.</p> +<p>The world held only her and him. And as Hugh looked into her +eyes his soul rose up and scaled the heights above it till it stood +beside hers.</p> +<p>There is a sacred place where, if we follow close in Love's +footsteps, we see him lay aside his earthly quiver and his bitter +arrows, and turn to us as he is, with the light of God upon him, +one with us as one with God. In that pure light lies cease to be. +We know them no more, neither remember them, for love and truth are +one.</p> +<p>Hugh strode across to Lady Newhaven, took the letter from her, +and threw it into the heart of the fire. Then he turned to +Rachel.</p> +<p>"I drew the short lighter," he said. "I meant to take the +consequences at first, but when the time came—I did not. +Partly I was afraid, and partly I could not leave you."</p> +<p>If Lady Newhaven yearned for revenge she had it then. They had +both forgotten her. But she saw Rachel's eyes change as the eyes of +a man at the stake might change when the fire reached him. She +shrank back from the agony in them. Hugh's face became pinched and +thin as a dead man's. A moment ago he saw no consequences. He saw +only that he could not lie to her. His mind fell headlong from its +momentary foothold. What mad impulse had betrayed him to his +ruin?</p> +<p>"You drew the short lighter, and you let me think all the time +he had," said Rachel, her voice almost inaudible in its fierce +passion. "You drew it, and you let him die instead of you, as any +one who knew him would know he would. And when he was dead you came +to me, and kept me in ignorance even—that time—when I +said I trusted you."</p> +<p>The remembrance of that meeting was too much.</p> +<p>Rachel turned her eyes on Lady Newhaven, who was watching her +terror-stricken.</p> +<p>"I said I would not give him up, but I will," she said, +violently. "You can take him if you want him. What was it you said +to me, Hugh? That if you had drawn the short lighter you would have +had to abide by it. Yes, that was it. Your whole intercourse with +me has been one lie from first to last. You were right, Violet, +when you said he ought to marry you. It will be another lie on the +top of all the others."</p> +<p>"It was what Edward wished," faltered his widow. "He says so in +the letter that has just been burned."</p> +<p>"Lord Newhaven wished it," said Rachel, looking at the miserable +man between them. "Poor Lord Newhaven! First his honor. Then his +life. You have taken everything he had. But there are still his +shoes."</p> +<p>"Rachel!" said Hugh, suddenly, and he fell on his knees before +her, clasping the hem of her gown.</p> +<p>She pushed him violently from her, tearing her gown in releasing +it from his frenzied grasp.</p> +<p>"Leave me," she whispered. Her voice was almost gone. "Coward +and liar, I will have nothing more to do with you."</p> +<p>He got upon his feet somehow. The two gray desperate faces spent +with passion faced each other. They were past speech.</p> +<p>He read his death-warrant in her merciless eyes. She looked at +the despair in his without flinching.</p> +<p>He stood a moment, and then feeling his way, like one half +blind, left the room, unconsciously pushing aside Lady Newhaven, +whom both had forgotten.</p> +<p>She gave one terrified glance at Rachel, and slipped out after +him.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, +such<br /> +As God made women, to save men by love—<br /> +By just my love I might have saved this man."<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">—ELIZABETH BARRETT +BROWNING.</span></div> +<p>"Has Lady Newhaven been here?" said the Bishop, coming into the +study, his hands full of papers. "I thought I saw her carriage +driving away as I came up."</p> +<p>"She has been here."</p> +<p>The Bishop looked up suddenly, his attention arrested by +Rachel's voice. There is a white heat of anger that mimics the +pallor of a fainting fit. The Bishop thought she was about to +swoon, until he saw her eyes. Those gentle faithful eyes were +burning. He shrank as one who sees the glare of fire raging inside +familiar windows.</p> +<p>"My poor child," he said, and he sat down heavily in his leather +arm-chair.</p> +<p>Rachel still stood. She looked at him, and her lips moved, but +no sound came forth.</p> +<p>The Bishop looked intently at her.</p> +<p>"Where is Scarlett?" he said.</p> +<p>"Hugh is gone," she said, stammering. "I have broken off my +engagement with him. He will never come back."</p> +<p>And she fell suddenly on her knees, and hid her convulsed face +against the arm of a chair.</p> +<p>The Bishop did not move. He waited for this paroxysm of anger to +subside. He had never seen Rachel angry before in all the years he +had known her, but he watched her without surprise. Only stupid +people think that coal cannot burn as fiercely as tow.</p> +<p>She remained a long time on her knees, her face hidden. The +Bishop did not hurry her. At last she began to sob silently, +shuddering from head to foot.</p> +<p>Then he came and sat down near her, and took the cold clinched +hands in his.</p> +<p>"Rachel, tell me," he said, gently.</p> +<p>She tried to pull her hands away, but he held them firmly. He +obliged her to look up at him. She raised her fierce, disfigured +face for a moment, and then let it fall on his hands and hers.</p> +<p>"I am a wicked woman," she said. "Don't trouble about me. I'm +not worth it. I thought I would have kept all suffering from him, +but now—if I could make him suffer—I would."</p> +<p>"I have no doubt he is suffering."</p> +<p>"Not enough. Not like me. And I loved him and trusted him. And +he is false, too, like that other man I loved; like you, only I +have not found you out yet; like Hester; like all the rest. I will +never trust any one again. I will never be deceived again. This +is—the—second time."</p> +<p>And Rachel broke into a passion of tears.</p> +<p>The Bishop released her hands and felt for his own +handkerchief.</p> +<p>Then he waited, praying silently. The clock had made a long +circuit before she raised herself.</p> +<p>"I am very selfish," she said, looking with compunction at the +kind, tired face. "I ought to have gone to my room instead of +breaking down here. Dear Bishop, forgive me. It is past now. I +shall not give way again."</p> +<p>"Will you make me some tea?" he said.</p> +<p>She made the tea with shaking hands and awkward, half-blind +movements. It was close on dinner-time, but she did not notice it. +He obliged her to drink some, and then he settled himself in his +leather arm-chair. He went over his engagements for the evening. In +half an hour he ought to be dining with Canon Glynn to meet an old +college friend. At eleven he had arranged to see a young clergyman +whose conscience was harrying him. He wrote a note on his knee +without moving, saying he could not come, and touched the bell at +his elbow. When the servant had taken the note he relapsed into the +depths of his arm-chair and sipped his tea.</p> +<p>"I think, Rachel," he said at last, "that I ought to tell you +that I partly guess at your reason for breaking off your +engagement. I have known for some time that there was trouble +between the Newhavens. From what Lady Newhaven said to me to-day, +and from the fact that she has been here, and that immediately +after seeing her you broke your engagement with Scarlett, I must +come to the conclusion that Scarlett had been the cause of this +trouble."</p> +<p>Rachel had regained her composure. Her face was white and +hard.</p> +<p>"You are right," she said. "He was at one time—her +lover."</p> +<p>"And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become +your husband?"</p> +<p>"No. He told me about it before he asked me to marry him. I +accepted him, knowing it."</p> +<p>"Then he was trying to retrieve himself. He acted towards you, +at any rate, like an honorable man."</p> +<p>Rachel laughed. "So I thought at the time."</p> +<p>"If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don't see why +you should have thrown him over. One dishonorable action sincerely +repented does not make a dishonorable man."</p> +<p>"I did not know all," said Rachel. "I do now."</p> +<p>The Bishop looked into the fire.</p> +<p>Her next words surprised him.</p> +<p>"You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?"</p> +<p>"I did."</p> +<p>"Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal +for the sake of his children—namely, his wife's +misconduct—I think I had better tell you the rest."</p> +<p>So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the +drawing of lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained +ignorant as to which had drawn the short lighter. How Hugh had +drawn it; how when the time came he had failed to fulfil the +agreement; how two days later Lord Newhaven had killed himself; and +how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of course, concluded that Lord +Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter.</p> +<p>Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little.</p> +<p>"Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married +woman. I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he +risked losing me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more. +I thought he was, at any rate, an upright man. After Lord +Newhaven's death he asked me to marry him, and I accepted him. And +when we were talking quietly one day"—Rachel's face became, +if possible, whiter than before—"I told him that I knew of +the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except the dead +man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself for +Lord Newhaven's death. He had brought it on himself. I said to +him"—Rachel's voice trembled more and more-"'It was an even +chance. You might have drawn the short lighter yourself.' +And—he—said that if he had, he should have had to abide +by it."</p> +<p>The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand. It seemed cruel to +look at Rachel, as it is cruel to watch a man drown.</p> +<p>"And how do you know he did draw it?" he said.</p> +<p>"It seems Lord Newhaven left his wife a letter, which she has +only just received, telling her so. She brought it here to-day to +show me."</p> +<p>"Ah! A letter! And you read it?"</p> +<p>"No," said Rachel, scornfully, "I did not read it. I did not +believe a word she said about it. Hugh was there, and I told him I +trusted him; and he took the letter from her, and put it in the +fire."</p> +<p>"And did he not contradict it?"</p> +<p>"No. He said it was true. He has lied to me over and over again; +but I saw he was speaking the truth for once."</p> +<p>There was a long silence.</p> +<p>"I don't know how other people regard those things," said Rachel +at last, less harshly—she was gradually recovering +herself—"but I know to me it was much worse that he could +deceive me than that he should have been Lady Newhaven's lover. I +did feel that dreadfully. I had to choke down my jealousy when he +kissed me. He had kissed her first. He had made that side of his +love common and profane; but the other side remained. I clung to +that. I believed he really loved me, and that supported me and +enabled me to forgive him, though men don't know what that +forgiveness costs us. Only the walls of our rooms know that. But it +seems to me much worse to have failed me on that other side as +well—to have deceived me—to have told me a +lie—just when—just when we were talking +intimately."</p> +<p>"It was infinitely worse," said the Bishop.</p> +<p>"And it was the action of a coward to draw lots in the first +instance if he did not mean to abide by the drawing, and the action +of a traitor, once they were drawn, not to abide by them. But yet, +if he had told me—if he had only told me the whole +truth—I loved him so entirely that I would have +forgiven—<i>even that</i>. But whenever I alluded to it, he +lied."</p> +<p>"He was afraid of losing you."</p> +<p>"He has lost me by his deceit. He would not have lost me if he +had told me the truth. I think—I know—that I could have +got over anything, forgiven anything, even his cowardice, if he had +only admitted it and been straightforward with me. A little plain +dealing was all I asked, but—I did not get it."</p> +<p>The Bishop looked sadly at her. Straightforwardness is so seldom +the first requirement a woman makes of the man she loves. Women, as +a rule, regard men and their conduct only from the point of view of +their relation to women—as sons, as husbands, as fathers. Yet +Rachel, it seemed, could forgive Hugh's sin against her as a woman, +but not his further sin against her as a friend.</p> +<p>"Yet it seems he did speak the truth at last," he said.</p> +<p>"Yes."</p> +<p>"And after he had destroyed the letter, which was the only proof +against him."</p> +<p>"Yes."</p> +<p>Another silence.</p> +<p>"I am glad you have thrown him over," said the Bishop, slowly, +"for you never loved him."</p> +<p>"I deceived myself in that case," said Rachel, bitterly. "My +only fear was that I loved him too much."</p> +<p>The Bishop's face had become fixed and stern.</p> +<p>"Listen to me, Rachel," he said. "You fell desperately in love +with an inferior man. He is charming, refined, well-bred, and with +a picturesque mind, but that is all. He is inferior. He is by +nature shallow and hard (the two generally go together), without +moral backbone, the kind of man who never faces a difficulty, who +always flinches when it comes to the point, the stuff out of which +liars and cowards are made. His one redeeming quality is his love +for you. I have seen men in love before. I have never seen a man +care more for a woman than he cares for you. His love for you has +taken entire possession of him, and by it he will sink or +swim."</p> +<p>The Bishop paused. Rachel's face worked.</p> +<p>"He deceived you," said the Bishop, "not because he wished to +deceive you, but because he was in a horrible position, and because +his first impulse of love was to keep you at any price. But his +love for you was raising him even while he deceived you. Did he +spend sleepless nights because for months he vilely deceived Lord +Newhaven? No. Rectitude was not in him. His conscience was not +awake. But I tell you, Rachel, he has suffered like a man on the +rack from deceiving you. I knew by his face as soon as I saw him +that he was undergoing some great mental strain. I did not +understand it, but I do now."</p> +<p>Rachel's mind, always slow, moved, stumbled to its bleeding +feet.</p> +<p>"It was remorse," she said, turning her face away.</p> +<p>"It was not remorse. It was repentance. Remorse is bitter. +Repentance is humble. His love for you has led him to it. Not your +love for him, Rachel, which breaks down at the critical moment; his +love for you which has brought him for the first time to the +perception of the higher life, to the need of God's forgiveness, +which I know from things he has said, has made him long to lead a +better life, one worthier of you."</p> +<p>"Don't," said Rachel. "I can't bear it."</p> +<p>The Bishop rose, and stood facing her.</p> +<p>"And at last," he went on—"at last, in a moment, when you +showed your full trust and confidence in him, he shook off for an +instant the clogs of the nature which he brought into the world, +and rose to what he had never been before—your equal. And his +love transcended the lies that love itself on its lower plane had +prompted. He reached the place where he could no longer lie to you. +And then, though his whole future happiness depended on one more +lie, he spoke the truth."</p> +<p>Rachel put out her hand as if to ward off what was coming.</p> +<p>"And how did you meet him the first time he spoke the truth to +you?" continued the Bishop, inexorably. "You say you loved him, and +yet—you spurned him from you, you thrust him down into hell. +You stooped to him in the beginning. He was nothing until your +fancied love fell upon him. And then you break him. It is women +like you who do more harm in the world than the bad ones. The harm +that poor fool Lady Newhaven did him is as nothing compared to the +harm you have done him. You were his god, and you have deserted +him. And you say you loved him. May God preserve men from the love +of women if that is all that a good woman's love is capable +of."</p> +<p>"I can do nothing," said Rachel, hoarsely.</p> +<p>"Do nothing!" said the Bishop, fiercely. "You can do nothing +when you are responsible for a man's soul God will require his soul +at your hands. Scarlett gave it into your keeping, and you took it. +You had no business to take it if you meant to throw it away. And +now you say you can do nothing!"</p> +<p>"What can I do?" said Rachel, faintly.</p> +<p>"Forgive him."</p> +<p>"Forgiveness won't help him. The only forgiveness he would care +for is to marry me."</p> +<p>"Of course. It is the only way you can forgive him."</p> +<p>Rachel turned away. Her stubborn, quivering face showed a +frightful conflict.</p> +<p>The Bishop watched her.</p> +<p>"My child," he said, gently, "we all say we follow Christ, but +most of us only follow him and his cross—part of the way. +When we are told that our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for +our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He felt as if they +were His own in His great love for us. But when you shrink from +bearing your fellow-creature's transgressions, it shows that your +love is small."</p> +<p>Rachel was silent.</p> +<p>"If you really love him you will forgive him."</p> +<p>Rachel clinched and unclinched her hands.</p> +<p>"You are appealing to a nobility and goodness which are not in +me," she said, stubbornly.</p> +<p>"I appeal to nothing but your love. If you really love him you +will forgive him."</p> +<p>"He has broken my heart."</p> +<p>"I thought that was it. It is yourself you are thinking of. But +what is he suffering at this moment? You do not know or care. Where +is he now, that poor man who loves you? Rachel, if you had ever +known despair, you would not thrust a fellow creature down into +it."</p> +<p>"I have known it," said Rachel, hoarsely.</p> +<p>"Were not you deserted once? You were deserted to very little +purpose, if after that you can desert another. Go back in your +mind, and—remember. Where you stood once he stands now. You +and his sin have put him there. You and his sin have tied him to +his stake. Will you range yourself for ever on the side of his sin? +Will you stand by and see him perish?"</p> +<p>Silence; like the silence round a death-bed.</p> +<p>"He is in a great strait. Only love can save him."</p> +<p>Rachel flung out her arms with an inarticulate cry.</p> +<p>"I will forgive him," she said. "I will forgive him."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>"Les âmes dont j'aurai besoin,<br /> +Et les étoiles sont trop loin;<br /> +Je mourral dans un coin."</div> +<p>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 endeavored to compose himself, to recollect himself. But +exhaustion gradually did for him what he could not do for +himself.</p> +<p>Rachel had thrown him over. He had always known she would, +and—she had.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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?</p> +<p>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 <i>had</i> waked—in torment. Life as long +as he lived would be like this moment.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>"I will not bear it," said Hugh, tears of anguish welling up +into his eyes.</p> +<p>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 forever."</p> +<p>"I am forsaken," said Hugh. He repeated the words over and over +again. "Forsaken! Forsaken!" And he looked round for a way of +escape.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>He understood now</i>.</p> +<p>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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He caught up his hat and went out.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"It is the only way," he said, over and over again, "the only +way."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was here, opposite that clump of silver birch. The ice was a +different color 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.</p> +<p>"I must, I must," gasped Hugh, between his clinched teeth.</p> +<p>"You shall not," said the other self, mad with terror. "Hold on +to the ice."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The other self fought furiously for life, clutching and tearing +at the breaking ice.</p> +<p>"Call," it said to him, "while there is still time."</p> +<p>Hugh set his teeth.</p> +<p>The ice broke in a great piece and tilted heavily against him. +It was over one shoulder.</p> +<p>"Call," said the other self, sharply, again, "or you will be +under the ice."</p> +<p>And up to the quiet heaven rose once and again a hoarse, wild +cry of human agony and despair.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII</h2> +<div class='blockquot'>Ueber allen Gipfeln<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Ist Ruh;</span><br /> +In allen Wipfeln<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Spürest Du</span><br /> +Kaum einen Hauch;<br /> +Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.<br /> +Warte nur, balde<br /> +Ruhest Du auch.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 7em;">—GOETHE.</span></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>When the young man had left, Rachel said, hesitating:</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"My dear," said the Bishop, "I went across to his rooms two +hours ago, directly you went up to Hester."</p> +<p>He loved Rachel, but he wondered at her lack of imagination.</p> +<p>"Two hours ago! And what did you say to him?"</p> +<p>"I did not see him. I was too late. He was gone."</p> +<p>"Gone!" said Rachel, faintly. "Where?"</p> +<p>"I do not know. I went up to his rooms. All his things were +still there."</p> +<p>"Where is he now?"</p> +<p>"I do not know."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Her face became pinched and livid. She understood now, after the +event.</p> +<p>"I am frightened for him," she said.</p> +<p>The Bishop had been alarmed while she poured out his tea before +they began to talk.</p> +<p>"Perhaps he has gone back to London," she said, her eyes +widening with a vague dread.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The doctor's brougham, coming at full speed, drew up suddenly at +the door.</p> +<p>"There he is at last," said the Bishop, and before the bell +could be rung he opened the door.</p> +<p>A figure was already on the threshold, but it was not Dr. Brown. +It was Dick.</p> +<p>"Where is Dr. Brown?" said Rachel and the Bishop simultaneously, +looking at the doctor's well-known brougham and smoking horses.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Is he dead?" asked Rachel, her eyes never leaving Dick's +face.</p> +<p>"No, but he is very ill."</p> +<p>"I will come now."</p> +<p>The chaplain came slowly across the hall, laden with books and +papers.</p> +<p>"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 carriage with her. Dick turned up +the collar of his fur coat, and climbed up beside the coachman.</p> +<p>The carriage turned warily, and then set off at a great +pace.</p> +<p>The cathedral loomed up suddenly, all aglow with light within. +Out into the night came the dirge of the organ for the dying +year.</p> +<p>The Bishop kept his eyes fixed on the pane. The houses were left +behind. They were in the country.</p> +<p>"Who is that?" said Rachel, suddenly, as a long shadow ran +beside them along the white hedgerow.</p> +<p>"It is only Dick. There is a rise in the ground here, and he is +running to ease the horses."</p> +<p>There was a long silence.</p> +<p>"I believe he did it on purpose," said Rachel, at last. "I +forsook him in his great need, and now he has forsaken me."</p> +<p>"He would never forsake you, Rachel."</p> +<p>"Not knowingly," she said. "I did it knowing. That is the +difference between him and me."</p> +<p>She did not speak again.</p> +<p>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 stand-still.</p> +<p>Rachel was out of the carriage before Dick could get off the +box.</p> +<p>She looked at him without speaking, and he led the way swiftly +through the silent wood under the moon. The Bishop followed.</p> +<p>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 splendor of the night. The cottage door was open. Dr. +Brown was looking out.</p> +<p>Rachel went up to him.</p> +<p>"Where is he?" she said.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"Where is he?" she repeated, shaking her head impatiently.</p> +<p>"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 parlor.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>For the first moment Rachel did not know him. How could this be +Hugh? How could these blank, unrecognizing eyes be Hugh's eyes, +which had never until now met hers without love?</p> +<p>But it was he. Yes, it was he. She traced the likeness as we do +in a man's son to the man himself.</p> +<p>She fell on her knees beside him and took the wandering hands +and kissed them.</p> +<p>He looked at her, through her, with those bright, unseeing eyes, +and the burning hands escaped from hers back to their weary +work.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The Bishop went up to Dick and put his arm round his shoulders. +Two tears of pain were standing in Dick's hawk-eyes. He had seen +Rachel kiss Hugh's hands. He ground his heel against the brick +floor.</p> +<p>The Bishop understood, and understood, too, the sudden revulsion +of feeling.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"I suppose he was taking a short cut across the ice."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>Dr. Brown came slowly out, half closing the parlor door behind +him.</p> +<p>"I can do nothing more," he said. "If he lived he would have +brain fever. But he is dying."</p> +<p>"Does he know her?"</p> +<p>"No. He may know her at the last, but it is doubtful. I can do +nothing, and I am wanted elsewhere."</p> +<p>"I will stop," said the Bishop.</p> +<p>"Shall I take you back?" said Dr. Brown, looking at Dick. But +Dick shook his head.</p> +<p>"I might be of use to her," he said, when the doctor had +gone.</p> +<p>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 parlor, 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.</p> +<p>Hugh lay quite still now with his eyes half closed. His hands +lay passive in Rachel's. The restless fever of movement was passed. +She almost wished it back, so far, so far was his life ebbing away +from hers.</p> +<p>"Hughie," she whispered to him over and over again. "I love you. +Do not leave me."</p> +<p>But he muttered continually to himself and took no heed of +her.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Perhaps he would know her with the daylight.</p> +<p>The new day came up out of the white east in a great peace, pale +as Christ newly risen from the dead, with the splendor of God's +love upon Him.</p> +<p>A great peace and light stole together into the little room.</p> +<p>Hugh stirred, and Rachel saw a change pass over his pinched, +sunken face.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Would he know her?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>She took him in her arms. She held him to her heart.</p> +<p>"I knew you would," he said, smiling at her. "I knew it. We will +never part again."</p> +<p>And with a sigh of perfect happiness he turned wholly to her, +his closed eyes against her breast.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION"></a>CONCLUSION</h2> +<p>It was autumn once more. The brambles were red in the hollow +below Warpington Vicarage. Abel was gathering the apples in the +orchard.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Mrs. Gresley, in an alarming new hat, sank back exhausted in her +garden-chair.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"We seem to live in an atmosphere of weddings," said Mr. +Gresley. "First, Dr. Brown and Fräulein, and now Algy Pratt +and Lady Newhaven."</p> +<p>"I was so dreadfully afraid that Fräulein 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 <i>coincidence</i> 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 Fräulein. 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."</p> +<p>"Hester used to do it," said Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"Was Hester well?"</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>"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."</p> +<p>A burst of cheering, echoed by piercing howls from Boulou locked +up in the empty nursery.</p> +<p>"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.</p> +<p>More cheering! A sudden flourish of trumpets and a trombone from +the volunteer band at the corner, of which Mr. Pratt was +colonel.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>In a moment they were passed, 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.</p> +<p>"She looked rather frightened," said Mrs. Gresley.</p> +<p>"Such a magnificent reception is alarming to a gentle, retiring +nature," said Mr. Gresley.</p> +<p>More cheering! this time much more enthusiastic than the +last—louder, deafening.</p> +<p>Dr. Brown's dog-cart came slowly in sight, accompanied by a +crowd.</p> +<p>"They have taken out the horse and are dragging them up," said +Mrs. Gresley, in astonishment. "Look at Dr. Brown waving his hat, +and Fräulein 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."</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="POSTSCRIPT" id="POSTSCRIPT"></a>POSTSCRIPT</h2> +<p>We turn the pages of the Book of Life with impatient hands. And +if we shut up the book at a sad page we say, hastily, "Life is +sad." But it is not so. There are other pages waiting to be turned. +I, who have copied out one little chapter of the lives of Rachel +and Hester, cannot see plainly, but I catch glimpses of those other +pages. I seem to see Rachel with children round her, and Dick not +far off, and the old light rekindled in Hester's eyes. For Hope and +Love and Enthusiasm never die. We think in youth that we bury them +in the graveyards of our hearts, but the grass never yet grew over +them. How, then, can life be sad, when they walk beside us always +in the growing light towards the Perfect Day.</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Pottage, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED POTTAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 14885-h.htm or 14885-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/8/8/14885/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Red Pottage + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: February 2, 2005 [EBook #14885] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED POTTAGE *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +Red Pottage + +By + +Mary Cholmondeley + +AUTHOR OF + +"THE DANVERS JEWELS" + +"After the Red Pottage comes the exceeding bitter cry" + +NEW YORK AND LONDON + +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + +1900 + + + + + TO + + VICTORIA + + Good things have not kept aloof, + + * * * * * + + I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, + Nor golden largesse of thy praise. + + + + +RED POTTAGE + + + + +CHAPTER I + + In tragic life, God wot, + No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: + We are betray'd by what is false within. + --GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +"I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of +his cage. + +"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but +half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom +took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been +dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, whither his +thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing the +_trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop_ of the horse. + +It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, and the +throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared to see, "the +glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and shirt front, +surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their owner, leaning back +with his hat tilted over his eyes. + +_Trip-clip-clop_ went the horse. + +A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an hour, +especially if it has been long eluded. + +"I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient movement. +It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue which had been +so new and alluring a year ago. He did not own it to himself, but he +was tired of it. Perhaps the reason why good resolutions have earned for +themselves such an evil repute as paving-stones is because they are +often the result, not of repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs +an evaporating pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and +his shame for many months. But now it was becoming something more--which +it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till lately--a +fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off and pushed out of +sight. Decidedly the moment for the good resolution had arrived. + +"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever +guessed it." + +How could any one have guessed it? + +He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and had +looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other days, and +the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He had added a +stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it became--a prison. Had +he been tempter or tempted? He did not know. He did not care. He wanted +only to be out of it. His better feelings and his conscience had been +awakened by the first touch of weariness. His brief infatuation had run +its course. His judgment had been whirled--he told himself it had been +whirled, but it had really only been tweaked--from its centre, had +performed its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back +to the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was merely a +pretty woman. + +"I will break with her gradually," he said, like the tyro he was, and he +pictured to himself the wretched scenes in which she would abuse him, +reproach him, probably compromise herself, the letters she would write +to him. At any rate, he need not read them. Oh! how tired he was of the +whole thing beforehand. Why had he been such a fool? He looked at the +termination of the liaison as a bad sailor looks at an inevitable sea +passage at the end of a journey. It must be gone through, but the +prospect of undergoing it filled him with disgust. + +A brougham passed him swiftly on noiseless wheels, and the woman in it +caught a glimpse of the high-bred, clean-shaved face, half savage, half +sullen, in the hansom. + +"Anger, impatience, and remorse," she said to herself, and finished +buttoning her gloves. + +"Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever guessed it," repeated Hugh, +fervently, as the hansom came suddenly to a stand-still. + +In another moment he was taking Lady Newhaven's hand as she stood at the +entrance of her amber drawing-room beside a grove of pink orchids. + +He chatted a moment, greeted Lord Newhaven, and passed on into the +crowded rooms. How could any one have guessed it? No breath of scandal +had ever touched Lady Newhaven. She stood beside her pink orchids, near +her fatigued-looking, gentle-mannered husband, a very pretty woman in +white satin and diamonds. Perhaps her blond hair was a shade darker at +the roots than in its waved coils; perhaps her blue eyes did not look +quite in harmony with their blue-black lashes; but the whole effect had +the delicate, conventional perfection of a cleverly touched-up +chromo-lithograph. Of course, tastes differ. Some people like +chromo-lithographs, others don't. But even those who do are apt to +become estranged. They may inspire love, admiration, but never fidelity. +Most of us have in our time hammered nails into our walls which, though +they now decorously support the engravings and etchings of our maturer +years, were nevertheless originally driven in to uphold the cherished, +the long since discarded chromos of our foolish youth. + +The diamond sun upon Lady Newhaven's breast quivered a little, a very +little, as Hugh greeted her, and she turned to offer the same small +smile and gloved hand to the next comer, whose name was leaping before +him from one footman to another. + +"Mr. Richard Vernon." + +Lady Newhaven's wide blue eyes looked vague. Her hand hesitated. This +strongly built, ill-dressed man, with his keen, brown, deeply scarred +face and crooked mouth, was unknown to her. + +Lord Newhaven darted forward. + +"Dick!" he exclaimed, and Dick shot forth an immense mahogany hand and +shook Lord Newhaven's warmly. + +"Well," he said, after Lord Newhaven had introduced him to his wife, +"I'm dashed if I knew who either of you were. But I found your +invitation at my club when I landed yesterday, so I decided to come and +have a look at you. And so it is only you, Cackles, after all"--(Lord +Newhaven's habit of silence had earned for him the sobriquet of +"Cackles")--"I quite thought I was going into--well, ahem!--into +society. I did not know you had got a handle to your name. How did you +find out I was in England?" + +"My dear fellow, I didn't," said Lord Newhaven, gently drawing Dick +aside, whose back was serenely blocking a stream of new arrivals. "I +fancy--in fact, I'm simply delighted to see you. How is the wine getting +on? But I suppose there must be other Dick Vernons on my wife's list. +Have you the card with you?" + +"Rather," said Dick; "always take the card with me since I was kicked +out of a miner's hop at Broken Hill because I forgot it. 'No gentleman +will be admitted in a paper shirt' was mentioned on it, I remember. A +concertina, and candles in bottles. Ripping while it lasted. I wish you +had been there." + +"I wish I had." Lord Newhaven's tired, half-closed eye opened a little. +"But the end seems to have been unfortunate." + +"Not at all," said Dick, watching the new arrivals with his head thrown +back. "Fine girl that; I'll take a look at the whole mob of them +directly. They came round next day to say it had been a mistake, but +there were four or five cripples who found that out the night before. +Here is the card." + +Lord Newhaven glanced at it attentively, and then laughed. + +"It is four years old," he said; "I must have put you on my mother's +list, not knowing you had left London. It is in her writing." + +"I'm rather late," said Dick, composedly; "but I am here at last. Now, +Cack--Newhaven, if that's your noble name--as I am here, trot out a few +heiresses, would you? I want to take one or two back with me. I say, +ought I to put my gloves on?" + +"No, no. Clutch them in your great fist as you are doing now." + +"Thanks. I suppose, old chap, I'm all right? Not had on an evening-coat +for four years." + +Dick's trousers were too short for him, and he had tied his white tie +with a waist to it. Lord Newhaven had seen both details before he +recognized him. + +"Quite right," he said, hastily. "Now, who is to be the happy woman?" + +Dick's hawk eye promenaded over the crowd in the second room, in the +door-way of which he was standing. + +"That one," he said; "the tall girl in the green gown talking to the +Bishop." + +"You have a wonderful eye for heiresses. You have picked out the +greatest in London. That is Miss Rachel West. You say you want two." + +"One at a time, thanks. I shall take her down to supper. I +suppose--er--there is supper at this sort of thing, isn't there?" + +"Of a kind. You need not be afraid of the claret; it isn't yours." + +"Catch you giving your best at a crush," retorted Dick. "The Bishop's +moving. Hurry up." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell, + The King behind his shoulder spake: "Dead man, thou dost not well." + --RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +Hugh had gone through the first room, and, after a quarter of an hour, +found himself in the door-way of the second. He had arrived late, and +the rooms were already thinning. + +A woman in a pale-green gown was standing near the open window, her +white profile outlined against the framed darkness, as she listened with +evident amusement to the tall, ill-dressed man beside her. + +Hugh's eyes lost the veiled scorn with which it was their wont to look +at society and the indulgent patronage which lurked in them for pretty +women. + +Rachel West slowly turned her face towards him without seeing him, and +his heart leaped. She was not beautiful except with the beauty of +health, and a certain dignity of carriage which is the outcome of a head +and hands and body that are at unity with each other, and with a mind +absolutely unconscious of self. She had not the long nose which so +frequently usurps more than its share of the faces of the well-bred, nor +had she, alas! the short upper lip which redeems everything. Her +features were as insignificant as her coloring. People rarely noticed +that Rachel's hair was brown, and that her deep-set eyes were gray. But +upon her grave face the word "Helper" was plainly written--and something +else. What was it? + +Just as in the faces of seamen we trace the onslaught of storm and sun +and brine, and the puckering of the skin round the eyes that comes of +long watching in half-lights, so in some faces, calm and pure as +Rachel's, on which the sun and rain have never beaten, there is an +expression betokening strong resistance from within of the brunt of a +whirlwind from without. The marks of conflict and endurance on a young +face--who shall see them unmoved! The Mother of Jesus must have noticed +a great difference in her Son when she first saw Him again after the +temptation in the wilderness. + +Rachel's grave, amused glance fell upon Hugh. Their eyes met, and he +instantly perceived, to his astonishment, that she recognized him. But +she did not bow, and a moment later left the nearly empty rooms with the +man who was talking to her. + +Hugh was excited out of recognition of his former half-scornful, +half-_blase_ self. That woman must be his wife. She would save him from +himself, this cynical, restless self, which never remained in one stay. +The half-acknowledged weakness in his nature unconsciously flung itself +upon her strength, a strength which had been tried. She would love him, +and uphold him. There would be no more yielding to circumstances if that +pure, strong soul were close beside him. He would lean upon her, and the +ugly by-paths of these last years would know him no more. Her presence +would leaven his whole life. In the momentary insanity, which was +perhaps, after all, only a prophetic intuition, he had no fears, no +misgivings. He thought that with that face it was not possible that she +could be so wicked as to refuse him. + +"She will marry me," he said to himself. "She must." + +Lady Newhaven touched him gently on the arm. + +"I dared not speak to you before," she said. "Nearly every one has gone. +Will you take me down to supper? I am tired out." + +He stared at her, not recognizing her. + +"Have I vexed you?" she faltered. + +And with a sudden horrible revulsion of feeling he remembered. The poor +chromo had fallen violently from its nail. But the nail remained--ready. +He took her into the supper-room and got her a glass of champagne. She +subsided on to a sofa beside another woman, vaguely suspecting trouble +in the air. He felt thankful that Rachel had already gone. Dick, nearly +the last, was putting on his coat, arranging to meet Lord Newhaven the +following morning at his club. They had been in Australia together, and +were evidently old friends. + +Lord Newhaven's listless manner returned as Dick marched out. Hugh had +got one arm in his coat. An instinct of flight possessed him, a vague +horror of the woman in diamonds furtively watching him under her lowered +eyelids through the open door. + +"Oh, Scarlett!" said Lord Newhaven, detaining him languidly, "I want +three minutes of your valuable time. Come into my study." + +"Another cross-bow for Westhope Abbey?" said Hugh, trying to speak +unconcernedly, as he followed his host to a back room on the ground +floor. Lord Newhaven was collecting arms for the hall of his +country-house. + +"No; much simpler than those elaborate machines," said the older man, +turning on the electric light. Hugh went in, and Lord Newhaven closed +the door. + +Over the mantel-shelf were hung a few old Japanese inlaid carbines, and +beneath them an array of pistols. + +"Useless now," said Lord Newhaven, touching them affectionately. "But," +he added, with a shade more listlessness than before, "Society has +become accustomed to do without them, and does ill without them, but we +must conform to her." Hugh started slightly, and then remained +motionless. "You observe these two paper lighters, Scarlett? One is an +inch shorter than the other. They have been waiting on the mantel-shelf +for the last month, till I had an opportunity of drawing your attention +to them. I am sure we perfectly understand each other. No name need be +mentioned. All scandal is avoided. I feel confident you will not +hesitate to make me the only reparation one man can make another in the +somewhat hackneyed circumstances in which we find ourselves." + +Lord Newhaven took the lighters out of the glass. He glanced suddenly at +Hugh's stunned face and went on: + +"I am sorry the idea is not my own. I read it in a magazine. Though +comparatively modern, it promises soon to become as customary as the +much-to-be-regretted pistols for two and coffee for four. I hold the +lighters thus, and you draw. Whoever draws or keeps the short one is +pledged to leave this world within four months, or shall we say five, on +account of the pheasant shooting? Five be it. Is it agreed? Just so! +Will you draw?" + +A swift spasm passed over Hugh's face, and a tiger glint leaped into +Lord Newhaven's eyes, fixed intently upon him. + +There was a brief second in which Hugh's mind wavered, as the flame of a +candle wavers in a sudden draught. Lord Newhaven's eyes glittered. He +advanced the lighters an inch nearer. + +If he had not advanced them that inch Hugh thought afterwards that he +would have refused to draw. + +He backed against the mantel-piece, and then put out his hand suddenly +and drew. It seemed the only way of escape. + +The two men measured the lighters on the table under the electric light. + +Lord Newhaven laughed. + +Hugh stood a moment, and then went out. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + "Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband?" + + +When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her husband and +Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did not follow them +with the deliberate intention of eavesdropping, but from a vague impulse +of suspicious anxiety. Yet she crouched in her white satin gown against +the door listening intently. + +Neither man moved within, only one spoke. There was no other sound to +deaden her husband's distinct, low voice. The silence that followed his +last words, "Will you draw?" was broken by his laugh, and she had barely +time to throw herself back from the door into a dark recess under the +staircase before Hugh came out. He almost touched her as he passed. He +must have seen her, if he had been capable of seeing anything; but he +went straight on unheeding. And as she stole a few steps to gaze after +him, she saw him cross the hall and go out into the night without his +hat and coat, the amazed servants staring after him. + +She drew back to go up-stairs, and met her husband coming slowly out of +the study. He looked steadily at her, as she clung trembling to the +banisters. There was no alteration in his glance, and she suddenly +perceived that what he knew now he had always known. She put her hand to +her head. + +"You look tired," he said, in the level voice to which she was +accustomed. "You had better go to bed." + +She stumbled swiftly up-stairs, catching at the banisters, and went into +her own room. + +Her maid was waiting for her by the dressing-table with its shaded +electric lights. And she remembered that she had given a party, and that +she had on her diamonds. + +It would take a long time to unfasten them. She pulled at the diamond +sun on her breast with a shaking hand. Her husband had given it to her +when her eldest son was born. Her maid took the tiara gently out of her +hair, and cut the threads that sewed the diamonds on her breast and +shoulders. Would it never end? The lace of her gown, cautiously +withdrawn through its hundred eyelet-holes, knotted itself. + +"Cut it," she said, impatiently. "Cut it." + +At last she was in her dressing-gown and alone. She flung herself face +downwards on the sofa. Her attitude had the touch of artificiality which +was natural to her. + +The deluge had arrived, and unconsciously she met it, as she would have +made a heroine meet it had she been a novelist, in a white dressing-gown +and pink ribbons in a stereotyped attitude of despair on a divan. + +Conscience is supposed to make cowards of us all, but it is a matter of +common experience that the unimaginative are made cowards of only by +being found out. + +Had David qualms of conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city? +Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the +prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely +obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly +nailed him to the cross of his sin. + +And so it was with Lady Newhaven. She had gone through the twenty-seven +years of her life believing herself to be a religious and virtuous +person. She was so accustomed to the idea that it had become a habit, +and now the whole of her self-respect was in one wrench torn from her. +The events of the last year had not worn it down to its last shred, had +not even worn the nap off. It was dragged from her intact, and the shock +left her faint and shuddering. + +The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to conceal his +knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than the probability +that she had been seen by some of the servants kneeling listening at a +keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant people make is to assume that +others are as unobservant as themselves. + +By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this catastrophe come +about? She thought of all the obvious incidents which would have +revealed the secret to herself--the dropped letter, the altered +countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She was convinced her secret +had been guarded with minute, with scrupulous care. The only thing she +had forgotten in her calculations was her husband's character, if, +indeed, she could be said to have forgotten that which she had never +known. + +Lord Newhaven was in his wife's eyes a very quiet man of few words. That +his few words did not represent the whole of him had never occurred to +her. She had often told her friends that he walked through life with his +eyes shut. He had a trick of half shutting his eyes which confirmed her +in this opinion. When she came across persons who were after a time +discovered to have affections and interests of which they had not +spoken, she described them as "cunning." She had never thought Edward +"cunning" till to-night. How had he, of all men, discovered +this--this--? She, had no words ready to call her conduct by, though +words would not have failed her had she been denouncing the same conduct +in another wife and mother. + +Gradually "the whole horror of her situation"--to borrow from her own +vocabulary--forced itself upon her mind like damp through a gay +wall-paper. What did it matter how the discovery had been made! It was +made, and she was ruined. She repeated the words between little gasps +for breath. Ruined! Her reputation lost! Hers--Violet Newhaven's. It was +a sheer impossibility that such a thing could have happened to a woman +like her. It was some vile slander which Edward must see to. He was good +at that sort of thing. But no, Edward would not help her. She had +committed--She flung out her hands, panic-stricken, as if to ward off a +blow. The deed had brought with it no shame, but the word--the word +wounded her like a sword. + +Her feeble mind, momentarily stunned, pursued its groping way. + +He would divorce her. It would be in the papers. But no. What was that +he had said to Hugh--"No names to be mentioned; all scandal avoided." + +She shivered and drew in her breath. It was to be settled some other +way. Her mind became an entire blank. Another way! What way? She +remembered now, and an inarticulate cry broke from her. They had drawn +lots. + +_Which had drawn the short lighter?_ + +Her husband had laughed. But then he laughed at everything. He was never +really serious, always shallow and heartless. He would have laughed if +he had drawn it himself. Perhaps he had. Yes, he certainly had drawn it. +But Hugh? She saw again the white, set face as he passed her. No; it +must be Hugh who had drawn it--Hugh, whom she loved. She wrung her hands +and moaned, half aloud: + +"Which? Which?" + +There was a slight movement in the next room, the door was opened, and +Lord Newhaven appeared in the door-way. He was still in evening dress. + +"Did you call?" he said, quietly. "Are you ill?" He came and stood +beside her. + +"No," she said, hoarsely, and she sat up and gazed fixedly at him. +Despair and suspense were in her eyes. There was no change in his, and +she remembered that she had never seen him angry. Perhaps she had not +known when he was angry. + +He was turning away, but she stopped him. "Wait," she said, and he +returned, his cold, attentive eye upon her. There was no contempt, no +indignation in his bearing. If those feelings had shaken him, it must +have been some time ago. If they had been met and vanquished in secret, +that also must have been some time ago. He took up an _Imitation of +Christ_, bound in the peculiar shade of lilac which at that moment +prevailed, and turned it in his hand. + +"You are overwrought," he said, after a moment's pause, "and I +particularly dislike a scene." + +She did not heed him. + +"I listened at the door," she said, in a harsh, unnatural voice. + +"I am perfectly aware of it." + +A sort of horror seemed to have enveloped the familiar room. The very +furniture looked like well-known words arranged suddenly in some new and +dreadful meaning. + +"You never loved me," she said. + +He did not answer, but he looked gravely at her for a moment, and she +was ashamed. + +"Why don't you divorce me if you think me so wicked?" + +"For the sake of the children," he said, with a slight change of voice. + +Teddy, the eldest, had been born in this room. Did either remember that +gray morning six years ago? + +There was a silence that might be felt. + +"Who drew the short lighter?" she whispered, before she knew that she +had spoken. + +"I am not here to answer questions," he replied. "And I have asked none. +Neither, you will observe, have I blamed you. But I desire that you will +never again allude to this subject, and that you will keep in mind that +I do not intend to discuss it with you." + +He laid down the _Imitation_ and moved towards his own room. + +With a sudden movement she flung herself upon her knees before him and +caught his arm. The attitude suggested an amateur. + +"Which drew the short lighter?" she gasped, her small upturned face +white and convulsed. + +"You will know in five months' time," he said. Then he extricated +himself from her trembling clasp and left the room, closing the door +quietly behind him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one! + --RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was +already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. For a few +seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of morphia, who +feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea of rest, but is +conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter shores of pain, and who +stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of hastening the touch of the +encircling, aching sands on which he is so soon to be cast in agony once +more. + +His mind cleared a little. Rachel's grave face stood out against a dark +background--a background darker surely than that of the summer night. He +remembered with self-contempt the extravagant emotion which she had +aroused in him. + +"Absurd," Hugh said to himself, with the distrust of all sudden springs +of pure emotion which those who have misused them rarely escape. And +then another remembrance, which only a sleeping-draught had kept at bay, +darted upon him like a panther on its prey. + +He had drawn the short lighter. + +He started violently, and then fell back trembling. + +"Oh, my God!" he said, involuntarily. + +He lay still, telling himself that this dreadful nightmare would pass, +would fade in the light of common day. + +His servant came in noiselessly with a cup of coffee and a little sheaf +of letters. + +He pretended to be asleep; but when the man had gone he put out his +shaking hand for the coffee and drank it. + +The mist before his mind gradually lifted. Gradually, too, the horror on +his face whitened to despair, as a twilight meadow whitens beneath the +evening frost. He had drawn the short lighter. Nothing in heaven or +earth could alter that fact. + +He did not stop to wonder how Lord Newhaven had become aware of his own +dishonor, or at the strange weapon with which he had avenged himself. He +went over every detail of his encounter with him in the study. His hand +had been forced. He had been thrust into a vile position. He ought to +have refused to draw. He did not agree to draw. Nevertheless, he had +drawn. And Hugh knew that, if it had to be done again, he should again +have been compelled to draw by the iron will before which his was as +straw. He could not have met the scorn of those terrible half-closed +eyes if he had refused. + +"There was no help for it," said Hugh, half aloud. And yet to die by his +own hand within five months! It was incredible. It was preposterous. + +"I never agreed to it," he said, passionately. + +_Nevertheless, he had drawn_. The remembrance ever returned to lay its +cold hand upon his heart, and with it came the grim conviction that if +Lord Newhaven had drawn the short lighter he would have carried out the +agreement to the letter. Whether it was extravagant, unchristian, +whatever might have been truly said of that unholy compact, Lord +Newhaven would have stood by it. + +"I suppose I must stand by it, too," said Hugh to himself, the cold +sweat breaking out on his forehead. "I suppose I am bound in honor to +stand by it, too." + +He suffered his mind to regard the alternative. + +To wrong a man as deeply as he had wronged Lord Newhaven; to tacitly +accept. That was where his mistake had been. Another man, that +mahogany-faced fellow with the colonial accent, would have refused to +draw, and would have knocked Lord Newhaven down and half killed him, or +would have been knocked down and half killed by him. But to tacitly +accept a means by which the injured man risked his life to avenge his +honor, and then afterwards to shirk the fate which a perfectly even +chance had thrown upon him instead of on his antagonist! It was too +mean, too despicable. Hugh's pale cheek burned. + +"I am bound," he said slowly to himself over and over again. There was +no way of escape. + +Yesterday evening, with some intuition of coming peril, he had said, "I +will get out." The way of retreat had been open behind him. Now, by one +slight movement, he was cut off from it forever. + +"I can't get out," said the starling, the feathers on its breast worn +away with beating against the bars. + +"I can't get out," said Hugh, coming for the first time in contact with +the bars which he was to know so well--the bars of the prison that he +had made with his own hands. + +He looked into the future with blank eyes. He had no future now. He +stared vacantly in front of him like a man who looks through his window +at the wide expanse of meadow and waving wood and distant hill which has +met his eye every morning of his life and finds it--gone. It was +incredible. He turned giddy. His reeling mind, shrinking back from the +abyss, struck against a fixed point, and, clutching it, came violently +to a stand-still. + +_His mother!_ + +His mother was a widow and he was her only son. If he died by his own +hand it would break her heart. Hugh groaned, and thrust the thought from +him. It was too sharp. He could not suffer it. + +His sin, not worse than that of many another man, had found him out. He +had done wrong. He admitted it, but this monstrous judgment on him was +out of all proportion to his offence. And, like some malignant +infectious disease, retribution would fall, not on him alone, but on +those nearest him, on his innocent mother and sister. It was unjust, +unjust, unjust! + +A very bitter look came into his face. Hugh had never so far hated any +one, but now something very like hatred welled up in his heart against +Lady Newhaven. She had lured him to his destruction. She had tempted +him. This was undoubtedly true, though not probably the view which her +guardian angel would take of the matter. + +Among the letters which the servant had brought him he suddenly +recognized that the topmost was in Lady Newhaven's handwriting. Anger +and repulsion seized him. No doubt it was the first of a series. "Why +was he so altered? What had she done to offend him?" etc., etc. He knew +the contents beforehand, or thought he knew them. He got up +deliberately, threw the unopened note into the empty fireplace, and put +a match to it. He watched it burn. + +It was his first overt act of rebellion against her yoke, the first step +along the nearest of the many well-worn paths that a man takes at random +to leave a woman. It did not occur to him that Lady Newhaven might have +written to him about his encounter with her husband. He knew Lord +Newhaven well enough to be absolutely certain that he would mention the +subject to no living creature, least of all to his wife. + +"Neither will I," he said to himself; "and as for her, I will break with +her from this day forward." + +The little pink notes with the dashing, twirly handwriting persisted for +a week or two and then ceased. + + * * * * * + +Hugh was a man of many social engagements. His first impulse, when later +in the day he remembered them, was to throw them all up and leave +London. But Lord Newhaven would hear of his departure, and would smile. +He decided to remain and to go on as if nothing had happened. When the +evening came he dressed with his usual care, verified the hour of his +engagement, and went out to dine with the Loftuses. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + What the _Bandar-log_ think now the jungle will think later. + --Maxim of the _Bandar-log_, RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +It was Sybell Loftus's first season in London since her second marriage +with Mr. Doll Loftus. After a very brief sojourn in that city of +frivolity she had the acumen to discover that London society was +hopelessly worldly and mercenary; that people only met to eat and to +abuse each other; that the law of cutlet for cutlet was universal; that +young men, especially those in the Guards, were garrisoned by a full +complement of devils; that London girls lived only for dress and the +excitement of husband-hunting. In short, to use her own expression, she +"turned London society inside out." + +London bore the process with equanimity, and presently Sybell determined +to raise the art of dinner-giving from the low estate to which she +avowed it had fallen to a higher level. She was young, she was pretty, +she was well-born, she was rich. All the social doors were open to her. +But one discovery is often only the prelude to another. She soon made +the further one that in order to raise the tone of social gatherings it +is absolutely necessary to infuse into them a leaven of "clever people." +Further light on this interesting subject showed her that most of the +really "clever people" did not belong to her set. The discovery which +all who love adulation quickly make--namely, that the truly appreciative +and sympathetic and gifted are for the greater part to be found in a +class below their own--was duly made and registered by Sybell. She +avowed that class differences were nothing to her with the enthusiasm of +all those who since the world began have preferred to be first in the +society which they gather round them. + +Fortunately for Sybell she was not troubled by doubts respecting the +clearness of her own judgment. Eccentricity was in her eyes originality; +a wholesale contradiction of established facts was a new view. She had +not the horrid perception of difference between the real and the +imitation which spoils the lives of many. She was equally delighted with +both, and remained in blissful ignorance of the fact that her "deep" +conversation was felt to be exhaustingly superficial if by chance she +came across the real artist or thinker instead of his counterfeit. + +Consequently to her house came the _rate_ in all his most virulent +developments; the "new woman" with stupendous lopsided opinions on +difficult Old Testament subjects; the "lady authoress" with a mission to +show up the vices of a society which she knew only by hearsay. Hither +came, unwittingly, simple-minded Church dignitaries, who, Sybell hoped, +might influence for his good the young agnostic poet who had written a +sonnet on her muff-chain, a very daring sonnet, which Doll, who did not +care for poetry, had not been shown. Hither, by mistake, thinking it was +an ordinary dinner-party, came Hugh, whom Sybell said she had +discovered, and who was not aware that he was in need of discovery. And +hither also on this particular evening came Rachel West, whom Sybell had +pronounced to be very intelligent a few days before, and who was +serenely unconscious that she was present on her probation, and that if +she did not say something striking she would never be asked again. + +Doll Loftus, Sybell's husband, was standing by Rachel when Hugh came in. +He felt drawn towards her because she was not "clever," as far as her +appearance went. At any rate, she had not the touzled, ill-groomed hair +which he had learned to associate with female genius. + +"This sort of thing is beyond me," he said, mournfully, to Rachel, his +eyes travelling over the assembly gathered round his wife, whose remarks +were calling forth admiring laughter. "I don't understand half they +say, and when I do I sometimes wish I didn't. But I suppose--" +tentatively--"You go in for all this sort of thing?" + +"I?" said Rachel, astonished. "I don't go in for anything. But what sort +of thing do you mean?" + +"There is Scarlett," said Doll, with relief, who hated definitions, and +felt the conversation was on the slippery verge of becoming deep. "Do +you know him? Looks as if he'd seen a ghost, doesn't he?" + +Rachel's interest, never a heavy sleeper, was instantly awakened as she +saw Sybell piloting Hugh towards her. She recognized him--the man she +had seen last night in the hansom and afterwards at the Newhavens. A +glance showed her that his trouble, whatever it might be, had pierced +beyond the surface feelings of anger and impatience and had reached the +quick of his heart. The young man, pallid and heavy-eyed, bore himself +well, and Rachel respected him for his quiet demeanor and a certain +dignity, which, for the moment, obliterated the slight indecision of his +face, and gave his mouth the firmness which it lacked. It seemed to +Rachel as if he had but now stood by a death-bed, and had brought with +him into the crowded room the shadow of an inexorable fate. + +The others only perceived that he had a headache. Hugh did not deny it. +He complained of the great heat to Sybell, but not to Rachel. Something +in her clear eyes told him, as they told many others, that small lies +and petty deceits might be laid aside with impunity in dealing with her. +He felt no surprise at seeing her, no return of the sudden violent +emotion of the night before. He had never spoken to her till this +moment, but yet he felt that her eyes were old friends, tried to the +uttermost and found faithful in some forgotten past. Rachel's eyes had a +certain calm fixity in them that comes not of natural temperament, but +of past conflict, long waged, and barely but irrevocably won. A faint +ray of comfort stole across the desolation of his mind as he looked at +her. He did not notice whether she was handsome or ugly, any more than +we do when we look at the dear familiar faces which were with us in +their childhood and ours, which have grown up beside us under the same +roof, which have rejoiced with us and wept with us, and without which +heaven itself could never be a home. + +In a few minutes he was taking her in to dinner. He had imagined that +she was a woman of few words, but after a faint attempt at conversation +he found that he had relapsed into silence, and that it was she who was +talking. Presently the heavy cloud upon his brain lifted. His strained +face relaxed. She glanced at him, and continued her little monologue. +Her face had brightened. + +He had dreaded this dinner-party, this first essay to preserve his +balance in public with his frightful invisible burden; but he was +getting through it better than he had expected. + +"I have come back to what is called society," Rachel was saying, "after +nearly seven years of an exile something like Nebuchadnezzar's, and +there are two things which I find as difficult as Kipling's 'silly +sailors' found their harps 'which they twanged unhandily.'" + +"Is small talk one of them?" asked Hugh. "It has always been a +difficulty to me." + +"On the contrary," said Rachel. "I plume myself on that. Surely my +present sample is not so much below the average that you need ask me +that." + +"I did not recognize that it _was_ small talk," said Hugh, with a faint +smile. "If it really is, I can only say I shall have brain fever if you +pass on to what _you_ might call conversation." + +It was to him as if a miniature wavelet of a great ocean somewhere in +the distance had crept up to laugh and break at his feet. He did not +recognize that this tiniest runlet which fell back at once was of the +same element as the tidal wave which had swept over him yesternight. + +"But are you aware," said Rachel, dropping her voice a little, "it is +beginning to dawn upon me that this evening's gathering is met together +for exalted conversation, and perhaps we ought to be practising a +little. I feel certain that after dinner you will be 'drawn through the +clefts of confession' by Miss Barker, the woman in the high dinner gown +with orange velvet sleeves. Mrs. Loftus introduced her to me when I +arrived as the 'apostle of humanity.'" + +"Why should you fix on that particular apostle for me?" said Hugh, +looking resentfully at a large-faced woman who was talking in an +"intense" manner to a slightly bewildered Bishop. + +"It is a prophetic instinct, nothing more." + +"I will have a prophetic instinct, too, then," said Hugh, helping +himself at last to the dish which was presented to him, to Rachel's +relief. "I shall give you the--" looking slowly down the table. + +"The Bishop?" + +"Certainly not, after your disposal of me." + +"Well, then, the poet? I am sure he is a poet because his tie is uneven +and his hair is so long. Why do literary men wear their hair long, and +literary women wear it short. I should _like_ the poet." + +"You shall not have him," said Hugh, with decision. "I am hesitating +between the bald young man with the fat hand and the immense ring and +the old professor who is drawing plans on the table-cloth." + +"The apostle told me with bated breath that the young man with the ring +is Mr. Harvey, the author of _Unashamed_." + +Hugh looked at his plate to conceal his disgust. + +There was a pause in the buzz of conversation, and into it fell +straightway the voice of the apostle like a brick through a skylight. + +"The need of the present age is the realization of our brotherhood with +sin and suffering and poverty. West London in satin and diamonds does +not hear her sister East London in rags calling to her to deliver her. +The voice of East London has been drowned in the dance-music of the West +End." + +Sybell gazed with awed admiration at the apostle. + +"What a beautiful thought," she said. + +"Miss Gresley's _Idyll of East London_," said Hugh, "is a voice which, +at any rate, has been fully heard." + +The apostle put up a _pince-nez_ on a bone leg and looked at Hugh. + +"I entirely disapprove of that little book," she said. "It is misleading +and wilfully one-sided." + +"Hester Gresley is a dear friend of mine," said Sybell, "and I must +stand up for her. She is the sister of our clergyman, who is a very +clever man. In fact, I am not sure he isn't the cleverest of the two. +She and I have great talks. We have so much in common. How strange it +seems that she who lives in the depths of the country should have +written a story of the East End!" + +"That is always so," said the author of _Unashamed_, in a sonorous +voice. "The novel has of late been dwarfed to the scope of the young +English girl"--he pronounced it gurl--"who writes from her imagination +and not from her experience. What true art requires of us is a faithful +rendering of a great experience." + +He looked round, as if challenging the world to say that _Unashamed_ was +not a lurid personal reminiscence. + +Sybell was charmed. She felt that none of her previous dinner-parties +had reached such a high level as this one. + +"A faithful rendering of a great experience," she repeated. "How I wish +Hester were here to hear that. I often tell her she ought to see life, +and cultivated society would do so much for her. I found her out a year +ago, and I'm always begging people to read her book, and I simply long +to introduce her to clever people and oblige the world to recognize her +talent." + +"I agree with you, it is not yet fully recognized," said Hugh, in a +level voice; "but if _The Idyll_ received only partial recognition, it +was, at any rate, enthusiastic. And it is not forgotten." + +Sybell felt vaguely uncomfortable, and conceived a faint dislike of Hugh +as an uncongenial person. + +The apostle and the poet began to speak simultaneously, but the female +key was the highest, and prevailed. + +"We all agree in admiring Miss Gresley's delicate piece of workmanship," +said the apostle, both elbows on the table after the manner of her kind, +"but it is a misfortune to the cause of suffering humanity--to _our_ +cause--when the books which pretend to set forth certain phases of its +existence are written by persons entirely ignorant of the life they +describe." + +"How true!" said Sybell. "I have often thought it, but I never could put +it into words as you do. Oh! how I agree with you and Mr. Harvey! As I +often say to Hester, 'How can you describe anything if you don't go +anywhere or see anything? I can't give you my experience. No one can.' I +said that to her only a month ago, when she refused to come up to London +with me." + +Rachel's white face and neck had taken on them the pink transparent +color that generally dwelt only in the curves of her small ears. + +"Why do you think Miss Gresley is ignorant of the life she describes?" +she said, addressing the apostle. + +The author and the apostle both opened their mouths at the same moment, +only to register a second triumph of the female tongue. + +Miss Barker was in her element. The whole table was listening. She +shrugged her orange-velvet shoulders. + +"Those who have cast in their lot with the poor," she said, +sententiously, "would recognize at once the impossibility of Miss +Gresley's characters and situations." + +"To me they seem real," said Rachel. + +"Ah, my dear Miss West, you will excuse me, but a young lady like +yourself, nursed in the lap of luxury, can hardly be expected to look at +life with the same eyes as a poor waif like myself, who has penetrated +to the very core of the city, and who has heard the stifled sigh of a +vast perishing humanity." + +"I lived in the midst of it for six years," said Rachel. "I did not cast +in my lot with the poor, for I was one of them, and earned my bread +among them. Miss Gresley's book may not be palatable in some respects, +the district visitor and the woman missionary are certainly treated with +harshness, but, as far as my experience goes, _The Idyll_ is a true word +from first to last." + +There was in Rachel's voice a restrained force that vaguely stirred all +the occupants of the room. Every one looked at her, and for a moment no +one spoke. She became quite colorless. + +"Very striking. Just what I should have said in her place," said Sybell +to herself. "I will ask her again." + +"I can hear it raining," said Doll's voice from the head of the table to +the company in general. "If it will only go on for a week without +stopping there may be some hope for the crops yet." + +The conversation buzzed up again, and Rachel turned instantly to Hugh, +before Mr. Harvey, leaning forward with his ring, had time to address +her. + +Hugh alone saw what a superhuman effort it had been to her to overcome +her shrinking from mentioning, not her previous poverty, but her +personal experience. She had sacrificed her natural reserve, which he +could see was great; she had even set good taste at defiance to defend +Hester Gresley's book. Hugh had shuddered as he heard her speak. He felt +that he could not have obtruded himself on so mixed an assembly. Yet he +saw that it had cost her more to do so than it would have cost him. + +He began to remember having heard people speak of an iron-master's +daughter, whose father had failed and died, and who, after several years +of dire poverty, had lately inherited a vast fortune from her father's +partner. It had been talked about at the time, a few months ago. This +must be she. + +"You have a great affection for Miss Gresley," he said, in a low voice. + +"I have," said Rachel, her lip still quivering. "But if I disliked her I +hope I should have said the same. Surely it is not necessary to love +the writer in order to defend the book." + +Hugh was silent. He looked at her, and wished that she might always be +on his side. + +"About two courses ago I was going to tell you," said Rachel, smiling, +"of one of my chief difficulties on my return to the civilized world and +'Society.' But now you have had an example of it. I am trying to cure +myself of the trick of becoming interested in conversation. I must learn +to use words as counters, not as coins. I need not disbelieve what I +say, but I must not speak of anything to which I attach value. I +perceive that to do this is an art and a means of defence from invasion. +But I, on the contrary, become interested, as you have just seen. I +forget that I am only playing a game, and I rush into a subject like a +bull into a china-shop, and knock about all the crockery until--as I am +not opposed by my native pitchfork--I suddenly return to my senses, and +discover that I have mistaken a game for real earnest." + +"We were all in earnest five minutes ago," said Hugh; "at least, I was. +I could not bear to hear Miss Gresley patronized by all these failures +and amateurs. But, unless I am very much mistaken, you will find several +pitchforks laid up for you in the drawing-room." + +"I don't mean to smash any more china," said Rachel. + +Another wavelet skimmed in and broke a little further up the sand. A +sense of freshness, of expectation was in the air. The great gathered +ocean was stirring itself in the distance. Hugh had forgotten his +trouble. + +He turned the conversation back to Hester Gresley and her writing. He +spoke of her with sympathy and appreciation, and presently detected a +softness in Rachel's eyes which made him jealous of Hester. + +By the time the evening was over the imperceptible travelling of the +summer sea had reached as far as the tidal wave. + +Hugh left when Rachel did, accompanying her to her carriage. At the +door were the darkness and the rain. At the door with them the horror +and despair of the morning were in wait for him, and laid hold upon him. +Hugh shuddered, and turned instinctively to Rachel. + +She was holding out her hand to him. He took it and held it tightly in +his sudden fear and desolation. + +"When shall I meet you again?" he said, hoarsely. + +A long look passed between them. Hugh's tortured soul, full of +passionate entreaty, leaped to his eyes. Hers, sad and steadfast, met +the appeal in his, and recognized it as a claim. There was no surprise +in her quiet face. + +"I ride early in the Row," she said. "You can join me there if you wish. +Good-night." + +She took her hand with great gentleness out of his and drove away. + +And the darkness shut down again on Hugh's heart. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + Ici bas tous les hommes pleurent + Leurs amities et leurs amours. + --BOURGET. + + +Many sarcastic but true words have been said by man, and in no jealous +spirit, concerning woman's friendship for woman. The passing judgment of +the majority of men on such devotion might be summed up in the words, +"Occupy till I come." It does occupy till they do come. And if they +don't come the hastily improvised friendship may hold together for +years, like an unseaworthy boat in a harbor, which looks like a boat but +never goes out to sea. + +But, nevertheless, here and there among its numberless counterfeits a +friendship rises up between two women which sustains the life of both, +which is still young when life is waning, which man's love and +motherhood cannot displace nor death annihilate; a friendship which is +not the solitary affection of an empty heart, nor the deepest affection +of a full one, but which nevertheless lightens the burdens of this world +and lays its pure hand upon the next. + +Such a friendship, very deep, very tender, existed between Rachel West +and Hester Gresley. It dated back from the nursery days, when Hester and +Rachel solemnly eyed each other, and then made acquaintance in the dark +gardens of Portman Square, into which Hester introduced a fortified +castle with a captive princess in it, and a rescuing prince and a +dragon, and several other ingredients of romance to the awed amazement +of Rachel--stolid, solid, silent Rachel--who loved all two and four +legged creatures, but who never made them talk to each other as Hester +did. And Hester, in blue serge, told Rachel, in crimson velvet, as they +walked hand in hand in front of their nursery-maids, what the London +sparrows said to each other in the gutters, and how they considered the +gravel path in the square was a deep river suitable to bathe in. And +when the spring was coming, and the prince had rescued the princess so +often from the dungeon in the laurel-bushes that Hester was tired of it, +she told Rachel how the elms were always sighing because they were shut +up in town, and how they went out every night with their roots into the +green country to see their friends, and came back, oh! so early in the +morning, before any one was awake to miss them. And Rachel's heart +yearned after Hester, and she gave her her red horse and the tin duck +and magnet, and Hester made stories about them all. + +At last the day came when Rachel's mother, who had long viewed the +intimacy with complacency, presented her compliments, in a note-sheet +with two immense gilt crests on it, to Hester's aunt, and requested that +her little niece might be allowed to come to tea with her little +daughter. And Lady Susan Gresley, who had never met the rich +iron-master's wife in this world, and would probably be equally +exclusive in the next, was about to refuse, when Hester, who up to that +moment had apparently taken no interest in the matter, suddenly cast +herself on the floor in a paroxysm of despair and beat her head against +the carpet. The tearful entreaties of her aunt gradually elicited the +explanation, riddled by sobs, that Hester could never take an interest +in life again, could never raise herself even to a sitting position, nor +dry her eyes on her aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go +to tea with Rachel and see her dormouse. + +Lady Susan, much upset herself, and convinced that these outbursts were +prejudicial to Hester's health, gave way at once, and a few days later +Hester, pale, shy, in a white muffler, escorted by mademoiselle, went to +tea in the magnificent house on the other side of the square, and saw +Rachel's round head without a feathered hat on it, and both children +were consumed by shyness until the two mademoiselles withdrew into +another room, and Rachel showed Hester the dormouse which she had found +in the woods in the country, and which ate out of her hand. And Hester +made a little poem on it, beginning, + + "There was a mouse in Portman Square"; + +and so, with many breaks, the friendship attained a surer footing, and +the intimacy grew with their growth, in spite of the fact that Lady +Susan had felt unable (notwithstanding the marked advances of Mrs. West, +possibly because of them) to enlarge her visiting-list, in spite of many +other difficulties which were only in the end surmounted by the +simplicity of character which Rachel had not inherited from her parents. + +And then, after both girls had danced through one London season in +different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, and +then--by accident--her father, leaving behind him an avalanche of +unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast fortune was +engulfed. + +Hard years followed for Rachel. She ate the bread of carefulness in the +houses of poor relations not of high degree, with whom her parents had +quarrelled when they had made their money and began to entertain social +ambitions. She learned what it was to be the person of least importance +in families of no importance. She essayed to teach, and failed. She had +no real education. She made desperate struggles for independence, and +learned how others failed besides herself. She left her relations and +their bitter bread and came to London, and struggled with those who +struggled, and saw how Temptation spreads her net for bleeding feet. +Because she loved Hester she accepted from her half her slender +pin-money. Hester had said, "If I were poor, Rachel, how would you bear +it if I would not let you help me?" And Rachel had wept slow, difficult +tears, and had given Hester the comfort of helping her. The greater +generosity was with Rachel, and Hester knew it. + +And as Rachel's fortunes sank, Hester's rose. Lady Susan Gresley had one +talent, and she did not lay it up in a napkin. She had the art of +attracting people to her house, that house to which Mrs. West had never +forced an entrance. Hester was thrown from the first into a society +which her clergyman brother, who had never seen it, pronounced to be +frivolous, worldly, profane, but which no one has called dull. There +were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to +place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she +attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to "cleverness" in a +woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to steel himself against +wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. She refused several offers, +one so brilliant that no woman ever believed that it was really made. + +Lady Susan saw that her niece, without a fortune, with little beauty +save that of high breeding, with weak health, was becoming a personage. +"What will she become?" people said. And in the meanwhile Hester did +nothing beyond dressing extremely well. And everything she saw and every +person she met added fuel to an unlit fire in her soul. + +At last Rachel was able to earn a meagre living by type-writing, and for +four years, happy by contrast with those when despair and failure had +confronted her, she lived by the work of her hands among those poor as +herself. Gradually she had lost sight of all her acquaintances. She had +been out of the school-room for too short a time to make friends. And, +alas! in the set in which she had been launched poverty was a crime; no, +perhaps not quite that, but as much a bar to intercourse as in another +class a want of the letter _h_ is found to be. + +It was while Rachel was still struggling for a livelihood that the event +happened which changed the bias of her character, as a geranium +transplanted from the garden changes its attitude in a cottage window. + +On one of the early days of her despair she met on the dreary stairs of +the great rabbit-warren in which she had a room, a man with whom she +had been acquainted in the short year of her social life before the +collapse of her fortunes. He had paid her considerable attention, and +she had thought once or twice, with momentary bitterness, that, like the +rest, he had not cared to find out what had become of her. She greeted +him with shy but evident pleasure. She took for granted he had come to +see her, and he allowed her to remain under that delusion. In reality he +had been hunting up an old model whom he wanted for his next picture, +and who had silently left Museum Buildings some months before without +leaving his address. He had genuinely admired her, though he had +forgotten her, and he was unaffectedly delighted to see her again. + +That one chance meeting was the first of many. Flowers came to Rachel's +little room, and romance came with them. Rachel's proud, tender heart +struggled, and then gave way before this radiant first love blossoming +in the midst of her loneliness. At last, on a March afternoon, when the +low sun caught the daffodils he had brought her, he told her he loved +her. + +Days followed, exquisite days, which have none like them in later life +whatever later life may bring. That year the spring came early, and they +went often together into the country. And that year when all the world +was white with blossom the snow came and laid upon earth's bridal veil a +white shroud. Every cup of May blossom, every petal of hawthorn, bent +beneath its burden of snow. And so it was in the full spring-tide of +Rachel's heart. The snow came down upon it. She discovered at last that +though he loved her he did not wish to marry her; that even from the +time of that first meeting he had never intended to marry her. That +discovery was a shroud. She wrapped her dead love in it, and would fain +have buried it out of her sight. + +But only after a year of conflict was she suffered to bury it--after a +year during which the ghost of her dead ever came back, and came back to +importune her vainly with its love. Rachel's poor neighbors grew +accustomed to see the tall, handsome, waiting figure which always +returned and returned, but which at last, after one dreadful day, was +seen no more in Museum Buildings. Rachel had laid the ghost at last. But +the conflict remained graven in her face. + + * * * * * + +On a certain cold winter morning Hester darted across the wet pavement +from the brougham to the untidy entrance of Museum Buildings where +Rachel still lived. It was a miserable day. The streets and bare trees +looked as if they had been drawn in in ink, and the whole carelessly +blotted before it was dry. All the outlines were confused, blurred. The +cold penetrated to the very bones of the shivering city. + +Rachel had just come in, wet and tired, bringing with her a roll of +manuscript to be transcribed. A woman waiting for her on the endless +stone stairs had cursed her for taking the bread out of her mouth. + +"He always employed me till you came," she shrieked, shaking her fist at +her, "and now he gives it all to you because you're younger and +better-looking." + +She gave the woman as much as she dared spare, the calculation did not +take long, and went on climbing the stairs. + +Something in the poor creature's words, something vague but repulsive in +her remembrance of the man who paid her for the work by which she could +barely live, fell like lead into Rachel's heart. She looked out dumbly +over the wilderness of roofs. The suffering of the world was eating into +her soul; the suffering of this vast travailing East London, where +people trod each other down to live. + +"If any one had told me," she said to herself, "when I was rich, that I +lived on the flesh and blood of my fellow-creatures, that my virtue and +ease and pleasure were bought by their degradation and toil and pain, I +should not have believed it, and I should have been angry. If I had +been told that the clothes I wore, the food I ate, the pen I wrote with, +the ink I used, the paper I wrote on--all these, and everything I +touched, from my soap to my match-box, especially my match-box, was the +result of sweated labor, I should not have believed it, I should have +laughed. But yet it is so. If I had not been rich once myself I should +think as all these people do, that the rich are devils incarnate to let +such things go on. They have the power to help us. We have none to help +ourselves. But they never use it. The rich grind the poor for their +luxuries with their eyes shut, and we grind each other for our daily +bread with our eyes open. I have got that woman's work. I have struggled +hard enough to get it, but, though I did not realize it, I might have +known that I had only got on to the raft by pushing some one else off +it." + +Rachel looked out across the miles of roofs which lay below her garret +window. The sound was in her ears of that great whirlpool wherein youth +and beauty and innocence go down quick day by day. The wilderness of +leaden roofs turned suddenly before her eyes into a sullen furrowed sea +of shame and crime which, awaiting no future day of judgment, daily gave +up its awful dead. + +Presently Hester came in, panting a little after the long ascent of worn +stairs, and dragging with her a large parcel. It was a fur-lined cloak. +Hester spread it mutely before her friend, and looked beseechingly at +her. Then she kissed her, and the two girls clung together for a moment +in silence. + +"Dearest," said Rachel, "don't give me new things. It isn't that--you +know I did take it when I was in need. But, oh, Hester, I know you can't +afford it. I should not mind if you were rich, at least, I would try +not, but--if you would only give me some of your old clothes instead. I +should like them all the better because you had worn them." And Rachel +kissed the lapel of Hester's coat. + +"I can't," whispered Hester into Rachel's hair. "The best is only just +good enough." + +"Wouldn't it be kinder to me?" + +Hester trembled, and then burst into tears. + +"I will wear it, I will wear it," said Rachel, hurriedly. "Look, Hester! +I have got it on. How deliciously warm! and--do look!--it has two little +pockets in the fur lining." + +But Hester wept passionately, and Rachel sat down by her on the floor in +the new cloak till the paroxysm was over. + +How does a subtle affinity find a foothold between natures which present +an obvious, a violent contrast to each other? Why do the obvious and the +subtle forget their life-long feud at intervals and suddenly appear for +a moment in each other's society? + +Rachel was physically strong. Hester was weak. The one was calm, +patient, practical, equable, the other imaginative, unbalanced, +excitable. + +Life had not spoiled Rachel. Lady Susan Gresley had done her best to +spoil Hester. The one had lived the unprotected life, and showed it in +her bearing. The other had lived the sheltered life, and bore its mark +upon her pure forehead and youthful face. + +"I cannot bear it," said Hester at last. "I think and think, and I can't +think of anything. I would give my life for you, and you will hardly let +me give you L3 10_s._ 6_d._ That is all it cost. It is only frieze, that +common red frieze, and the lining is only rabbit." A last tear fell at +the word rabbit. "I wanted to get you a velvet one, just the same as my +new one, lined with chinchilla, but I knew it would only make you +miserable. I wish," looking vindictively at the cloak--"I wish rabbits +had never been born." + +Rachel laughed. Hester was evidently recovering. + +"Mr. Scarlett was saying last night that no one can help any one," +continued Hester, turning her white, exhausted face to her friend. "He +said that we are always so placed that we can only look on. And I told +him that could not be true, but, oh, in my heart, Rachel, I have felt it +was true all these long, long five years since you have lived here." + +Rachel came and stood beside her at the little window. There was just +room for them between the type-writer and the bed. + +Far below, Hester's brougham was pacing up and down. + +"Then are love and sympathy nothing?" she said. "Those are the real +gifts. If I were rich to-morrow I should look to you just as I do now +for the things which money can't buy. And those are the +things"--Rachel's voice shook--"which you have always given me, and +which I can't do without. You feel my poverty more than I do myself. It +crushed me at first when I could not support myself. Now that I can--and +in everything except money I am very rich--I am comparatively happy." + +There was a long silence. + +"Perhaps," said Rachel at last, with difficulty, "if I had remained an +heiress Mr. Tristram might have married me. I feel nearly sure he would +have married me. In that case I lost my money only just in time to +prevent a much greater misfortune, and I am glad I am as I am." + +Rachel remembered that conversation often in after-years with a sense of +thankfulness that for once she, who was so reticent, had let Hester see +how dear she was to her. + +The two girls stood long together cheek against cheek. + +And as Hester leaned against Rachel the yearning of her soul towards her +suddenly lit up something which had long lain colossal, but +inapprehended, in the depths of her mind. Her paroxysm of despair at her +own powerlessness was followed by a lightning flash of self-revelation. +She saw, as in a dream, terrible, beautiful, inaccessible, but distinct, +where her power lay, of which restless bewildering hints had so often +mocked her. She had but to touch the houses and they would fall down. +She held her hands tightly together lest she should do it. The strength +as of an infinite ocean swept in beneath her weakness, and bore it upon +its surface like a leaf. + +"You must go home," said Rachel gently, remembering Lady Susan's +punctual habits. + +Hester kissed her absently and went out into the new world which had +been pressing upon her all her life, the gate of which Love had opened +for her. For Love has many keys besides that of her own dwelling. Some +who know her slightly affirm that she can only open her own cheap patent +padlock with a secret word on it that everybody knows. But some who know +her better hold that hers is the master-key which will one day turn all +the locks in all the world. + + * * * * * + +A year later Hester's first book, _An Idyll of East London_, was reaping +its harvest of astonished indignation and admiration, and her +acquaintances--not her friends--were still wondering how she came to +know so much of a life of which they decided she could know nothing, +when suddenly Lady Susan Gresley died, and Hester went to live in the +country with her clergyman brother. + +A few months later still, and on a mild April day, when the poor London +trees had black buds on them, Rachel brushed and folded away in the +little painted chest of drawers her few threadbare clothes, and put the +boots--which the cobbler, whose wife she had nursed, had patched for +her--under the shelf which held her few cups and plates and the faithful +tin kettle, which had always been a cheerful boiler. And she washed her +seven coarse handkerchiefs, and put them in the washhandstand drawer. +And then she raked out the fire and cleaned the grate, and set the room +in order. It was quickly done. She took up her hat, which lay beside a +bundle on the bed. Her hands trembled as she put it on. She looked +wistfully round her, and her face worked. The little room which had +looked so alien when she came to it six years ago had become a home. She +went to the window and kissed the pane through which she had learned to +see so much. Then she seized up the bundle and went quickly out, locking +the door behind her, and taking the key with her. + +"I am going away for a time, but I shall come back," she said to the +cobbler's wife on the same landing. + +"No one comes back as once goes," said the woman, without raising her +eyes from the cheap blouse which she was finishing, which kept so well +the grim secret of how it came into being that no one was afraid of +buying it. + +"I am keeping on the room." + +The woman smiled incredulously, giving one sharp glance at the bundle. +She had seen many flittings. She should buy the kettle when Rachel's +"sticks" were sold by the landlord in default of the rent. + +"Well, you was a good neighbor," she said. "There's a-many as 'ull miss +you. Good-bye, and good luck to ye. I sha'n't say as you've left." + +"I shall come back," said Rachel, hoarsely, and she slipped down-stairs +like a thief. She felt like a thief. For she was rich. The man who had +led her father into the speculations which had ruined him had died +childless, and had bequeathed to her a colossal fortune. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize + the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of + sentiment?--EMERSON. + + +A fortnight had passed since the drawing of lots, and Lady Newhaven +remained in ignorance as to which of the two men had received his +death-warrant. Few have found suspense easy to bear; but for the +self-centred an intolerable element is added to it, which unselfish +natures escape. From her early youth Lady Newhaven had been in the habit +of viewing life in picturesque _tableaux vivants_ of which she +invariably formed the central figure. At her confirmation the Bishop, +the white-robed clergy, and the other candidates had served but as a +nebulous background against which her own white-clad, kneeling figure, +bowed in reverent devotion, stood out in high relief. + +When she married Lord Newhaven he took so slight a part, though a +necessary one, in the wedding groups that their completeness had never +been marred by misgivings as to his exact position in them. When, six +years later, after one or two mild flirtations which only served as a +stimulus to her love of dress--when at last she met, as she would have +expressed it, "the one love of her life," her first fluctuations and +final deviation from the path of honor were the result of new +arrangements round the same centre. + +The first groups in which Hugh took part had been prodigies of virtue. +The young mother with the Madonna face--Lady Newhaven firmly believed +that her face, with the crimped fringe drawn down to the eyebrows, +resembled that of a Madonna--with her children round her, Lord Newhaven +as usual somewhat out of focus in the background; and Hugh, young, +handsome, devoted, heartbroken, and ennobled for life by the +contemplation of such impregnable virtue. + +"You accuse me of coldness," she had imagined herself saying in a later +scene, when the children and the husband would have made too much of a +crowd, and were consequently omitted. "I wish to Heaven I were as cold +as I appear." + +And she had really said it later on. Hugh never did accuse her of +coldness, but that was a detail. Those words, conned over many times, +had nevertheless actually proceeded out of her mouth. Few of us have the +power of saying anything we intend to say. But Lady Newhaven had that +power, and enjoyed also in consequence a profound belief in her +prophetic instincts; while others, Hugh not excepted, detected a +premeditated tone in her conversation, and a sense of incongruity +between her remarks and the occasion which called them forth. + +From an early date in their married life Lord Newhaven had been in the +habit of discounting these remarks by making them in rapid rotation +himself before proceeding to the matter in hand. + +"Having noticed that a mother--I mean a young mother--is never really +happy in the absence of her children, and that their affection makes up +for the carelessness of their father, may I ask, Violet, what day you +wish to return to Westhope?" he said one morning at breakfast. + +"Any day," she replied. "I am as miserable in one place as in another." + +"We will say Friday week, then," returned Lord Newhaven, ignoring, as he +invariably did, any allusions to their relative position, and because he +ignored them she made many. "The country," he added, hurriedly, "will be +very refreshing after the glare and dust and empty worldly society of +London." + +She looked at him in anger. She did not understand the reason, but she +had long vaguely felt that all conversation seemed to dry up in his +presence. He mopped it all into his own sponge, so to speak, and left +every subject exhausted. + +She rose in silent dignity, and went to her boudoir and lay down there. +The heat was very great, and another fire was burning within her, +withering her round cheek, and making her small, plump hand look shrunk +and thin. A fortnight had passed, and she had not heard from Hugh. She +had written to him many times, at first only imploring him to meet her, +but afterwards telling him she knew what had happened, and entreating +him to put her out of suspense, to send her one line that his life was +not endangered. She had received no answer to any of her letters. She +came to the conclusion that they had been intercepted by Lord Newhaven, +and that no doubt the same fate had befallen Hugh's letters to herself. +For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed that +Hugh's letters had become less frequent and shorter in length. She +understood the reason now. Half of them had been intercepted. How that +fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may not be +immediately apparent to the prosaic mind, but it was obvious to Lady +Newhaven. That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not force the narrow +entrance to her mind. Such a possibility had never been even considered +in the pictures of the future with which her imagination busied itself. +But what would the future be? The road along which she was walking +forked before her eyes, and her usual perspicacity was at fault. She +knew not in which of those two diverging paths the future would lie. + +Would she in eighteen months' time--she should certainly refuse to marry +within the year--be standing at the altar in a "confection" of lilac and +white with Hugh; or would she be a miserable wife, moving ghostlike +about her house, in colored raiment, while a distant grave was always +white with flowers sent by a nameless friend of the dead? "How some one +must have loved him!" she imagined Hugh's aged mother saying. And once, +as that bereaved mother came in the dusk to weep beside the grave, did +she not see a shadowy figure start up, black-robed, from the +flower-laden sod, and, hastily drawing a thick veil over a beautiful, +despairing face, glide away among the trees? At this point Lady Newhaven +always began to cry. It was too heart-rending. And her mind in violent +recoil was caught once more, and broken on the same wheel. "Which? +_Which_?" + +A servant entered. + +"Would her ladyship see Miss West for a few minutes?" + +"Yes," said Lady Newhaven, glad to be delivered from herself, if only by +the presence of an acquaintance. + +"It is very charitable of you to see me," said Rachel. "Personally, I +think morning calls ought to be a penal offence. But I came at the +entreaty of a former servant of yours. I feel sure you will let me carry +some message of forgiveness to her, as she is dying. Her name is Morgan. +Do you remember her?" + +"I once had a maid called Morgan," said Lady Newhaven. "She was drunken, +and I had to part with her in the end; but I kept her as long as I could +in spite of it. She had a genius for hair-dressing." + +"She took your diamond heart pendant," continued Rachel. "She was never +found out. She can't return it, for, of course, she sold it and spent +the money. But now at last she feels she did wrong, and she says she +will die easier for your forgiveness." + +"Oh! I forgive her," said Lady Newhaven, indifferently. "I often +wondered how I lost it. I never cared about it." She glanced at Rachel, +and added tremulously, "My husband gave it me." + +A sudden impulse was urging her to confide in this grave, gentle-eyed +woman. The temptation was all the stronger because Rachel, who had only +lately appeared in society, was not connected with any portion of her +previous life. She was as much a chance acquaintance as a +fellow-passenger in a railway carriage. + +Rachel rose and held out her hand. + +"Don't go," whispered Lady Newhaven, taking her outstretched hand and +holding it. + +"I think if I stay," said Rachel, "that you may say things you will +regret later on when you are feeling stronger. You are evidently tired +out now. Everything looks exaggerated when we are exhausted, as I see +you are." + +"I am worn out with misery," said Lady Newhaven. "I have not slept for a +fortnight. I feel I must tell some one." And she burst into violent +weeping. + +Rachel sat down again, and waited patiently for the hysterical weeping +to cease. Those in whom others confide early learn that their own +engagements, their own pleasures and troubles, are liable to be set +aside at any moment. Rachel was a punctual, exact person, but she missed +many trains. Those who sought her seldom realized that her day was as +full as, possibly fuller, than their own. Perhaps it was only a very +small pleasure to which she had been on her way on this particular +morning, and for which she had put on that ethereal gray gown for the +first time. At any rate, she relinquished it without a second thought. + +Presently Lady Newhaven dried her eyes and turned impulsively towards +her. + +The strata of impulsiveness and conventional feeling were always so +mixed up after one of these emotional upheavals that it was difficult to +guess which would come uppermost. Sometimes fragments of both appeared +on the surface together. + +"I loved you from the first moment I saw you," she said. "I don't take +fancies to people, you know. I am not that kind of person. I am very +difficult to please, and I never speak of what concerns myself. I am +_most_ reserved. I dare say you have noticed how reserved I am. I live +in my shell. But directly I saw you I felt I could talk to you. I said +to myself, 'I will make a friend of that girl.' Although I always feel a +married woman is so differently placed from a girl. A girl only thinks +of herself. I am not saying this the least unkindly, but, of course, it +is so. Now a married woman has to consider her husband and family in all +she says and does. How will it affect _them?_ That is what I so often +say to myself, and then my lips are sealed. But, of course, being +unmarried, you would not understand that feeling." + +Rachel did not answer. She was inured to this time-honored +conversational opening. + +"And the temptations of married life," continued Lady Newhaven--"a girl +cannot enter into them." + +"Then do not tell me about them," said Rachel, smiling, wondering if she +might still escape. But Lady Newhaven had no intention of letting her +go. She only wished to indicate to her her true position. And gradually, +not without renewed outbursts of tears, not without traversing many +layers of prepared conventional feelings, in which a few thin streaks of +genuine emotion wore embedded, she told her story--the story of a young, +high-minded, and neglected wife, and of a husband callous, indifferent, +a scorner of religion, unsoftened even by the advent of the +children--"such sweet children, such little darlings"--and the gradual +estrangement. Then came the persistent siege to the lonely heart of one +not pretty, perhaps, but fatally attractive to men; the lonely heart's +unparalleled influence for good over the besieger. + +"He would do anything," said Lady Newhaven, looking earnestly at Rachel. +"My influence over him is simply boundless. If I said, as I sometimes +did at balls, how sorry I was to see some plain girl standing out, he +would go and dance with her. I have seen him do it." + +"I suppose he did it to please you." + +"That was just it, simply to please me." + +Rachel was not so astonished as Lady Newhaven expected. She certainly +was rather wooden, the latter reflected. The story went on. It became +difficult to tell, and, according to the teller, more and more liable to +misconstruction. Rachel's heart ached as bit by bit the inevitable +development was finally reached in floods of tears. + +"And you remember that night you were at an evening party here," sobbed +Lady Newhaven, casting away all her mental notes and speaking extempore. +"It is just a fortnight ago, and I have not slept since, and _he_ was +here, looking so miserable"--(Rachel started slightly)--"he sometimes +did, if he thought I was hard upon him. And afterwards, when every one +had gone, Edward took him to his study and told him he had found us out, +and they drew lots which should kill himself within five months--and I +listened at the door." + +Lady Newhaven's voice rose half strangled, hardly human, in a shrill +grotesque whimper above the sobs which were shaking her. There was no +affectation about her now. + +Rachel's heart went out to her the moment she was natural. She knelt +down and put her strong arms round her. The poor thing clung to her, +and, leaning her elaborate head against her, wept tears of real anguish +upon her breast. + +"And which drew the short lighter?" said Rachel at last. + +"I don't know," almost shrieked Lady Newhaven. "It is that which is +killing me. Sometimes I think it is Edward, and sometimes I think it is +Hugh." + +At the name of Hugh, Rachel winced. Lady Newhaven had mentioned no name +in the earlier stages of her story while she had some vestige of +self-command; but now at last the Christian name slipped out unawares. + +Rachel strove to speak calmly. She told herself there were many Hughs in +the world. + +"Is Mr. Hugh Scarlett the man you mean?" she asked. If she had died for +it, she must have asked that question. + +"Yes," said Lady Newhaven. + +A shadow fell on Rachel's face, as on the face of one who suddenly +discovers, not for the first time, an old enemy advancing upon him under +the flag of a new ally. + +"I shall always love him," gasped Lady Newhaven, recovering herself +sufficiently to recall a phrase which she had made up the night before. +"I look upon it as a spiritual marriage." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + A square-set man and honest. + --TENNYSON. + + +"Dick," said Lord Newhaven, laying hold of that gentleman as he was +leaving Tattersall's, "what mischief have you been up to for the last +ten days?" + +"I lay low till I got my clothes," said Dick, "and then I went to the +Duke of ----. I've just been looking at a hack for him. He says he does +not want one that takes a lot of sitting on. I met him the first night I +landed. In fact, I stepped out of the train on to his royal toe +travelling incog. I was just going to advise him to draw in his feelers +a hit and give the Colonies a chance, when he turned round and I saw who +it was. I knew him when I was A.D.C. at Melbourne before I took to the +drink. He said he thought he'd know my foot anywhere, and asked me down +for ---- races." + +"And you enjoyed it?" + +"Rather. I did not know what to call the family at first, so I asked him +if he had any preference and what was the right thing, and he told me +how I must hop up whenever he came in, and all that sort of child's +play. There was a large party and some uncommonly pretty women. And I +won a tenner off his Royal Highness, and here I am." + +"And what are you going to do now?" + +"Go down to the city and see what Darneil's cellars are like before I +store my wine in them. It won't take long. Er!--I say, Cack--Newhaven?" + +"Well?" + +"Ought I to--how about my calling on Miss--? I never caught her name." + +"Miss West, the heiress?" + +"Yes. Little attention on my part." + +"Did she ask you to call?" + +"No, but I think it was an oversight. I expect she would like it." + +"Well, then, go and be--snubbed." + +"I don't want snubbing. A little thing like me wants encouragement." + +"A good many other people are on the lookout for encouragement in that +quarter." + +"That settles it," said Dick; "I'll go at once. I've got to call on Lady +Susan Gresley, and I'll take Miss--" + +"West. West. West." + +"Miss West on the way." + +"My dear fellow, Miss West does not live on the way to Woking. Lady +Susan Gresley died six months ago." + +"Great Scot! I never heard of it. And what has become of Hester? She is +a kind of cousin of mine." + +"Miss Gresley has gone to live in the country a few miles from us, with +her clergyman brother." + +"James Gresley. I remember him. He's a bad egg." + +"Now, Dick, are you in earnest, or are you talking nonsense about Miss +West?" + +"I'm in earnest." He looked it. + +"Then, for heaven's sake, don't put your foot in it by calling. My wife +has taken a violent fancy to Miss West. I don't think it is returned, +but that is a detail. If you want to give her a chance, leave it to me." + +"I know what that means. You married men are mere sieves. You'll run +straight home with your tongue out and tell Lady Newhaven that I want to +marry Miss--I can't clinch her name--and then she'll tell her when they +are combing their back hair. And then if I find, later on, I don't like +her and step off the grass, I shall have behaved like a perfect brute, +and all that sort of thing. A man I knew out in Melbourne told me that +by the time he'd taken a little notice of a likely girl, he'd gone too +far to go back, and he had to marry her." + +"You need not be so coy. I don't intend to mention the subject to my +wife. Besides, I don't suppose Miss West will look at you. You're a +wretched match for her. With her money she might marry a brewery or a +peerage." + +"I'll put myself in focus anyhow," said Dick. "Hang it all! if you could +get a woman to marry you, there is hope for everybody. I don't expect it +will be as easy as falling off a log. But if she is what I take her to +be I shall go for all I'm worth." + +Some one else was going for all he was worth. Lord Newhaven rode early, +and he had frequently seen Rachel and Hugh riding together at foot's +pace. Possibly his offer to help Dick was partly prompted by an +unconscious desire to put a spoke in Hugh's wheel. + +Dick, whose worst enemy could not accuse him of diffidence, proved a +solid spoke but for a few days only. Rachel suddenly broke all her +engagements and left London. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + "Pour vivre tranquille il faut vivre loin des gens d'eglise." + + +There is a little stream which flows through Middleshire which seems to +reflect the spirit of that quiet county, so slow is its course, so +narrow is its width. Even the roads don't take the trouble to bridge it. +They merely hump themselves slightly when they feel it tickling +underneath them, and go on, vouchsafing no further notice of its +existence. Yet the Drone is a local celebrity in Middleshire, and, like +most local celebrities, is unknown elsewhere. The squire's sons have +lost immense trout in the Drone as it saunters through their lands, and +most of them have duly earned thereby the distinction (in Middleshire) +of being the best trout-rod in England. Middleshire bristles with the +"best shots in England" and the "best preachers in England" and the +cleverest men in England. The apathetic mother-country knows, according +to Middleshire, "but little of her greatest men." At present she +associates her loyal county with a breed of small black pigs. + +Through this favored locality the Drone winds, and turns and turns +again, as if loath to leave the rich, low meadow-lands and clustering +villages upon its way. After skirting the little town of Westhope and +the gardens of Westhope Abbey, the Drone lays itself out in comfortable +curves and twists innumerable through the length and breadth of the +green country till it reaches Warpington, whose church is so near the +stream that in time of flood the water hitches all kinds of things it +has no further use for among the grave-stones of the little church-yard. +On one occasion, after repeated prayers for rain, it even overflowed +the lower part of the vicar's garden, and vindictively carried away his +bee-hives. But that was before he built the little wall at the bottom of +the garden. + +Slightly raised above the church, on ground held together by old elms, +the white vicarage of Warpington stands, blinking ever through its trees +at the church like a fond wife at her husband. Indeed, so like had she +become to him that she had even developed a tiny bell-tower near the +kitchen chimney, with a single bell in it, feebly rung by a female +servant on saints' days and G.F.S. gatherings. + +About eight o'clock on this particular morning in July the Drone could +hear, if it wanted to hear, which apparently no one else did, the high, +unmodulated voice in which Mr. Gresley was reading the morning service +to Mrs. Gresley and to a young thrush, which was hurling its person, +like an inexperienced bicyclist, now against Lazarus and his +grave-clothes, now against the legs of John the Baptist, with one foot +on a river's edge and the other firmly planted in a distant desert, and +against all the other Scripture characters in turn which adorned the +windows. + +The service ended at last, and, after releasing his unwilling +congregation by catching and carrying it, beak agape, into the open air, +Mr. Gresley and his wife walked through the church-yard--with its one +melancholy Scotch fir, embarrassed by its trouser of ivy--to the little +gate which led into their garden. + +They were a pleasing couple, seen at a little distance. He, at least, +evidently belonged to a social status rather above that of the average +clergyman, though his wife may not have done so. Mr. Gresley, with his +long, thin nose and his short upper lip and tall, well-set-up figure, +bore on his whole personality the stamp of that for which it is +difficult to find the right name, so unmeaning has the right name become +by dint of putting it to low uses--the maltreated, the travestied name +of "gentleman." + +None of those moral qualities, priggish or otherwise, are assumed for +Mr. Gresley which, we are told, distinguish the true, the perfect +gentleman, and some of which, thank Heaven! the "gentleman born" +frequently lacks. Whether he had them or not was a matter of opinion, +but he had that which some who have it not strenuously affirm to be of +no value--the right outside. + +To any one who looked beyond the first impression of good-breeding and a +well-cut coat, a second closer glance was discouraging. Mr. Gresley's +suspicious eye and thin, compressed lips hinted that both fanatic and +saint were fighting for predominance in the kingdom of that pinched +brain, the narrowness of which the sloping forehead betokened with such +cruel plainness. He looked as if he would fling himself as hard against +a truth without perceiving it as a hunted hare against a stone-wall. He +was unmistakably of those who only see side issues. + +Mrs. Gresley took her husband's arm as he closed the gate. She was still +young and still pretty, in spite of the arduous duties of a clergyman's +wife, and the depressing fact that she seemed always wearing out old +finery. Perhaps her devotion to her husband had served to prolong her +youth, for as the ivy is to the oak, and as the moon is to the sun, and +as the river is to the sea, so was Mrs. Gresley to Mr. Gresley. + +The fortunate couple were advancing through the garden, looking fondly +at their own vicarage, with their own sponges hanging out of their upper +windows, and their offspring waving to them from a third, when a small, +slight figure appeared on the terrace. + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, with decision, "it is your duty to speak to +Hester about attending early service. If she can go out in the garden +she can come to church." + +"I have spoken to her once," said Mr. Gresley, frowning, "and though I +put it before her very plainly she showed great obstinacy. Fond as I am +of Hester, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that she has an arrogant +and callous nature. But we must remember, my love, that Aunt Susan was +most lax in all her views, and we must make allowance for Hester, who +lived with her till last year. It is only natural that Hester, bred up +from childhood in that worldly circle--dinner-parties all through Lent, +and Sunday luncheons--should have fallen through want of solid church +teaching into freethinking and ideas of her own upon religion." + +Mr. Gresley's voice was of that peculiar metallic note which carries +farther than the owner is aware. It rose, if contradicted, into a sort +of continuous trumpet-blast which drowned all other lesser voices. +Hester's little garret was two stories above Mr. Gresley's study on the +ground floor, but, nevertheless, she often heard confused, anxious +parochial buzzings overwhelmed by that sustained high note which knew no +cessation until objection or opposition ceased. As she came towards +them, she heard with perfect distinctness what he was saying, but it did +not trouble her. Hester was gifted with imagination, and imagination +does not find it difficult to read by the shorthand of the expressions +and habitual opinions and repressions of others what they occasionally +say at full length, and to which they fondly believe they are giving +utterance for the first time. Mr. Gresley had said all this many times +already by his manner, and it had by its vain repetitions lost its +novelty. Mr. Gresley was fortunately not aware of this, for +unimaginative persons believe themselves to be sealed books, as +hermetically sealed as the characters of others are to themselves. + +Hester was very like her brother. She had the same nose, slightly too +long for her small face, the same short upper lip and light hair, only +her brother's was straight and hers was crimped, as wet sand is crimped +by a placid outgoing sea. That she had an equally strong will was +obvious. But there the likeness ended. Hester's figure was slight, and +she stooped a little. Hester's eyes were very gentle, very appealing +under their long, curled lashes. They were sad, too, as Mr. Gresley's +never were, gay as his never were. An infinite patience looked out of +them sometimes, that patience of enthusiasm which will cast away its +very soul and all its best years for the sake of an ideal. Hester +showed her age in her eyes. She was seven-and-twenty, and appeared many +years younger until she looked at you. + +Mrs. Gresley looked with veiled irritation at her sister-in-law in her +clean holland gown, held in at the waist with a broad lilac ribbon, +adroitly drawn in picturesque folds through a little silver buckle. + +Mrs. Gresley, who had a waist which the Southminster dress-maker +informed her had "to be kept down," made a mental note for the hundredth +time that Hester "laced in." + +Hester gave that impression of "finish" and sharpness of edge so rarely +found among the blurred, vague outlines of English women. There was +nothing vague about her. Lord Newhaven said she had been cut out body +and mind with a sharp pair of scissors. Her irregular profile, her +delicate, pointed speech and fingers, her manner of picking up her +slender feet as she walked, her quick, alert movements--everything about +her was neat, adjusted, perfect in its way, yet without more apparent +effort than the _succes fou_ in black and white of the water wagtail, +which she so closely resembled. + +"Good-morning," she said, turning back with them to the house. "Abel +says it is going to be the hottest day we have had yet. And the +letter-bag is so fat that I could hardly refrain from opening it. +Really, James, you ought to hide the key, or I shall succumb to +temptation." + +Once in the days of her ignorance, when she first came to live at +Warpington, Hester had actually turned the key in the lock of the sacred +letter-bag when the Gresleys were both late, and had extracted her own +letters. She never did it a second time. On the contrary, she begged +pardon in real regret at having given such deep offence to her brother +and his wife, and in astonishment that so simple an action could offend. +She had made an equally distressing blunder in the early days of her +life with the Gresleys by taking up the daily paper on its arrival in +the afternoon. + +"My dear Hester," Mrs. Gresley said, really scandalized, "I am sure you +won't mind my saying so, but James has not seen his paper yet." + +"I have noticed he never by any chance looks at it till the evening, and +you always say you never read it," said Hester, deep in a political +crisis. + +"That is his rule, and a very good rule it is; but he naturally likes to +be the _first_ to look at it," said Mrs. Gresley, with a great exercise +of patience. She had heard Hester was clever, but she found her very +stupid. Everything had to be explained to her. + +Her tone recalled Hester from the Indian tribal rising and the speech of +the Prime Minister to the realities of life. It was fortunate for her +that she was quick-witted. These two flagrant blunders were sufficient +for her. She grasped the principle that those who have a great love of +power and little scope for it must necessarily exercise it in trivial +matters. She extended the principle of the newspaper and the letter-bag +over her entire intercourse with the Gresleys and never offended in that +manner again. + +On this particular morning she waited decorously beside her brother as +he opened the bag and dealt out the contents into three heaps. Hester +pounced on hers and subsided into her chair at the breakfast-table. + +"I wonder," said Mrs. Gresley, looking at Hester's pile of letters over +the top of her share of the morning's correspondence--namely, a list of +Pryce Jones--"that you care to write so many letters, Hester. I am sure +I never did such a thing when I was a girl. I should have regarded it as +a waste of time." + +"Ha!" said Mr. Gresley, in a gratified tone, opening a little roll. +"What have we here? Proofs! My paper upon 'Modern Dissent.' I told +Edwards I would not allow him to put it in his next number of the +_Southminster Advertiser_ until I had glanced at it in print. I don't +know when I shall find time to correct it. I shall be out all the +afternoon at the chapter meeting." + +He looked at Hester. She had laid down her letters and was taking a cup +of coffee from Mrs. Gresley. She evidently had not heard her brother's +remark. + +"You and I must lay our heads together over this, Hester," he said, +holding up with some pride a long slip of proof. "It will be just in +your line. You might run it over after breakfast," he continued, in high +good-humor, "and put in the stops and grammar and spelling--you're more +up in that sort of thing than I am--and then we will go through it +together." + +Hester was quite accustomed, when her help was asked as to a +composition, to receive as a reason for the request the extremely +gratifying assurance that she was "good" at punctuation and spelling. It +gave the would-be author a comfortable feeling that, after all, he was +only asking advice on the crudest technical matters on which Hester's +superiority could be admitted without a loss of masculine self-respect. + +"I would rather not tamper with punctuation and spelling," said Hester, +dryly. "I am so shaky on both myself. You had better ask the +school-master. He knows all that sort of ABC better than I do." + +Mr. Gresley frowned, and looked suspiciously at her. He wanted Hester's +opinion, of which she was perfectly aware. But she intended that he +should ask for it. + +Mrs. Gresley, behind the coffee-pot, felt that she was overlooked. She +had helped Mr. Gresley with his numerous literary efforts until Hester +came. + +"I saw you correcting some one's manuscript last week," he said. "You +were at it all day in the hay-field." + +"That was different. I was asked to criticise the style and +composition." + +"Oh, well," said Mr. Gresley, "don't let us split hairs. I don't want an +argument about it. If you'll come into my study at ten o'clock I'll get +it off my hands at once." + +"With pleasure," said Hester, looking at him with rueful admiration. She +had tried a hundred times to get the better of him in conversation, but +she had not yet succeeded. + +"I have a message for you," continued Mr. Gresley, in restored +good-humor. "Mrs. Loftus writes that she is returning to Wilderleigh at +the end of the week, and that the sale of work may take place in the +Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August. And--let me see, I will read +what she says: + +"'I am not unmindful of our conversation on the duty of those who go +annually to London to bring a spiritual influence to bear on +society'--("I impressed that upon her before she went up.")--'We had a +most interesting dinner-party last week, nearly all celebrated and +gifted persons, and the conversation was really beyond anything I can +describe to you. I thought my poor brain would turn. I was quite afraid +to join in. But Mr. Harvey--the great Mr. Harvey--told me afterwards I +was at my best. One lady, Miss Barker, who has done so much for the East +End, is coming down to Wilderleigh shortly for a rest. I am anxious you +should talk to her. She says she has doubts, and she is tired of the +Bible. By the way, please tell Hester, with my love, that she and Mr. +Harvey attacked _The Idyll of East London_, and showed it up entirely, +and poor little me had to stand up for her against them all." + +"She would never do that," said Hester, tranquilly. "She might perhaps +have said, 'The writer is a friend of mine. I must stand up for her.' +But she would never have gone beyond saying it to doing it." + +"Hester," exclaimed Mrs. Gresley, feeling that she might just as well +have remained a spinster if she was to be thus ignored in her own house, +"I can't think how you can allow your jealousy of Sybell Loftus, for I +can attribute it to nothing else, to carry you so far." + +"Perhaps it had better carry me into the garden," said Hester, rising +with the others. "You must forgive me if I spoke irritably. I have a +racking headache." + +"She looks ill," said her brother, following Hester's figure with +affectionate solicitude, as she passed the window a moment later. + +"And yet she does next to nothing," said the hard-worked little wife, +intercepting the glance. "I always thought she wrote her stories in the +morning. I know she is never about if the Pratt girls call to see her +before luncheon. Yet when I ran up to her room yesterday morning to ask +her to take Mary's music, as Fraeulein had the headache"--(Mrs. Gresley +always spoke of "the headache" and "the toothache")--"she was lying on +her bed doing nothing at all." + +"She is very unaccountable," said Mr. Gresley. "Still, I can make +allowance for the artistic temperament. I share it to a certain degree. +Poor Hester. She is a spoiled child." + +"Indeed, James, she is. And she has an enormous opinion of herself. For +my part, I think the Bishop is to blame for making so much of her. Have +you never noticed how different she is when he is here, so gay and +talkative, and when we are alone she hardly says a word for days +together, except to the children?" + +"She talked more when she first came," said Mr. Gresley. "But when she +found I made it a rule to discourage argument"--(by argument Mr. Gresley +meant difference of opinion)--"she seemed gradually to lose interest in +conversation. Yet I have heard the Bishop speak of her as a brilliant +talker. And Lord Newhaven asked me last spring how I liked having a +celebrity for a sister. A celebrity! Why, half the people in Middleshire +don't even know of Hester's existence." And the author of "Modern +Dissent" frowned. + +"That was a hit at you, my dear," said Mrs. Gresley. "It was just after +your pamphlet on 'Schism' appeared. Lord Newhaven always says something +disagreeable. Don't you remember, when you were thinking of exchanging +Warpington for that Scotch living, he said he knew you would not do it +because with your feeling towards Dissent you would never go to a +country where you would be a Dissenter yourself?" + +"How about the proofs?" said Hester, through the open window. "I am +ready when you are, James." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother. + --EMERSON. + + +"Of course, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, leading the way to his study and +speaking in his lesson-for-the-day voice, "I don't pretend to +write"--("They always say that," thought Hester)--"I have not sufficient +leisure to devote to the subject to insure becoming a successful author. +And even if I had I am afraid I should not be willing to sell my soul to +obtain popularity, for that is what it comes to in these days. The +public must be pandered to. It must be amused. The public likes smooth +things, and the great truths--the only things I should care to write +about--are not smooth, far from it." + +"No, indeed." + +"This little paper on 'Dissent,' which I propose to publish in pamphlet +form after its appearance as a serial--it will run to two numbers in the +_Southminster Advertiser_--was merely thrown off in a few days when I +had influenza, and could not attend to my usual work." + +"It must be very difficult to work in illness," said Hester, who had +evidently made a vow during her brief sojourn in the garden, and was now +obviously going through that process which the society of some of our +fellow-creatures makes as necessary as it is fatiguing--namely, that of +thinking beforehand what we are going to say. + +Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed herself +flat under one of these resolutions. He was wont to say that no one was +pleasanter than Hester when she was reasonable, or made more suitable +remarks. He perceived with joy that she was reasonable now, and the +brother and sister sat down close together at the writing-table with the +printed sheets between them. + +"I will read aloud," said Mr. Gresley, "and you can follow me, and stop +me if you think--er--the sense is not quite clear." + +"I see." + +The two long noses, the larger freckled one surmounted by a _pince-nez_, +the other slightly pink, as if it had absorbed the tint of the +blotting-paper over which it was so continually poised, both bent over +the sheets. + +Through the thin wall which separated the school-room from the study +came the sound of Mary's scales. Mary was by nature a child of wrath, as +far as music was concerned, and Fraeulein--anxious, musical Fraeulein--was +strenuously endeavoring to impart to her pupil the rudiments of what was +her chief joy in life. + +"'Modern Dissent,'" read aloud Mr. Gresley, "by Veritas." + +"_Veritas_!" repeated Hester. Astonishment jerked the word out of her +before she was aware. She pulled herself hastily together. + +"Certainly," said the author, looking at his sister through his glasses, +which made the pupils of his eyes look as large as the striped marbles +on which Mary and Regie spent their pennies. "Veritas," he continued, +"is a Latin word signifying Truth." + +"So I fancied. But is not _Truth_ rather a large name to adopt as a _nom +de guerre_? Might it not seem rather--er--in a layman it would appear +arrogant." + +"I am not a layman, and I do not pretend to write on subjects of which I +am ignorant," said Mr. Gresley, with dignity. "This is not a work of +fiction. I don't imagine this, or fancy that, or invent the other. I +merely place before the public, forcibly, and in a novel manner, a few +great truths." + +Mary was doing her finger exercises. C, C, C, with the thumb; D, D, D, +with the first finger, Fraeulein was repeating. "Won! two! free! Won! +two! free!" with a new intonation of cheerful patience at each +repetition. + +"Ah!" said Hester. "A few great truths. Then the name must be 'Veritas.' +You would not reconsider it?" + +"Certainly not," said Mr. Gresley, his eye challenging hers. "It is the +name I am known by as the author of 'Schism.'" + +"I had momentarily forgotten 'Schism,'" said Hester, dropping her +glance. + +"I went through a good deal of obloquy about 'Schism,'" said Mr. Gresley +with pride, "and I should not wonder if 'Modern Dissent' caused quite a +ferment in Middleshire. If it does, I am willing to bear a little spite +and ill-will. All history shows that truth is met at first by +opposition. Half the country clergy round here are asleep. Good men, but +lax. They want waking up. I said as much to the Bishop the other day, +and he agreed with me; for he said that if some of his younger clergy +could be waked up to a sense of their own arrogance and narrowness he +would hold a public thanksgiving in the cathedral. But he added that he +thought nothing short of the last trump would do it." + +"I agree with him," said Hester, having first said the sentence to +herself, and having decided it was innocuous. + +The climax of the music lesson had arrived. "The Blue Bells of +Scotland"--the sole _Clavier Stueck_ which Mary's rigidly extended little +starfishes of hands could wrench out of the school-room piano--was at +its third bar. + +"Well," said Mr. Gresley, refreshed by a cheering retrospect. "Now for +'Modern Dissent.'" + +A strenuous hour ensued. + +Hester was torn in different directions, at one moment tempted to allow +the most flagrant passages to pass unchallenged rather than attempt the +physical impossibility of interrupting the reader only to be drawn into +a dispute with him, at another burning to save her brother from the +consequences which wait on certain utterances. + +Presently Mr. Gresley's eloquence, after various tortuous and unnatural +windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage after following +the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears a villa. Hester had +seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see the villa through the +trees long before we are allowed to approach it, and she longed to save +her brother from what was in her eyes as much a degradation as a _tu +quoque_. But she remembered in time that the Gresleys considered she had +no sense of humor, and she decided to let it pass. Mr. Gresley enjoyed +it so much himself that he hardly noticed her fixed countenance. + +Why does so deep a gulf separate those who have a sense of humor and +those who, having none, are compensated by the conviction that they +possess it more abundantly? The crevasse seems to extend far inland to +the very heights and water-sheds of character. Those who differ on humor +will differ on principles. The Gresleys and the Pratts belonged to that +large class of our fellow-creatures who, conscious of a genius for +adding to the hilarity of our sad planet, discover an irresistible +piquancy in putting a woman's hat on a man's head, and in that "verbal +romping" which playfully designates a whiskey-and-soda as a gargle, and +says "au reservoir" instead of "au revoir." + +At last, however, Hester nervously put her hand over the next sheet, as +he read the final words of the last. + +"Wait a moment," she said, hurriedly. "This last page, James. Might it +not be well to reconsider it? Is it politic to assume such great +ignorance on the part of Nonconformists? Many I know are better educated +than I am." + +"My dear," said Mr. Gresley, "ignorance is at the root of any difference +of opinion on such a subject as this. I do not say wilful ignorance, but +the want of sound Church teaching. I must cut at the roots of this +ignorance." + +"Dear James, it is thrice killing the slain. No one believes these +fallacies which you are exposing--the Nonconformists least of all. Those +I have talked with don't hold these absurd opinions that you put down +to them. You don't even touch their real position. You are elaborately +knocking down ninepins that have never stood up, because they have +nothing to stand on." + +"I am not proposing to play a game of mental skittles," said the +clerical author. "It is enough for me, as I said before, to cut at the +roots of ignorance wherever I see it flourishing, not to pull off the +leaves one by one as you would have me do by dissecting their opinions. +This may not be novel, it may not even be amusing, but, nevertheless, +Hester, a clergyman's duty is to wage unceasing war against spiritual +ignorance. And what," read on Mr. Gresley, after a triumphant moment in +which Hester remained silent, "is the best means of coping against +ignorance, against darkness"--("It was a root a moment ago," thought +Hester)--"but by the infusion of light? The light shineth in darkness, +and the darkness comprehendeth it not." Half a page more and the +darkness was 'Modern Dissent.' Hester put her hand over her mouth and +kept it there. + +The familiar drama of a clerical bull and a red rag was played out +before her eyes, and, metaphorically speaking, she followed the example +of the majority of laymen and crept up a tree to be out of the way. + +When it was all over she came down trembling. + +"Well! what do you think of it?" said Mr. Gresley, rising and pacing up +and down the room. + +"You hit very hard," said Hester, after a moment's consideration. She +did not say, "You strike home." + +"I have no opinion of being mealy-mouthed," said Mr. Gresley, who was +always perfectly satisfied with a vague statement. "If you have anything +worth saying, say it plainly. That is my motto. Don't hint this or that, +but take your stand upon a truth and strike out." + +"Why not hold out our hands to our fellow-creatures instead of striking +at them?" said Hester, moving towards the door. + +"I have no belief in holding out our hands to the enemies of Christ," +Mr. Gresley began, who in the course of his pamphlet had thus gracefully +designated the great religious bodies who did not view Christianity +through the convex glasses of his own mental _pince-nez_. "In these days +we see too much of that. I leave that to the Broad Church, who want to +run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. I, on the contrary--" + +But Hester had vanished. + +There was a dangerous glint in her gray eyes, as she ran up to her +little attic. + +"According to him, our Lord must have been the first Nonconformist," she +said to herself. "If I had stayed a moment longer I should have said so. +For once I got out of the room in time." + +Hester's attic was blisteringly hot. It was over the kitchen, and +through the open window came the penetrating aroma of roast mutton newly +wedded to boiled cabbage. Hester had learned during the last six months +all the variations of smells, evil, subtle, nauseous, and overpowering, +of which the preparation of food--and, still worse, the preparation of +chicken food--is capable. She seized her white hat and umbrella and fled +out of the house. + +She moved quickly across a patch of sunlight, looking, with her large +white, pink-lined umbrella, like a travelling mushroom on a slender +stem, and only drew rein in the shady walk near the beehives, where the +old gardener, Abel, was planting something large in the way of "runners" +or "suckers," making a separate hole for each with his thumb. + +Abel was a solid, pear-shaped man, who passed through life bent double +over the acre of Vicarage garden, to which he committed long lines of +seeds, which an attentive Providence brought up in due season as "curly +kebbidge" or "salary" or "sparrow-grass." + +Abel had his back towards Hester, and only the corduroy half of him was +visible as he stooped over his work. Occasionally he could be induced to +straighten himself, and--holding himself strongly at the hinge with +earth-ingrained hands--to discourse on polities and religion, and to +opine that our policy in China was "neither my eye nor my elber." "The +little lady," as he called Hester, had a knack of drawing out Abel; but +to-day, as he did not see her, she slipped past him, and, crossing the +church-yard, sat down for a moment in the porch to regain her breath, +under the card of printed texts offered for the consideration of his +flock by their young pastor. + +"How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God," +was the culling from the Scriptures which headed the selection.[A] +Hester knew that card well, though she never by any chance looked at it. +She had offended her brother deeply by remonstrating, or, as he called +it, by "interfering in church matters," when he nailed it up. After a +few minutes she dropped over the low church-yard wall into the meadow +below, and flung herself down on the grass in the short shadow of a yew +near at hand. What little air there was to be had came to her across the +Drone, together with the sound of the water lazily nudging the bank and +whispering to the reeds little jokelets which they had heard a hundred +times before. + +[Footnote A: A card, headed by the above text, was seen by the writer in +August, 1898, in the porch of a country church.] + +Hester's irritable nerves relaxed. She stretched out her small, neatly +shod foot in front of her, leaned her back against the wall, and +presently could afford to smile. + +"Dear James," she said, shaking her head gently to and fro, "I wish we +were not both writers, or, as he calls it, 'dabblers with the pen.' One +dabbler in a vicarage is quite enough." + +She took out her letters and read them. Only half of them had been +opened. + +"I shall stay here till the luncheon bell rings," she said, as she +settled herself comfortably. + +Rachel's letter was read last, on the principle of keeping the best to +the end. + +"And so she is leaving London--isn't this rather sudden?--and coming +down at once--to-day--no, yesterday, to Southminster, to the Palace. And +I am to stay in this afternoon, as she will come over, and probably the +Bishop will come too. I should be glad if I were not so tired." + +Hester looked along the white high road which led to Southminster. In +the hot haze she could just see the two ears of the cathedral pricking +up through the blue. Everything was very silent, so silent that she +could hear the church clock of Slumberleigh, two miles away, strike +twelve. A whole hour before luncheon! + +The miller's old white horse, with a dip in his long back and a +corresponding curve in his under outline, was standing motionless in the +sun, fast asleep, his front legs bent like a sailor's. + +A little bunch of red and white cows, knee-deep in the water, were +swishing off the flies with the wet tufts of their tails. Hester watched +their every movement. She was no longer afraid of cows. Presently, as if +with one consent, they all made up their minds to relieve the tedium of +the contemplative life by an exhibition of humor, and, scrambling out of +the water, proceeded to canter along the bank with stiff raised tails, +with an artificial noose sustained with difficulty just above the tuft. + +"How like James and the Pratts!" Hester said to herself, watching the +grotesque gambols and nudgings of the dwindling humorists. "It must be +very fatiguing to be so comic." + +Hester had been up since five o'clock, utilizing the quiet hours before +the house was astir. She was tired out. A bumblebee was droning sleepily +near at hand. The stream talked and talked and talked about what he was +going to do when he was a river. "How tired the banks must be of +listening to him!" thought Hester, with closed eyes. + +And the world melted slowly away in a delicious sense of well-being, +from which the next moment, as it seemed to her, she was suddenly +awakened by Mr. Gresley's voice near at hand. + +"Hester! _Hester_! HESTER!" + +"Here! here!" gasped Hester, with a start, upsetting her lapful of +letters as she scrambled hastily to her feet. + +The young vicar drew near, and looked over the church-yard wall. A large +crumb upon his upper lip did not lessen the awful severity of his +countenance. + +"We have nearly finished luncheon," he observed. "The servants could not +find you anywhere. I don't want to be always finding fault, Hester, but +I wish, for your own sake as well as ours, you would be more punctual at +meals." + +Hester had never been late before, but she felt that this was not the +moment to remind her brother of that fact. + +"I beg pardon," she said, humbly. "I fell asleep." + +"You fell asleep!" said Mr. Gresley, who had been wrestling all the +morning with platitudes on "Thy will be done." "All I can say, Hester, +is that it is unfortunate you have no occupation. I cannot believe it is +for the good of any of us to lead so absolutely idle a life that we fall +asleep in the morning." + +Hester made no reply. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance + as to whip the fog.--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +The children, who had reached the pear stage, looked with round, awed +eyes at "Auntie Hester" as she sat down at the luncheon-table beside the +black bottle which marked her place. The Gresleys were ardent total +abstainers, and were of opinion that Hester's health would be greatly +benefited by following their example. But Hester's doctor differed from +them--he was extremely obstinate--with the result that the Gresleys were +obliged to tolerate the obnoxious bottle on their very table. It was +what Mrs. Gresley called a "cross," and Mr. Gresley was always afraid +that the fact of its presence might become known and hopelessly +misconstrued in Warpington and the world at large. + +The children knew that Hester was in disgrace, as she vainly tried to +eat the congealed slice of roast mutton, with blue slides in it, which +had been put before her chair half an hour ago, when the joint was sent +out for the servants' dinner. The children liked "Auntie Hester," but +without enthusiasm, except Regie, the eldest, who loved her as himself. +She could tell them stories, and make butterflies and horses and dogs +out of paper, but she could never join in their games, not even in the +delightful new ones she invented for them. She was always tired +directly. And she would never give them rides on her back, as the large, +good-natured Pratt girls did. And she was dreadfully shocked if they did +not play fair, so much so that on one occasion Mr. Gresley had to +interfere, and to remind her that a game was a game, and that it would +be better to let the children play as they liked than to be perpetually +finding fault with them. + +Perhaps nothing in her life at the Vicarage was a greater trial to +Hester than to see the rules of fair play broken by the children with +the connivance of their parents. Mr. Gresley had never been to a public +school, and had thus missed the ABC of what in its later stages is +called "honor." He was an admirable hockey-player, but he was not in +request at the frequent Slumberleigh matches, for he never hit off fair, +or minded being told so. + +"Auntie Hester is leaving all her fat," said Mary, suddenly, in a shrill +voice, her portion of pear held in her left cheek as she spoke. She had +no idea that she ought not to draw attention to the weakness of others. +She was only anxious to be the first to offer interesting information. + +"Never mind," said Mrs. Gresley, admiring her own moderation. "Finish +your pear." + +If there was one thing more than another in Hester's behavior that +annoyed Mrs. Gresley--and there were several others--it was Hester's +manner of turning her food over on her plate and leaving half of it. + +Hester did it again now, and Mrs. Gresley, already irritated by her +unpunctuality, tried to look away so as not to see her, and prayed for +patience. The hundred a year which Hester contributed to the little +establishment had eased the struggling household in many ways; but Mrs. +Gresley sometimes wondered if the money, greatly needed as it was, +counterbalanced the perpetual friction of her sister-in-law's presence. + +"Father!" + +"Yes, my son." + +"Isn't it wrong to drink wine?" + +Yes, my son." + +"Then why does Auntie Hester drink it?" + +Hester fixed her eyes intently on her brother. Would he uphold her +before the children? + +"Because she thinks it does her good," said Mr. Gresley. + +She withdrew her eyes. Her hand, holding a spoonful of cold rice +pudding, shook. A delicate color flooded her face, and finally settled +in the tip of her nose. In her own way she loved the children. + +"Ach, mein Herr," almost screamed Fraeulein, who adored Hester, and saw +the gravity of the occasion, "aber Sie vergessen that the Herr Doctor +Br-r-r-r-r-own has so strong--so very strong command--" + +"I cannot allow a discussion as to the merits or demerits of alcohol at +my table," said Mr. Gresley. "I hold one opinion, Dr. Brown holds +another. I must beg to be allowed to differ from him. Children, say +grace." + + * * * * * + +It was Wednesday and a half-holiday, and Mrs. Gresley had arranged to +take the children in the pony-carriage to be measured for new boots. +These expeditions to Westhope were a great event. At two o'clock exactly +the three children rushed down-stairs, Regie bearing in his hand his tin +money-box, in which a single coin could be heard to leap. Hester +produced a bright threepenny-piece for each child, one of which was +irretrievably buried in Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately +lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and +slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, +accompanied by Boulou, a diminutive yellow-and-white dog of French +extraction. Boulou was a well-meaning, kind little soul. There was a +certain hurried arrogance about his hind-legs, but it was only manner. +He was not in reality more conceited than most small dogs who wear their +tails high. + +Hester saw them drive off, and a few minutes later Mr. Gresley started +on his bicycle for a ruridecanal chapter meeting in the opposite +direction. She heard the Vicarage gate "clink" behind him as she crossed +the little hall, and then she suddenly stopped short and wrung her +hands. She had forgotten to tell either of them that the Bishop of +Southminster was going to call that afternoon. She knew he was coming on +purpose to see her, but this would have been incredible to the +Gresleys. She had not read Rachel's letter announcing his coming till +she had taken refuge in the field where she had fallen asleep, and her +mental equilibrium had been so shaken by the annoyance she felt she had +caused the Gresleys at luncheon that she had entirely forgotten the +subject till this moment. + +She darted out of the house and flew down the little drive. But Fortune +frowned on Hester to-day. She reached the turn of the road only to see +the bent figure of Mr. Gresley whisk swiftly out of sight, his clerical +coat-tails flowing gracefully out behind like a divided skirt on each +side of the back wheel. + +Hester toiled back to the house breathless and dusty, and ready to cry +with vexation. "They will never believe I forgot to tell them," she said +to herself. "Everything I do is wrong in their eyes and stupid in my +own." And she sat down on the lowest step of the stairs and leaned her +head against the banisters. + +To her presently came a ministering angel in the shape of Fraeulein, who +had begged an egg from the cook, had boiled it over her spirit-lamp, and +now presented it with effusion to her friend on a little tray, with two +thin slices of bread-and-butter. + +"You are all goodness, Fraeulein," said Hester, raising her small, +haggard face out of her hands. "It is wrong of me to give so much +trouble." She did not want the egg, but she knew its oval was the only +shape in which Fraeulein could express her silent sympathy. So she +accepted it gratefully, and ate it on the stairs, with the tenderly +severe Fraeulein watching every mouthful. + +Life did not seem quite such a hopeless affair when the little meal was +finished. There were breaks in the clouds, after all. Rachel was coming +to see her that afternoon. Hester was, as Fraeulein often said, "easy +cast down and easy cast up." The mild stimulant of the egg "cast her up" +once more. She kissed Fraeulein and ran up to her room, where she +divested her small person of every speck of dust contracted on the +road, smoothed out an invisible crease in her holland gown, put back the +little ring of hair behind her ear which had become loosened in her rush +after her brother, and then came down, smiling and composed, to await +her friend in the drawing-room. + +Hester seldom sat in the drawing-room, partly because it was her +sister-in-law's only sitting-room and partly because it was the regular +haunt of the Pratt girls, who (with what seemed to Hester dreadful +familiarity) looked in at the windows when they came to call, and, if +they saw any one inside, entered straightway by the same, making retreat +impossible. + +The Miss Pratts had been willing, when Hester first came into the +neighborhood, to take a good-natured though precarious interest in +"their Vicar's sister." Indeed, Mrs. Gresley had felt obliged to warn +Hester not to count too much on their attentions, "as they sometimes +dropped people as quickly as they took them up." + +Hester was ignorant of country life, of its small society, its +inevitable relations with unsympathetic neighbors just because they were +neighbors; and she was specially ignorant of the class to which Mrs. +Gresley and the Pratts belonged, and from which her aunt had in her +lifetime unwisely guarded her niece as from the plague. She was amazed +at first at the Pratts calling her by her Christian name without her +leave, until she discovered that they spoke of the whole county by their +Christian names, even designating Lord Newhaven's two younger +brothers--with whom they were not acquainted--as Jack and Harry, though +they were invariably called by their own family John and Henry. + +When, after her aunt's death, she had, by the advice of her few +remaining relatives, taken up her abode with her brother, as much on his +account as her own, for he was poor and with an increasing family, she +journeyed to Warpington accompanied by a pleasant feeling that, at any +rate, she was not going among strangers. She had often visited in +Middleshire, at Wilderleigh, in the elder Mr. Loftus's time, for whom +she had entertained an enthusiastic reverence; at Westhope Abbey, where +she had a firm ally in Lord Newhaven, and at several other Middleshire +houses. She was silly enough to think she knew Middleshire fairly well, +but after she settled at Warpington she gradually discovered the +existence of a large undercurrent of society of which she knew nothing +at all, in which, whether she were willing or not, she was plunged by +the fact that she was her brother's sister. + +Hester perceived clearly enough that her brother did not by birth belong +to this set, though his profession brought him in contact with it, but +he had evidently, though involuntarily, adopted it for better for worse; +perhaps because a dictatorial habit is generally constrained to find +companionship in a social grade lower than its own, where a loud voice +and a tendency to monologue checkered by prehistoric jokes and tortured +puns may meet with a more patient audience. Hester made many discoveries +about herself during the first months of her life at Warpington, and the +first of the series amazed her more than any of the later ones. + +She discovered that she was proud. Perhaps she had not the enormous +opinion of herself which Mrs. Gresley so frequently deplored, for +Hester's thoughts seldom dwelt upon herself. But the altered +circumstances of her life forced them momentarily upon herself +nevertheless, as a burst pipe will spread its waters down a damask +curtain. + +So far, during the eight years since she had left the school-room, she +had always been "Miss Gresley," a little personage treated with +consideration wherever she went, and _choyee_ for her delicate humor and +talent for conversation. She now experienced the interesting sensation, +as novel to her as it is familiar to most of us, of being nobody, and +she disliked it. The manners of the set in which she found herself also +grated continually on her fastidious taste. She was first amazed and +then indignant at hearing her old Middleshire friends, whose simplicity +far surpassed that of her new acquaintance, denounced by the +latter--without being acquainted with them except officially--as "fine," +as caring only for "London people," and as being "tuft-hunters," because +they frequently entertained at their houses persons of rank, to half of +whom they were related. All this was new to Hester. She discovered that, +though she might pay visits at these houses, she must never mention +them, as it was considered the height of vulgarity to speak of people of +rank. + +Mrs. Gresley, who had been quite taken aback when the first of these +invitations came, felt it her duty to warn Hester against a love of +rank, reminding her that it was a very bad thing to get a name for +running after titled people. + +"James and I have always kept clear of that," she remarked, with +dignity. "For my part, I dare say you will think me very old-fashioned, +but I must own I never can see that people with titles or wealth are one +bit nicer or pleasanter than those without them." + +Hester agreed. + +"And," continued Mrs. Gresley, "it has always been our aim to be +independent, not to bow down before any one. If I am unworldly, it is +because I had the advantage of parents who impressed on me the +hollowness of all social distinctions. If the Pratts were given a title +to-morrow I should behave exactly the same to them as I do now." + +If Lady Susan Gresley had passed her acquaintance through a less +exclusive sieve, Hester might have had the advantage of hearing all +these well-worn sentiments, and of realizing the point of view of a +large number of her fellow-creatures before she became an inconspicuous +unit in their midst. + +But if Mrs. Gresley was pained by Hester's predilection for the society +of what she called "swells" (the word, though quite extinct in civilized +parts, can occasionally be found in country districts), she was still +more pained by the friendships Hester formed with persons whom her +sister-in-law considered "not quite." + +Mrs. Gresley was always perfectly civil, and the Pratts imperfectly so, +to Miss Brown, the doctor's invalid sister. But Hester made friends with +her, in spite of the warnings of Mrs. Gresley that kindness was one +thing and intimacy another. + +"The truth is," Mrs. Gresley would say, "Hester loves adulation, and as +she can't get it from the Pratts and us, she has to go to those below +her in the social scale, like Miss Brown, who will give it to her. Miss +Brown may be very cultivated. I dare say she is, but she makes up to +Hester." + +Sybell Loftus, who lived close at hand at Wilderleigh, across the Prone, +was one of the very few besides Miss Brown among her new acquaintances +who hailed Hester at once as a kindred spirit, to the unconcealed +surprise of the Pratts and the Gresleys. Sybell adored Hester's book, +which the Gresleys and Pratts considered rather peculiar "as emanating +from the pen of a clergyman's sister." She enthusiastically suggested to +Hester several improvements which might easily be made in it, which +would have changed its character altogether. She even intrenched on the +sacred precinct of a married woman's time to write out the openings of +several romances, which she was sure Hester, with her wonderful talent, +could build up into magnificent works of art. She was always running +over to the Vicarage to confide to Hester the unique thoughts which had +been vouchsafed to her while contemplating a rose, or her child, or her +husband, or all three together. + +Hester was half amused, half fascinated, and ruefully lost many of the +mornings still left her by the Pratts and Gresleys in listening to the +outpourings of this butterfly soul, which imagined every flower it +involuntarily alighted on and drew honey from to be its own special +production. + +But Hester's greatest friend in Middleshire was the Bishop of +Southminster, with whom Rachel was staying, and whom she was expecting +this afternoon. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + The depth and dream of my desire, + The bitter paths wherein I stray, + Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire, + Thou knowest Who hast made the clay! + --RUDYARD KIPLING. + + +The unbalanced joys and sorrows of emotional natures are apt to arouse +the pity of the narrow-hearted and the mild contempt of the obtuse of +their fellow-creatures. + +But perhaps it is a mistake to feel compassion for persons like Hester, +for if they have many evil days and weeks in their usually short lives, +they have also moments of sheer bliss, hours of awed contemplation and +of exquisite rapture which, possibly, in the long run, equal the more +solid joys of a good income and a good digestion, nay, even the +perennial glow of that happiest of happy temperaments which limits the +nature of others by its own, which sees no uncomfortable difference +between a moral and a legal right, and believes it can measure life with +the same admirable accuracy with which it measures its drawing-room +curtains. + +As Hester and Rachel sat together in the Vicarage drawing-room, Rachel's +faithful, doglike eyes detected no trace of tears in Hester's dancing, +mischievous ones. They were alone, for the Bishop had dropped Rachel on +his way to visit a sick clergyman, and had arranged to call at the +Vicarage on his way back. + +Hester quickly perceived that Rachel did not wish to talk of herself, +and drew a quaint picture of her own life at Warpington, which she +described "not wisely but too well." But she was faithful to her salt. +She said nothing of the Gresleys to which those worthies could have +objected had they been present. Indeed, she spoke of them in what they +would have termed "a very proper manner," of their kindness to her when +she had been ill, of how Mr. Gresley had himself brought up her +breakfast-tray every morning, and how, in the spring, he had taught her +to bicycle. + +"But, oh! Rachel," added Hester, "during the last nine months my +self-esteem has been perforated with wounds, each large enough to kill +the poor creature. My life here has shown me horrible faults in myself +of which I never dreamed. I feel as if I had been ironed all over since +I came here, and all kinds of ugly words in invisible ink are coming out +clear in the process." + +"I am quite alarmed," said Rachel, tranquilly. + +"You ought to be. First of all I did think I cared nothing about food. I +don't remember ever giving it a thought when I lived with Aunt Susan. +But here I--I am difficult about it. I do try to eat it, but often I +really can't. And then I leave it on my plate, which is a disgusting +habit, which always offends me in other people. Now I am as bad as any +of them; indeed, it is worse in me because I know poor James is not very +rich." + +"I suppose the cooking is vile?" + +"I don't know. I never noticed what I ate till I came here, so I can't +judge. Perhaps it is not very good. But the dreadful part is that I +should mind. I could not have believed it of myself. James and Minna +never say anything, but I know it vexes them, as of course it must." + +Rachel looked critically at Hester's innocent, childlike face. When +Hester was not a cultivated woman of the world she was a child. There +was, alas! no medium in her character. Rachel noticed how thin her face +and hands had become, and the strained look in the eyes. The faint color +in her cheek had a violet tinge. + +She did not waste words on the cookery question. She saw plainly enough +that Hester's weak health was slipping further down the hill. + +"And all this time you have been working?" + +"If you call it working. I used to call it so once, but I never do now. +Yes, I manage about four hours a day. I have made another pleasant +discovery about myself--that I have the temper of a fiend if I am +interrupted." + +"But surely you told the Gresleys when first you came that you must not +be interrupted at certain hours?" + +"I did. I did. But, of course--it is very natural--they think that +rather self-important and silly. I am thought very silly here, Rachel. +And James does not mind being interrupted in writing his sermons. And +the Pratts have got the habit of running in in the mornings." + +"Who on earth are the Pratts?" + +"They are what _they_ call 'county people.' Their father made a fortune +in oil, and built a house covered with turrets near here a few years +ago. I used to know Captain Pratt, the son, very slightly in London. I +never would dance with him. He used to come to our 'At Homes,' but he +was never asked to dinner. He is a great 'parti' among a certain set +down here. His mother and sisters were very kind to me when I came, but +I was not so accustomed then as I am now to be treated familiarly and +called 'Hessie,' which no one has ever called me before, and I am afraid +I was not so responsive as I see now I ought to have been. Down here it +seems your friends are the people whom you live near, not the ones you +like. It seems a curious arrangement. And as the Pratts are James's and +Minna's greatest friends, I did not wish to offend them. And then, of +course, I did offend them mortally at last by losing my temper when they +came up to my room to what they called 'rout me out,' though I had told +them I was busy in the mornings. I was in a very difficult place, and +when they came in I did not know who they were, because only the people +in the book were real just then. And then when I recognized them, and +the scene in my mind which I had been waiting for for weeks was +shattered like a pane of glass, I became quite giddy and spoke wildly. +And then--I was so ashamed afterwards--I burst into tears of rage and +despair." + +Even the remembrance was too much. Hester wiped away two large tears +onto a dear little handkerchief just large enough to receive them, and +went on with a quaver in her voice. + +"I was so shocked at myself that I found it quite easy to tell them next +day that I was sorry I had lost my temper; but they have not been the +same since. Not that I wanted them to be the same. I would rather they +were different. But I was anxious to keep on cordial terms with Minna's +friends. She quarrels with them herself, but that is different. I +suppose it is inevitable if you are on terms of great intimacy with +people you don't really care for." + +"At any rate, _they_ have not interrupted you again?" + +"N--no. But still, I was often interrupted. Minna has too much to do, +and she is not strong just now, and she often sends up one of the +children, and I was so nearly fierce with one of them--poor little +things!--that I felt the risk was becoming too great, so I have left off +writing between breakfast and luncheon, and I get up directly it is +light instead. It is light very early now. Only the worst part of it is +that I am so tired for the rest of the day that I can hardly drag myself +about." + +Rachel said nothing. She seldom commented on the confidences that were +made to her. She saw that Hester, always delicate, was making an +enormous effort under conditions which would be certain to entail +disastrous effects on her health. The book was sapping her strength like +a vampire, and the Gresleys were evidently exhausting it still further +by unconsciously strewing her path with difficulties. Rachel did not +know them, but she supposed they belonged to that large class whose eyes +are holden. + +"And the book itself? Is it nearly finished?" + +Hester's face changed. Eagerly, shyly, enthusiastically she talked to +her friend about the book, as a young girl talks of her lover. +Everything else was forgotten. Hester's eyes burned. Her color came and +went. She was transfigured. + +The protecting, anxious affection died out of Rachel's face as she +looked at Hester, and gave place to a certain wistful, half-envious +admiration. She had once been shaken by all these emotions herself, +years ago, when she was in love. She had regarded them as a revelation +while they lasted; and afterwards, as a steep step--a very steep +step--upon the stair of life. But she realized now that such as Hester +live constantly in the world which the greater number of us can only +enter when human passion lends us the key; the world at which, when the +gates are shut against us, the coarser minded among us are not ashamed +to level their ridicule and contempt. + +Hester spoke brokenly with awe and reverence of her book, as of some +mighty presence, some constraining power outside herself. She saw it +complete, beautiful--an entrancing vision, inaccessible, as a sunset. + +"I cannot reach up to it. I cannot get near it," she said. "When I try +to write it, it is like drawing an angel with spread wings with a bit of +charcoal. I understate everything. Yet I labor day by day travestying +it, caricaturing the beautiful thoughts that come into my mind. I make +everything commonplace and vulgar by putting it into words. I go alone +into the woods and sit for hours quite still with the trees. And +gradually I understand and know. And I listen, and Nature speaks, really +speaks--not a _facon de parler_, as some people think who explain to you +that you mean this or that by your words which you don't mean--and her +spirit becomes one with my spirit. And I feel I can never again +misunderstand her, never again fail to interpret her, never again wander +so far away from her that every white anemone and every seedling fern +disowns me, and waits in silence till the alien has gone from among +them. And I come home, Rachel, and I try, sometimes I try for half the +night, to find words to translate it into. But there are no words, or, +if there are, I cannot find them, and at last I fall back on some +coarse simile, and in my despair I write it down. And, oh! Rachel, the +worst is that presently, when I have forgotten what it ought to have +been, when the vision fades, I know I shall _admire_ what I have +written. It is that that breaks my heart." + +The old, old lament of those who worship art, that sternest mistress in +the world, fell into the silence of the little drawing-room. Rachel +understood it in part only, for she had always vaguely felt that Hester +idealized Nature, as she idealized her fellow-creatures, as she +idealized everything, and she did not comprehend why Hester was in +despair because she could not speak adequately of Life or Nature as she +saw them. Rachel thought, with bewilderment, that that was just what she +could do. + +At this moment a carriage drew up at the door, and after a long +interval, during which the wrathful voice of the cook could be +distinctly heard through the kitchen window recalling "Hemma" to a sense +of duty from the back yard, "Hemma" breathlessly ushered in the Bishop +of Southminster. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + Originality irritates the religious classes, who will not be taken + out of their indolent ways of thinking; who have a standing + grievance against it, and "heresy" and "heterodoxy" are bad words + ready for it.--W.W. PEYTON. + + +The Bishop was an undersized, spare man, with a rugged, weather-beaten +face and sinewy frame. If you had seen him working a crane in a +stone-mason's yard, or leading a cut-and-thrust forlorn-hope, or sailing +paper boats with a child, you would have felt he was the right man in +the right place. That he was also in his right place as a bishop had +never been doubted by any one. Mr. Gresley was the only person who had +occasionally had misgivings as to the Bishop's vocation as a true +priest, but he had put them aside as disloyal. + +Jowett is believed to have said, "A bishop without a sense of humor is +lost." Perhaps that may have been one of the reasons why, by Jowett's +advice, the See of Southminster was offered to its present occupant. The +Bishop's mouth, though it spoke of an indomitable will, had a certain +twist of the lip, his deep-set, benevolent eyes had a certain twinkle +which made persons like Lord Newhaven and Hester hail him at once as an +ally, but which ought to have been a danger-signal to some of his +clerical brethren--to Mr. Gresley in particular. + +The Bishop respected and upheld Mr. Gresley as a clergyman, but as a +conversationalist the young vicar wearied him. If the truth were known +(which it never was), he had arranged to visit Hester when he knew Mr. +Gresley would be engaging the reluctant attention of a ruridecanal +meeting. + +He gave a sigh of relief as he became aware that Hester and Rachel were +the only occupants of the cool, darkened room. Mrs. Gresley, it seemed, +was also out. + +Hester made tea, and presently the Bishop, who looked much exhausted, +roused himself. He had that afternoon attended two death-beds--one the +death-bed of a friend, and the other that of the last vestige of peace, +expiring amid the clamor of a distracted Low Church parish and High +Church parson, who could only meet each other after the fashion of +cymbals. For the moment even his courageous spirit had been +disheartened. + +"I met a son of Anak the other night at the Newhavens'," he said to +Hester, "who claimed you as a cousin--a Mr. Richard Vernon. He broke the +ice by informing me that I had confirmed him, and that perhaps I should +like to know that he had turned out better than he expected." + +"How like Dick!" said Hester. + +"I remembered him at last. His father was the squire of Farlow, where I +was rector before I came to Southminster. Dick was not a source of +unmixed pleasure to his parents. As a boy of eight he sowed the parental +billiard-table with mustard and cress in his father's absence, and +raised a very good crop, and performed other excruciating experiments. I +believe he beat all previous records of birch rods at Eton. I remember +while he was there he won a bet from another boy who could not pay, and +he foreclosed on the loser's cricketing trousers. His parents were +distressed about it when he brought them home, and I tried to make him +see that he ought not to have taken them. But Dick held firm. He said it +was like tithe, and if he could not get his own in money, as I did, he +must collect it in trousers. I must own he had me there. I noticed that +he wore the garment daily as long as any question remained in his +parents' minds as to whether they ought to be returned. After that I +felt sure he would succeed in life." + +"I believe he is succeeding in Australia." + +"I advised his father to send him abroad. There really was not room for +him in England, and, unfortunately for the army, the examiners jibbed at +his strictly phonetic spelling. He tells me he has given up being an +A.D.C. and has taken to vine-growing, because if people are up in the +world they always drink freely, and if they are 'down on their luck' +they drink all the more to drown care. The reasoning appeared to me +sound." + +"He and James used to quarrel frightfully in the holidays," said Hester. +"It was always the same reason, about playing fair. Poor James did not +know that games were matters of deadly importance, and that a rule was a +sacred thing. I wonder why it is that clergymen so often have the same +code of honor as women; quite a different code from that of the average +man." + +"I think," said the Bishop, "it is owing to that difference of code that +women clash so hopelessly with men when they attempt to compete or work +with them. Women have not to begin with the _esprit de corps_ which the +most ordinary men possess. With what difficulty can one squeeze out of a +man any fact that is detrimental to his friend, or even to his +acquaintance, however obviously necessary it may be that the information +should be asked for and given. Yet I have known many good and earnest +and affectionate women, who lead unselfish lives, who will 'give away' +their best woman friend at the smallest provocation, or without any +provocation at all; will inform you, _a propos_ of nothing, that she was +jilted years ago, or that her husband married her for her money. The +causes of humiliation and disaster in a woman's life seem to have no +sacredness for her women friends. Yet if that same friend whom she has +run down is ill, the runner down will nurse her day and night with +absolutely selfless devotion." + +"I have often been puzzled by that," said Rachel. "I seem to be always +making mistakes about women, and perhaps that is the reason. They show +themselves capable of some deep affection or some great self-sacrifice, +and I respect and admire them, and think they are like that all +through. And the day comes when they are not quite straightforward, or +are guilty of some petty meanness, which a man who is not fit to black +their boots would never stoop to." + +Hester's eyes fixed on her friend. + +"Do you tell them? Do you show them up to themselves," she asked, "or do +you leave them?" + +"I do neither," said Rachel. "I treat them just the same as before." + +"Then aren't you a hypocrite, too?" + +Hester's small face was set like a flint. + +"I think not," said Rachel, tranquilly, "any more than they are. The +good is there for certain, and the evil is there for certain. Why should +I take most notice of the evil, which is just the part which will be +rubbed out of them presently, while the good will remain?" + +"I think Rachel is right," said the Bishop. + +"I don't think she is, at all," said Hester, her plumage ruffled, +administering her contradiction right and left to her two best friends +like a sharp peck from a wren. "I think we ought to believe the best of +people until they prove themselves unworthy, and then--" + +"Then what?" said the Bishop, settling himself in his chair. + +"Then leave them in silence." + +"I only know of a woman's silence by hearsay. I have never met it. Do +you mean bitterly reproach the thistle for not bearing grapes?" + +"I do not. It is my own fault if I idealize a thistle until the thistle +and I both think it is a vine. But if people appear to love and honor +certain truths which they know are everything to me, and claim kinship +with me on that common ground, and then desert when the pinch comes, as +it always does come, and act from worldly motives, then I know that they +have never really cared for what they professed to love, that what I +imagined to be a principle was only a subject of conversation--and--I +withdraw." + +"You withdraw!" echoed the Bishop. "This is terrible." + +"Just as I should," continued Hester, "if I were in political life. If a +man threw in his lot with me, and then, when some means of worldly +advancement seemed probable from the other side, deserted to it, I +should not in consequence think him incapable of being a good husband +and father and landlord. But I should never again believe that he cared +for what I had staked my all on. And when he began to talk as if he +cared (as they always do, as if nothing had happened) I should not show +him up to himself. I have tried that and it is no use. I should--" + +"Denounce him as an apostate?" suggested the Bishop. + +"No. He should be to me thenceforward as a heathen." + +"Thrice miserable man!" + +"You would not have me treat him as a brother after that?" + +"Of course not, because he would probably dislike that still more." + +At this moment a hurricane seemed to pass through the little house, and +the three children rushed into the drawing-room, accompanied by Boulou, +in a frantic state of excitement. Boulou, like Hester, had no happy +medium in his character. He was what Mrs. Gresley called "very Frenchy," +and he now showed his Frenchyness by a foolish exhibition of himself in +coursing round and round the room with his silly foreign tail crooked +the wrong way. + +"Mother got out at Mrs. Brown's," shrieked Regie, in his highest voice, +"and I drove up." + +"Oh, Regie!" expostulated Mary the virtuous, the invariable corrector of +the statements of others. "You held the reins, but William walked +beside." + +Hester made the children shake hands with her guests, and then they +clustered round her to show what they had bought. + +Though the Bishop was fond of children, he became suddenly restive. He +took out his watch, and was nervously surprised at the lapse of time. +The carriage was sent for, and in a few minutes that dignified vehicle +was bowling back to Southminster. + +"I am not satisfied about Hester," said the Bishop. "She looks ill and +irritable, and she has the tense expression of a person who is making a +colossal effort to be patient, and whose patience, after successfully +meeting twenty calls upon it in the course of the day, collapses +entirely at the twenty-first. That is a humiliating experience." + +"She spoke as if she were a trial to her brother and his wife." + +"I think she is. I have a sort of sympathy with Gresley as regards his +sister. He has been kind to her according to his lights, and if she +could write little goody-goody books he would admire her immensely, and +so would half the neighborhood. It would be felt to be suitable. But +Hester jars against the preconceived ideas which depute that clergymen's +sisters and daughters should, as a matter of course, offer up their +youth and hair and teeth and eyesight on the altar of parochial work. +She does and is nothing that long custom expects her to do and be. +Originality is out of place in a clergyman's family, just because it is +so urgently needed. It is a constant source of friction. But, on the +other hand, the best thing that could happen to Hester is to be thrown +for a time among people who regard her as a nonentity, who have no sense +of humor, and to whom she cannot speak of any of the subjects she has at +heart. If Hester had remained in London after the success of her _Idyll_ +she would have met with so much sympathy and admiration that her next +book would probably have suffered in consequence. She is so susceptible, +so expansive, that repression is positively necessary to her to enable +her, so to speak, to get up steam. There is no place for getting up +steam like a country vicarage with an inner cordon of cows round it and +an outer one of amiable country neighbors, mildly contemptuous of +originality in any form. She cannot be in sympathy with them in her +present stage. It is her loss, not theirs. At forty she will be in +sympathy with them, and appreciate them as I do; but that is another +story. She has been working at this new book all winter with a fervor +and concentration which her isolation has helped to bring about. She +owes a debt of gratitude to her surroundings, and some day I shall tell +her so." + +"She says her temper has become that of a fiend." + +"She is passionate, there is no doubt. She nearly fell on us both this +afternoon. She is too much swayed by every little incident. Everything +makes a vivid impression on her and shakes her to pieces. It is rather +absurd and disproportionate now, like the long legs of a foal, but it is +a sign of growth. My experience is that people without that fire of +enthusiasm on the one side and righteous indignation on the other never +achieve anything except in domestic life. If Hester lives, she will +outgrow her passionate nature, or at least she will grow up to it and +become passive, contemplative. Then, instead of unbalanced anger and +excitement, the same nature which is now continually upset by them will +have learned to receive impressions calmly and, by reason of that +receptiveness and insight, she will go far." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + Only those who know the supremacy of the Intellectual life--the + life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within + it--can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene + activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly + annoyances.--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +Hester in the meanwhile was expressing wonder and astonishment at the +purchases of the children, who, with the exception of Mary, had spent +their little all on presents for Fraeulein, whose birthday was on the +morrow. After Mary's tiny white bone umbrella had been discovered to be +a needle-case, and most of the needles had been recovered from the +floor, Regie extracted from its paper a little china cow. But, alas! the +cow's ears and horns remained in the bag, owing possibly to the +incessant passage of the parcel from one pocket to another on the way +home. Regie looked at the remnants in the bag, and his lip quivered, +while Mary, her own umbrella safely warehoused, exclaimed, "Oh, Regie!" +in tones of piercing reproach. + +But Hester quickly suggested that she could put them on again quite +easily, and Fraeulein would like it just as much. Still, it was a blow. +Regie leaned his head against Hester's shoulder. + +Hester pressed her cheek against his little dark head. Sybell Loftus had +often told Hester that she could have no idea of the happiness of a +child's touch till she was a mother; that she herself had not an inkling +till then. But perhaps some poor substitute for that exquisite feeling +was vouchsafed to Hester. + +"The tail is still on," she whispered, not too cheerfully, but as one +who in darkness sees light beyond. + +The cow's tail was painted in blue upon its side. + +"When I bought it," said Regie, in a strangled voice, "and it was a +great-deal-of-money cow, I did wish its tail had been out behind; but I +think now it is safer like that." + +"All the best cows have their tails on the side," said Hester. "And +to-morrow morning, when you are dressed, run up to my room, and you will +find it just like it was before." And she carefully put aside the bits +with the injured animal. + +"And now what has Stella got?" + +Stella produced a bag of "bull's-eyes," which, in striking contrast with +the cow, had, in the course of the drive home, cohered so tightly +together that it was doubtful if they would ever be separated again. + +"Fraeulein never eats bull's-eyes," said Mary, who was what her parents +called "a very truthful child." + +"I eats them," said Stella, reversing her small cauliflower-like person +on the sofa till only a circle of white rims with a nucleus of coventry +frilling, with two pink legs kicking gently upward, were visible. + +Stella always turned upsidedown if the conversation took a personal +turn. In later and more conventional years we find a poor equivalent for +marking our disapproval by changing the subject. + +Hester had hardly set Stella right side upward when the door opened once +more and Mrs. Gresley entered, hot and exhausted. + +"Run up-stairs, my pets," she said. "Hester, you should not keep them +down here now. It is past their tea-time." + +"We came ourselves, mother," said Regie. "Fruaelein said we might, to +show Auntie Hester our secrets." + +"Well, never mind; run away now," said the poor mother, sitting down +heavily in a low chair, "and take Boulou." + +"You are tired out," said Hester, slipping on to her knees and unlacing +her sister-in-law's brown boots. + +Mrs. Gresley looked with a shade of compunction at the fragile kneeling +figure, with its face crimsoned by the act of stooping and by the +obduracy of the dust-ingrained boot-laces. But as she looked she noticed +the flushed cheeks, and, being a diviner of spirits, wondered what +Hester was ashamed of now. + +As Hester rose her sister-in-law held out, with momentary hesitation, a +thin paper bag, in which an oval form allowed its moist presence to be +discerned by partial adhesion to its envelope. + +"I saw you ate no luncheon, Hester, so I have brought you a little sole +for supper." + +Some of us poor Marthas spend all our existence, so to speak, in the +kitchens of life. We never get so far as the drawing-room. Our +conquests, our self-denials, are achieved through the medium of suet and +lard and necks of mutton. We wrestle with the dripping, and rise on +stepping-stones--not of our dead selves, but of sheep and oxen--to +higher things. + +The sole was a direct answer to prayer. Mrs. Gresley had been enabled to +stifle her irritation against this delicate, whimsical, fine lady of a +sister-in-law--laced in, too, we must not forget that--who, in Mrs. +Gresley's ideas, knew none of the real difficulties of life, its +butcher's bills, its monthly nurses, its constant watchfulness over +delicate children, its long, long strain at two ends which won't meet. +We must know but little of our fellow-creatures if the damp sole in the +bag appears to us other than the outward and homely sign of an inward +and spiritual conquest. + +As such Hester saw it, and she kissed Mrs. Gresley and thanked her, and +then ran, herself, to the kitchen with the peace offering, and came back +with her sister-in-law's down-at-heel in-door shoes. + +Mr. Gresley was stabling his bicycle in the hall as she crossed it. He +was generally excessively jocose with his bicycle. He frequently said, +"Whoa, Emma!" to it. But to-day he, too, was tired, and put Emma away in +silence. + +When Hester returned to the drawing-room Mrs. Gresley had recovered +sufficiently to notice her surroundings. She was sitting with her +tan-stockinged feet firmly planted on the carpet instead of listlessly +outstretched, her eyes ominously fixed on the tea-table and seed-cake. + +Hester's silly heart nudged her side like an accomplice. + +"Who has been here to tea?" said Mrs. Gresley. "I met the Pratts and the +Thursbys in Westhope." + +Hester was frightened. We need to be in the presence of those who judge +others by themselves. + +"The Bishop was here and Rachel West," she said, coloring. "They left a +few minutes ago." + +"Well, of all unlucky things, that James and I should have been out. +James, do you hear that? The Bishop's been while we were away. And I do +declare, Hester," looking again at the table, "you never so much as +asked for the silver teapot." + +"I never thought of it," said Hester, ruefully. It was almost impossible +to her to alter the habit of a lifetime, and to remember to dash out and +hurriedly change the daily routine if visitors were present. Lady Susan +had always used her battered old silver teapot every day, and for the +life of her Hester could not understand why there should be one kind one +day and one kind another. She glanced resentfully at the little brown +earthen-ware vessel which she had wielded so carefully half an hour ago. +Why did she never remember the Gresleys' wishes? + +"Hester," said Mrs. Gresley, suddenly, taking new note of Hester's +immaculate brown holland gown, which contrasted painfully with her own +dilapidated pink shirt with hard collars and cuffs and imitation tie, +tied for life in the shop where it was born. "You are so smart; I do +believe you knew they were coming." + +If there was one thing more than another which offended Hester, it was +being told that she was _smart_. + +"I trust I am never smart," she replied, not with any touch of the +haughtiness that some ignorant persons believe to be the grand manner, +but with a subtle change of tone and carriage which seemed instantly to +remove her to an enormous distance from the other woman with her +insinuation and tan stockings. Mrs. Gresley unconsciously drew in her +feet. "I did not know when I dressed this morning that the Bishop was +coming to-day." + +"Then you _did_ know later that he was coming?" + +"Yes, Rachel West wrote to tell me so this morning, but I did not open +her letter at breakfast, and I was so vexed at being late for luncheon +that I forgot to mention it then. I remembered as soon as James had +started, and ran after him, but he was too far off to hear me call to +him." + +It cost Hester a good deal to give this explanation, as she was aware +that the Bishop's visit had been to her and to her alone. + +"Come, come," said Mr. Gresley, judicially, with the natural masculine +abhorrence of a feminine skirmish. + +"Don't go on making foolish excuses, Hester, which deceive no one; and +you, Minna, don't criticise Hester's clothes. It is the Bishop's own +fault for not writing his notes himself. He might have known that Miss +West would have written to Hester instead of to me. I can't say I think +Hester behaved kindly towards us in acting as she did, but I won't hear +any more argument about it. I desire the subject should now _drop_." + +The last words were uttered in the same tone in which Mr. Gresley closed +morning service, and were felt to be final. He was not in reality +greatly chagrined at missing the Bishop, whom he regarded with some of +the suspicious distrust with which a certain class of mind ever regards +that which is superior to it. Hester left the room, closing the door +gently behind her. + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, looking at her priest with tears of +admiration in her eyes, "I shall never be good like you, so you need not +expect it. How you can be so generous and patient with her I don't know. +It passes me." + +"We must learn to make allowances for each other," said Mr. Gresley, in +his most affectionate cornet, drawing his tired, tearful little wife +down beside him on the sofa. And he made some fresh tea for her, and +waited on her, and she told him about the children's boots and the sole, +and he told her about a remarkable speech he had made at the chapter +meeting, and a feeling that had been borne in on him on the way home +that he should shortly write something striking about Apostolic +Succession. And they were happy together; for though he sometimes +reproved her as a priest if she allowed herself to dwell on the +probability of his being made a Bishop, he was very kind to her as a +husband. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + "Beware of a silent dog and still water." + + +If you are travelling across Middleshire on the local line between +Southminster and Westhope, after you have passed Wilderleigh with its +gray gables and park wall, close at hand you will perceive to nestle (at +least, Mr. Gresley said it nestled) Warpington Vicarage; and perhaps, if +you know where to look, you will catch a glimpse of Hester's narrow +bedroom window under the roof. Half a mile farther on Warpington Towers, +the gorgeous residence of the Pratts, bursts into view, with flag on +turret flying, and two tightly bitted rustic bridges leaping high over +the Drone. You cannot see all the lodges of Warpington Towers from the +line, which is a source of some regret to Mr. Pratt; but if he happens +to be travelling with you he will point out two of them, chaste stucco +Gothic erections with church windows, and inform you that the three +others are on the northern and eastern sides, vaguely indicating the +directions of Scotland and Ireland. + +And the Drone, kept in order on your left by the low line of the +Slumberleigh hills, will follow you and leave you, leave you and return +all the way to Westhope. You are getting out at Westhope, of course, if +you are a Middleshire man; for Westhope is on the verge of Middleshire, +and the train does not go any farther--at least, it only goes into one +of the insignificant counties which jostle each other to hold on to +Middleshire, unknown Saharas, where passengers who oversleep themselves +wake to find themselves cast away. + +Westhope Abbey stands in its long, low meadows and level gardens, close +to the little town, straggling red roof above red roof, up its steep +cobbled streets. + +Down the great central aisle you may walk on mossy stones between the +high shafts of broken pillars under the sky. God's stars look down once +more where the piety of man had for a time shut them out. Through the +slender tracery of what was once the east window, instead of glazed +saint and crucifix, you may see the little town clasping its hill. + +The purple clematis and the small lizard-like leaf of the ivy have laid +tender hands on all that is left of that stately house of prayer. The +pigeons wheel round it, and nest in its niches. The soft, contented +murmur of bird praise has replaced the noise of bitter human prayer. A +thin wind-whipped grass holds the summit of the broken walls against all +corners. The fallen stones, quaintly carved with angel and griffin, are +going slowly back year by year, helped by the rain and hindered by the +frost, slowly back through the sod to the generations of human hands +that held and hewed them, and fell to dust below them hundreds of years +ago. The spirit returns to the God who gave it, and the stone to the +hand that fashioned it. + +The adjoining monastery had been turned into a dwelling-house, without +altering it externally, and it was here that Lord Newhaven loved to pass +the summer months. Into its one long upper passage all the many rooms +opened, up white stone steps through arched doors, rooms which had once +been monks' dormitories, abbots' cells, where Lady Newhaven and her +guests now crimped their hair and slept under down quilts till noon. + +It was this long passage, with its interminable row of low latticed +windows, that Lord Newhaven was turning into a depository for the old +English weapons which he was slowly collecting. He was standing now +gazing lovingly at them, drawing one finger slowly along an inlaid +arquebus, when a yell from the garden made him turn and look out. + +It was not a yell of anguish, and Lord Newhaven remained at the window +leaning on his elbows and watching at his ease the little scene which +was taking place below him. + +On his bicycle on the smooth-shaven lawn was Dick, wheeling slowly in +and out among the stone-edged flower-beds, an apricot in each broad +palm, while he discoursed in a dispassionate manner to the two excited +little boys who were making futile rushes for the apricots. The +governess and Rachel were looking on. Rachel had arrived at Westhope the +day before from Southminster. "Take your time, my son," said Dick, just +eluding by a hair's-breadth a charge through a geranium-bed on the part +of the eldest boy. "If you are such jolly little fools as to crack your +little skulls on the sun-dial, I shall eat them both myself. Miss Turner +says you may have them, so you've only got to take them. I can't keep on +offering them all day long. My time"--(Dick ran his bicycle up a +terrace, and, as soon as the boys were up, glided down again)--"my time +is valuable. You don't want them?" A shrill disclaimer and a fresh +onslaught. "Miss Turner, they thank you very much, but they don't care +for apricots." + +Half a second more and Dick skilfully parted from his bicycle and was +charged by his two admirers and severely pummelled as high as they could +reach. When they had been led away by Miss Turner, each biting an +apricot and casting longing backward looks at their friend, Rachel and +Dick wandered to the north side of the abbey and sat down there in the +shade. + +Lord Newhaven could still see them, could still note her amused face +under her wide white hat. He was doing his best for Dick, and Dick was +certainly having his chance, and making the most of it according to his +lights. + +"But, all the same, I don't think he has a chance," said Lord Newhaven +to himself. "That woman, in spite of her frank manner and her +self-possession, is afraid of men; not of being married for her money, +but of man himself. And whatever else he may not be, Dick is a man. +It's the best chance she will ever get, so it is probable she won't take +it." + +Lord Newhaven sauntered back down the narrow black oak staircase to his +own room on the ground-floor. He sat down at his writing-table and took +out of his pocket a letter which he had evidently read before. He now +read it slowly once more. + +"Your last letter to me had been opened," wrote his brother from India, +"or else it had not been properly closed. As you wrote on business, I +wish you would be more careful." + +"I will," said Lord Newhaven, and he wrote a short letter in his small, +upright hand, closed the envelope, addressed and stamped it, and +sauntered out through the low-arched door into the garden. + +Dick was sitting alone on the high-carved stone edge of the round pool +where the monks used to wash, and where gold-fish now lived cloistered +lives. A moment of depression seemed to have overtaken that cheerful +personage. + +"Come as far as the post-office," said Lord Newhaven. + +Dick gathered himself together, and rose slowly to his large feet. + +"You millionaires are all the same," he said. "Because you have a house +crawling with servants till they stick to the ceiling you have to go to +the post-office to buy a penny stamp. It's like keeping a dog and +barking yourself." + +"I don't fancy I bark much," said Lord Newhaven. + +"No, and you don't bite _often_, but when you do you take out the piece. +Do you remember that colored chap at Broken Hill?" + +"He deserved it," said Lord Newhaven. + +"He richly deserved it. But you took him in, poor devil, all the same. +You were so uncommonly mild and limp beforehand, and letting pass things +you ought not to have let pass, that, like the low beast he was, he +thought he could play you any dog's trick, and that you would never +turn on him." + +"It's a way worms have." + +"Oh, hang worms; it does not matter whether they turn or not. But cobras +have no business to imitate them till poor rookies think they have no +poison in them, and that they can tickle them with a switch. What a +great hulking brute that man was! You ricked him when you threw him! I +saw him just before I left Adelaide. He's been lame ever since." + +"He'd have done for me if he could." + +"Of course he would. His blood was up. He meant to break your back. I +saw him break a chap's back once, and it did not take so very long +either. I heard it snap. But why did you let him go so far to start with +before you pulled him up? That's what I've never been able to understand +about you. If you behaved different to start with they would behave +different to you. They would know they'd have to." + +"I have not your art," said Lord Newhaven, tranquilly, "of letting a man +know when he's getting out of hand that unless he goes steady there will +be a row, and he'll be in it. I'm not made like that." + +"It works well," said Dick. "It's a sort of peaceful way of rubbing +along and keeping friends. If you let those poor bullies know what to +expect they aren't, as a rule, over-anxious to toe the mark. But you +never _do_ let them know." + +"No," said Lord Newhaven, as he shot his letter into the brass mouth in +the cottage wall, just below a window of "bulls'-eyes" and peppermints, +"I never do. I don't defend it. But--" + +"But what?" + +Lord Newhaven's face underwent some subtle change. His eyes fixed +themselves on a bottle of heart-shaped peppermints, and then met Dick's +suddenly, with the clear, frank glance of a schoolboy. + +"But somehow, for the life of me, until things get serious--_I can't_." + +Dick, whose perceptions were rather of a colossal than an acute order, +nevertheless perceived that he had received a confidence, and changed +the subject. + +"Aren't you going to buy some stamps?" he asked, perfectly aware that +Lord Newhaven had had his reasons for walking to the post-office. + +Lord Newhaven, who was being watched with affectionate interest from +behind the counter by the grocer postmaster, went in, hit his head +against a pendent ham, and presently emerged with brine in his hair and +a shilling's worth of stamps in his hand. + +Later in the day, when he and Dick were riding up the little street, +with a view to having a look at the moor--for Middleshire actually has a +grouse moor, although it is in the Midlands--the grocer in his white +apron rushed out and waylaid them. + +"Very sorry about the letter, my lord," he repeated volubly, touching +his forelock. "Hope her la'ship told you as I could not get it out +again, or I'm sure I would have done to oblige your lordship, and her +la'ship calling on purpose. But the post-office is that mean and +distrustful as it don't leave me the key, and once hanything is in, in +it is." + +"Ah!" said Lord Newhaven, slowly. "Well, Jones, it's not your fault. I +ought not to have changed my mind. I suppose her ladyship gave you my +message that I wanted it back?" + +"Yes, my lord, and her la'ship come herself, not ten minutes after you +was gone. But I've no more power over that there receptacle than a +hunlaid hegg, and that's the long and short of it. I've allus said, and +I say it again, 'Them as have charge of the post-office should have the +key.'" + +"When I am made postmaster-general you _shall_ have it," said Lord +Newhaven, smiling. "It is the first reform that I shall bring about." +And he nodded to the smiling, apologetic man and trotted on, Dick beside +him, who was apparently absorbed in the action of his roan cob. + +But Dick's mind had sustained a severe shock. That Lady Newhaven, "that +jolly little woman," the fond mother of those two "jolly little chaps," +should have been guilty of an underhand trick, was astonishing to him. + +Poor Dick had started life with a religious reverence for woman; had +carried out his brittle possession to bush-life in Australia, from +thence through two A.D.C.-ships, and, after many vicissitudes, had +brought it safely back with a large consignment of his own Burgundy to +his native land. It was still sufficiently intact--save for a chip or +two--to make a pretty wedding-present to his future wife. But it had had +a knock since he mounted the roan cob. For, unfortunately, the kind of +man who has what are called "illusions" about women is too often the man +whose discrimination lies in other directions, in fields where little +high-heeled shoes are not admitted. + +Rachel had the doubtful advantage of knowing that, in spite of Dick's +shrewdness respecting shades of difference in muscatels, she and Lady +Newhaven were nevertheless ranged on the same pedestal in Dick's mind as +flawless twins of equal moral beauty. But after this particular day she +observed that Lady Newhaven had somehow slipped off the pedestal, and +that she, Rachel, had the honor of occupying it alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + "Une grande passion malheureaux est un grand moyen de sagesse." + + +Rachel had left London precipitately after she had been the unwilling +confidante of Lady Newhaven's secret, and had taken refuge with that +friend of all perplexed souls, the Bishop of Southminster. She felt +unable to meet Hugh again without an interval of breathing-time. She +knew that if she saw much more of him he would confide in her, and she +shrank from receiving a confidence the ugliest fact of which she already +knew. Perhaps she involuntarily shrank also from fear lest he should +lower himself in her eyes by only telling her half the truth. Sad +confessions were often poured into Rachel's ears which she had known for +years. She never alluded to that knowledge, never corrected the half-lie +which accompanies so many whispered self--accusations. Confidences and +confessions are too often a means of evasion of justice--a laying of the +case for the plaintiff before a judge without allowing the defendant to +be present or to call a witness. Rachel, by dint of long experience, +which did slowly for her the work of imagination, had ceased to wonder +at the faithfully chronicled harsh words and deeds of generous souls. +She knew or guessed at the unchronicled treachery or deceit which had +brought about that seemingly harsh word or deed. + +She had not the exalted ideas about her fellow-creatures which Hester +had, but she possessed the rare gift of reticence. She exemplified the +text--"Whether it be to friend or foe, talk not of other men's lives." +And in Rachel's quiet soul a vast love and pity dwelt for these same +fellow-creatures. She had lived and worked for years among those whose +bodies were half starved, half clothed, degraded. When she found money +at her command she had spent sums (as her lawyer told her) out of all +proportion on that poor human body, stumbling between vice and +starvation. But now, during the last year, when her great wealth had +thrown her violently into society, she had met, until her strong heart +flinched before it, the other side of life--the starved soul in the +delicately nurtured, richly clad body, the atrophied spiritual life in +hideous contrast with the physical ease and luxury which were choking +it. The second experience was harder to bear than the first. And just as +in the old days she had shared her bread and cheese with those hungrier +than herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread +and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her +new associates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of +luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins +the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually +starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose +names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke--the little +world which is called "Society." + +She longed to comfort them, to raise them up, to wipe from their hands +and garments the muddy gold stains of the gutter into which they had +fallen, to smooth away the lines of mean care from their faces. But it +had been far simpler in her previous life to share her hard-earned bread +with those who needed it than it was now to share her equally +hard-earned thoughts and slow gleanings of spiritual knowledge, to share +the things which belonged to her peace. + +Rachel had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming passion of +love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had devastated the +little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, involving its hospitable +dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in one common ruin. Out of that +desolation she was unconsciously rebuilding her city, but it was still +rather gaunt and bare, the trees had not had time to grow in the +streets, and there was an ugly fortification round it of defaced, +fire-seared stones, which had once stood aloft in minaret and tower, and +which now served only as a defence against all corners. + +If Dick had been in trouble, or rather if she had known the troubles he +had been through, and which had made his crooked mouth shut so firmly, +Rachel might possibly have been able to give him something more valuable +than the paper money of her friendship. But Dick was obviously +independent. He could do without her, while Hugh had a claim upon her. +Rachel's thoughts turned to Hugh again and ever again. Did he see his +conduct as she saw it? A haunting fear was upon her that he did not. And +she longed with an intensity that outbalanced for the time every other +feeling that he should confess his sin fully, entirely--see it in all +its ugliness, and gather himself together into a deep repentance before +he went down into silence, or before he made a fresh start in life. She +would have given her right hand to achieve that. + +And in a lesser degree she was drawn towards Lady Newhaven. Lady +Newhaven was conscious of the tender compassion which Rachel felt for +her, and used it to the uttermost; but unfortunately she mistook it for +admiration of her character, mixed with sympathetic sorrow for her +broken heart. If she had seen herself as Rachel saw her, she would have +conceived, not for herself, but for Rachel, some of the aversion which +was gradually distilling, bitter drop by drop, into her mind for her +husband. She would not have killed him. She would have thought herself +incapable of an action so criminal, so monstrous. But if part of the +ruin in the garden were visibly trembling to its fall, she would not +have warned him if he had been sitting beneath it, nor would her +conscience have ever reproached her afterwards. + +"I wish Miss Gresley would come and stay here instead of taking you away +from me," she said, plaintively, to Rachel one morning, when she made +the disagreeable discovery that Rachel and Hester were friends. "I don't +care much about her myself, she is so profane and so dreadfully +irreligious. But Edward likes to talk to her. He prefers artificial +people. I wonder he did not marry her. That old cat, Lady Susan Gresley, +was always throwing her at his head. I wish she was not always +persuading you to leave me for hours together. I get so frightened when +I am left alone with Edward. I live in perpetual dread that he will say +something before the children or the servants. He is quite cruel +enough." + +"He will never say anything." + +"You are always so decided, Rachel. You don't see possibilities, and you +don't know him as I do. He is capable of anything. I will write a note +now, and you can take it to Miss Gresley, if you _must_ go there +to-day." + +"I wish to go very much." + +"And you will stay another week whether she comes or not?" + +There was a momentary pause before Rachel said, cheerfully, "I will stay +another week, with pleasure. But I am afraid Lord Newhaven will turn +restive at taking me in to dinner." + +"Oh! he likes you. He always prefers people who are not of his own +family." + +Rachel laughed. "You flatter me." + +"I never flatter any one. He does like you, and, besides, there are +people coming next week for the grouse-shooting. I suppose that heavy +young Vernon is going to lumber over with you. It's not my fault if he +is always running after you. Edward insisted on having him. I don't want +him to dance attendance on _me_." + +"He and I are going to bicycle to Warpington together. The Gresleys are +cousins of his. If it turns very hot we will wait till after sunset to +return, if we may." + +"Just as you like," said Lady Newhaven with asperity. "But I advise you +to be careful, my dear Rachel. It never seems to occur to you what +on-lookers see at a glance, namely, that Mr. Vernon is in love with +your fortune." + +"According to public opinion that is a very praiseworthy attachment," +said Rachel, who had had about enough. "I often hear it commended." + +Lady Newhaven stared. That her conversation could have the effect of a +mustard leaf did not strike her. She saw that Rachel was becoming +restive, and, of course, the reason was obvious. She was thinking of +marrying Dick. + +"Well, my dear," she said, lying down on a low couch near the latticed +window, and opening a novel, "you need not be vexed with me for trying +to save you from a mercenary marriage. I only speak because I am fond of +you. But one marriage is as good as another. I was married for love +myself; I had not a farthing. And yet you see my marriage has turned out +a tragedy--a bitter, bitter tragedy." + +_Tableau_.--A beautiful, sad-faced young married woman in white, +reclining among pale-green cushions near a bowl of pink carnations, +endeavoring to rouse the higher feelings of an inexperienced though not +youthful spinster in a short bicycling skirt. Decidedly, the picture was +not flattering to Rachel. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + "On s'ennuie presque toujours avec ceux qu'on ennuie." + + +Hester did not fail a second time to warn the Gresleys of the arrival of +guests. She mentioned it in time to allow of the making of cakes, and +Mr. Gresley graciously signified his intention of returning early from +his parochial rounds on the afternoon when Dick and Rachel were +expected, while Mrs. Gresley announced that the occasion was a +propitious one for inviting the Pratts to tea. + +"Miss West will like to meet them," she remarked to Hester, whose jaw +dropped at the name of Pratt. "And it is very likely if they take a +fancy to her they will ask her to stay at the Towers while she is in the +neighborhood. If the captain is at home I will ask him to come too. The +Pratts are always so pleasant and hospitable." + +Hester was momentarily disconcerted at the magnitude of the social +effort which Rachel's coming seemed to entail. But for once she had the +presence of mind not to show her dismay, and she helped Mrs. Gresley to +change the crewel-work antimacassars, with their washed-out kittens +swinging and playing leap-frog, for the best tussore-silk ones. + +The afternoon was still young when all the preparations had been +completed, and Mrs. Gresley went up-stairs to change her gown, while +Hester took charge of the children, as Fraeulein had many days previously +arranged to make music with Dr. and Miss Brown on this particular +afternoon. And very good music it was which proceeded out of the open +windows of the doctor's red brick house opposite Abel's cottage. Hester +could just hear it from the bottom of the garden near the church-yard +wall, and there she took the children, and under the sycamore, with a +bench round it, the dolls had a tea-party. Hester had provided herself +with a lump of sugar and a biscuit, and out of these many dishes were +made, and were arranged on a clean pocket-handkerchief spread on the +grass. Regie carried out his directions as butler with solemn +exactitude; and though Mary, who had inherited the paternal sense of +humor, thought fit to tweak the handkerchief and upset everything, she +found the witticism so coldly received by "Auntie Hester," although she +explained that father always did it, that she at once suited herself to +her company, and helped to repair the disaster. + +It was very hot. The dolls, from the featureless midshipman to the +colossal professional beauty sitting in her own costly perambulator (a +present from Mrs. Pratt), felt the heat, and showed it by their moist +countenances. The only person who was cool was a small, nude, china +infant in its zinc bath, the property of Stella, whose determination to +reach central facts, and to penetrate to the root of the matter, at +present took the form of tearing or licking off all that could be torn +or licked from objects of interest. Hester, who had presented her with +the floating baby in the bath, sometimes wondered, as she watched Stella +conscientiously work through a well-dressed doll down to its stitched +sawdust compartments, what Mr. Gresley would make of his daughter when +she turned her attention to theology. + +They were all sitting in a tight circle round the handkerchief, Regie +watching Hester cutting a new supply of plates out of smooth leaves with +her little gilt scissors, while Mary and Stella tried alternately to +suck an inaccessible grain of sugar out of the bottom of an acorn cup. + +Rachel and Dick had come up on their silent wheels, and were looking at +them over the wall before Hester was aware of their presence. + +"May we join the tea-party?" asked Rachel, and Hester started +violently. + +"I am afraid the gate is locked," she said. "But perhaps you can climb +it." + +"We can't leave the bicycles outside, though," said Dick, and he took a +good look at the heavy padlocked gate. Then he slowly lifted it off its +hinges, wheeled in the bicycles, and replaced the gate in position. + +Rachel looked at him. + +"Do you always do what you want to do?" she said, involuntarily. + +"It saves trouble," he said, "especially as no one can be such a +first-class fool as to think a padlock will keep a gate shut. He would +expect it to be opened." + +"But father said no one could come in there now," explained Regie, who +had watched, open-mouthed, the upheaval of the gate. "Father said it +could not be opened any more. He told mother." + +"Did he, my son?" said Dick, and he kissed every one, beginning with +Hester and finishing with the dolls. Then they all sat down to the +tea-party, and partook largely of the delicacies, and after tea Dick +solemnly asked the children if they had seen the flying half-penny he +had brought back with him from Australia. The children crowded round +him, and the half-penny was produced and handed round. Each child +touched it, and found it real. Auntie Hester and Auntie Rachel examined +it. Boulou was requested to smell it. And then it was laid on the grass, +and the pocket-handkerchief which had done duty as a table-cloth was +spread over it. + +The migrations of the half-penny were so extraordinary that even Rachel +and Hester professed amazement. Once it was found in Rachel's hand, into +which another large hand had gently shut it. But it was never discovered +twice in the same place, though all the children rushed religiously to +look for it where it was last discovered. + +Another time, after a long search, the doll in the bath was discovered +to be sitting upon it, and once it actually flew down Regie's back; and +amid the wild excitement of the children its cold descent was described +by Regie in piercing minuteness until the moment when it rolled out over +his stocking at his knee. + +"Make it fly down my back too, Uncle Dick," shrieked Mary. "Regie, give +it to me." + +But Regie danced in a circle round Dick, holding aloft the wonderful +half-penny. + +"Make it fly down my throat," he cried, too excited to know what he was +doing, and he put the half-penny in his mouth. + +"Put it out this instant," said Dick, without moving. + +A moment's pause followed, in which the blood ebbed away from the hearts +of the two women. + +"I can't," said Regie; "I've swallowed it." And he began to whimper, and +then suddenly rolled on the grass screaming. + +Dick pounced upon him like a panther, and held him by the feet head +downward, shaking him violently. The child's face was terrible to see. + +Hester hid her face in her hands. Rachel rose and stood close to Dick. + +"I think the shaking is rather too much for him," she said, watching the +poor little purple face intently. "I'm bound to go on," said Dick, +fiercely. "Is it moving, Regie?" + +"It's going down," screamed Regie, suddenly. + +"That it's not," said Dick, and he shook the child again, and the +half-penny flew out upon the grass. "Thank God," said Dick, and he laid +the gasping child on Hester's lap and turned away. + +A few minutes later Regie was laughing and talking, and feeling himself +a hero. Presently he slipped off Hester's knee and ran to Dick, who was +lying on the grass a few paces off, his face hidden in his hands. + +"Make the half-penny fly again, Uncle Dick," cried all the children, +pulling at him. + +Dick raised an ashen face for a moment and said, hoarsely, "Take them +away." + +Hester gathered up the children and took them back to the house through +the kitchen garden. + +"Don't say we have arrived," whispered Rachel to her. "I will come on +with him presently." And she sat down near the prostrate vine-grower. +The president of the South Australian Vine-Growers' Association looked +very large when he was down. + +Presently he sat up. His face was drawn and haggard, but he met Rachel's +dog-like glance of silent sympathy with a difficult, crooked smile. + +"He is such a jolly little chap," he said, winking his hawk eyes. + +"It was not your fault." + +"That would not have made it any better for the parents," said Dick. "I +had time to think of that while I was shaking that little money-box. +Besides, it was my fault, in a way. I'll never play with other people's +children again. They are too brittle. I've had shaves up the Fly River +and in the South Sea Islands, but never anything as bad as this, in this +blooming little Vicarage garden with a church looking over the wall." + +Hester was skimming back towards them. + +"Don't mention it to James and his wife," she said to Dick. "He has to +speak at a temperance meeting to-night. I will tell them when the +meeting is over." + +"That's just as well," said Dick, "for I know if James jawed much at me +I should act on the text that it is more blessed to give than to +receive." + +"In what way?" + +"Either way," said Dick. "Tongue or fist. It does not matter which, so +long as you give more than you get. And the text is quite right. It is +blessed, for I've tried it over and over again, and found it true every +time. But I don't want to try it on James if he's anything like what he +was as a curate." + +"He is not much altered," said Hester. + +"He is the kind of man that would not alter much," said Dick. "I expect +God Almighty likes him as he is." + +Mr. and Mrs. Gresley, meanwhile, were receiving Mrs. Pratt and the two +Misses Pratt in the drawing-room. Selina and Ada Pratt were fine, +handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their smart sailor +hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and whose +muff-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and sequin belts +and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the highest pinnacle of the +world of fashion. + +Selina was the most popular, being liable to shrieks of laughter at the +smallest witticisms, and always ready for that species of amusement +termed "bally-ragging" or "hay-making." But Ada was the most admired. +She belonged to that type which in hotel society and country towns is +always termed "queenly." She "kept the men at a distance." She "never +allowed them to take liberties," etc., etc. She held her chin up and her +elbows out, and was considered by the section of Middleshire society in +which she shone to be very distinguished. Mrs. Pratt was often told that +her daughter looked like a duchess; and this facsimile of the +aristocracy, or rather of the most distressing traits of its latest +recruits, had a manner of lolling with crossed legs in the parental +carriage and pair which was greatly admired. "Looks as if she was born +to it all," Mr. Pratt would say to his wife. + +Mrs. Gresley was just beginning to fear her other guests were not coming +when two tall figures were seen walking across the lawn, with Hester +between them. + +Mr. Gresley sallied forth to meet them, and blasts of surprised welcome +were borne into the drawing-room by the summer air. + +"But it was locked. I locked it myself." Inaudible reply. + +"Padlocked. Only opens to the word Moon. Key on my own watch-chain." + +Inaudible reply. + +"Hinges! ha! ha! ha! Very good, Dick. Likely story that. I see you're +the same as ever. Travellers' tales. But we are not so easily taken in, +are we, Hester?" + +Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the Pratts +were concerned. Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected "fancy" to Rachel, and +pressed her to stay at "The Towers" while she was in the neighborhood, +and make further acquaintance with her "young ladies." + +"Ada is very pernickety," she said, smiling towards that individual +conversing with Dick. "She won't make friends with everybody, and she +gives it me" (with maternal pride) "when I ask people to stay whom she +does not take to. She says there's a very poor lot round here, and most +of the young ladies so ill-bred and empty she does not care to make +friends with them. I don't know where she gets all her knowledge from. +I'm sure it's not from her mother. Ada, now you come and talk a little +to Miss West." + +Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel made room +for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself behind the +tea-table with Mrs. Gresley. + +The conversation turned on bicycling. + +"I bike now and then in the country," said Ada, "but I have not done +much lately. We have only just come down from town, and, _of course_, I +never bike in London." + +Rachel had just said that she did. + +"Perhaps you are nervous about the traffic," said Rachel. + +"Oh! I'm not the least afraid of the traffic, but it's such bad form to +bike in London." + +"That, of course, depends on how it's done," said Rachel; "but I am sure +in your ease you need not be afraid." + +Ada glared at Rachel, and did not answer. + +When the Pratts had taken leave she said to her mother: + +"Well, you can have Rachel West if you want to, but if you do I shall go +away. She is only Birmingham, and yet she's just as stuck up as she can +be." + +The Pratts were "Liverpool." + +"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt with natural pride, "it's well known +no one is good enough for you. But I took to Miss West, and an orphan +and all, with all that money, poor thing!" + +"She has no style," said Selina, "but she has a nice face; and she's +coming to stay with Sibbie Loftus next week, when she leaves Vi +Newhaven. She may be Birmingham, Ada, but she's just as thick with +county people as we are." + +"I did not rightly make out," said Mrs. Pratt, reflectively, "whether +that tall gentleman, Mr. Vernon, was after Miss West or Hessie Gresley." + +"Oh, ma! You always think some one's after somebody else," said Ada, +impatiently, whose high breeding obliged her to be rather peremptory +with her simple parent. "Mr. Vernon is a pauper, and so is Hessie. And, +besides, Hessie is not the kind of girl anybody would want to marry." + +"Well, I'm not so sure of that," said Selina. "But if she had had any +chances I know she would have told me, because I told her all about +Captain Cobbett and Mr. Baxter." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages. + --LA FONTAINE. + + +If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a word with +Hester, she was doomed to disappointment. Mr. Gresley took the seat on +the sofa beside Rachel which Ada Pratt had vacated, and after a few +kindly eulogistic remarks on the Bishop of Southminster and the +responsibilities of wealth, he turned the conversation into the +well-worn groove of Warpington. + +Rachel proved an attentive listener, and after Mr. Gresley had furnished +her at length with nutritious details respecting parochial work, he went +on: + +"I am holding this evening a temperance meeting in the Parish Room. I +wish, Miss West, that I could persuade you to stay for it, and thus +enlist your sympathies in a matter of vital importance." + +"They have been enlisted in it for the last ten years," said Rachel, who +was not yet accustomed to the invariable assumption on the part of Mr. +Gresley that no one took an interest in the most obvious good work until +he had introduced and championed it. "But," she added, "I will stay with +pleasure." + +Dick, who was becoming somewhat restive under Mrs. Gresley's inquiries +about the Newhavens, became suddenly interested in the temperance +meeting. + +"I've seen many a good fellow go to the dogs through drink in the +Colonies, more's the pity," Dick remarked. "I think I'll come too, +James. And if you want a few plain words you call on me." + +"I will," said Mr. Gresley, much gratified. "I always make a point of +encouraging the laity--at least, those among them who are thoroughly +grounded in Church teaching--to express themselves. Hear both sides, +that is what I always say. The Bishop constantly enjoins on his clergy +to endeavor to elicit the lay opinion. The chair this evening will be +taken by Mr. Pratt, a layman." + +The temperance meeting was to take place at seven o'clock, and possibly +Rachel may have been biassed in favor of that entertainment by the hope +of a quiet half-hour with Hester in her own room. At any rate, she +secured it. + +When they were alone Rachel produced Lady Newhaven's note. + +"Do come to Westhope," she said. "While you are under this roof it seems +almost impossible to see you, unless we are close to it," and she +touched the sloping ceiling with her hand. "And yet I came to Westhope, +and I am going on to Wilderleigh, partly in order to be near you." + +Hester shook her head. + +"The book is nearly finished," she said, the low light from the attic +window striking sideways on the small face with its tightly compressed +lips. + +A spirit indomitable, immortal, looked for a moment out of Hester's gray +eyes. The spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was becoming weaker +day by day. + +"When it is finished," she went on, "I will go anywhere and do anything, +but stay here I must till it is done. Besides, I am not fit for society +at present. I am covered with blue mould. Do you remember how that +horrid Lady Carbury used to laugh at the country squires' daughters for +being provincial? I have gone a peg lower than being provincial--I have +become parochial." + +A knock came at the door, and Fraeulein's mild, musical face appeared in +the aperture. + +"I fear to disturb you," she said, "but Regie say he cannot go to sleep +till he see you." + +Hester introduced Fraeulein to Rachel, and slipped down-stairs to the +night nursery. + +Mary and Stella were already asleep in their high-barred cribs. The +blind was down, and Hester could only just see the white figure of Regie +sitting up in his night-gown. She sat down on the edge of the bed and +took him in her arms. + +"What is it; my treasure?" + +"Auntie Hester, was I naughty about the flying half-penny?" + +"No, darling. Why?" + +"Because mother always says not to put pennies in my mouth, and I never +did till to-day. And now Mary says I have been very naughty." + +"It does not matter what Mary says," said Hester, with a withering +glance towards the sleeping angel in the next crib, who was only Mary by +day. "But you must never do it again, and you will tell mother all about +it to-morrow." + +"Yes," said Regie; "but, but--" + +"But what?" + +"Uncle Dick did say it was a flying half-penny, and you said so, too, +and that other auntie. And I thought it did not matter putting in flying +half-pennies, only common ones." + +Hester saw the difficulty in Regie's mind. + +"It felt common when it was inside," said Regie, doubtfully, "and yet +you and Uncle Dick _did_ say it was a flying one." + +Regie's large eyes were turned upon her with solemn inquiry in them. It +is crises like this that our first ideals are laid low. + +Regie had always considered Hester as the very soul of honor, that +mysterious honor which he was beginning to dimly apprehend through her +allegiance to it, and which, in his mind, belonged as exclusively to her +as the little bedroom under the roof. + +"Regie," said Hester, tremulously, seeing that she had unwittingly put +a stumbling-block before the little white feet she loved, "when we +played at the doll's tea-party, and you were the butler, I did not mean +you were _really_ a butler, did I? I knew, and you knew, and we all +knew, that you were Regie all the time." + +"Ye-es." + +"It was a game. And so when Uncle Dick found us playing the tea-party +game he played another game about the flying half-penny." + +"Then it was a common half-penny, after all," said Regie, with a deep +sigh. + +"Yes, it was a common half-penny, only the game was that it could fly, +like the other game was that the acorn cups were real teacups. So Uncle +Dick and all of us were not saying what was not true. We were all +playing at a game. Do you understand, my little mouse?" + +"Yes," said Regie, with another voluminous sigh, and Hester realized, +with thankfulness, that the half-penny and not herself had fallen from +its pedestal. "I see now; but when he said, Hi! Presto! and it flew +away, I thought I saw it flying. Mary said she did. And I suppose the +gate was only a game, too." + +Hester felt that the subject would be quite beyond her powers of +explanation if once the gate were introduced into it. + +She laid Regie down and covered him. + +"And you will go to sleep now. And I will ask Uncle Dick when next he +comes to show us how he did the game with the half-penny." + +"Yes," said Regie, dejectedly. "I'd rather know what there is to be +known. Only I _thought_ it was a flying one. Good-night, Auntie Hester." + +She stayed beside him a few minutes until his even breathing showed her +he was asleep, and then slipped back to her own room. The front-door +bell was ringing as she came out of the nursery. The temperance +deputation from Liverpool had arrived. Mr. Gresley's voice of welcome +could be heard saying that it was only ten minutes to seven. + +Accordingly, a few minutes before that hour, Mr. Gresley and his party +entered the Parish Room. It was crammed. The back benches were filled +with a large contingent of young men, whose half-sheepish, half-sullen +expression showed that their presence was due to pressure. Why the +parishioners had come in such numbers it would be hard to say. Perhaps +even a temperance meeting was a change in the dreary monotony of rural +life at Warpington. Many of the faces bore the imprint of this monotony, +Rachel thought, as she refused the conspicuous front seat pointed out to +her by Mrs. Gresley, and sat down near the door with Hester. + +Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a moment +later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his eye +travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking for her. +Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five deep by the +last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and the wall, but it +was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding the anxious +church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick disappeared among the +young men at the back, and Rachel thought no more of him until a large +Oxford shoe descended quietly out of space upon the empty seat near her, +and Dick, who had persuaded the young men to give him foot-room on their +seats, and had stepped over the high backs of several "school forms," +sat down beside her. + +It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling. But the thought +darted through her mind that Dick was the kind of man who, somehow or +other, would succeed where he meant to succeed, and would marry the +woman he intended to marry. There was no doubt that she was that woman, +and as he sat tranquilly beside her she wished, with a nervous tremor, +that his choice had fallen on some one else. + +The meeting opened with nasal and fervent prayer on the part of a +neighboring Archdeacon. No one could kneel down except the dignitaries +on the platform, but every one pretended to do so. Mr. Pratt, who was in +the chair, then introduced the principal speaker. Mr. Pratt's face, very +narrow at the forehead, became slightly wider at the eyes, widest when +it reached round the corners of the mouth, and finally split into two +long, parti-colored whiskers. He assumed on these occasions a manner of +pontifical solemnity towards his "humble brethren," admirably suited to +one who, after wrestling for many years with a patent oil, is conscious +that he has blossomed out into a "county family." + +The Warpington parishioners listened to him unmoved. + +The deputation from Liverpool followed, a thin, ascetic-looking man of +many bones and little linen, who spoke with the concentrated fury of a +fanatic against alcohol in all its varieties. Dick, who had so far taken +more interest in Rachel's gloves, which she had dropped, and with which +he was kindly burdening himself, than in the proceedings, drew himself +up and fixed his steel eyes on the speaker. + +A restive movement in the audience followed the speech, which was loudly +clapped by Mr. Gresley and the Pratts. + +Mr. Gresley then mounted the platform. + +Mr. Gresley had an enormous advantage as a platform speaker, and as a +preacher in the twin pulpits of church and home, owing to the conviction +that he had penetrated to the core of any subject under discussion, and +could pronounce judgment upon it in a conclusive manner. He was wont to +approach every subject by the preliminary statement that he had +"threshed it out." This threshing-out had been so thorough that there +was hardly a subject even of the knottiest description which he was +unable to dismiss with a few pregnant words. "Evolution! Ha! ha! +Descended from an ape. I don't believe that for one." While women's +rights received their death-blow from a jocose allusion to the woman +following the plough while the man sat at home and rocked the cradle. + +With the same noble simplicity he grappled with the difficult and +complex subject of temperance, by which he meant total abstinence. He +informed his hearers, "in the bigoted tones of a married teetotaler," +that he had gone to the root of the matter--the roots were apparently on +the surface--and that it was no use calling black white and white black. +He for one did not believe in muddling up black and white, as some +lukewarm people advocated, till they were only a dirty gray. No; either +drink was right or it was wrong. If it was not wrong to get drunk, he +did not know what was wrong. He was not a man of compromise. Alcohol was +a servant of the devil, and to tamper with it was to tamper with the +Evil One himself. Touch not. Taste not. Handle not. He for his part +should never side with the devil. + +This lofty utterance having been given time to sink in, Mr. Gresley +looked round at the sea of stolid, sullen faces, and concluded with +saying that the chairman would now call upon his cousin, Mr. Vernon, to +speak to them on the shocking evils he himself had witnessed in +Australia as the results of drink. + +Dick was not troubled by shyness. He extricated himself from his seat +with the help of the young men, and slowly ascended the platform. He +looked a size too large for it, and for the other speakers, and his +loose tweed suit and heather stockings were as great a contrast to the +tightly buttoned-up black of the other occupants as were his strong, +keen face and muscular hands to those of the previous speakers. + +"That's a man," said a masculine voice behind Rachel. "He worn't reared +on ditch-water, you bet." + +"Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen," said Dick. "You've only got to +listen to me for half a minute, and you'll find out without my telling +you that Nature did not cut me out for a speaker. I'm no talker. I'm a +workingman"--an admission which Mr. Pratt would rather have been boiled +in his own oil than have made. "For the last seven years I've done my +twelve hours a day, and I've come to think more of what a man gets +through with his hands than the sentiments which he can wheeze out after +a heavy meal. But Mr. Gresley has asked me to tell you what I know about +drink, as I have seen a good many samples of it in Australia." + +Dick then proceeded, with a sublime disregard of grammar, and an +earnestness that increased as he went on, to dilate on the evil effects +of drink as he himself had witnessed them. He described how he had seen +men who could not get spirits make themselves drunk on "Pain-killer"; +how he had seen strong, young station hands, who had not tasted spirits +for months, come down from the hills with a hundred pounds in their +pockets, and drink themselves into "doddery" old men in a fortnight in +the nearest township, where they were kept drunk on drugged liquor till +all their hard-earned wages were gone. + +The whole room listened in dead silence. No feet shuffled. Mr. Gresley +looked patronizingly at Dick's splendid figure and large, outstretched +hand, with the crooked middle finger, which he had cut off by mistake in +the bush and had stuck on again himself. Then the young Vicar glanced +smiling at the audience, feeling that he had indeed elicited a "lay +opinion" of the best kind. + +"Now what are the causes of all these dreadful things?" continued Dick. +"I'm speaking to the men here, not the women. What are the causes of all +this poverty and vice and scamped workmanship, and weak eyes and shaky +hands, on the top of high wages? I tell you they come from two things, +and one is as bad as the other. One is drinking too much, and the other +is drinking bad liquor. Every man who's worth his salt," said Dick, +balancing his long bent finger on the middle of his other palm, "should +know when he has had enough. Some can carry more, some less." Mr. +Gresley started and signed to Dick, but Dick did not notice. "Bad liquor +is at the root of half the drunkenness I know. I don't suppose there are +many publicans here to-night, for this meeting isn't quite in their +line; and if there are, they can't have come expecting compliments. But +if you fellows think you get good liquor at the publics round here, I +tell you you are jolly well mistaken." + +"Hear! hear!" shouted several voices. + +"I've been in the course of the last week to most of the public-houses +in Southminster and Westhope and Warpington to see what sort of stuff +they sold, and upon my soul, gentlemen, if I settled in Warpington I'd, +I'd"--Dick hesitated for a simile strong enough--"I'd turn teetotaler +until I left it again, rather than swallow the snake poison they serve +out to you." + +There was a general laugh, in the midst of which Mr. Gresley, whose +complexion had deepened, sprang to his feet and endeavored to attract +Dick's attention, but Dick saw nothing but his audience. Mr. Gresley +began to speak in his high, "singsong" voice. + +"My young friend," he said, "has mistaken the object of this meeting. In +short I must--" + +"Not a bit," said Dick--"not a bit; but if the people have had enough of +me I'll take your chair while you have another innings." + +In a moment the room was in an uproar. + +Shouts of "No, no," "Go on," "Let him speak." + +In the tumult Mr. Gresley's voice, instead of being the solo, became but +as one instrument--albeit a trombone--in an orchestra. + +"But I thoroughly agree with the gentlemen who spoke before me," said +Dick, when peace was restored. "Total abstinence is a long chalk below +temperance, but it's better than drunkenness any day. And if a man can't +get on without three-finger nips, let him take the pledge. There are one +or two here to-night who would be the better for it. But, to my +thinking, total abstinence is like a water mattress. It is good for a +sick man, and it's good for a man with a weak will, which is another +kind of illness. But temperance is for those who are in health. There is +a text in the Bible about wine making glad the heart of man. That's a +good text, and one to go on. As often as not texts are like bags, and a +man crams all his own rubbish into them, and expects you to take them +together. There are some men, who ought to know better, who actually get +out of that text by saying the Bible means unfermented liquor"--Mr. +Gresley became purple. "Does it? Then how about the other place where we +hear of new wine bursting old bottles. What makes them burst? +Fermentation, of course, as every village idiot knows. No, I take it +when the Bible says wine it means wine. Wine's fermented liquor, and +what's unfermented liquor? Nothing but 'pop.'" + +Dick pronounced the last word with profound contempt, which was met with +enthusiastic applause. + +"My last word to you, gentlemen," continued Dick, "is, keep in mind two +points: first, look out for an honest publican, if there is such an +article, who will buy only the best liquor from the best sources, and is +not bound by the breweries to sell any stuff they send along. Join +together, and make it hot for a bound publican. Kick him out, even if he +is the Squire's butler." Mr. Pratt's complexion became apoplectic. "And +the second point is, Remember some men have heads and some haven't. It +is no use for a lame man entering for a hurdle-race. A strong man can +take his whack--if it's with his food--and it will do him good, while a +weak man can't hang up his hat alter the first smile." + +A storm of applause followed, which was perhaps all the heartier by +reason of the furious face of Mr. Gresley. Dick was clapped continuously +as he descended the platform and slowly left the room, feeling in his +pockets for his tobacco-pouch. A squad of young men creaked out after +him, and others followed by twos and threes, so that the mellifluous +voice of Mr. Pratt was comparatively lost, who, disregarding his +position as chairman, now rose to pour oil--of which, in manner alone, +he had always a large supply--on the troubled waters. Mr. Pratt had felt +a difficulty in interrupting a member of a county family, which with the +eye of faith he plainly perceived Dick to be, and at the same time a +guest of "Newhaven's." The Pratts experienced in the rare moments of +their intercourse with the Newhavens some of that sublime awe, that +subdued rapture, which others experience in cathedrals. Mr. Pratt had +also taken a momentary pleasure in the defeat of Mr. Gresley, who did +not pay him the deference which he considered due to him and his "seat." +Mr. Pratt always expected that the Vicar should, by reason of his small +income, take the position of a sort of upper servant of the Squire; and +he had seen so many instances of this happy state of things that he was +perpetually nettled by Mr. Gresley's "independent" attitude; while Mr. +Gresley was equally irritated by "the impatience of clerical control" +and shepherding which Mr. Pratt, his largest and woolliest sheep, too +frequently evinced. + +As the chairman benignly expressed his approval of both views, and toned +down each to meet the other, the attention of the audience wandered to +the occasional laughs and cheers which came from the school play-ground. +And when, a few minutes later, Rachel emerged with the stream, she saw +Dick standing under the solitary lamp-post speaking earnestly to a +little crowd of youths and men. The laughter had ceased. Their +crestfallen appearance spoke for itself. + +"Well, good-night, lads," said Dick, cordially, raising his cap to them, +and he rejoined Rachel and Hester at the gate. + +When Dick and Rachel had departed on their bicycles, and when the +deputation, after a frugal supper, had retired to rest, and when the +drawing-room door was shut, then, and not till then, did Mr. Gresley +give vent to his feelings. + +"And he would not stop," he repeated over and over again almost in +hysterics, when the total-abstinence hose of his wrath had been turned +on Dick until every reservoir of abuse was exhausted. "I signed to him; +I spoke to him. You saw me speak to him, Minna, and he would not stop." + +Hester experienced that sudden emotion which may result either in tears +or laughter at the cruel anguish brought upon her brother by the +momentary experience of what he so ruthlessly inflicted. + +"He talked me down," said Mr. Gresley, his voice shaking. "He opposed me +in my own school-room. Of course, I blame myself for asking him to +speak. I ought to have inquired into his principles more thoroughly, but +he took me in entirely by saying one thing in this room and the exact +opposite on the platform." + +"I thought his views were the same in both places," said Hester, "and, +at the time, I admired you for asking him to speak, considering he is a +vine-grower." + +"A what?" almost shrieked Mr. Gresley. + +"A vine-grower. Surely you know he has one of the largest vineyards in +South Australia?" + +For a moment Mr. Gresley was bereft of speech. + +"And you knew this and kept silence," he said at last, while Mrs. +Gresley looked reproachfully, but without surprise, at her +sister-in-law. + +"Certainly. What was there to speak about? I thought you knew." + +"I never heard it till this instant. That quite accounts for his views. +He wants to push his own wines. Of course, drunkenness is working for +his interests. I understand it all now. He has undone the work of years +by that speech for the sake of booking a few orders. It is contemptible. +I trust, Hester, he is not a particular friend of yours, for I shall +feel it my duty to speak very strongly to him if he comes again." + +But Dick did not appear again. He was off and away before the terrors of +the Church could be brought to bear on him. + +But his memory remained green at Warpington. + +"They do say," said Abel to Hester a few days later, planting his spade +on the ground, and slowly scraping off upon it the clay from his nailed +boots, "as that Muster Vernon gave 'em a dusting in the school-yard as +they won't forget in a hurry. He said he could not speak out before the +women folk, but he was noways nesh to pick his words onst he was +outside. Barnes said as his tongue 'ud 'ave raised blisters on a hedge +stake. But he had a way with him for all that. There was a deal of talk +about him at market last Wednesday, and Jones and Peg is just silly to +go back to Australy with 'im. I ain't sure," continued Abel, closing the +conversation by a vigorous thrust of his spade into the earth, "as one +of the things that fetched 'em all most wasn't his saying that since +he's been in a hot climate he knowed what it was to be tempted himself +when he was a bit down on his luck or a bit up. Pratts would never have +owned to that." The village always spoke of Mr. Pratt in the plural +without a prefix. "I've been to a sight of temperance meetings, +because," with indulgence, "master likes it, tho' I always has my glass, +as is natural. But I never heard one of the speakers kind of settle to +it like that. That's what the folks say; that for all he was a born +gentleman he spoke to 'em as man to man, not as if we was servants or +childer." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + Le bruit est pour le fat. + La plainte est pour le sot. + L'honnete homme trompe + S'en va et ne dit mot. + --M. DELANONI + + +"And so you cannot persuade Miss Gresley to come to us next week?" said +Lord Newhaven, strolling into the dining-room at Westhope Abbey, where +Rachel and Dick were sitting at a little supper-table laid for two in +front of the high altar. The dining-room had formerly been the chapel, +and the carved stone altar still remained under the east window. + +Lord Newhaven drew up a chair, and Rachel felt vaguely relieved at his +presence. He had a knack of knowing when to appear and when to efface +himself. + +"She can't leave her book," said Rachel. + +"Her first book was very clever," said Lord Newhaven, "and, what was +more, it was true. I hope for her own sake she will outgrow her love of +truth, or it will make deadly enemies for her." + +"And good friends," said Rachel. + +"Possibly," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at her, and almost +obliged to believe that she had spoken without self-consciousness. "But +if she outgrows all her principles, I hope, at any rate, she won't +outgrow her sharp tongue. I liked her ever since she first came to this +house, ten years ago, with Lady Susan Gresley. I remember saying that +Captain Pratt; who called while she was here, was a 'bounder.' And Miss +Gresley said she did not think he was quite a bounder, only on the +boundary-line. If you knew Captain Pratt, that describes him exactly." + +"I wish she had not said it," said Rachel, with a sigh. "She makes +trouble for herself by saying things like that. Is Lady Newhaven in the +drawing-room?" + +"Yes, I heard her singing 'The Lost Chord' not ten minutes ago." + +"I will go up to her," said Rachel. + +"I do believe," said Lord Newhaven, when Rachel had departed, "that she +has an affection for Miss Gresley." + +"It is not necessary to be a detective in plain clothes to see that," +said Dick. + +"No. It generally needs to be a magnifying-glass to see a woman's +friendship, and then they are only expedients till we arrive, Dick. You +need not he jealous of Miss Gresley. Miss West will forget all about her +when she is Mrs. Vernon." + +"She does not seem very keen about that," said Dick, grimly. "I'm only +marking time. I'm no forwarder than I was." + +"Well, it's your own fault for fixing your affections on a woman who is +not anxious to marry. She has no objection to you. It is marriage she +does not like." + +"Oh, that's bosh!" said Dick. "All women wish to be married, and if they +don't they ought to." + +He felt that an invidious reflection had been east on Rachel. + +"All the same, a man with one eye can see that women with money, or +anything that makes them independent of us, don't flatter us by their +alacrity to marry us. They will make fools of themselves for love--none +greater--and they will marry for love. But their different attitude +towards us, their natural lords and masters, directly we are no longer +necessary to them as stepping-stones to a home and a recognized +position, revolts me. If you had taken my advice at the start, you would +have made up to one among the mob of women who are dependent on marriage +for their very existence. If a man goes into that herd he will not be +refused. And if he is it does not matter. It is the blessed custom of +piling everything on to the eldest son, and leaving the women of the +family almost penniless, which provides half of us with wives without +any trouble to ourselves. Whatever we are, they have got to take us. The +average dancing young woman living in luxury in her father's house is +between the devil and the deep sea. We are frequently the devil; but it +is not surprising that she can't face the alternative--a poverty to +which she was not brought up, and in which she has seen her old spinster +aunts. But I suppose in your case you really want the money?" + +Dick looked rather hard at Lord Newhaven. + +"I should not have said that unless I had known it to be a lie," +continued the latter, "because I dislike being kicked. But, Dick, listen +to me. You have not," with sudden misgiving, "laid any little +matrimonial project before her this evening, have you?" + +"No; I was not quite such a fool as that." + +"Well! Such things do occur. Moonlight, you know, etc. I was possessed +by a devil once, and proposed by moonlight, as all my wife's friends +know, and probably her maid. But, seriously, Dick, you are not making +progress, as you say yourself." + +"Well!" rather sullenly. + +"Well, on-lookers see most of the game. Miss West may--I don't say she +is--but if things go on as they are for another week she may become +slightly bored. That was why I joined you at supper. She had had, for +the time, enough." + +"Of me?" said Dick, reddening under his tan. + +"Just so. It is a matter of no importance after marriage, but it should +be avoided beforehand. Are you really in earnest about this?" + +Dick delivered himself slowly and deliberately of certain platitudes. + +"Well, I hope I shall hear you say all that again some day in a +condensed form before a clergyman. In the meanwhile--" + +"In the meanwhile I had better clear out." + +"Yes; I don't enjoy saying so in the presence of my own galantine and +mayonnaise, but that is it. Go, and--come back." + +"If you have a Bradshaw," said Dick, "I'll look out my train now. I +think there is an express to London about seven in the morning, if you +can send me to the station." + +"But the post only comes in at eight." + +"Well, you can send my letters after me." + +"I dare say I can, my diplomatist. But you are not going to leave till +the post has arrived, when you will receive business letters requiring +your immediate presence in London. You are not going to let a woman know +that you leave on her account." + +"You are very sharp, Cackles," said Dick, drearily. "And I'll take a +leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right thing. But I +expect she will know very well that the same business which took me to +that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to London." + +Rachel was vaguely relieved when Dick went off next morning. She was +not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from young men, +which in due season became "marked," and then resulted in proposals +neatly or clumsily expressed. But she was disturbed when she thought of +Dick, and his departure was like the removal of a weight, not a heavy, +but still a perceptible one. For Rachel was aware that Dick was in +deadly earnest, and that his love was growing steadily, almost +unconsciously, was accumulating like snow, flake by flake, upon a +mountain-side. Some day, perhaps not for a long time, but some day, +there would be an avalanche, and, in his own language, she "would be in +it." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est + le pardon qu'elle a fait naitre dans votre ame. . . . Mais si la + trahison n'a pas accru la simplicite, la confiance plus haute, + l'etendue de l'amour, on vous aura trahi bien inutilement, et vous + pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrive.--MAETERLINCK. + + +Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard wall +where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous occasion. +It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley did +not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk secrets," as they +would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was felt by the Gresleys +to be the appropriate moment to momentarily lay aside their daily +avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in the garden for social +intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. Listeners are generally liked. +Perhaps also her gentle, unassuming manner was not an unpleasant change +after the familiar nonchalance of the Pratts. + +The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, and +then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain obtuse +persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and outwitting +them, just as the really wicked people, who give _viva voce_ +invitations, goad us into crevasses of lies, for which, if there is any +justice anywhere, they will have to answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley +gave the last shove to Hester and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on +what he called socialism. Finding they were discussing some phase of it, +he drew up a chair and informed them that he had "threshed out" the +whole subject. + +"Socialism," he began, delighted with the polite resignation of his +hearers, which throughout life he mistook for earnest attention. +"Community of goods. People don't see that if everything were divided up +to-day, and everybody was given a shilling, by next week the thrifty man +would have a sovereign, and the spendthrift would be penniless. +Community of goods is impossible as long as human nature remains what it +is. But I can't knock that into people's heads. I spoke of it once to +Lord Newhaven, after his speech in the House of Lords. I thought he was +more educated and a shade less thoughtless than the idle rich usually +are, and that he would see it if it was put plainly before him. But he +only said my arguments were incontrovertible, and slipped away." + +It was after this conversation, or rather monologue, that Hester and +Rachel arranged to meet by stealth. + +They were sitting luxuriously in the short grass, with their backs +against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over their eyes. + +"I wish I had met this Mr. Dick five or six years ago," said Rachel, +with a sigh. + +Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love +disaster. + +"Dick always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. "I should +offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a lot of +trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end." + +Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put into words +a latent conviction of her own which troubled her. + +"Dick is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester, +dispassionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not high +praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his goodness does +not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care for such things, he +has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him +in a little patent safe of his own." + +"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture," +said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. Dick." + +There was a short silence. + +"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how +commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of second-rate +novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong, +promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of +stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I +have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal +experience. I keep before my mind that other men are _not_ like _him_. I +know they aren't, but yet--somehow I think they are. I am frightened." + +Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend. + +"Do you still consider, after these four years, that _he_ did you an +injury?" + +Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of +midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the +distant hills. + +"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw it away. +I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is because I am +naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, "that it seems now, +looking back, such a dreadful waste." + +"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks like a +waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless +passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. +Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the +love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish +prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses +happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for +having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of all the reins.'" + +"You mean it did me good," said Rachel, "and that _he_ was a kind of +benefactor in disguise. I dare say you are right, but you see I don't +take a burning interest in my own character. I don't find my mental +stand-point--isn't that what Mrs. Loftus calls it?--very engrossing." + +"He was a benefactor, all the same," said Hester, with decision. "I did +not think so at the time, and if I could have driven over him in an +omnibus I would have done so with pleasure. But I believe that the day +will come when you will cover that grave with a handsome monument, +erected out of gratitude to him for not marrying you. And now, Rachel, +will you forgive me beforehand for what I am going to say?" + +"Oh!" said Rachel, ruefully. "When you say that I know it is the prelude +to something frightful. You are getting out a dagger, and I shall be its +sheath directly." + +"You are a true prophet, Rachel." + +"Yes, executioner." + +"My dear, dear friend, whom I love best in the world, when that happened +my heart was wrung for you. I would have given everything I had, life +itself--not that that is saying much--to have saved you from that hour." + +"I know it." + +"But I should have been the real enemy if I had had power to save you, +which, thank God! I had not. That hour had to be. It was necessary. You +may not care about your own character, but I do. There is something +stubborn and inflexible in you--the seamy side of your courage and +steadfastness--which cannot readily enter into the feelings of others or +put itself in their place. I think it is want of imagination--I mean the +power of seeing things as they are. You are the kind of woman who, if +you had married comfortably some one you rather liked, might have become +like Sybell Loftus, who never understands any feeling beyond her own +microscopic ones, and who measures love by her own small preference for +Doll. You would have had no more sympathy than she has. People, like +Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what one has experienced. +That is why they are always saying, 'as a mother,' or 'as a wife.' If +that were true the world would have to get on without sympathy, for no +two people have the same experience. Only a shallow nature believes +that a resemblance in two cups means that they both contain the same +wine. Sybell believes it, and you would have been very much the same, +not from lack of perception, as in her case, but from want of using your +powers of perception. If you had not undergone an agonized awakening, +all the great realities of life--love, hatred, temptation, +enthusiasm--would have remained for you as they have remained for +Sybell, merely pretty words to string on light conversation. That is why +I can't bear to hear her speak of them, because every word she says +proves she has not known them. But the sword that pierced your heart +forced an entrance for angels, who had been knocking where there was no +door--until then." + +Silence. + +"Since when is it that people have turned to you for comfort and +sympathy?" + +No answer. + +"Rachel, on your oath, did you ever really care for the London poor +until you became poor yourself, and lived among them?" + +"No." + +"But they were there all the time. You saw them in the streets. It was +not as if you only heard of them. You saw them. Their agony, their vice, +was written large on their faces. There was a slum almost at the back of +that great house in Portman Square where you lived many years in luxury +with your parents." + +"Don't," said Rachel, her lip trembling. + +"I must. You did not care then. If a flagrant case came before you you +gave something like other uncharitable people who hate feeling +uncomfortable. But you care _now_. You seek out those who need you. +Answer me. Were they cheaply bought or not, that compassion and love for +the degraded and the suffering which were the outcome of your years of +poverty in Museum Buildings?" + +"They were cheaply bought," said Rachel, with conviction, speaking with +difficulty. + +"Would you have learned them if you had gone on living in Portman +Square?" + +"Oh, Hester! would anybody?" + +"Yes, they would. But that is not the question. Would _you?_" + +"N--no," said Rachel. + +There was a long silence. + +Rachel's mind took its staff and travelled slowly, humbly, a few more +difficult steps up that steep path where "Experience is converted into +thought as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin." + +At last she turned her grave eyes upon her friend. + +"I see what you mean," she said; "I have not reached the place yet; but +I can believe that I shall come to it some day, when I shall feel as +thankful for that trouble as I do feel now for having known poverty. +Yes, Hester, you are right. I was a hard woman, without imagination. I +have been taught in the only way I could learn--by experience. I have +been very fortunate." + +Hester did not answer, but bent down and kissed Rachel's hands. It was +as if she had said, "Forgive me for finding fault with one so far above +me." And the action was so understood. + +Rachel colored, and they sat for a moment hand close in hand, heart very +near to heart. + +"How is it you are so sure of these things, Hester?" said Rachel, in a +whisper. "When you say them I see they are true, and I believe them, but +how do you _know_ them?" + +A shadow, a very slight one, fell across Hester's face. "'Love knows the +secret of grief.' But can Love claim that knowledge if he is asked how +he came by it by one who should have known?" The question crept in +between the friends and moved them apart. Hester's voice altered. + +"Minna would say that I picked them up from the conversation of James. +You know the Pratts are perfectly aware of what I have, of course, tried +to conceal, namely, that the love-scenes in the _Idyll_ were put +together from scraps I had collected of James's engagement to Minna. And +all the humorous bits are claimed by a colony of cousins in Devonshire +who say that any one 'who had heard them talk' could have written the +_Idyll._ And any one who had not heard them apparently. The so-called +profane passages are all that are left to me as my own." + +"You are profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the +flippancy which she had brought upon herself. + +A distant whoop distracted their attention, and they saw Regie galloping +towards them, imitating a charger, while Fraeulein and the two little +girls followed. + +Regie stopped short before Rachel, and looked suspiciously at her. + +"Where is Uncle Dick?" he said. + +"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and her +eyes falling guiltily before her questioner. + +"Then he has not come with you?" + +Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley +often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was +quick-witted and flashy. + +"No, he has not come with me." + +"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come." + +"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I knew he +was somewhere else." + +Dear little Mary was naturally the Gresleys' favorite child. However +thoroughly they might divest themselves of parental partiality, they +could not but observe that she was as sensible as a grown-up person. + +"I thought he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a tree or +something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell with a +conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever Mary may +say?" + +"Mary is generally wrong," said Hester, "but she is right for once." + +Mary, who was early acquiring the comfortable habit of hearing only the +remarks that found an echo in her own breast, heard she was right, and +said, shrilly: + +"I told Regie when we was still on the road that Uncle Dick wasn't +there. Mother doesn't always go with father, but he said he'd run and +see." + +"We shall be ver'r late for luncheon," said Fraeulein, hastily, blushing +down to the onyx brooch at her turn-down collar, and drawing Mary away. + +"Perhaps he left the half-penny with you," said Regie. "Fraeulein would +like to see it." + +"No, no," said Fraeulein, the tears in her eyes. "I do not vish at all. I +cry half the night when I hear of it." + +"I only cry when baby beats me," said Mary, balancing on one leg. + +"I have not got the half-penny," said Rachel, the three elders +studiously ignoring Mary's personal reminiscences. + +The children were borne away by Fraeulein, and the friends kissed and +parted. + +"I am coming to Wilderleigh to-morrow," said Rachel. "I shall be much +nearer to you then." + +"It is no good contending against Dick and fate," said Hester, shaking +her finger at her. "You see it is all decided for you. Even the children +have settled it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + If a fool be associated with a wise man all his life, he will + perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of + soup.--_Buddhist Dhammapada_. + + +"I can't think what takes you to Wilderleigh," said Lady Newhaven to +Rachel. "I am always bored to death when I go there. Sybell is so +self-centred." + +Perhaps one of the reasons why Lady Newhaven and Sybell Loftus did not +"get on" was owing to a certain superficial resemblance between them. + +Both exacted attention, and if they were in the same room together it +seldom contained enough attention to supply the needs of both. Both were +conscious, like "Celia Chettam," that since the birth of their first +child their opinions respecting literature, politics, and art had +acquired additional weight and solidity, and that a wife and mother +could pronounce with decision on important subjects where a spinster +would do well to hold her peace. Each was fond of saying, "As a married +woman I think this or that"; yet each was conscious of dislike and +irritation when she heard the other say it. And there is no doubt that +Sybell had been too unwell to appear at Lady Newhaven's garden-party the +previous summer, because Lady Newhaven had the week before advanced her +cherished theory of "one life one love," to the delight of Lord Newhaven +and the natural annoyance of Sybell, whose second husband was at that +moment handing tea and answering "That depends" when appealed to. + +"As if," as Sybell said afterwards to Hester, "a woman can help being +the ideal of two men." + +"Sybell is such a bore now," continued Lady Newhaven, "that I don't +know what she will be when she is older. I don't know why you go to +Wilderleigh, of all places." + +"I go because I am asked," said Rachel, "and partly because I shall be +near Hester Gresley." + +"I don't think Miss Gresley can be very anxious to see you, or she would +have come here when I invited her. I told several people she was coming, +and that Mr. Carstairs, who thinks so much of himself, came on purpose +to meet her. It is very tiresome of her to behave like that, especially +as she did not say she had any engagement. You make a mistake, Rachel, +in running after people who won't take any trouble to come and see you. +It is a thing I never do myself." + +"She is buried in her book at present." + +"I can't think what she has to write about. But I suppose she picks up +things from other people." + +"I think so. She is a close observer." + +"I think you are wrong there, Rachel, for when she was here some years +ago she never looked about her at all. And I asked her how she judged of +people, and she said, 'By appearances.' Now that was very silly, +because, as I explained to her, appearances were most deceptive, and I +had often thought a person with a cold manner was cold-hearted, and +afterwards found I was quite mistaken." + +Rachel did not answer. She wondered in what the gift consisted, which +Lady Newhaven and Sybell both possessed, of bringing all conversation to +a stand-still. + +"It seems curious," said Lady Newhaven, after a pause, "how the books +are mostly written by the people who know least of life. Now, the +_Sonnets from the Portuguese_. People think so much of them. I was +looking at them the other day. Why, they are nothing to what I have +felt. I sometimes think if _I_ wrote a book--I don't mean that I have +any special talent--but if I really sat down and wrote a book with all +the deep side of life in it, and one's own religious feelings, and +described love and love's tragedy as they really are, what a sensation +it would make! It would take the world by storm." + +"Any book dealing sincerely with one of those subjects could not fail to +be a great success." + +"Oh yes. I am not afraid I should fail. I do wish you were not going, +Rachel. We have so much in common. And it is such a comfort to be with +some one who knows what one is going through. I believe you feel the +suspense, too, for my sake." + +"I do feel it--deeply." + +"I sometimes think," said Lady Newhaven, her face aging suddenly under +an emotion so disfiguring that Rachel's eyes fell before it--"I am +sometimes almost certain that Edward drew the short lighter. Oh! do you +think if he did he will really _act up to it_ when the time comes?" + +"If he drew it he will certainly take the consequences." + +"Will he, do you think? I am almost sure he drew it. He is doing so many +little things that look as if he knew he were not going to live. I heard +Mr. Carstairs ask him to go to Norway with him next spring, and Edward +laughed, and said he never looked more than a few months ahead." + +"I am afraid he may have said that intending you to hear it." + +"But he did not intend me to hear it. I overheard it." Rachel's face +fell. + +"You did promise after you told me about the letter that you would never +do that kind of thing again." + +"Well, Rachel, I have not. I have not even looked at his letters since. +I could not help it that once, because I thought he might have told his +brother in India. But don't you think his saying that to Mr. Carstairs +looks--" + +Rachel shook her head. + +"He is beyond me," she said. "There may be something more behind which +we don't know about." + +"I have a feeling, it has come over me again and again lately, that I +shall be released, and that Hugh and I shall be happy together yet." + +And Lady Newhaven turned her face against the high back of her carved +oak chair and sobbed hysterically. + +"Could you be happy if you had brought about Lord Newhaven's death?" +said Rachel. + +Her voice was full of tender pity, not for the crouching unhappiness +before her, but for the poor atrophied soul. Could she reach it? She +would have given everything she possessed at that moment for one second +of Christ's power to touch those blind eyes to sight. + +"How can you say such things? I should _not_ have brought it about. I +did not even know of that dreadful drawing of lots till the thing was +done. That was all his own doing." + +Rachel sighed. The passionate yearning towards her companion shrank back +upon herself. + +"The fault is in me," she said to herself. "If I were purer, humbler, +more loving, I might have been allowed to help her." + +Lady Newhaven rose, and held Rachel tightly in her arms. + +"I count the days," she said, hoarsely, shaking from head to foot. "It +is two months and three weeks to-day. November the twenty-ninth. You +will promise faithfully to come to me and be with me then? You will not +desert me? Whatever happens you will be sure--to come?" + +"I will come. I promise," said Rachel. And she stooped and kissed the +closed eyes. She could at least do that. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + Brother, thy tail hangs down behind. + --_Song of the Bandar-log_. + + +Rachel arrived after tea at Wilderleigh, and went straight to her room +on a plea of fatigue. It was a momentary cowardice that tempted her to +yield to her fatigue. She felt convinced that she should meet Hugh +Scarlett at Wilderleigh. She had no reason for the conviction beyond the +very inadequate one that she had met him at Sybell's London house. +Nevertheless, she felt sure that he would be among the guests, and she +longed for a little breathing-space after parting with Lady Newhaven +before she met him. Presently Sybell flew in and embraced her with +effusion. + +"Oh! what you have missed!" she said, breathlessly. "But you do look +tired. You were quite right to lie down before dinner, only you aren't +lying down. We have had such a conversation down-stairs. The others are +all out boating with Doll but Mr. Harvey, the great Mr. Harvey, you +know." + +"I am afraid I don't know." + +"Oh yes, you do. The author of _Unashamed_." + +"I remember now." + +"Well, he is here, resting after his new book, _Rahab_. And he has been +reading us the opening chapters, just to Miss Barker and me. It is quite +wonderful. So painful, you know. He does not spare the reader anything; +he thinks it wrong to leave out anything--but so powerful!" + +"Is it the same Miss Barker whom I met at your house in the season, who +denounced _The Idyll?_" + +"Yes. How she did cut it up! You see, she knows all about East London, +and that sort of thing. I knew you would like to meet her again because +you are philanthropic, too. She hardly thought she could spare the time +to come, but she thought she would go back fresher if the wail were out +of her ears for a week. The wail! Isn't it dreadful? I feel we ought to +do more than we do, don't you?" + +"We ought, indeed." + +"But then, you see, as a married woman, I can't leave my husband and +child and bury myself in the East End, can I?" + +"Of course not. But surely it is an understood thing that marriage +exempts women from all impersonal duties." + +"Yes, that is just it. How well you put it! But others could. I often +wonder why, after writing _The Idyll_, Hester never goes near East +London. I should have gone straight off, and have cast in my lot with +them if I had been in her place." + +"Do you ever find people do what you would have done if you had been in +their place?" + +"No, never. They don't seem to see it. It's a thing I can't understand +the way people don't act up to their convictions. And I do know, though +I would not tell Hester so for worlds, that the fact that she goes on +living comfortably in the country after bringing out that book makes +thoughtful people, not me, of course, but other earnest-minded people, +think she is a humbug." + +"It would--naturally," said Rachel. + +"Well, now I am glad you agree with me, for I said something of the same +kind to Mr. Scarlett last night, and he could not see it. He's rather +obtuse. I dare say you remember him?" + +"Perfectly." + +"I don't care about him, he is so superficial, and Miss Barker says he +is very lethargic in conversation. I asked him because--don't breathe a +word of it--but because, as a married woman, one ought to help others, +and--do you remember how he stood up for Hester that night in London?" + +"For her book, you mean." + +"Well, it's all one. Men are men, my dear. Let me tell you he would +never have done that if he had not been in love with her." + +"Do you mean that men never defend obvious truths unless they are in +love?" + +"Now you are pretending to misunderstand me," said Sybell, joyously, +making her little squirrel face into a becoming pout. "But it's no use +trying to take me in. And it's coming right. He's there at this moment!" + +"At the Vicarage?" + +"Where else? I asked him to go. I urged him. I said I felt sure she +expected him. One must help on these things." + +"But if he is obtuse and lethargic and superficial, is he likely to suit +Hester?" + +"My dear, the happiest lot for a woman is marriage. And you and I are +Hester's friends. So we ought to do all we can for her happiness. That +is why I just mentioned this." + +The dressing-gong began to boom. + +"I must fly," said Sybell, depositing a butterfly kiss on Rachel's +forehead. And she flew. + +"I wish I knew what I felt about him," said Rachel to herself. "I don't +much like hearing him called obtuse and superficial, but I suppose I +should like still less to hear Sybell praise him. I have never heard her +praise anything but mediocrity yet." + +If Rachel had been at all introspective she might have found a clew as +to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her +hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown +lying in state on the bed for a white satin one embroidered at long +intervals with rose-colored carnations. The gown was a masterpiece, +designed especially for her by a great French milliner. Rachel often +wondered whose eyesight had been strained over those marvellous +carnations, but to-night she did not give them a thought. She looked +with grave dissatisfaction at her pale, nondescript face and nondescript +hair and eyes. She did not know that only women with marriageable +daughters saw her as she saw herself in the glass. + +As she left her room a door opened at the farther end of the same wing, +and a tall man came out. The middle-class element in her said, +"Superfine." His fastidious taste said, "A plain woman." + +In another instant they recognized each other. + +"Superfine! What nonsense," she thought, as she met his eager, tremulous +glance. + +"A plain woman. Rachel plain!" He had met the welcome in her eyes, and +there was beauty in every movement, grace in every fold of her white +gown. + +As they met the gong suddenly boomed out close beneath them, and they +could only smile at each other as they shook hands. The butler, who was +evidently an artist in his way, proved the gong to the uttermost; and +they had descended the staircase together, and had crossed the hall +before its dying tremors allowed them to speak. + +As he was about to do so he saw her wince suddenly. She was looking +straight in front of her at the little crowd in the drawing-room. For an +instant her face turned from white to gray, and she involuntarily put +out her hand as if to ward off something. Then a lovely color mounted to +her cheek; she drew herself up and entered the room, while Hugh, behind +her, looked fiercely at each man in succession. + +It is always the unexpected that happens. As Rachel's half-absent eyes +passed over the group in the brilliantly lighted drawing-room her heart +reared, without warning, and fell back upon her. She had only just +sufficient presence of mind to prevent her hand pressing itself against +her heart. He was there; he was before her--the man whom she had loved +with passion for four years, and who had tortured her. + +Mr. Harvey (the great Mr. Harvey) strode forward, and Rachel found her +hand engulfed in a large soft hand, which seemed to have a poached egg +in the palm. + +"This is a pleasure to which I have long looked forward," murmured the +great man, all cuff and solitaire, bending in what he would have termed +a "chivalrous manner" over Rachel's hand; while Doll, standing near, +wondered drearily "why these writing chaps were always such bounders." + +Rachel passed on to greet Miss Barker, standing on the hearthrug, this +time in magenta velveteen, but presumably still tired of the Bible, +conversing with Rachel's former lover, whose eyes were on the floor and +whose hand gripped the mantel-piece. He had seen her--recognized her. + +"May I introduce Mr. Tristram?" said Sybell to Rachel. + +"We have met before," said Rachel, gently, as he bowed without looking +at her, and she put out her hand. + +He was obliged to touch it, obliged to meet for one moment the clear, +calm eyes that had once held boundless love for him, boundless trust in +him; that had, as he well knew, wept themselves half blind for him. + +Mr. Tristram was one of the many who judge their actions in the light of +after-circumstances, and who towards middle-age discover that the world +is a treacherous world. He had not been "in a position to marry" when he +had fallen in love with Rachel. But he had been as much in love with her +as was consistent with a permanent prudential passion for himself and +his future--that future which the true artist must ever preserve +untrammelled. "High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone," etc. He had felt +keenly breaking with Rachel. Later on, when a tide of wealth flowed up +to the fifth floor of Museum Buildings, he had recognized, for the first +time, that he had made a great mistake in life. To the smart of baffled +love had been added acute remorse, not so much for wealth missed as for +having inflicted upon himself and upon her a frightful and unnecessary +pain. But how could he have foreseen such a thing? How could he tell? +he had asked himself, in mute stupefaction, when the news reached him. +What a cheat life was! What a fickle jade was Fortune! + +Since the memorable day when Rachel had found means to lay the ghost +that haunted her he had made no sign. + +"I hardly expected you would remember me," he said, catching at his +self-possession. + +"I have a good memory," she said, aware that Miss Barker was listening +and that Hugh was bristling at her elbow. "And the little Spanish boy +whom you were so kind to, and who lodged just below me in Museum +Buildings, has not forgotten either. He still asks after the +'Cavalier.'" + +"Mr. Tristram is positively blushing at being confronted with his good +deeds," said Sybell, intervening on discovering that the attention of +some of her guests had been distracted from herself. "Yes, darling"--to +her husband--"you take in Lady Jane. Mr. Scarlett, will you take in Miss +West?" + +"I have been calling on your friend, Miss Gresley," said Hugh, after he +had overcome his momentary irritation at finding Mr. Harvey was on +Rachel's other side. "I did not know until her brother dined here last +night that she lived so near." + +"Did not Mrs. Loftus tell you?" said Rachel, with a remembrance of +Sybell's remarks before dinner. + +"She told me after I had mentioned my wish to go and see her. She even +implored me so repeatedly to go that I--" + +"Nearly did not go at all." + +"Exactly. But in this case I persevered because I am, or hope I am, a +friend of hers. But I was not rewarded." + +"I thought you said you had seen her." + +"Oh yes, I saw her, and I saw that she looked very ill. But I found it +impossible to have any conversation with her in the presence of Mr. and +Mrs. Gresley. Whenever I spoke to her Mr. Gresley answered, and +sometimes Mrs. Gresley also. In fact, Mr. Gresley considered the call as +paid to himself. Mrs. Loftus tells me he is much cleverer than his +sister, but I did not gain that impression. And after I had given tongue +to every platitude I could think of I had to take my leave." + +"Hester ought to have come to the rescue." + +"She did try. She offered to show me the short cut to Wilderleigh across +the fields. But unluckily--" + +"I can guess what you are going to say." + +"I am sure you can. Mr. Gresley accompanied us, and Miss Gresley turned +back at the first gate." + +"You have my sympathy." + +"I hope I have, for I have had a severe time of it. Mr. Gresley was most +cordial," continued Hugh, ruefully, "and said what a pleasure it was to +him to meet any one who was interested in intellectual subjects. I +suppose he was referring to my platitudes. He said living in the country +cut him off almost entirely from the society of his mental equals, so +much so that at times he had thoughts of moving to London and making a +little centre for intellectual society. According to him the whole +neighborhood was sunk in a state of hopeless apathy, with the exception +of Mrs. Loftus. He said she was the only really clever, cultivated +person in Middleshire." + +"Did he? How about the Bishop of Southminster?" + +"He did not mention him. My acquaintance with Mrs. Loftus is of the +slightest," added Hugh, interrogatively, looking at his graceful, +animated hostess. + +"I imagined you knew her fairly well, as you are staying here." + +"No. She asked me rather late in the day. I fancy I was a 'fill up.' I +accepted in the hope, rather a vague one, that I might meet you here." + +To Rachel's surprise her heart actually paid Hugh the compliment of +beating a shade faster than its wont. She looked straight in front of +her, and her absent eyes fell on Mr. Tristram sitting opposite, talking +somewhat sulkily to Miss Barker. Rachel looked steadily at him. + +Mr. Tristram had been handsome once, and four years had altered him but +little in that respect. He had not yet grown stout, but it was evident +that Nature had that injury in reserve for him. To grow stout is not +necessarily to look common, but if there is an element of inherent +commonness in man or woman, a very little additional surface will make +it manifest, as an enlarged photograph magnifies its own defects. The +"little more and how much it is" had come upon the unhappy Tristram, +once the slimmest of the slim. Life had evidently not gone too well with +him. Self-pity and the harassed look which comes of annoyance with +trifles had set their mark upon him. His art had not taken possession of +him. "High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone." But they sometimes faint +also in bachelor lodgings. The whole effect of the man was second-rate, +mentally, morally, socially. He seemed exactly on a par with the +second-rate friends with whom Sybell loved to surround herself. Hugh and +Dick were taking their revenge on the rival who blocked their way. +Whatever their faults might be, they were gentlemen, and Mr. Tristram +was only "a perfect gentleman." Rachel had not known the difference when +she was young. She saw it now. + +"I trust, Miss West," said the deep voice of Mr. Harvey, revolving +himself and his solitaire slowly towards her, that I have your sympathy +in the great cause to which I have dedicated myself, the emancipation of +woman." + +"I thought the new woman had effected her own emancipation," said +Rachel. + +Mr. Harvey paid no more attention to her remark than any one with a +theory to propound which must be delivered to the world as a whole. + +"I venture to think," he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to +a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the +position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in _The Princess_, +by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that +respect. I hold"--in a voice calculated to impress the whole +table--"that woman is man's superior, and that she degrades herself +when she endeavors to place herself on an equality with him." + +There was a momentary silence, like that which travellers tell us +succeeds the roar of the lion in his primeval forest, silencing even the +twitter of the birds. + +"How true that is!" said Sybell, awed by the lurid splendor of Mr. +Harvey's genius. "Woman is man's superior, not his equal. I have felt +that all my life, but I never quite saw how until this moment. Don't you +think so, too, Miss Barker?" + +"I have never lost an opportunity of asserting it," said the Apostle, +her elbow on Mr. Tristram's bread, looking at Mr. Harvey with some +asperity for poaching on her manor. + +"All sensible women have been agreed for years on that point." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + With aching hands and bleeding feet + We dig and heap, lay stone on stone, + We bear the burden and the heat + Of the long day, and wish 'twere done! + Not till the hours of light return + All we have built do we discern. + --MATTHEW ARNOLD. + + +It was Sunday morning. The night was sinking out of the sky to lean +faint unto death upon the bosom of the earth. The great forms of the +trees, felt rather than seen, were darkness made visible. Among the +night of high elms round Warpington a single yellow light burned in an +upper window. It had been burning all night. And now, as the night +waned, the little light waned with it. At least, it was suddenly blown +out. + +Hester came to the window and looked out. There was light, but there was +no dawn as yet. In the gray sky over the gray land the morning-star, +alone and splendid, kept watch in the east. + +She sat down and leaned her brow against the pane. She did not know that +it was aching. She did not know that she was cold, exhausted; so +exhausted that the morning-star in the outer heaven and the morning-star +in her soul were to her the same. They stooped together, they merged +into one great light, heralding a perfect day presently to be. + +The night was over, and that other long night of travail and patience +and faith, and strong rowing in darkness against the stream, was over, +too, at last--at last. _The book was finished_. + +The tears fell slowly from Hester's eyes on to her clasped hands, those +blessed tears which no human hand shall ever intervene to wipe away. + +To some of us Christ comes in the dawn of the spiritual life walking +upon the troubled waves of art. And we recognize Him, and would fain go +to meet Him. But our companions and our own fears dissuade us. They say +it is only a spirit, and that Christ does not walk on water, that the +land whither we are rowing is the place He has Himself appointed for us +to meet Him. So our little faith keeps us in the boat, or fails us in +the waves of that windswept sea. + +It seemed to Hester as if once, long ago, shrinking and shivering, she +had stood in despair upon the shore of a great sea, and had heard a +voice from the other side say, "Come over." She had stopped her ears; +she had tried not to go. She had shrunk back a hundred times from the +cold touch of the water that each time she essayed let her trembling +foot through it. And now, after an interminable interval, after she had +trusted and doubted, had fallen and been sustained, had met the wind and +the rain, after she had sunk in despair and risen again, she knew not +how, now at length a great wave--the last--had cast her up half drowned +upon the shore. A miracle had happened. She had reached the other side, +and was lying in a great peace after the storm upon the solemn shore +under a great white star. + +Hester sat motionless. The star paled and paled before the coming of a +greater than he. Across the pause which God has set 'twixt night and day +came the first word of the robin. It reached Hester's ear as from +another world--a world that had been left behind. The fragmentary notes +floated up to her from an immeasurable distance, like scattered bubbles +through deep water. + +The day was coming. God's creatures of tree and field and hill took +form. Man's creature, the little stout church in their midst, thrust +once more its plebeian outline against God's sky. Dim shapes moved +athwart the vacancy of the meadows. Voices called through the gray. +Close against the eaves a secret was twittered, was passed from beak to +beak. In the nursery below a little twitter of waking children broke the +stillness of the house. + +But Hester did not hear it. She had fallen into a deep sleep in the low +window-seat, with her pale forehead against the pane; a sleep so deep +that even the alarum of the baby did not rouse her, nor the entrance of +Emma with the hot water. + + * * * * * + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, an hour later; as she and her husband +returned through the white mist from early celebration, "Hester was not +there. I thought she had promised to come." + +"She had." + +There was a moment's silence. + +"Perhaps she is not well," said Mr. Gresley, closing the church-yard +gate into the garden. + +Mrs. Gresley's heart swelled with a sense of injustice. She had often +been unwell, often in feeble health before the birth of her children, +but had she ever pleaded ill-health as an excuse for absenting herself +from one of the many services which her husband held to be the +main-spring of the religious life? + +"I do not think she can be very unwell. She is standing by the magnolia +now," she said, her lip quivering, and withdrawing her hand from her +husband's arm. She almost hated the slight, graceful figure, which was +not of her world, which was, as she thought, coming between her and her +husband. + +"I will speak seriously to her," said Mr. Gresley, dejectedly, who +recollected that he had "spoken seriously" to Hester many times at his +wife's instigation without visible result. And as he went alone to meet +his sister he prayed earnestly that he might be given the right word to +say to her. + +A ray of sunlight, faint as an echo, stole through the lingering mist, +parting it on either hand, and fell on Hester. + +Hester, standing in a white gown under the veiled trees in a glade of +silver and trembling opal, which surely mortal foot had never trod, +seemed infinitely removed from him. Dimly he felt that she was at one +with this mysterious morning world, and that he, the owner, was an alien +and a trespasser in his own garden. + +But a glimpse of his cucumber-frames in the background reassured him. He +advanced with a firmer step, as one among allies. + +Hester did not hear him. + +She was gazing with an absorption that shut out all other sights and +sounds at the solitary blossom on the magnolia-tree. Yesterday it had +been a bud; but to-day the great almond-white petals which guarded it, +overlapping each other so jealously, had opened wide, and the perfect +flower, keeping nothing back, had laid bare all its pure white soul +before its God. + +As Mr. Gresley stopped beside her, Hester turned her little pinched, +ravaged face towards him and smiled. Something of the passionate +self-surrender of the flower was reflected in her eyes. + +"Dear Hester," he said, seeing only the wan, drawn face. "Are you ill?" + +"Yes--no. I don't think so," said Hester, tremulously, recalled suddenly +to herself. She looked hastily about her. The world of dew and silver +had deserted her, had broken like an iridescent bubble at a touch. The +magnolia withdrew itself. Hester found herself suddenly transplanted +into the prose of life, emphasized by a long clerical coat and a bed of +Brussels sprouts. + +"I missed you," said Mr. Gresley, with emphasis. + +"Where? When?" Hester's eyes had lost their fixed look and stared +vacantly at him. + +Mr. Gresley tried to subdue his rising annoyance. + +Hester was acting, pretending not to understand, and he saw through it. + +"At God's altar," he said, gravely, the priest getting the upper hand of +the man. + +"Have you not found me there?" said Hester, below her breath, but so low +that fortunately her brother did not catch the words, and was spared +their profanity. + +"I will appeal to her better feelings," he said to himself. "They must +be there, if I can only touch them." + +He did not know that in order to touch the better feelings of our +fellow-creatures we must be able to reach up to them, or by reason of +our low stature we may succeed only in appealing to the lowest in them, +in spite of our tiptoe good intentions. Is that why such appeals too +often meet with bitter sarcasm and indignation? + +But fortunately a robust belief in the assiduities of the devil as the +cause of all failures, and a conviction that who-so opposed Mr. Gresley +opposed the Deity, supported and blindfolded the young Vicar in +emergencies of this kind. + +He spoke earnestly and at length to his sister. He waved aside her timid +excuse that she had overslept herself after a sleepless night, and had +finished dressing but the moment before he found her in the garden. He +entreated her to put aside such insincerity as unworthy of her. He +reminded her of the long months she had spent at Warpington with its +peculiar spiritual opportunities; that he should be to blame if he did +not press upon her the first importance of the religious life, the +ever-present love of God, and the means of approaching Him through the +sacraments. He entreated her to join her prayers with his that she might +be saved from the worship of her own talent, which had shut out the +worship of God, from this dreadful indifference to holy things, and the +impatience of all religious teaching which he grieved to see in her. + +He spoke well, the earnest, blind, would-be leader endeavoring to guide +her to the ditch from which he knew not how she had emerged, +passionately distressed at the opposition he met with as he would have +drawn her lovingly towards it. + +The tears were in Hester's eyes, but the eyes themselves were as flint +seen through water. She stifled many fierce and cruel impulses to speak +as plainly as he did, to tell him that it was not religion that was +abhorent to her, but the form in which he presented it to her, and that +the sin against the Holy Ghost was disbelief, like his, in the religion +of others. But when have such words availed anything? When have they +been believed? Hester had a sharp tongue, and she was slowly learning to +beware of it as her worst enemy. She laid down many weapons before she +trusted herself to speak. + +"It is good of you to care what becomes of me," she said, gently, but +her voice was cold. "I am sorry you regard me as you do. But from your +point of view you were right to speak--as--as you have done. I value the +affection that prompted it." + +"She can't meet me fairly," said Mr. Gresley to himself, with sudden +anger at the meanness of such tactics. "They say she is so clever, and +she can't refute a word I say. She appears to yield and then defies me. +She always puts me off like that." + +The sun had vanquished the mist, and in the brilliant light the two +figures moved silently, side by side, back to the house, one with +something very like rage in his heart, the rage that in bygone days +found expression in stake and fagot. + +Perhaps the heaviest trouble which Hester was ever called upon to bear +had its mysterious beginnings on that morning of opal and gossamer when +the magnolia opened. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et irrefutables, de ces + arguments qui fondent devant la raison comme la neige an feu, et + qu'on ne peut saisir, des arguments absurdes et triomphants, de + cure de campagne qul demontre Dieu.--Guy DE MAUPASSANT. + + +Sybell's party broke up on Saturday, with the exception of Rachel and +Mr. Tristram, who had been unable to finish by that date a sketch he was +making of Sybell. When Doll discovered that his wife had asked that +gentleman to stay over Sunday he entreated Hugh, in moving terms, to do +the same. + +"I am not literary," said Doll, who always thought it necessary to +explain that he was not what no one thought he was. "I hate all that +sort of thing. Utter rot, I call it. For goodness' sake, Scarlett, sit +tight. I must be decent to the beast in my own house, and if you go I +shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all hours of the night in +the smoking-room." + +Hugh was easily persuaded, and so it came about that the morning +congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching Hugh +and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved Wilderleigh pew, +with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it, and Doll at the other. No one +looked at Rachel. Her hat attracted a momentary attention, but her face +none. + +The Miss Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man +milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the sparse +congregation. The spectator of so many points, all made the most of, +unconsciously felt with a sense of oppression that everything that could +be done had been done. No stone had been left unturned. + +Their brother, Captain Algernon Pratt, sitting behind them, looked +critically at them, and owned that they were smart women. But he was not +entirely satisfied with them, as he had been in the old days, before he +went into the Guards and began the real work of his life, raising +himself in society. + +Captain Pratt was a tall, pale young man--_assez beau +garcon_--faultlessly dressed, with a quiet acquired manner. He was not +ill-looking, the long upper lip concealed by a perfectly kept mustache, +but the haggard eye and the thin line in the cheek, which did not +suggest thought and overwork as their cause, made his appearance vaguely +repellent. + + "Jesu, lover of my soul," + +sang the shrill voices of the choir-boys, echoed by Regie and Mary, +standing together, holding their joint hymnbook exactly equally between +them, their two small thumbs touching. + +Fraeulein, on Hester's other side, was singing with her whole soul, +accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body: + + "Cover my defenceless 'ead, + Wiz ze sadow of Zy wing." + +Mr. Gresley, after baying like a blood-hound through the opening verses, +ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer. The congregation amened and +settled itself. Mary leaned her blond head against her mother, Regie +against Hester. + +The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley. + +He gave out the text: + +"Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?" + + * * * * * + +All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a period +admirably suited for quiet reflection. + +"A good woman loves but once," said Mr. Tristram to himself, in an +attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a pillar in +front of him. Some of us would be as helpless without a Bowdlerized +generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the invalid would be +without his peptonized beef-tea. + +"Rachel is a good woman, a saint. Such a woman does not love in a hurry, +but when she does she loves forever." What was that poem he and she had +so often read together? Tennyson, wasn't it? About love not altering +"when it alteration finds," but bears it out even to the crack of doom. +Fine poet, Tennyson; he knew the human heart. She had certainly adored +him four years ago, just in the devoted way in which he needed to be +loved. And how he had worshipped her! Of course he had behaved badly. He +saw that now. But if he had it was not from want of love. She had been +unable to see that at the time. Good women were narrow, and they were +hard, and they did not understand men. Those were their faults. Had she +learned better by now? Did she realize that she had far better marry a +man who had loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than +some fortune-hunter, like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram +called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and ask +for forgiveness. He glanced for a moment at the gentle, familiar face +beside him. + +"She will forgive me," he said, reassuring himself, in spite of an +inward qualm of misgiving. "I am glad I arranged to stay on. I will +speak to her this afternoon. She has become much softened, and we will +bury the past and make a fresh start together." + + * * * * * + +"I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon," said Doll, stretching a leg +outside the open end of the pew. "I wish Gresley would not call the +Dissenters worms. They are some of my best tenants, and they won't like +it when they hear of it. And I'll go round the young pheasants. (Doll +did this, or something similar, every Sunday afternoon of his life, but +he always rehearsed it comfortably in thought on Sunday mornings.) And +if Withers is about I'll go out in the boat--the big one, the little one +leaks--and set a trimmer or two for to-morrow. I'm not sure I'll set one +under the south bank, for there was the devil to pay last time, when +that beast of an eel got among the roots. I'll ask Withers what he +thinks. I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters blind leaders of +the blind. It's such bad form, and I don't suppose the text meant that +to start with, and what's the use of ill-feeling in a parish? And I'll +take Scarlett with me. We'll slip off after luncheon, and leave that +bounder to bound by himself. And poor old Crack shall come too. Uncle +George always took him." + + * * * * * + +"James is simply surpassing himself," said Mrs. Gresley to herself, her +arm round her little daughter. "Worms what a splendid comparison! The +Churchman, the full-grown man after the stature of Christ, and the +Dissenter invertebrate (I think dear James means inebriate), like a worm +cleaving to the earth. But possibly God in His mercy may let them slip +in by a back-door to heaven! How like him to say that, so generous, so +wide-minded, taking the hopeful view of everything! How noble he looks! +These are days in which we should stick to our colors. I wonder how he +can think of such beautiful things. For my part, I think the duty of the +true priest is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right +wrong for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson +to the Bishop, if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as if +right and wrong were mere matters of opinion! What a gift he has! I know +he will eat nothing for luncheon. If only we were somewhere else where +the best joints were a little cheaper, and his talents more +appreciated." And Mrs. Gresley closed her eyes and prayed earnestly, a +tear sliding down her cheek on to Mary's floss-silk mane, that she might +become less unworthy to be the wife of one so far above her, that the +children might all grow up like him, and that she might be given +patience to bear with Hester even when she vexed him. + + * * * * * + +Captain Pratt's critical eye travelled over the congregation. It +absolutely ignored Mrs. Gresley and Fraeulein. It lingered momentarily on +Hester. He knew what he called "breeding" when he saw it, and he was +aware that Hester possessed it, though his sisters would have laughed at +the idea. He had seen many well-bred women on social pinnacles look like +that, whose houses were at present barred against him. The Pratt sisters +were fixed into their smartness as some faces are fixed into a grin. It +was not spontaneous, fugitive, evanescent as a smile, gracefully worn, +or lightly laid aside, as in Hester's case. He had known Hester slightly +in London for several years. He had seen her on terms of intimacy, such +as she never showed to his sisters, with inaccessible men and women with +whom he had achieved a bare acquaintance, but whom, in spite of many +carefully concealed advances, he had found it impossible to know better. +Captain Pratt had reached that stage in his profession of raising +himself when he had become a social barometer. He was excessively +careful whom he knew, what women he danced with, what houses he visited; +and any of his acquaintances who cared to ascertain their own social +status to a hair's-breadth had only to apply to it the touchstone of +Captain Pratt's manner towards them. + +Hester, who grasped many facts of that kind, was always amused by the +cold consideration with which he treated her on his rare visits to the +parental Towers; and which his sisters could only construe as a sign +that "Algy was gone on Hessie." + +"But he will never marry her," they told each other. "Algy looks +higher." + +It was true. If Hester had been Lady Hester, it is possible that the +surname of Pratt, if frequently refused by stouter women, might +eventually have been offered to her. But Captain Pratt was determined +to marry rank, and nothing short of a Lady Something was of any use to +him. An Honorable was better than nothing, but it did not count for much +with him. It had a way of absenting itself when wanted. No one was +announced as an Honorable. It did not even appear on cards. It might he +overlooked. Rank, to be of any practical value, must be apparent, +obvious. Lady Georgiana Pratt, Lady Evelina Pratt! Any name would do +with that prefix. His eye travelled as far as Sybell and stopped again. +She was "the right sort" herself, and she dressed in the right way. Why +could not Ada and Selina imitate her? But he had never forgiven her the +fact that he had met "a crew of cads" at her house, whom he had been +obliged to cut afterwards in the Row. No, Sybell would not have done for +him. She surrounded herself with vulgar people. + +Captain Pratt was far too well-mannered to be guilty of staring, except +at pretty maid-servants or shop-girls, and his eye was moved on by the +rigid police of etiquette which ruled his every movement. It paused +momentarily on Rachel. He knew about her, as did every bachelor in +London. A colossal heiress. She was neither plain nor handsome. She had +a good figure, but not good enough to counterbalance her nondescript +face. She had not the air of distinction which he was so quick to detect +and appraise. She was a social nonentity. He did not care to look at her +a second time. "I would not marry her with twice her fortune," he said +to himself. + + * * * * * + +Regie's hand had stolen into Hester's. His even breathing, felt rather +than heard, as he dropped asleep against her shoulder, surrounded Hester +with the atmosphere of peace and comfort which his father had broken +earlier in the day. Regie often brought back to her what his father +wrested from her. + +She listened to the sermon as from a warm nest safely raised above the +quaggy ground of personal feeling. + +"Dear James! How good he is! how much in earnest! But worms don't go in +at back-doors. Why are not clergymen taught a few elementary rules of +composition before they are ordained? But perhaps no one will notice it +except myself. James is certainly a saint. He has the courage of his +opinions. I believe he loves God and the Church with his whole heart, +and would go to the stake for them, or send me there if he thought it +was for the good of my soul. Why has he no power? Why is he so much +disliked in the parish and neighborhood? I am sure it is not because he +has small abilities, and makes puns, and says cut-and-dried things. How +many excellent clergymen who do the same are beloved? Is it because he +deals with every one as he deals with me? What dreadful things he thinks +of me. I don't wonder he is anxious about me. What unworthy motives of +wilful blindness and arrogance he is attributing to the Nonconformists! +Oh, James, James! will you never see that it is disbelief in the +sincerity of the religion of others, because it is not in the same +narrow form as your own, which makes all your zeal and earnestness of +none effect! You think the opposition you meet with everywhere is the +opposition of evil to good, of indifference to piety. When will you +learn that it is the good in your hearers which opposes you, the love of +God in them which is offended by your representation of Him?" + + * * * * * + +Hugh's eyes were fixed on the same pillar as Mr. Tristram's, but if he +had been aware of that fact he would have chosen another pillar. His +thin, handsome face was beginning to show the marks of mental strain. +His eyes had the set, impassive look of one who, hedged in on both +sides, sees a sharp turn ahead of him on an unknown road. + + * * * * * + +"Rachel! Rachel! Rachel! Don't you hear me calling to you? Don't you +hear me telling you that I can't live without you? The hymn was +right--'Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee'--only +it was written of you, not of that far, far away God who does not care. +Only care for me. Only love me. Only give me those cool hands that I may +lean my forehead against them. No help can come to me except through +you. Stoop down to me and raise me up, for I love you." + +The sun went in suddenly, and a cold shadow fell on the pillar and on +Hugh's heart. + +Love and marriage were not for him. That far-away God, that Judge in the +black cap, had pronounced sentence against him, had doomed that he +should die in his sins. When he had sat in his own village church only +last Sunday between his mother and sister, he had seen the empty place +on his chancel wall where the tablet to his memory would be put up. When +he walked through the church-yard, his mother leaning on his arm, his +step regulated by her feeble one, he had seen the vacant space by his +father's grave already filled by the mound of raw earth which would +shortly cover him. His heart had ached for his mother, for the gentle, +feeble-minded sister, who had transferred the interest in life, which +keeps body and soul together, from her colorless existence to that of +her brother. Hughie was the romance of her gray life: what Hughie said, +what Hughie thought, Hughie's wife--oh, jealous thought, only to be met +by prayer! But later on--joy of joys--Hughie's children! He realized it, +now and then, vaguely, momentarily, but never as fully as last Sunday. +He shrank from the remembrance, and his mind wandered anew in the +labyrinth of broken, twisted thought, from which he could find no way +out. + +_There must be some way out!_ He had stumbled callously through one day +after another of these weeks in which he had not seen Rachel towards his +next meeting with her, as a half-blind man stumbles towards the light. +But the presence of Rachel afforded no clew to the labyrinth. What vain +hope was this that he had cherished unconsciously that she could help +him. There was no help for him. There was no way out. He was in a trap. +He must die, and soon, by his own hand. Incredible, preposterous fate! +He shuddered, and looked around him involuntarily. + +His glance, reverent, full of timid longing, fell on Rachel, and his +heart cried aloud, suddenly, "If she loves me, I shall not be able to +leave her." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + Look in my face! my name is Might-have-been; + I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell. + --DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. + + +It was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Tristram leaned on the stone balustrade +that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was watching two +distant figures, followed by a black dot, stroll away across the park. +One of them seemed to drag himself unwillingly. Mr. Tristram +congratulated himself on the acumen which had led him to keep himself +concealed until Doll and Hugh had started for Beaumere. + +Sybell had announced at luncheon, in the tone of one who observes a +religious rite, that she should rest till four o'clock, and would be +ready to sit for the portrait of her upper lip at that hour. + +It was only half-past two now. Mr. Tristram had planted himself exactly +in front of Rachel's windows, with his back to the house. "She will keep +me waiting, but she will come out in time," he said to himself, nervous +and self-confident by turns, resting his head rather gracefully on his +hand. His knowledge of womankind supported him like a life-belt, but it +has been said that life-belts occasionally support their wearers +upsidedown. Theories have been known to exhibit the same spiteful +tendency towards those who place their trust in them. + +"Of course, she has got to show me that she is offended with me," he +reflected, gazing steadily at the Welsh hills. "She would not have come +out if I had asked her, but she will certainly come as I did not. I will +give her half an hour." + +Rachel, meanwhile, was looking fixedly at Mr. Tristram from her bedroom +window with that dispassionate scrutiny to avoid which the vainest would +do well to take refuge in noisome caves. + +"I wonder," she said to herself, "whether Hester always saw him as I see +him now. I believe she did." + +Rachel put on her hat and took up her gloves. "If this is really I, and +that is really he, I had better go down and get it over," she said to +herself. + +Mr. Tristram had given her half an hour. She appeared in the low stone +doorway before the first five minutes of the allotted time had elapsed, +and he gave a genuine start of surprise as he heard her step on the +gravel. His respect for her fell somewhat at this alacrity. + +"I have been waiting in the hope of seeing you," he said, after a +moment's hesitation. "I am anxious to have a serious conversation with +you." + +"Certainly," she said. + +They walked along the terrace, and presently found themselves in the +little coppice adjoining it. They sat down together on a wooden seat +round an old cedar, in the heart of the golden afternoon. + +It was an afternoon the secret of which Autumn and Spring will never +tell to Winter and Summer, when the wildest dreams of love might come +true, when even the dead might come down and put warm lips to ours, and +we should feel no surprise. + +A kingfisher flashed across the open on his way back to the brook near +at hand, fleeing from the still splendor of the sun-fired woods, where +he was but a courtier, to the little winding world of gray stones and +water, where he was a jewelled king. + +When the kingfisher had left them _tete-a-tete_, Mr. Tristram found +himself extremely awkwardly placed on the green bench. He felt that he +had not sufficiently considered beforehand the peculiar difficulties +which, in the language of the law, "had been imported into his case." + +Rachel sat beside him in silence. If it could be chronicled that +sympathetic sorrow for her companion's predicament was the principal +feeling in her mind, she would have been an angel. + +Mr. Tristram halted long between two opinions. At last he said, +brokenly: + +"Can you forgive me?" + +What woman, even with her white hair, even after a lifetime spent out of +ear-shot, ever forgets the tone her lover's voice takes when he is in +trouble? Rachel softened instantly. + +"I forgave you long ago," she said, gently. + +Something indefinable in the clear, full gaze that met his daunted him. +He stared apprehensively at her. It seemed to him as if he were standing +in cold and darkness looking in through the windows of her untroubled +eyes at the warm, sunlit home which had once been his, when it had been +exceeding well with him, but of which he had lost the key. + +A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came sailing +on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel's knee. + +"I was angry at first," she said, her voice falling across the silence +like another leaf. "And then, after a time, I forgave you. And later +still, much later, I found out that you had never injured me--that I had +nothing to forgive." + +He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained +volubly--for here he felt he was on sure ground--that, on the contrary, +she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an infernal blackguard, +that men were coarse brutes, not fit to kiss a good woman's +shoe-latchet, etc., etc. He identified his conduct with that of the +whole sex, without alluding to it as that of the individual Tristram. He +made it clear that he did not claim to have behaved better than most +men. + +Rachel listened attentively. "And I actually loved him," she said to +herself. + +"But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her love +raises a man, transfigures him, ennobles his whole life," etc., etc. + +"My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at the time," +said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were spoken. + +Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last; was the reproach he had been +expecting. + +He assured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once more. +He denounced the accursed morals of the day, above which he ought to +have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all unmarried men. + +"That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett," she said, scornfully, to herself, and +then her cheek blanched as she remembered that Hugh was not exempt, +after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient; but she waited quietly +for the inevitable proposal. + +Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic and facile utterance, which +the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, had become so +entangled in the morals of the age that it took him some time to +extricate himself from the subject before he could pass on to plead, in +an impassioned manner, the cause of the man, unworthy though he might +be, who had long loved her, loved her now, and would always love her, in +this world and the next. + +It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had many. +But if the proposal was long, the refusal was longer. Rachel, who had a +good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic life made great +demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that +domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high +hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these +objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have +not seen them for a day or two. + +Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at first +impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But +the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him +devotedly could not at last prevail against the odious conviction that +she was determined not to marry him. + +"Then, in that case, you never loved me?" + +"I do not love you now." + +"You are determined not to marry?" + +"On the contrary, I hope to do so." + +Rachel's words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment +that she hoped anything of the kind. + +"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth." + +"I prefer several others." + +Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally with +his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his +docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence, and she +had learned it. + +"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an +aristocrat than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever his +faults may be, loves you for yourself." + +Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is as +offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman? + +Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly. + +"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that touch of +_hauteur_ which, when the vulgar have at last drawn it upon themselves +by the insolence which is the under side of their courtesy, always has +the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull. + +In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. Tristram +stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two +rabbits to hurry back into their holes. + +Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again. +His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close +at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first +among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of rank, now that +her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He +should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if he had not heard it +from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she had chosen. +It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions +from him and to bid her good-bye. + +"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and looking very +much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He +had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman's No," which at the last +moment meant "Yes." And then there was another which chronicled how, +after several stanzas of upbraiding, "we rushed into each other's arms." +Both recurred to him now. He had often thought how true they were. + +"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who apparently had an +unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this +once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other +and to our--former attachment." + +"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful she +would lose him. + +"Good-bye." + +"You understand it is for always?" + +"I do." + +He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she really +let him go? + +"I am not the kind of man to be whistled back," he said, fiercely. It +was an appeal and a defiance, for he was just the kind of man, and they +both knew it. + +"Of course not." + +"That is your last word?" + +"My last word." + +He dropped her hand and half turned to go. + +She made no sign. + +Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind him. At +the little gate he stopped a moment, listening intently. No recalling +voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were talking about. With +a trembling hand he slammed the gate and departed. + +Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long that +the stooping sun found out the solemn, outstretched arms of the cedar, +and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle's wing. Each little +twig and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold against the twilight that +lurked beneath the heavy boughs. + +She sat so still that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, and +struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her, +first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, with the +other, and decided that she was harmless. + +Presently a robin dropped down close to her, flashing up his gray under +wing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, and from its +sun-stirred depths said his say. + +The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons, when the shadows are +lengthening, he sings sadness into your heart. If you are joyful shut +your ears against him, for you may keep peace, but never joy, while he +is singing. He knows all about it, "love's labor lost," the gray face of +young Love dead, the hard-wrought grave in the live rock where he is +buried. And he tells of it again and again and again, as if Love's sharp +sword had indeed reddened his little breast, until the heart aches to +hear him. But he tells also that consolation is folded not in +forgetfulness, but in remembrance. That is why he sings in the silence +of the autumn dawn, before Memory closes her eyes, and again near +sunset, when Memory wakes. + +Still Rachel sat motionless. + +She had labored with dumb unreasoning passion to forget, as a man works +his hand to the bone night after night, week after week, month after +month, to file through the bars of his prison. She found at last that +forgetfulness came not of prayer and fasting; that it was not in her to +forget. The past had seemed to stretch its cruel, desecrating hand over +all the future, cutting her off from the possibility of love and +marriage, and from the children whom in dreams she held in her arms. As +she had said to Hester, she thought she "had nothing left to give." + +But now the dead past had risen from its grave in her meeting with her +former lover, and in a moment, in two short days and wakeful nights, the +past relinquished its false claim upon her life. She saw that it was +false, that she had been frightened where no fear was, that her +deliverance lay in remembrance itself, not in the handcuffs with which +until now she had bound her deliverer. + +Mr. Tristram had come back into her life, and with his own hands had +destroyed the overthrown image of himself, which lay like a barrier +across her heart. He had replaced it by an accurate presentment of +himself as he really was. + +"Only that which is replaced is destroyed," and it is often our real +self in its native rags, and not, as we jealously imagine, another king +in richer purple who has replaced us in the throne-room of the heart +that loved us. To the end of life Rachel never forgot Mr. Tristram, any +more than the amber forgets its fly. But she was vaguely conscious as he +left her that he had set her free. She listened to his retreating step +hardly daring to breathe. It was too good to be true. At last there was +dead silence. No echo of a footfall. Quite gone. He had departed not +only out of her presence, but out of her life. + +She breathed again. A tremor, like that which shakes the first green +leaf against the March sky, stole across her crushed heart, empty at +last, empty at last. She raised her hand timidly in the sunshine. She +was free. She looked round dazzled, bewildered. The little world of +sunshine and the turquoises of sky strewn among the golden net-work of +the trees smiled at her, as one who brings good tidings. + +A certain familiar hold on life and nature, so old that it was almost +new, which she had forgotten, but which her former self used to feel, +came back suddenly upon her, like a lost friend from over-seas. Scales +seemed to fall from her eyes. The light was too much for her. She had +forgotten how beautiful the world was. Everything was possible. + +Some, in the night of their desolation, can take comfort when they see +the morning-star shuddering white in the east, and can say, "Courage, +the day is at hand." + +But others never realize that their night is over till the sun is up. +Rachel had sat in a long stupor. The message writ large for her comfort +in the stars that the night was surely waning had not reached her, +bowed, as she thought, beneath God's hand. And the sure return of the +sun at last came upon her like a miracle. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + "'Tis not for every one to catch a salmon." + + +Every one who knows Middleshire knows that the little lake of Beaumere +is bounded on the one side by the Westhope and on the other by the +Wilderleigh property, the boundary being the ubiquitous Drone, which +traverses the mere in a desultory fashion, and with the assistance of +several springs makes Beaumere what it is, namely (to quote from the +local guide-book), "the noblest expanse of water surrounded by some of +the most picturesque scenery in Middleshire." + +Thither Doll and Hugh took their way in the leisurely manner of men +whose orthodoxy obliges them to regard Sunday as a day of rest. + +Doll pointed out to Hugh the coppice which his predecessor, Mr. George +Loftus, had planted. Hugh regarded it without excitement. Both agreed +that it was coming on nicely. Hugh thought that he ought to do a little +planting at his own place. Doll said, "You can't do everything at once." +A large new farm was the next object of interest. "Uncle George rebuilt +Greenfields from the ground," remarked Doll, as they crossed the high +road and took to the harvesting fields, where "the ricks stood gray to +the sun." + +Hugh nodded. Doll thought he was a very decent chap, though rather +low-spirited. Hugh thought that if Mr. George Loftus had been alive he +might have consulted him. In an amicable silence, broken occasionally by +whistling for Crack, who hurried blear-eyed and asthmatic out of +rabbit-holes, the pair reached Beaumere; and, after following the path +through the wood, came suddenly upon the little lake locked in the heart +of the steeply climbing forest. + +Doll stood still and pointed with his stick for fear Hugh might overlook +it. "I come here every Sunday," he remarked. + +A sense of unreality and foreboding seized on Hugh, as the still face of +the water looked up at him. Where had he seen it before, this sea of +glass reflecting the yellow woods that stooped to its very edge? What +had it to do with him? + +"I've been here before," he said, involuntarily. + +"I dare say," said Doll. "Newhaven marches with me here. The boundary is +by that clump of silver birch. The Drone comes in there, but you can't +see it. The Newhavens are friends of yours, aren't they?" + +"Acquaintances," said Hugh, absently, looking hard at the water. He had +never been here before. Memory groped blindly for a lost link, as one +who momentarily recognizes a face in a crowd, and tries to put a name to +it and fails. As the face disappears, so the sudden impression passed +from Hugh's mind. + +"I expect you have been here with them," said Doll. "Good man, +Newhaven." + +"I used to see a good deal of them at one time," said Hugh; "but they +seem to have forgotten me of late." + +"Oh, that's her!" said Doll. "She is always off and on with people. +Takes a fancy one day and a dislike the next. But he's not like that. +You always know where to find him. Solid man, Newhaven. He doesn't say +much, but what he says he sticks to." + +"He gives one that impression," said Hugh. + +"I rather think he is there now," said Doll, pointing to the farther +shore. "I see a figure moving, and two little specks. I should not +wonder if it were him and the boys. They often come here on Sunday +afternoons." + +"You have long sight," said Hugh. He had met Lord Newhaven several times +since the drawing of lots, and they had always greeted each other with +cold civility. But Hugh avoided him when he could without drawing +attention to the fact that he did so. + +"Are you going over to his side?" he asked. + +"Rather not," said Doll. "I have never set a single trimmer or fired a +shot beyond that clump of birch, or Uncle George before me." + +The two men picked their way down the hill-side among the tall, thin +tree-trunks. There was no one except the dogs at the keeper's cottage, +in a clearing half-way down. Doll took the key of the boat-house from a +little hole under the eaves. + +"I think Withers must be out," he remarked at last, after knocking and +calling at the locked door and peering through the closed window. Hugh +had been of that opinion for some time. "Gone out with his wife, I +expect. Never mind, we can do without him." + +They went slipping over the dry beech-mast to the boat-house. Doll +unlocked the door and climbed into one of the boats; Hugh and Crack +followed. They got a perch-rod off a long shelf, and half a dozen +trimmers. Then they pulled out a little way and stopped near an +archipelago of water-lily leaves. + +Doll got out the perch-rod and float and made a cast. + +"It's not fishing," he said, apologetically, half to his guest and half +to his Maker. "But we are bound to get some baits." + +Hugh nodded, and gazed down at the thin forest below. He could see the +perch moving in little companies in the still water beyond the +water-trees. Presently a perch, a very small one, out alone for the +first time, came up, all stiff head and shoulders and wagging tail, to +the carelessly covered hook. + +"Don't, don't, you young idiot!" said Hugh, below his breath. But the +perch knew that the time had come when a perch must judge for himself. + +The float curtesied and went under, and in another second the little +independent was in the boat. + +"There are other fools in the world besides me, it seems," said Hugh to +himself. + +"He'll do; but I wish he was a dace," said Doll, slipping the victim +into a tin with holes in the top. "Half a dozen will be enough." + +They got half a dozen, baited and set the trimmers white side up, and +were turning to row back, when Doll's eyes became suddenly fixed. + +"By Jove! there's something at it," he said, pointing to a trimmer at +some distance. + +Both men looked intently at it. Crack felt that something was happening, +and left off smelling the empty fish-can. + +The trimmer began to nod, to tilt, and then turned suddenly upsidedown, +and remained motionless. + +"He's running the line off it," said Doll. + +As he spoke the trimmer gave one jerk and went under. Then it +reappeared, awkwardly bustling out into the open. + +"Oh, hang it all! it's Sunday," said Doll, with a groan. "We can't be +catching pike on a Sunday." And he caught up the oars and rowed swiftly +towards the trimmer. + +As soon as they were within a boat's length it disappeared again, came +up again, and went pecking along the top of the water. Doll pursued +warily, and got hold of it. + +"Gently, now," he said, as he shipped the oars. "He'll go under the boat +and break us if we don't look out. I'll play him, and you shove the net +under him. Damn!--God forgive me!--we've come out without a landing-net. +Good Lord, Scarlett, you can't gaff him with a champagne-opener. There, +you pull him in, and I'll grab him somehow. I've done it before. Crack, +lie down, you infernal fool! Scarlett, if you pull him like that you'll +lose him to a certainty. By George, he's a big one!" Doll tore off his +coat and turned up his shirt-sleeves. "He's going under the boat. If you +let him go under the boat, I tell you, he'll break us. I'm quite ready." +Doll was rubbing his waistcoat-buttons against the gunwale. "Bring him +in gradually. For goodness' sake, keep your feet off the line, or, if +he makes a dash, he'll break you! Give him line. Keep your elbows out. +Keep your hands free. Don't let him jerk you. If you don't give him more +line when he runs, you'll lose him. He's not half done yet. Confound +you, Scarlett! hold on for all you're worth. All right, old chap, all +right. Don't mind me. You're doing it first-class. Right as rain. Now, +now. By George! did you see him that time? He's a nailer! Steady on him! +Bring him in gently. Keep an even pull on him. Keep steady!" + +Doll craned over the gunwale, his arms in the water. There was a swirl, +a momentary glimpse of a stolid fish, face and heavy shoulders, and the +boat righted itself. + +"Missed him, as I live!" gasped Doll. "Bring him in again." + +Hugh let out the slippery line, and drew it in again slowly, hand over +hand. Doll's round head was over the side, his long legs spread +adhesively in the bottom of the boat. Crack, beyond himself with +excitement, got on the seat and barked without ceasing. + +"He's coming up again," said Doll, gutturally, sliding forward his left +hand. "I must get him by the eyes, and then I doubt if I can lift him. +He's a big brute. He's dragging the whole boat and everything. He's +about done now. Steady! Now!" + +The great side of the pike lay heaving on the surface for a second, and +Doll's left forefinger and thumb were groping for its eyes. But the +agonized pike made a last effort. Doll had him with his left hand, but +could not raise him. "Pull him in now for all you're worth," he roared +to Hugh, as he made a grab with his right hand. His legs began to lose +their grip under the violent contortions of the pike. The boat tilted +madly. Hugh reached forward to help him. There was a frantic effort, and +it capsized. + +"Bad luck," said Doll, coming up spluttering, shaking his head like a +spaniel. "But we shall get him yet. He's bleeding like a pig. He'll +come up directly. Good Lord! the water's like ice. We must be over one +of the springs. I suppose you are all right, Scarlett." + +Hugh had come up, but in very different fashion. + +"Yes," he said, faintly, clutching the upturned boat. + +"I'm not sure," said Doll, keeping going with one hand, "that we had not +better get ashore and fetch the other boat. The water's enough to freeze +one." + +"I can't swim," said Hugh, his teeth chattering. + +He was a delicate man at the best of times, and the cold was laying hold +of him. + +Doll looked at his blue lips and shaking hands, and his face became +grave. He measured the distance to the shore with his eye. It had +receded in a treacherous manner. + +"I'm not much of a performer myself," he said, "since I broke my arm +last winter, but I can get to the shore. The question is, can you hold +on while I go back and bring the other boat, or shall we have a try at +getting back together?" + +"I can hold on all right," said Hugh, instantly aware that Doll did not +think he could tow him to land, but was politely ready to risk his +existence in the attempt. + +"Back directly," said Doll, and without a second's delay he was gone. +Hugh put out his whole strength in the endeavor to raise himself +somewhat out of the ice-cold water. But the upturned boat sidled away +from him like a skittish horse, and after grappling with it he only +slipped back again exhausted, and had to clutch it as best he could. + +As he clung to the gunwale he heard a faint coughing and gasping close +to his ear. Some one was drowning. Hugh realized that it must be Crack, +under the boat. He called to him; he chirruped, as if all were well. He +stretched one hand as far as he could under the boat feeling for him. +But he could not reach him. Presently the faint, difficult sound ceased, +began again, stopped, and was heard no more. + +A great silence seemed to rush in on the extinction of that small sound. +It stooped down and enveloped Hugh in it. Everything was very calm, very +still. The boat kept turning slowly round and round, the only thing that +moved. The sunlight quivered on the wet, upturned keel. Already it was +drying in patches. Hugh watched it. The cold was sapping his powers as +if he were bleeding. + +"I could have built a boat in the time Loftus takes to fetch one," he +said to himself, and he looked round him. No sign of Doll. He was alone +in the world. The cold was gaining on him slowly, surely. Why had he on +such heavy gloves, which made him fumble so clumsily. He looked at his +bare cut hands, and realized that their grip was leaving them. He felt +that he was in measurable distance of losing his hold. + +Suddenly a remembrance flashed across him of the sinister face of the +water as it had first looked up at him through the trees. Now he +understood. This was the appointed place for him to die. Hugh tightened +his hold with his right hand, for his left was paralyzed. + +"I will not," he said. "Nothing shall induce me. I will live and marry +Rachel." + +The cold advanced suddenly on him, as at the point of the bayonet. + +"Why not die?" said another voice. "Will it be easier in three months' +time than it is now? Will it ever be so easy again? See how near death +is to life, a wheel within a wheel, two rings linked together. A touch, +and you pass from one to the other." + +Hugh looked wildly round him. The sun lay warm upon the tree-tops. It +could not be that he was going to die _here_ and _now_; here in the +living sunshine, with the quiet, friendly faces of the hills all around +him. + +He strengthened his numb hold fiercely, all but lost it, regained it. +Cramp, long held at bay, overcame him. + +And the boat kept turning in the twilight. He reached the end of his +strength, and held on beyond it. He heard some one near at hand +suffocating in long-drawn gasps. Not Crack this time, but himself. + +The boat was always turning in the darkness. + +The struggle was over. "It is better so," said the other voice, through +the roaring of a cataract near at hand. "Your mother will bear it better +so. And all the long difficulties are over, and pain is past, and life +is past, and sleep is best." + +"But Rachel?" + +She was here in the warm, swaying darkness. She was with him. She was +Death. Death was only her arms round him in a great peace. Death was +better than life. He let go the silly boat that kept him from her and +turned wholly to her, his closed eyes against her breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + The main difference between people seems to be that one man can + come under obligations on which you can rely--is obligable--and + another is not. As he has not a law within him, there's nothing to + tie him to.--EMERSON. + + +"Father," said Teddy to Lord Newhaven, "do--do be a horse, and I will +ride you in the water." + +"Me, too," said Pauly. + +"I am not anxious to be a horse, Teddy. I'm quite content as I am." + +Lord Newhaven was stretched in an easy but undefensive attitude on the +heathery bank, with his hands behind his head. His two sons rushed +simultaneously at him and knelt on his chest. + +"Promise!" they cried, punching him. "Two turns each." There was a free +fight, and Lord Newhaven promised. + +"Honor bright! Two turns each, and really deep!" + +"Honor bright," said Lord Newhaven. + +His two sons got off his chest, and Teddy climbed on his back in +readiness, as his father sat up and began to unlace his boots. + +"Higher!" said Teddy, over his shoulder, his arms tightly clasped round +his father's neck, as Lord Newhaven rolled up his trousers. + +"You young slave-driver, they won't go up any higher." + +"You said 'honor bright.'" + +"Well, Shylock, I _am_ 'honor bright.'" + +"You had them over your knees last time." + +"I had knickerbockers on, then." + +"Won't these do the same?" + +"They won't come up another inch." + +"Then one, two, three--off!" shrieked Teddy, digging his heels into the +parental back. + +The horse displayed surprising agility. It curveted, it kicked, it +jumped a little drain, it careered into the water, making a tremendous +splashing. + +The two boys screamed with delight. + +But at last the horse sat down on the bank gasping, wiped its forehead, +and, in spite of frenzied entreaties, proceeded to put on its socks and +boots. + +Lord Newhaven was not to be moved a second time. He lit a cigarette and +observed that the moment for sailing boats had arrived. + +The boats were accordingly sailed. Lord Newhaven tilted his hat over his +eyes and acted as umpire. + +"It is not usual to sail boats upsidedown," he said, seeing Teddy +deliberately upset his. + +"They are doing it out there," said Teddy, who had a reason for most +things. And he continued to sail his boat upsidedown. + +Lord Newhaven got up, and swept the water with his eye. His face became +keen. Then his glance fell anxiously on the children. + +"Teddy and Pauly," he said, "promise me that you will both play on this +one bit of sand, and not go in the water till I come back." + +They promised, staring bewildered at their father. + +In another moment Lord Newhaven was tearing through the brushwood that +fringed the water's edge. + +As he neared the boat-house he saw another figure trying to shove out +the remaining boat. + +It was Doll. Lord Newhaven pushed her off and jumped in. + +Doll was almost speechless. His breath came in long gasps. The sweat +hung on his forehead. He pointed to the black, upturned boat. + +"This one leaks," said Lord Newhaven, sharply. + +"It's got to go all the same, and sharp," said Doll, hoarsely. + +Lord Newhaven seized up a fishing-tin and thrust it into Doll's hands. + +"You bale while I row," he said, and he rowed as he had never rowed +before. + +"Who is it?" he said, as the boat shot out into the open. + +Doll was baling like a madman. + +"Scarlett," he said. "And he's over one of the springs. He'll get +cramp." + +Lord Newhaven strained at the oars. + + * * * * * + +Consciousness was coming back, was slowly climbing upwards, upwards +through immense intervals of time and space, to where at last, with a +wrench, pain met it half-way. Hugh stirred feebly in the dark of a great +forlornness and loneliness. + +"Rachel," he said--"Rachel." + +His head was gently raised, and a cup pressed to his lips. He swallowed +something. + +He groped in the darkness for a window, and then opened his eyes. Lord +Newhaven withdrew a pace or two, and stood looking at him. + +Their eyes met. + +Neither spoke; but Hugh's eyes, dark with the shadow of death, said +plainly, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" + +Then he turned them slowly, as an infant turns them to the sky, the +climbing woods, leaning over each other's shoulders to look at him, to +the warm earth on which he lay. At a little distance was stretched a +small rough-haired form. Hugh's eyes fixed on it. It lay very still. + +"Crack," he said, suddenly, raising himself on his elbow. + +There was neither speech nor language. Crack's tail, that courteous +member, made no sign. + +"He was under the boat," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at the +exhausted face of the man he had saved, and unable for the life of him +to help a momentary fellow-feeling about the little dog. + +Hugh remembered. It all came back, the boat, Crack's dying gasps, the +agonized struggle, the strait gate of death, the difficult passage +through it, the calm beyond. He had almost got through, and had been +dragged back. + +"Why did you interfere?" he said, in sudden passion, his eyes flaming in +his white face. + +A dull color rose to Lord Newhaven's cheek. + +"I thought it was an accident," he said. "If it was not, I beg your +pardon." + +There was a moment's silence. + +"It _was_ an accident," said Hugh, hoarsely, and he turned on his elbow +and looked fixedly at the water, so that his companion might not see the +working of his face. + +Lord Newhaven walked slowly away in the direction of Doll, whose distant +figure, followed by another, was hurrying towards them. + +"And so there is a Rachel as well, is there?" he said to himself, vainly +trying to steel himself against his adversary. + +"How is he now?" said Doll, coming within ear-shot. + +"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and +yourself, too." + +"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the keeper. "It's +as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting up! I thought when +we laid into him on the bank that he was too far gone, didn't you? I +suppose"--hesitating--"Crack?" + +Lord Newhaven shook his head. + +"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be getting into +mischief." + +Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get the +leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had filled +ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the heavy, +unconscious body. + +There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had +remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim. + +"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the incident +and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of the remark, +repeated it to the Gresleys. + +Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his +water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he could see +in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a log where he +had left them. + +"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud. + +In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings towards +him had not changed, but they had been forced during the last half-hour +out of their original intrenchments into the open, and were liable to +attack from new directions. + +It was not that he had virtually saved Hugh's life, for Doll would never +have got him into the leaking boat and kept it afloat single-handed. +That first moment of enthusiasm, when he had rubbed the senseless limbs +and breathed into the cold lips, and had felt his heart leap when life +came halting back into them, that moment had passed and left him cold. + +But Hugh's melancholy eyes, as they opened once more on this world and +met his unflinchingly, haunted him, and the sudden anger at his +interference. It was the intrenchment of his contempt that Lord Newhaven +missed. + +A meaner nature would not have let him off so easily as Hugh had done. + +"It _was_ an accident," he said to himself, unwillingly. "He need not +have admitted that, but I should have been on a gridiron if he had not. +In different circumstances that man and I might have been friends. And +if he had got into a scrape of this kind a little further afield I might +have helped to get him out of it. He feels it. He has aged during the +last two months. But as it is--Upon my word, if he were a boy I should +have had to let him off. It would have been too bloodthirsty. But he is +seven-and-twenty. He is old enough to know better. She made a fool of +him, of course. She made a greater one of me once, for I--married her." + +Lord Newhaven reviewed with a dispassionate eye his courtship and +marriage. + +"A wood anemone," he said to himself; "I likened her to a wood anemone. +Good Lord! And I was thirty years of age, while this poor devil is +twenty-seven." + +Lord Newhaven stopped short with fixed eyes. + +"I believe I should have to let him off," he said, half-aloud. "I +believe I would let him off if I was not as certain as I stand here that +he will never do it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + "The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it." + + +Hester always took charge of the three elder children and Fraeulein of +the baby during the six-o'clock service, so that the nurse might go to +church. On this particular Sunday afternoon Hester and the children were +waiting in the little hall till the bell stopped, before which moment +they were forbidden to leave the house. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had just +started for the church, Mr. Gresley looking worn and harassed, for since +luncheon he had received what he called "a perfectly unaccountable +letter" from one of his principal parishioners, a Dissenter, who had +been present at the morning service, and who Mr. Gresley had confidently +hoped might have been struck by the sermon. This hope had been +justified, but not in the manner Mr. Gresley had expected. Mr. Walsh +opined, in a large round hand, that as worms (twice under-dashed) did +not usually pay voluntary church and school rates he no longer felt +himself under an obligation to do so, etc. The letter was a great, an +unexpected blow. Who could have foreseen such a result of the morning's +eloquence. + +"The truth is," said Mr. Gresley, tremulously, "that they can't and +won't hear reason. They can't controvert what I say, so they take refuge +in petty spite like this. I must own I am disappointed in Walsh. He is a +man of some education, and liberal as regards money. I had thought he +was better than most of them, and now he turns on me like this." + +"It's a way worms have," said Hester. + +"Oh, don't run a simile to death, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, +impatiently. "If you had listened to what I tried to say this morning +you would have seen I only used the word _worm_ figuratively. I never +meant it literally, as any one could see who was not determined to +misunderstand me. Worms pay school-rates! Such folly is positively +sickening, if it were not malicious." + +Hester had remained silent. She had been deeply vexed for her brother at +the incident. + +As the church-bell stopped the swing-door opened, and Boulou hurried in, +like a great personage, conscious that others have waited, and bearing +with him an aroma of Irish stew and onions, which showed that he had +been exchanging affabilities with the cook. For the truth must be owned. +No spinster over forty could look unmoved on Boulou. Alas! for the +Vicarage cook, who "had kept herself _to_ herself" for nearly fifty +years, only to fall the victim of a "grande passion" for Boulou. + +The little Lovelace bounded in, and the expedition started. It was +Regie's turn to choose where they should go, and he decided on the +"shrubbery," a little wood through which ran the private path to +Wilderleigh. Doll Loftus had given the Gresleys leave to take the +children there. + +"Oh, Regie, we always go there," said Mary, plaintively, who invariably +chose the Pratts' park, with its rustic bridges and _chalets_, which Mr. +Pratt, in a gracious moment, had "thrown open" to the Gresleys on +Sundays, because, as he expressed it, "they must feel so cramped in +their little garden." + +But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the "shrubberies" they +went. Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even to tell +them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in the coppice +near at hand. + +As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life leads us +we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in +our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were +born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the underneath of every +laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green +dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs. We +see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which +sad-faced elders call _ribes_; but once long ago, when the world was +young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on +them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them. +Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test, +just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of +interest was not ascertained. There was a certain scarlet berry, very +red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly +poison. How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter +taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly +essayed in later years. We ate those scarlet berries and lived, though +warned to the contrary. + +Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where +any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it +an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings. The +children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices +could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as the body was being lowered +into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly +restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over. + +"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a +little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to +Hester. + +As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards +them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested +that when two is not company three may be. + +"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified tone, +sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am to blame. +You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with +us?" + +"I know him," said Hester. + +"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large +pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any harm +myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I love the +Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one's +self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at +four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a little--well rather--" + +"Just so," said Hester. + +"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A married +woman often has to deal with such things without making a fuss about +them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly half-past four before +I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room a servant brought me a +note. It was from him, saying he had been obliged to leave Wilderleigh +suddenly on urgent business, and asking that his baggage might be sent +after him." + +Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. Sybell's +conversation always interested her. + +"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to herself, +"is because the ground the confidence would cover is invariably built +over already by a fiction of her own which it would not please her to +see destroyed." + +"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have behaved +in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of course the +pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because there is no +Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I asked that. And he +was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost asked to stay over Sunday +on purpose." + +Rachel and Hester looked on the ground. + +"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't you, +Rachel?" + +"I said I thought he was a little nervous." + +And what did he talk to you about?" + +"He spoke about the low tone of the morals of the day, and about +marriage." + +"Ah! I don't wonder he talked to you, Rachel, you are so sympathetic. I +expect lots of people confide in you about their troubles and love +affairs. Morals of the day! Marriage! Poor, poor Mr. Tristram! I shall +tell Doll quietly this evening. On the whole, it is just as well he is +gone." + +"Just as well," said Rachel and Hester, with surprising unanimity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + So fast does a little leaven spread within us--so incalculable is + the effect of one personality on another.--GEORGE ELIOT. + + +Hugh was not ill after what Mr. Gresley called "his immersion," but for +some days he remained feeble and exhausted. Sybell quite forgot she had +not liked him, insisted on his staying on indefinitely at Wilderleigh, +and, undaunted by her distressing experience with Mr. Tristram, read +poetry to Hugh in the afternoons and surrounded him with genuine +warm-hearted care. Doll was steadily, quietly kind. + +It was during these days that Hugh and Rachel saw much of each other, +during these days that Rachel passed in spite of herself beyond the +anxious impersonal interest which Hugh had awakened in her, on to that +slippery much-trodden ground of uncomfortable possibilities where the +unmarried meet. + +Hugh attracted and repelled her. + +It was, alas! easy to say why she was repelled. But who shall say why +she was attracted? Has the secret law ever been discovered which draws +one man and woman together amid the crowd? Hugh was not among the best +men who had wished to marry her, but nevertheless he was the only man +since Mr. Tristram who had succeeded in making her think continually of +him. And perhaps she half knew that though she had been loved by better +men, Hugh loved her better than they had. + +Which would prove the stronger, the attraction or the repulsion? + +"How can I?" she said to herself, over and over again. + +"When I remember Lady Newhaven, how can I? When I think of what his +conduct was for a whole year, how can I? Can he have any sense of honor +to have acted like that? Is he even really sorry? He is very charming, +very refined, and he loves me. He looks good, but what do I know of him +except evil? He looks as if he could be faithful, but how can I trust +him?" + +Hugh fell into a deep dejection after his narrow escape. Dr. Brown said +it was nervous prostration, and Doll rode into Southminster and returned +laden with comic papers. Who shall say whether the cause was physical or +mental? Hugh had seen death very near for the first time, and the +thought of death haunted him. He had not realized when he drew lots that +he was risking the possibility of anything like _that_, such an entire +going away, such an awful rending of his being as the short word _death_ +now conveyed to him. He had had no idea it would be like _that_. And he +had got to do it again. There was the crux. He had got to do it again. + +He leaned back faint and shuddering in the deck-chair in the rose-garden +where he was lying. + +Presently Rachel appeared, coming towards him down the narrow grass walk +between two high walls of hollyhocks. She had a cup of tea in her hand. + +"I have brought you this," she said, "with a warning that you had better +not come in to tea. Mr. Gresley has been sighted walking up the drive. +Mrs. Loftus thought you would like to see him, but I reminded her that +Dr. Brown said you were to be kept very quiet." + +Mr. Gresley had called every day since the accident in order to cheer +the sufferer, to whom he had been greatly attracted. Hugh had seen him +once, and afterwards had never felt strong enough to repeat the process. + +"Must you go back?" he asked. + +"No," she said. "Mrs. Loftus and he are great friends. I should be +rather in the way." + +And she sat down by him. + +"Are you feeling ill?" she said, gently, noticing his careworn face. + +"No," he replied. "I was only thinking. I was thinking," he went on, +after a pause, "that I would give everything I possess not to have done +something which I have done." + +Rachel looked straight in front of her. The confession was coming at +last. Her heart beat. + +"I have done wrong," he said, slowly, "and I am suffering for it, and I +shall suffer more before I've finished. But the worst is--" + +She looked at him. + +"The worst is that I can't bear all the consequences myself. An innocent +person will pay the penalty of my sin." + +Hugh's voice faltered. He was thinking of his mother. + +Rachel's mind instantly flew to Lord Newhaven. + +"Then Lord Newhaven drew the short lighter," she thought, and she +colored deeply. + +There was a long silence. + +"Do you think," said Hugh, smiling faintly, "that people are ever given +a second chance?" + +"Always," said Rachel. "If not here--afterwards." + +"If I were given another," said Hugh. "If I might only be given another +now in this life I should take it." + +He was thinking if only he might be let off this dreadful self-inflicted +death. She thought he meant that he repented of his sin, and would fain +do better. + +There was a sound of voices near at hand. Sybell and Mr. Gresley came +down the grass walk towards them. + +"London society," Mr. Gresley was saying, "to live in a stuffy street +away from the beauties of Nature, its birds and flowers, to spend half +my days laying traps for invitations, and half my nights grinning like a +fool in stifling drawing-rooms, listening to vapid talk. No, thanks! I +know better than to care for London society. Hester does, I know, but +then Hester does not mind making up to big people, and I do. In fact--" + +"I have brought Mr. Gresley, after all, in spite of Dr. Brown," said +Sybell, "because we were in the middle of such an interesting +conversation on the snares of society that I knew you would like to hear +it. You have had such a dull day with Doll away at his County Council." + +That night, as Rachel sat in her room, she went over that half-made, +ruthlessly interrupted confidence. + +"He does repent," she said to herself, recalling the careworn face. "If +he does, can I overlook the past? Can I help him to make a fresh start? +If he had not done this one dishonorable action, I could have cared for +him. Can I now?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + "A fool's mouth is his destruction." + + +The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have forgotten, but +the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an earlier chapter a +sale of work was mentioned which was to take place in the Wilderleigh +gardens at the end of August. + +The end of August had now arrived, and with it two white tents, which +sprang up suddenly one morning, like giant mushrooms, on one of Doll's +smooth-shaven lawns. He groaned in spirit as he watched their erection. +They would ruin the turf. + +"Might as well iron it with a hot iron," he said, disconsolately to +Hugh. "But, of course, this sort of thing--Diocesan Fund, eh? In these +days we must stand by our colors." He repeated Mr. Gresley's phrase. +Doll seldom ventured on an opinion not sanctioned by the ages, or that +he had not heard repeated till its novelty had been comfortably rubbed +off by his wife or the Gresleys. + +The two men watched the proceedings mournfully. They could not help, at +least they were told they could not help the women busily engaged in +draping and arranging the stalls. They were still at large, but Doll +knew, as well as a dog who is going to be washed, what was in store for +him in the afternoon, and he was depressed beforehand. + +"Don't let yourself be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not +up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing. +Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the smoking-room +till it's all over." + + * * * * * + +"All I can say is," remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led the +Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the work of +many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly badly. Here they +are, the richest people by far in the parish, and they would not even +take a stall, they would not even furnish half of one, and they said +they would be away, and they are at the Towers, after all. No one likes +the Pratts more than I do, or sees their good points as I do, but I +can't shut my eyes to the fact that they are the meanest of the mean." + +The Pratts had only contributed two "bed-spreads," and a "sheet-sham," +and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to know what +"bed-spreads" and "sheet-shams" are, let him ask his intended, and let +him see to it that he marries a woman who cannot tell him. + +Mrs. Pratt had bought the antimacassars for the Towers, and secretly +adored them until Ada pronounced them to be vulgar. The number of things +which Ada discovered to be vulgar increased every day, and included the +greater part of her mother's wardrobe, much to the distress of that poor +lady. Mrs. Pratt had reached the size when it is prudent to concentrate +a love of bright colors in one's parasol. On this particular afternoon +she shed tears over the fact that Ada refused to accompany her if her +mother wore a unique garment of orange satin, covered with what appeared +to be a plague of black worms. + +Of course, the sale of work was combined with a garden-party, and a +little after three o'clock carriage after carriage began to arrive, and +Sybell, with a mournful, handsome, irreproachably dressed husband, took +up her position on the south front to receive her guests. + +The whole neighborhood had been invited, and it can generally be gauged +with tolerable accuracy by a hostess of some experience who will respond +to the call and who will stay away. Sybell and her husband were among +those who were not to be found at these festivities, neither were the +Newhavens, save at their own, nor the Pontisburys, nor the Bishop of +Southminster. Cards had, of course, been sent to each, but no one +expected them to appear. + +Presently, among the stream of arrivals, Sybell noticed the slender +figure of Lady Newhaven, and--astonishing vision--Lord Newhaven beside +her. + +"Wonders will never cease," said Doll, shaken for a moment out of the +apathy of endurance. + +Sybell raised her eyebrows, and advanced with the prettiest air of +_empressement_ to meet her unexpected guests. No, clearly it was +impossible that the two women should like each other. They were the same +age, about the same height and coloring; their social position was too +similar; their historic houses too near each other. Lady Newhaven was by +far the best looking, but that was not a difference which attracted +Sybell towards her. On this occasion Sybell's face assumed its most +squirrel-like expression, for, as ill-luck would have it, they were +dressed alike. + +Lady Newhaven looked very ethereal, as she came slowly across the grass +in her diaphanous gown of rich white, covered with a flowing veil of +thinnest transparent black. Her blue eyes looked restlessly bright; her +lips wore a mechanical smile. Rachel, watching her, experienced a sudden +pang at her undeniable loveliness. It wounded her suddenly, as it never +had done before. "I am a common-looking, square-built woman compared to +her," she said to herself. "No wonder he--" + +She instinctively drew back as Lady Newhaven turned quickly towards her. + +"You dear person," said Lady Newhaven, her eyes moving restlessly over +the crowd, "are you still here? Let us go and buy something together. +How nice you look," without looking at her. She drew Rachel apart in the +direction of the tents. + +"Where is he?" she said, sharply. "I know he is here. I heard all about +the accident, though Edward never told me. I don't see him." + +"He is not in the gardens. He is not coming out. He is still rather +knocked up." + +"I thought I should have died when I heard it. Ah, Rachel, never love +any one. You don't know what it's like. But I must see him. I have come +here on purpose." + +"So I supposed." + +"Edward would come, too. He appeared at the last moment when the +carriage came round, though I have never known him to go to a +garden-party in his life. But where is he, Rachel?" + +"Somewhere in the house, I suppose." + +"I shan't know where to find him. I can't be wandering about that +woman's house by myself. We must slip away together, Rachel, and you +must take me to him. I must see him alone for five minutes." + +Rachel shook her head. + +Captain Pratt, tall, pale, cautious, immaculate, his cane held along his +spinal column, appeared suddenly close at hand. + +"Mrs. Loftus is fortunate in her day," he remarked, addressing himself +to Lady Newhaven, and observing her fixedly with cold admiration. "I +seldom come to this sort of thing, but neighbors in the country must +support each other. I see you are on your way to the tents. Pray allow +me to carry your purchases for you." + +"Oh! don't let me trouble you," said Lady Newhaven, shrinking +imperceptibly. But it was no trouble to Captain Pratt, and they walked +on together. + +Lord Newhaven, who could not have been far off, joined Rachel. + + * * * * * + +"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt to Ada, "you might have let me wear my +black and orange, after all, for you see Lady Newhaven has something +very much the same, only hers is white underneath. And do you see she +has got two diamond butterflies on--the little one at her throat and the +big one holding her white carnations. And you would not let me put on a +single thing. There now, Algy has joined her," continued Mrs. Pratt, her +attention quickly diverted from her own wrongs. "Now they are walking on +together. How nice he looks in those beautiful clothes. Algy and Lord +Newhaven and Mr. Loftus all have the same look, haven't they? All +friends together, as I often say, such a mercy among county people. You +might walk a little with Lord Newhaven, Ada. It's unaccountable how +seldom we see him, but always so pleasant when we do. Ah! he's speaking +to Rachel West. They are going to the tents, after all. Well, whatever +you may say, I do think we ought to go and buy something, too. Papa says +he won't put his hand in his pocket if the Loftuses are to get all the +credit, and we ought to have had the choice of having the sale at the +Towers, so he sha'n't do anything; but I think it would be nice if we +went and bought a little something. Just a five-pound note. You shall +spend it, my dear, if you like." + + * * * * * + +"This is sheer recklessness," said Lord Newhaven, as Rachel bought an +expensive tea-cosey from Fraeulein. "In these days of death-duties you +cannot possess four teapots, and you have already bought three teapot +costumes." + +"That is what I am here for," said Rachel, producing a check-book. "How +much did you say, Fraeulein?" + +"Twenty-seven and seex," said Fraeulein. + +"Now I see it in the full light, I have taken a fancy to it myself," +said Lord Newhaven. "I never saw anything the least like it. I don't +think I can allow you to appropriate it, Miss West. You are sweeping up +all the best things." + +"I have a verr' pretty thing for gentlemen," said Fraeulein. "Herr +B-r-r-rown has just bought one." + +"Very elaborate, indeed. Bible-markers, I presume? Oh, braces! Never +mind, they will be equally useful to me. I'll have them. Now for the +tea-cosey. It is under-priced. I consider that, with the chenille +swallow, it is worth thirty shillings. I will give thirty for it." + +"Thirty-two and six," said Rachel. + +"The landed interest is not going to be browbeaten by coal-mines. +Thirty-three and twopence." + +"Forty shillings," said Rachel. + +"Forty-two," said Lord Newhaven. + +Every one in the tent had turned to watch the bidding. + +"Forty-two and six," said Rachel. + +Fraeulein blushed. She had worked the tea-cosey. It was to her a sonata +in red plush. + +"Three guineas," said Captain Pratt, by an infallible instinct, +perceiving, and placing himself within the focus of general interest. + +The bidding ceased instantly. Lord Newhaven shrugged his shoulders and +turned away. Fraeulein, still shaking with conflicting emotions, handed +the tea-cosey to Captain Pratt. He took it with an acid smile, secretly +disgusted at the sudden cessation of interest, for which he had paid +rather highly, and looked round for Lady Newhaven. + +But she had disappeared. + +"Fancy you and Algy bidding against each other like that," said Ada +Pratt, archly, to Lord Newhaven, for though Ada was haughty in general +society she could be sportive, and even friskily ingratiating, towards +those of her fellow-creatures whom she termed "swells." "Why, half +Middleshire will be saying that you have quarrelled next." + +"Only those who do not know how intimate Captain Pratt and I really are +could think we have quarrelled," said Lord Newhaven, his eyes wandering +over the crowd. "But I am blocking your way and Mrs. Pratt's. How do you +do, Mrs. Pratt? Miss West, your burden is greater than you can bear. You +are dropping part of it. I don't know what it is, but I can shut my eyes +as I pick it up. I insist on carrying half back to the house. It will +give a pleasing impression that I have bought largely. Weren't you +pleased at the money we wrung out of Captain Pratt? He never thought we +should stop bidding. It's about all the family will contribute, unless +that good old Mamma Pratt buys something. She is the only one of the +family I can tolerate. Is Scarlett still here? I ought to have asked +after him before." + +"He's here, but he's not well. He's in hiding in the smoking-room." + +"He is lucky he is no worse. I should have had rheumatic fever if I had +been in his place. How cool it is in here after the glare outside. Must +you go out again? Well, I consider I have done my duty, and that I may +fairly allow myself a cigarette in peace." + + * * * * * + +"Really, Mr. Loftus, I'm quite shocked. This absurd faintness! The tent +was very crowded, and there is not much air to-day, is there? I shall be +all right if I may sit quietly in the hail a little. How deliciously +cool in here after the glare outside. A glass of water? Thanks. Yes, +only I hate to be so troublesome. And how are you after that dreadful +accident in the boat?" + +"Oh! I am all right," said Doll, who by this time hated the subject. "It +was Scarlett who was nearly frozen like New Zealand lamb." + +Doll had heard Mr. Gresley fire off the simile of the lamb, and +considered it sound. + +"How absurd you are. You always make me laugh. I suppose he has left now +that he is unfrozen." + +"Oh no. He is still here. We would not let him go till he was better. He +is not up to much. Weak chap at the best of times, I should think. He's +lying low in the smoking-room till the people are gone." + +"Mr. Scarlett is an old friend of ours," said Lady Newhaven, sipping her +glass of water, and spilling a little; "but I can't quite forgive +him--no, I really can't--for the danger he caused to Edward. You know, +or perhaps you don't know, that Edward can't swim, either. Even now I +can't bear to think what might have happened." + +She closed her eyes with evident emotion. + +Doll's stolid garden-party face relaxed. "Good little woman," he +thought. "As fond of him as she can be." + +"All's well that ends well," he remarked, aloud. + +Doll did not know that he was quoting Shakespeare, but he did know by +long experience that this sentence could be relied on as suitable to +the occasion, or to any occasion that looked a little "doddery," and +finished up all right. + +"And now, Mr. Loftus, positively I must insist on your leaving me +quietly here. I am quite sure you are wanted outside, and I should blame +myself if you wasted another minute on me. It was only the sun which +affected me. Don't mention it to Edward. He is always so fussy about me. +I will rest quietly here for a quarter of an hour, and then rejoin you +all again in the garden." + + * * * * * + +"I hope I am not disturbing any one," said Lord Newhaven, quietly +entering the smoking-room. "Well, Scarlett, how are you getting on?" + +Hugh, who was lying on a sofa with his arms raised and his hands behind +his head, looked up, and his expression changed. + +"He was thinking of something uncommonly pleasant," thought Lord +Newhaven, "not of me or mine, I fancy. I have come to smoke a cigarette +in peace," he added aloud, "if you don't object." + +"Of course not." + +Lord Newhaven lit his cigarette and puffed a moment in silence. + +"Hot outside," he said. + +Hugh nodded. He wondered how soon he could make a pretext for getting up +and leaving the room. + +There was a faint silken rustle, and Lady Newhaven, pale, breathless, +came swiftly in and closed the door. The instant afterwards she saw her +husband, and shrank back with a little cry. Lord Newhaven did not look +at her. His eyes were fixed on Hugh. + +Hugh's face became suddenly ugly, livid. He rose slowly to his feet, and +stood motionless. + +"He hates her," said Lord Newhaven to himself. And he removed his glance +and came forward. + +"You were looking for me, Violet?" he remarked. "I have no doubt you are +wishing to return home. We will go at once." He threw away his +cigarette. "Well, good-bye, Scarlett, in case we don't meet again. I +dare say you will pay Westhope a visit later on. Ah, Captain Pratt! so +you have fled, like us, from the madding crowd. I can recommend Loftus's +cigarettes. I have just had one myself. Good-bye. Did you leave your +purchases in the hall, Violet? Yes? Then we will collect them on our +way." + +The husband and wife were half-way down the grand staircase before Lord +Newhaven said, in his usual even voice: + +"I must ask you once more to remember that I will not have any scandal +attaching to your name. Did not you see that that white mongrel Pratt +was on your track? If I had not been there when he came in he would have +drawn his own vile conclusions, and for once they would have been +correct." + +"He could not think worse of me than you do," said the wife, half cowed, +half defiant. + +"No, but he could say so, which I don't; or, what is more probable, he +could use his knowledge to obtain a hold over you. He is a dangerous +man. Don't put yourself in his power." + +"I don't want to, or in anybody's." + +"Then avoid scandal instead of courting it, and don't repeat the folly +of this afternoon." + + * * * * * + +Captain Pratt did not remain long in the smoking-room. He had only a +slight acquaintance with Hugh, which did not appear capable of +expansion. Captain Pratt made a few efforts, proved its inelastic +properties, and presently lounged out again. + +Hugh moved slowly to the window, and leaned his throbbing forehead +against the stone mullion. He was still weak, and the encounter with +Lady Newhaven had shaken him. + +"What did he mean?" he said to himself, bewildered and suspicious. +"'Perhaps I should be staying at Westhope later on!' But, of course, I +shall never go there again. He knows that as well as I do. What did he +mean?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To flutter--and the Bird is on the wing. + --OMAR KHAYYAM. + +It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was late, but +he had come at last. There was death in the air, a whisper of death +stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side. The birds heard it and +were silent. The November wind was hurrying round Westhope Abbey, +shaking its bare trees. + +Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the level land +to the low hills beyond. He stood so long that the day died, and +twilight began to rub out first the hills and then the long, white lines +of flooded meadow and blurred pollard willows. Presently the river mist +rose up to meet the coming darkness. In the east, low and lurid, a tawny +moon crept up the livid sky. She made no moonlight on the gray earth. + +Lord Newhaven moved away from the window, where he had become a shadow +among the shadows, and sat down in the dark at his writing-table. + +Presently he turned on the electric lamp at his elbow and took a letter +out of his pocket. The circle of shaded light fell on his face as he +read--the thin, grave face, with the steady, inscrutable eyes. + +He read the letter slowly, evidently not for the first time. + +"If I had not been taken by surprise at the moment I should not have +consented to the manner in which our differences were settled. +Personally, I consider the old arrangement, to which you regretfully +alluded at the time"--("pistols for two and coffee for four," I remember +perfectly)--"as preferable, and as you appeared to think so yourself, +would it not be advisable to resort to it? Believing that the old +arrangement will meet your wishes as fully as it does mine, I trust that +you will entertain this suggestion, and that you will agree to a meeting +with your own choice of weapons, on any pretext you may choose to name +within the next week." + +The letter ended there. It was unsigned. + +"The time is certainly becoming short," said Lord Newhaven. "He is right +in saying there is only a week left. If it were not for the scandal for +the boys, and if I thought he would really hold to the compact, I would +meet him, but _he won't_. He flinched when he drew lots. He won't. He +has courage enough to stand up in front of me for two minutes, and take +his chance, but not to blow his own brains out. No. And if he knew what +is in store for him if he does not, he would not have courage to face +that either. Nor should I if I were in his shoes, poor devil. The first +six foot of earth would be good enough for me." + +He threw the letter with its envelope into the fire and watched it burn. + +Then he took up the gold pen, which his wife had given him, examined the +nib, dipped it very slowly in the ink, and wrote with sudden swiftness. + +"Allow me to remind you that you made no objection at the time to the +manner of our encounter and my choice of weapons, by means of which +publicity was avoided. The risk was equal. You now, at the last moment, +propose that I should run it a second time, and in a manner to cause +instant scandal. I must decline to do so, or to reopen the subject, +which had received my careful consideration before I decided upon it. I +have burned your letter, and desire you will burn mine." + +"Poor devil!" said Lord Newhaven, putting the letter, not in the +post-box at his elbow, but in his pocket. + +"Loftus and I did him an ill turn when we pulled him out of the water." + + * * * * * + +The letter took its own time, for it had to avoid possible pitfalls. It +shunned the company of the other Westhope letters, it avoided the +village post-office, but after a day's delay it was launched, and lay +among a hundred others in a station pillar-box. And then it hurried, +hurried as fast as express train could take it, till it reached its +London address, and went softly up-stairs, and laid itself, with a few +others, on Hugh's breakfast-table. + +For many weeks since his visit at Wilderleigh Hugh had been like a man +in a boat without oars, drifting slowly, imperceptibly on the placid +current of a mighty river, who far away hears the fall of Niagara +droning like a bumblebee in a lily cup. + +Long ago, in the summer, he had recognized the sound, had realized the +steep agony towards which the current was bearing him, and had struggled +horribly, impotently, against the inevitable. But of late, though the +sound was ever in his ears, welling up out of the blue distance, he had +given up the useless struggle, and lay still in the sunshine watching +the summer woods slide past and the clouds sail away, always away and +away, to the birthplace of the river, to that little fluttering pulse in +the heart of the hills which a woman's hand might cover, the infant +pulse of the great river to be. + +Hugh's thoughts went back, like the clouds, towards that tiny spring of +passion in his own life. He felt that he could have forgiven it--and +himself--if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain +torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it. +Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of +their own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their +youth. But it had not been so with him. He had walked more cautiously +than they. As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of +water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so +pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it, +watched it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped +its course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It never +leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe and +shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was quickly tired +of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a commonplace country, +past squalid polluting towns and villages. The hills were long since +gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, behold, his oars were gone! He +had been trapped to his destruction. + +Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady Newhaven. He +had been attracted, excited, partially, half-willingly enslaved. He had +thought at the time that he loved her, and that supposition had +confirmed him in his cheap cynicism about woman. This, then, was her +paltry little court, where man offered mock homage, and where she played +at being queen. Hugh had made the discovery that love was a much +overrated passion. He had always supposed so; but when he tired of Lady +Newhaven he was sure of it. His experience was, after all, only the same +as that which many men acquire by marriage, and hold unshaken through +long and useful lives. But Hugh had not been able to keep the treasures +of this early experience. It had been rendered worthless, perhaps rather +contemptible by a later one--that of falling in love with Rachel, and +the astonishing discovery that he was in love for the first time. He had +sold his birthright for a mess of red pottage, as surely as any man or +woman who marries for money or liking. He had not believed in his +birthright, and holding it to be worthless, had given it to the first +person who had offered him anything in exchange. + +His whole soul had gradually hardened itself against Lady Newhaven. If +he had loved her, he said to himself, he could have borne his fate. But +the play had not been worth the candle. His position was damnable; but +that he could have borne--at least, so he thought if he had had his +day. But he had not had it. That thought rankled. To be hounded out of +life because he had mistaken paper money for real was not only unfair, +it was grotesque. + +Gradually, however, Hugh forgot his smouldering hate of Lady Newhaven, +his sense of injustice and anger against fate; he forgot everything in +his love for Rachel. It became the only reality of his life. + +He had remained in London throughout October and November, cancelling +all his engagements because she was there. What her work was he vaguely +apprehended: that she was spending herself and part of her colossal +fortune in the East End, but he took no interest in it. He was incapable +of taking more interests into his life at this time. He passed many +quiet evenings with her in the house in Park Lane, which she had lately +bought. The little secretary who lived with her had always a faint smile +and more writing to do than usual on the evenings when he dined with +them. + +A great peace was over all their intercourse. Perhaps it was the hush +before the storm, the shadow of which was falling, falling, with each +succeeding day across the minds of both. Once only a sudden gust of +emotion stirred the quiet air, but it dropped again immediately. It came +with the hour when Hugh confessed to her the blot upon his past. The +past was taking upon itself ever an uglier and more repulsive aspect as +he saw more of Rachel. It was hard to put into words, but he spoke of +it. The spectre of love rose like a ghost between them, as they looked +earnestly at each other, each pale even in the ruddy fire-light. + +Hugh was truthful in intention. He was determined he would never lie to +Rachel. He implied an intrigue with a married woman, a deviation not +only from morality, but from honor. More he did not say. But as he +looked at her strained face it seemed to him that she expected something +more. A dreadful silence fell between them when he had finished. Had +she then no word for him. Her eyes--mute, imploring, dark with an agony +of suspense--met his for a second and fell instantly. She did not speak. +Her silence filled him with despair. He got up. "It's getting late. I +must go," he stammered. + +She rose, mechanically, and put out her hand. + +"May I come again?" he said, holding it more tightly than he knew, and +looking intently at her. Was he going to be dismissed? + +The pain he caused her hand recalled her to herself. A look of +bewilderment crossed her face, and then she realized his suspense and +said, gravely, "You may come again." + +He kissed the hand he held, and, as he did so, he knew for the first +time that she loved him. But he could not speak of love after what he +had just told her. He looked back when he reached the door, and saw her +standing where he had left her. She had raised the hand he had kissed to +her lips. + +That was three days ago. Since then he had not dared to go and see her. +He could not ask her to marry him when he was within a few days of the +time when he was bound in so-called honor to give Lord Newhaven +satisfaction. He certainly could not be in her presence again without +asking her. The shadows of the last weeks had suddenly become ghastly +realities once more. The roar of Niagara drowned all other sounds. What +was he going to do? What was he going to do in the predicament towards +which he had been drifting so long, which was now actually upon him? Who +shall say what horror, what agony of mind, what frenzied searching for a +way of escape, what anguish of baffled love crowded in on Hugh's mind +during those last days? At the last moment he caught at a straw, and +wrote to Lord Newhaven offering to fight him. He did not ask himself +what he should do if Lord Newhaven refused. But when Lord Newhaven did +refuse his determination, long unconsciously fostered, sprang full-grown +into existence in a sudden access of passionate anger and blind rage. + +"He won't fight, won't he! He thinks I will die like a rat in a trap +with all my life before me. I will not. I offered him a fair chance of +revenging himself--I would have fired into the air--and if he won't take +it is his own look-out, damn him! He can shoot me at sight if he likes. +Let him." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + 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 sinceres_." 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 honor. He owed it to the man he had injured to +preserve 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 dishonorably once he is an honorable 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 to 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, on the +twenty-eighth of November, the evening of the last day of the five +months. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + "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 door-way 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 crystallized 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 up-stairs 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 fire-light. + +"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 up-stairs heard the carriage +drive away into the darkness, and a great silence settled down upon the +house. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + "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 up-stairs. + +Mrs. Gresley recovered slowly, and before she was down-stairs 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 agonized 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 gray 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 +Fraeulein 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. Fraeulein 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 +behavior 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 Dr. 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, etc. But Dick, after one glance at her +strained face, was obdurate. He would hear no reason. He would not go +away. She and Fraeulein nervously cast a few clothes into a box, Fraeulein +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 untiring 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 apologize! 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 +tire 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, Fraeulein; 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + 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 color 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 recognized +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 clinched 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 upward at her colorless 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + And Nicanor lay dead in his harness. + --1 MACABEES, 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 portmanteau 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 honor. 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + Le nombre des etres qui veulent voir vrai est extraordinairement + petit. Ce qui domineles hommes, c'est la peur de la verite, a moins + que la verite 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 play-fellow 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 bed-time, 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 hands. + +"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 Newhaven's death, glanced with enthusiastic admiration at +her mistress. Lady Newhaven was a fickle, inconsiderate mistress, but at +this moment her behavior was perfect. She, Angelique, 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 Angelique wrung her hands. In the end Angelique 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. + +Angelique 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 were leaving immediately after dinner by +the evening express. + +"Ask Miss West to come to me as soon as they have gone," she said. + +Angelique 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 color 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 a +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 +mantel-shelf. She prayed urgently that she might stay upon the +hearth-rug, 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + "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 honor 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 +realized 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 Caesar," 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 Caesar. 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's 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 mantel-piece, 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 realized 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 +leaped. "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 accidently 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 laboring breath +of Despair had wellnigh 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + "Les sots sont plus a craindre que les mechants." + + +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 color 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 increasing 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. "Water-proof 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 +note-paper, 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 dare say 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 hear 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 he 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 forever 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 overcoloring 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 +realization 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 perseverence of the +writer of those many pages. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + + 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 favorite 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 alms-houses 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 learned 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 _risque_ 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 realize 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, coloring 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 washer-woman 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 a light 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 +publishers, 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 +parlor-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 teapot, etc. + +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 endeavor 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 was still decided to gain it in an +unscrupulous manner. Or I could help him to rewrite 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 +endeavoring 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 back-yard, and he is burning weeds and all kinds of things, and +he has given us each a ''tato' to bake, and Fraeulein has given us a +band-box 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + + 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 realized, 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 realized 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 neighbor. 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 color 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 Fraeulein a fur boa and muff, and Miss Brown a +type-writer 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 gray, 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-tipped ripples fleeing into the darkness of the reeds. The +little bridge, so vulgar in every-day life, leaned a mystery of darkness +over a mystery of light. The white frost held the meadows, and binding +them to the gray 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 Fraeulein. 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 arm-chair, rose, and +holding it firmly against his small person to prevent any disconnection +with it, solemnly crossed the hearth-rug, 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, +etc. + +"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 wellnigh 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 apologize, +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 color 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--burned 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 burned into him. + +He was frightened. + +"Dear Hester," he said, "I will help you to rewrite 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 back-yard. + +The bonfire was out. A thread of smoke twisted up from the crater of +gray 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 burned +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 burned 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 +burned 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." + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + + "Is it well with the child?" + + +"I am not really anxious," said Mr. Gresley, looking out across the +Vicarage laurels to the white fields and hedges. All was blurred and +vague and very still. The only thing that had a distinct outline was the +garden railing, with a solitary rook on it. + +"I am not really anxious," he said again, sitting down at the +breakfast-table. But his face contradicted him. It was blue and pinched, +for he had just returned from reading the morning service to himself in +an ice-cold church, but there was a pucker in the brow that was not the +result of cold. The Vicarage porch had fallen down in the night, but he +was evidently not thinking of that. He drank a little coffee, and then +got up and walked to the window again. + +"She is with the Pratts," he said, with decision. "I am glad I sent a +note over early, if it will relieve your mind, but I am convinced she is +with the Pratts." + +Mrs. Gresley murmured something. She looked scared. She made an attempt +to eat something, but it was a mere pretence. + +The swing door near the back staircase creaked. In the Vicarage you +could hear everything. + +Mr. and Mrs. Gresley looked eagerly at the door. The parlor-maid came in +with a note between her finger and thumb. + +"She is not there," said Mr. Gresley, in a shaking voice. "I wrote Mr. +Pratt such a guarded letter, saying Hester had imprudently run across to +see them on her return home, and how grateful I was to Mrs. Pratt for +not allowing her to return, as it had begun to snow. He says he and Mrs. +Pratt have not seen her." + +"James," said Mrs. Gresley, "where _is_ she?" + +A second step shuffled across the hail, and Fraeulein stood in the +door-way. Her pale face was drawn with anxiety. In both hands she +clutched a trailing skirt plastered with snow, hitched above a pair of +large goloshed feet, into which the legs were grafted without ankles. + +"She has not return?" + +"No," said Mr. Gresley, "and she is not with the Pratts." + +"I know always she is not wiz ze Pratts," said Fraeulein, scornfully. +"She never go to Pratt if she is in grief. I go out at half seven this +morning to ze Br-r-rowns, but Miss Br-r-rown know nozing. I go to +Wilderleigh, I see Mrs. Loftus still in bed, but she is not there. I go +to Evannses, I go to Smeeth, I go last to Mistair Valsh, but she is not +there." + +Mr. Gresley began to experience something of what Fraeulein had been +enduring all night. + +"She would certainly not go from my house to a Dissenter's," he said, +stiffly. "You might have saved yourself the trouble of calling there, +Fraeulein." + +"She like Mr. and Mrs. Valsh. She gives them her book." + +Fraeulein's voice drowned the muffled rumbling of a carriage and a ring +at the bell, the handle of which, uninjured amid the chaos, kept watch +above the remains of the late porch. + +The Bishop stood a moment in the little hall, while the maid went into +the dining-room to tell the Gresleys of his arrival. His eyes rested on +the pile of letters on the table, on the dead flowers beside them. They +had been so beautiful yesterday when he gave them to Hester. Hester +herself had been so pretty yesterday. + +The maid came back and asked him to "step" into the dining-room. + +Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had risen from their chairs. Their eyes were fixed +anxiously upon him. Fraeulein gave a little shriek and rushed at him. + +"She is viz you?" she gasped, shaking him by the arm. + +"She is with me," said the Bishop, looking only at Fraeulein, and taking +her shaking hands in his. + +"Thank God," said Mr. Gresley, and Mrs. Gresley sat down and began to +cry. + +Some of the sternness melted out of the Bishop's face as he looked at +the young couple. + +"I came as soon as I could," he said. "I started soon after seven, but +the roads are heavy." + +"This is a great relief," said Mr. Gresley. He began on his deepest +organ note, but it quavered quite away on the word relief for want of +wind. + +"How is Regie?" said the Bishop. It was his turn to be anxious. + +"Regie is verr vell," said Fraeulein, with decision. "Tell her he is so +vell as he vas." + +"He is very much shaken," said Mrs. Gresley, indignant mother-love +flashing in her wet eyes. "He is a delicate child, and she, Hester--may +God forgive her!--struck him in one of her passions. She might have +killed him. And the poor child fell and bruised his arm and shoulder. +And he was bringing her a little present when she did it. The child had +done nothing whatever to annoy her, had he, James?" + +"Nothing," said Mr. Gresley, and his conscience pricking him, he added, +"I must own Hester had always seemed fond of Regie till last night." + +He felt that it would not be entirely fair to allow the Bishop to think +that Hester was in the habit of maltreating the children. + +"I have told him that his own mother will take care of him," said Mrs. +Gresley, "and that he need not be afraid, his aunt shall never come back +again. When I saw his little arm I felt I could never trust Hester in +the house again." As Mrs. Gresley spoke she felt she was making +certainty doubly sure that the woman of whom she was jealous would +return no more. + +"Regie cry till his 'ead ache because you say Miss Gresley no come +back," said Fraeulein, looking at Mrs. Gresley, as if she would have +bitten a piece out of her. + +"I think, Fraeulein, it is the children's lesson-time," said Mr. Gresley, +majestically. + +Who could have imagined that unobtrusive, submissive Fraeulein, gentlest +and shyest of women, would put herself forward in this aggressive +manner. The truth is, it is all very well to talk, you never can tell +what people will do. They suddenly turn round and act exactly opposite +to their whole previous character. Look at Fraeulein! + +That poor lady, recalled thus to a sense of duty, hurried from the room, +and the Bishop, who had opened the door for her, closed it gently behind +her. + +"You must excuse her, my lord," said Mr. Gresley; "the truth is, we are +all somewhat upset this morning. Hester would have saved us much +uneasiness, I may say anxiety, if she had mentioned to us yesterday +evening that she was going back to you. No doubt she overtook your +carriage, which put up at the inn for half an hour." + +"No," said the Bishop, "she came on foot. She--walked all the way." + +Mr. Gresley smiled. "I am afraid, my lord, Hester has given you an +inaccurate account. I assure you, she is incapable of walking five +miles, much less ten." + +"She took about five hours to do it," said the Bishop, who had hesitated +an instant, as if swallowing something unpalatable. "In moments of great +excitement nervous persons like your sister are capable of almost +anything. The question is, whether she will survive the shock that drove +her out of your house last night. Her hands are severely burned. Dr. +Brown, whom I left with her, fears brain fever." + +The Bishop paused, giving his words time to sink in. Then he went on +slowly in a level voice, looking into the fire. + +"She still thinks that she has killed Regie. She won't believe the +doctor and me when we assure her she has not. She turns against us for +deceiving her." + +Mr. Gresley wrestled with a very bitter feeling towards his sister, +overcame it, and said, hoarsely: + +"Tell her from me that Regie is not much the worse, and tell her that +I--that his mother and I--forgive her." + +"Not me, James," sobbed Mrs. Gresley. "It is too soon. I don't. I can't. +If I said I did I should not feel it." + +"Hester is not in a condition to receive messages," said the Bishop. +"She would not believe them. Dr. Brown says the only thing we can do for +her is to show Regie to her. If she sees him she may believe her own +eyes, and this frightful excitement may be got under. I came to take him +back with me now in the carriage." + +"I will not let him go," said Mrs. Gresley, the mother in her overriding +her awe of the Bishop. "I am sorry if Hester is ill. I will"--and Mrs. +Gresley made a superhuman effort--"I will come and nurse her myself, but +I won't have Regie frightened a second time." + +"He shall not be frightened a second time. But it is very urgent. While +we are wasting time talking, Hester's life is ebbing away as surely as +if she were bleeding to death. If she were actually bleeding in this +room how quickly you two would run to her and bind up the wound. There +would be nothing you would not do to relieve her suffering." + +"If I would let Regie go," said Mrs. Gresley, "he would not be willing, +and we could not have him taken away by force, could we, James?" + +The door opened, and Regie appeared, gently pushed from behind by +Fraeulein's thin hand. Boulou followed. The door was closed again +immediately, almost on Boulou's tail. + +The Bishop and Regie looked hard at each other. + +"I send my love to Auntie Hester," said Regie, in his catechism voice, +"and I am quite well." + +"I should like to have some conversation with Regie alone," said the +Bishop. + +Mrs. Gresley wavered, but the Bishop's eye remained fixed on Mr. +Gresley, and the latter led his wife away. The door was left ajar, but +the Bishop closed it. Then he sat down by the fire and held out his +hand. + +Regie went up to him fearlessly, and stood between his knees. The two +faces were exactly on the same level. Boulou sat down before the fire, +his tail uncurling in the heat. + +"Auntie Hester is very sorry," said the Bishop. "She is so sorry that +she can't even cry." + +"Tell her not to mind," said Regie. + +"It's no good telling her. Does your arm hurt much?" + +"I don't know. Mother says it does, and Fraeulein says it doesn't. But it +isn't that." + +"What is it, then?" + +"It isn't that, or the 'tato being lost, it was only crumbs afterwards; +but, Mr. Bishop, _I hadn't done nothing_." + +Regie looked into the kind keen eyes, and his own little red ones filled +again with tears. + +"I had not done nothing," he repeated. "And I'd kept my 'tato for her. +It's that--that--I don't mind about my arm. I'm Christian soldiers about +my arm; but it's that--that--" + +"That hurts you in your heart," said the Bishop, putting his arm round +him. + +"Yes," said Regie, producing a tight little ball that had once been a +handkerchief. "Auntie Hester and I were such friends. I told her all my +secrets, and she told me hers. I knew long before, when she gave father +the silver cream-jug, and about Fraeulein's muff. If it was a mistake, +like father treading on my foot at the school-feast, I should not mind, +but she did it on purpose." + +The Bishop's brow contracted. Time was ebbing away, ebbing away like a +life. Yet Dr. Brown's warning remained in his ears. "If the child is +frightened of her, and screams when he sees her, I won't answer for the +consequences." + +"Is that your little dog?" he said, after a moment's thought. + +"Yes, that is Boulou." + +"Was he ever in a trap?" asked the Bishop, with a vague recollection of +the ways of clergymen's dogs, those "little rifts within the lute," +which so often break the harmony between a sporting squire and his +clergyman. + +"He was once. Mr. Pratt says he hunts, but father says not, that he +could not catch anything if he tried." + +"I had a dog once," said the Bishop, "called Jock. And he got in a trap +like Boulou did. Now, Jock loved me. He cared for me more than anybody +in the world. Yet, as I was letting him out of the trap, he bit me. Do +you know why he did that?" + +"Why?" + +"Because the trap hurt him so dreadfully that he could not help biting +something. He did not really mean it. He licked me afterwards. Now, +Auntie Hester was like Jock. She was in dreadful, dreadful pain like a +trap, and she hit you like Jock bit me. But Jock loved me best in the +world all the time. And Auntie Hester loves you, and is your friend she +tells secrets to, all the time." + +"Mother says she does not love me really. It was only pretence." Regie's +voice shook. "Mother says she must never come back, because it might be +baby next. She said so to father." + +"Mother has made a mistake. I'm so old that I know better even than +mother. Auntie Hester loves you, and can't eat any breakfast till you +tell her you don't mind. Will you come with me and kiss her, and tell +her so? And we'll make up a new secret on the way." + +"Yes," said Regie, eagerly, his wan little face turning pink. "But +mother?" he said, stopping short. + +"Run and get your coat on. I will speak to mother. Quick, Regie." + +Regie rushed curveting out of the room. The Bishop followed more slowly, +and went into the drawing-room where Mr. and Mrs. Gresley were sitting +by the fireless hearth. The drawing-room fire was never lit till two +o'clock. + +"Regie goes with me of his own free will," he said; "so that is settled. +He will be quite safe with me, Mrs. Gresley." + +"My wife demurs at sending him," said Mr. Gresley. + +"No, no, she does not," said the Bishop, gently. "Hester saved Regie's +life, and it is only right that Regie should save hers. You will come +over this afternoon to take him back," he continued to Mr. Gresley. "I +wish to have some conversation with you." + +Fraeulein appeared breathless, dragging Regie with her. + +"He has not got on his new overcoat," said Mrs. Gresley. "Regie, run up +and change at once." + +Fraeulein actually said, "Bozzer ze new coat," and she swept Regie into +the carriage, the Bishop following, stumbling over the ruins of the +porch. + +"Have they had their hot mash?" he said to the coachman, who was tearing +off the horses' clothing. + +"Yes, my lord." + +"Then drive all you know. Put them at the hills at a gallop." + +Fraeulein pressed a packet of biscuits into the Bishop's hand. "He eat no +breakfast," she said. + +"Uncle Dick said the porch would sit down, and it has," said Regie, in +an awe-struck voice, as the carriage swayed from side to side of the +road. "Father knows a great deal, but sometimes I think Uncle Dick knows +most of all. First gates and flying half-pennies, and now porches." + +"Uncle Dick is staying in Southminster. Perhaps we shall see him." + +"I should like to ask him about his finger, if it isn't a secret." + +"I don't think it is. Now, what secret shall we make up on the way?" The +Bishop put his head out of the window. "Drive faster," he said. + +It was decided that the secret should be a Christmas-present for +"Auntie Hester," to be bought in Southminster. The Bishop found that +Regie's entire capital was sixpence. But Regie explained that he could +spend a shilling, because he was always given sixpence by his father +when he pulled a tooth out. "And I've one loose now," he said. "When I +suck it it moves. It will be ready by Christmas." + +There was a short silence. The horses' hoofs beat the muffled ground all +together. + +"Don't you find, Mr. Bishop," said Regie, tentatively, "that this riding +so quick in carriages and talking secrets does make people very hungry?" + +The Bishop blushed. "It is quite true, my boy. I ought to have thought +of that before. I am uncommonly hungry myself," he said, looking in +every pocket for the biscuits Fraeulein had forced into his hand. When +they were at last discovered, in a somewhat dilapidated condition in the +rug, the Bishop found they were a kind of biscuit that always made him +cough, so he begged Regie, who was dividing them equally, as a personal +favor, to eat them all. + +It was a crumb be-sprinkled Bishop who, half an hour later, hurried up +the stairs of the Palace. + +"What an age you have been," snapped Dr. Brown, from the landing. + +"How is she?" + +"The same, but weaker. Have you got Regie?" + +"Yes, but it took time." + +"Is he frightened?" + +"Not a bit." + +"Then bring him up." + +The doctor went back into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar. + +A small shrunken figure with bandaged head and hands was sitting in an +arm-chair. The eyes of the rigid, discolored face were fixed. + +Dr. Brown took the bandage off Hester's head, and smoothed her hair. + +"He is coming up-stairs now," he said, shaking her gently by the +shoulders. "Regie is coming up-stairs now to see you. Regie is quite +well, and he is coming in now to see you." + +"Regie is dead, you old gray wolf," said Hester, in a monotonous voice. +"I killed him in the back-yard. The place is quite black, and it +smokes." + +"Look at the door," repeated Dr. Brown, over and over again. "He is +coming in at the door now." + +Hester trembled, and looked at the door. The doctor noticed, with a +frown, that she could hardly move her eyes. + +Regie stood in the doorway, holding the Bishop's hand. The cold snow +light fell upon the gallant little figure and white face. + +The doctor moved between Hester and the window. His shadow was upon her. + +The hearts of the two men beat like hammers. + +A change came over Hester's face. + +"My little Reg," she said, holding out her bandaged hands. + +Regie ran to her, and put his arms round her neck. They clasped each +other tightly. The doctor winced to watch her hands. + +"It's all right, Auntie Hester," said Regie. "I love you just the same, +and you must not cry any more." + +For Hester's tears were falling at last, quenching the wild fire in her +eyes. + +"My little treasure, my little mouse," she said, over and over again, +kissing his face and hands and little brown overcoat. + +Then all in a moment her face altered. Her agonized eyes turned to the +doctor. + +In an instant Dr. Brown's hand was over Regie's eyes, and he hurried him +out of the room. + +"Take him out of hearing," he whispered to the Bishop, and darted back. + +Hester was tearing the bandages off her hands. + +"I don't know what has happened," she wailed, "but my hands hurt me so +that I can't bear it." + +"Thank God!" said the old doctor, blowing his nose. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + + The Devil has no stancher ally than _want of perception_.--PHILIP + H. WICKSTEED. + + It takes two to speak truth--one to speak and another to + hear.--THOREAU. + + +Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. In the afternoon all the +Pratts had called, and Mr. Gresley, who departed early in the afternoon +for Southminster, had left his wife no directions as to how to act in +this unforseen occurrence, or how to parry the questions with which she +was overwhelmed. + +After long hesitation she at last owned that Hester had returned to +Southminster in the Bishop's carriage not more than half an hour after +it had brought her back. + +"I can't explain Hester's actions," she would only repeat over and over +again. "I don't pretend to understand clever people. I'm not clever +myself. I can only say Hester went back to Southminster directly she +arrived here." + +Hardly had the Pratts taken their departure when Doll Loftus was ushered +in. His wife had sent him to ask where Hester was, as Fraeulein had +alarmed her earlier in the day. Doll at least asked no questions. He had +never asked but one in his life, and that had been of his wife, five +seconds before he had become engaged to her. + +He accepted with equanimity the information that Hester had returned to +Southminster, and departed to impart the same to his exasperated wife. + +"But why did she go back? She had only that moment arrived," inquired +Sybell. How should Doll know. She, Sybell, had said she could not rest +till she knew where Hester was, and he, Doll, had walked to Warpington +through the snow-drifts to find out for her. And he had found out, and +now she wanted to know something else. There was no satisfying some +women. And the injured husband retired to unlace his boots. + +Yes, Mrs. Gresley had passed an uncomfortable day. She had ventured out +for a few minutes, and had found Abel, with his arms akimbo; +contemplating the little gate which led to the stables. It was lying on +the ground. He had swept the snow off it. + +"I locked it up the same as usual last night," he said to Mrs. Gresley. +"There's been somebody about as has tampered it off its hinges. Yet +nothing hasn't been touched, the coal nor the stack. It doesn't seem +natural, twisting the gate off for nothing." + +Mrs. Gresley did not answer. She did not associate Hester with the gate. +But she was too much perturbed to care about such small matters at the +moment. + +"His lordship's coachman tell me as Miss Gresley was at the Palace," +continued Abel, "while I was a hotting up his mash for him, for William +had gone in with a note, and onst he's in the kitchen the hanimals might +be stocks and stones for what he cares. He said his nevvy, the footman, +heard the front door-bell ring just as he was getting into bed last +night, and Miss Gresley come in without her hat, with the snow upon her. +The coachman said as she must ha' run afoot all the way." + +Abel looked anxiously at Mrs. Gresley. + +"I was just thinking," he said, "as perhaps the little lady wasn't quite +right in her 'ead. They do say as too much learning flies to the 'ead, +the same as spirits to them as ain't manured to 'em. And the little lady +does work desperate hard." + +"Not as hard as Mr. Gresley," said Mrs. Gresley. + +"Maybe not, mem, maybe not. But when I come up when red cow was sick at +four in the morning, or maybe earlier, there was always a light in her +winder, and the shadder of her face agin the blind. Yes, she do work +precious hard." + +Mrs. Gresley retreated into the house, picking her way over the debris +of the porch. At any other time its demise would have occupied the minds +of the Vicarage household for days. But, until this moment, it had +hardly claimed the tribute of a sigh. Mrs. Gresley did sigh as she +crossed the threshold. That prostrate porch meant expense. She had +understood from her husband that Dick had wantonly torn out the clamp +that supported it, and that the whole thing had in consequence given way +under the first snowfall. "He meant no harm," Mr. Gresley had added, +"but I suppose in the Colonies they mistake horse-play for wit." + +Mrs. Gresley went back to the drawing-room, and sat down to her +needle-work. She was an exquisite needlewoman, but all the activity of +her untiring hands was hardly able to stem the tide of mending that was +for ever flowing in upon her. When was she to find time to finish the +darling little garments which the new baby required? Fraeulein had been +kind in helping, but Fraeulein's eyes are not very strong, or her +stitches in consequence very small. Mrs. Gresley would have liked to sit +in the school-room when lessons were over, but Fraeulein had been so +distant at luncheon about a rissole that she had not the courage to go +in. + +So she sat and stitched with a heavy heart awaiting her husband's +return. The fly was another expense. Southminster was ten miles from +Warpington, eleven according to the Loftus Arms, from which it issued, +the owner of which was not on happy terms with his "teetotal" vicar. Yet +it had been absolutely necessary to have the fly, in order that Regie, +who so easily caught cold, might return in safety. + +The dusk was already falling, and more snow with it. + +It was quite dark when Mrs. Gresley at last caught the sound of wheels, +and hurried to the door. + +Mr. Gresley came in, bearing Regie, fast asleep in a fur rug, and laid +him carefully on the sofa, and then went out to have an altercation with +the driver, who demurred in forcible language to the arrangement, +adhered to by Mr. Gresley, that the cost of the fly should be considered +as part payment of certain arrears of tithe which in those days it was +the unhappy duty of the clergyman to collect himself. Mr. Gresley's +methods of dealing with money matters generally brought in a high rate +of interest in the way of friction, and it was a long time before the +driver drove away, turning his horse deliberately on the little patch of +lawn under the dining-room windows. + +Regie in the meanwhile had waked up, and was having tea in the +drawing-room as a great treat. + +He had much to tell about his expedition; how the Bishop had given him +half-a-crown, and Uncle Dick had taken him into the town to spend it, +and how after dinner he had ridden on Uncle Dick's back. + +"And Auntie Hester. How was she?" + +"She was very well, only she cried a little. I did not stay long, +because Mr. Bishop was wanting to give me the half-crown, and he kept it +down-stairs. And when I went in again she was in bed, and she was so +sleepy she hardly said anything at all." + +Mr. Gresley came in wearily and dropped into a chair. + +Mrs. Gresley gave him his tea, and presently took Regie up-stairs. Then +she came back and sat down in a low chair close to her husband. It was +the first drop of comfort in Mr. Gresley's cup to-day. + +"How is Hester?" + +"According to Dr. Brown she is very ill," said Mr. Gresley, in an +extinguished voice. "But they would not let me see her." + +"Not see her own brother! My dear James, you should have insisted." + +"I did, but it was no use. You know how angry Dr. Brown gets at the +least opposition. And the Bishop backed him up. They said it would +excite her." + +"I never heard of such a thing. What is the matter with her?" + +"Shock, Dr. Brown calls it. They have been afraid of collapse all day, +but she is better this evening. They seemed to think a great deal of her +knowing Regie." + +"Did the little lamb forgive her?" + +"Oh yes; he kissed her, and she knew him and cried. And it seems her +hands are severely burned. They have got a nurse, and they have +telegraphed for Miss West. The Bishop was very good to Regie and gave +him that fur rug." + +They looked at the splendid blue fox rug on the sofa. + +"I am afraid," said Mrs. Gresley, after a pause, "that Hester did run +all the way to Southminster as the Bishop said. Abel said the Bishop's +coachman told him that she came late last night to the Palace, and she +was white with snow when the footman let her in." + +"My dear, I should have thought you were too sensible to listen to +servant's gossip," said Mr. Gresley, impatiently. "Your own common-sense +will tell you that Hester never performed that journey on foot. I told +Dr. Brown the same, but he lost his temper at once. It's curious how +patient he is in a sick-room, and how furious he can be out of it. He +was very angry with me, too, because when he mentioned to the Bishop in +my presence that Hester was under morphia, I said I strongly objected to +her being drugged, and when I repeated that morphia was a most dangerous +drug, with effects worse than intoxication, in fact, that morphia was a +form of intoxication, he positively, before the Bishop, shook his fist +in my face, and said he was not going to be taught his business by me. + +"The Bishop took me away into the study. Dick Vernon was sitting there, +at least he was creeping about on all fours with Regie on his back. I +think he must be in love with Hester, he asked so anxiously if there was +any change. He would not speak to me, pretended not to know me. I +suppose the Bishop had told him about the porch, and he was afraid I +should come on him for repairs, as he had tampered with it. The Bishop +sent them away, and said he wanted to have a talk with me. The Bishop +himself was the only person who was kind." + +There was a long pause. Mrs. Gresley laid her soft cheek against her +husband's, and put her small hand in a protecting manner over his large +one. It was not surprising that on the following Sunday Mr. Gresley said +such beautiful things about women being pillows against which weary +masculine athletes could rest. + +"He spoke very nicely of you," went on Mr. Gresley at last. "He said he +appreciated your goodness in letting Regie go after what had happened, +and your offer to come and nurse Hester yourself. And then he spoke +about me. And he said he knew well how devoted I was to my work, and how +anything I did for the Church was a real labor of love, and that my +heart was in my work." + +"It is quite true. So it is," said Mrs. Gresley. + +"I never thought he understood me so well. And he went on to say that he +knew I must be dreadfully anxious about my sister, but that as far as +money was concerned--I had offered to pay for a nurse--I was to put all +anxiety off my mind. He would take all responsibility about the illness. +He said he had a little fund laid by for emergencies of this kind, and +that he could not spend it better than on Hester, whom he loved like his +own child. And then he went on to speak of Hester. I don't remember all +he said when he turned off about her, but he spoke of her as if she were +a person quite out of the common." + +"He always did spoil her," said Mrs. Gresley. + +"He went off on a long rigmarole about her and her talent, and how vain +he and I should be if leading articles appeared in the _Spectator_ about +us as they did about her. I did not know there had been anything of the +kind, but he said every one else did. And then he went on more slowly +that Hester was under a foolish hallucination, as groundless, no doubt, +as that she had caused Regie's death, that her book was destroyed. He +said, 'It is this idea which has got firm hold of her, but which has +momentarily passed off her mind in her anxiety about Regie, which has +caused her illness.' And then he looked at me. He seemed really quite +shaky. He held on to a chair. I think his health is breaking." + +"And what did you say?" + +"I said the truth, that it was no hallucination but the fact, that much +as I regretted to say so Hester had written a profane and immoral book, +and that I had felt it my duty to burn it, and a very painful duty it +had been. I said he would have done the same if he had read it." + +"I am glad you said that." + +"Well, the awkward part was that he said he had read it, every word, and +that he considered it the finest book that had been written in his day. +And then he began to walk up and down and to become rather excited, and +to say that he could not understand how I could take upon myself such a +responsibility, or on what grounds I considered myself a judge of +literature. As if I ever did consider myself a judge! But I do know +right from wrong. We had got on all right up till then, especially when +he spoke so cordially of you and me, but directly he made a personal +matter of Hester's book, setting his opinion against mine, for he +repeated over and over again it was a magnificent book, his manner +seemed to change. He tried to speak kindly, but all the time I saw that +my considering the book bad while he thought it good, gravelled him, and +made him feel annoyed with me. The truth is, he can't bear any one to +think differently from himself." + +"He always was like that," said the comforter. + +"I said I supposed he thought it right to run down the clergy and hold +them up to ridicule. He said, 'Certainly not, but he did not see how +that applied to anything in Hester's book.' He said, 'She has drawn us, +without bias towards us, exactly as we appear to three-quarters of the +laity. It won't do us any harm to see ourselves for once as others see +us. There is in these days an increasing adverse criticism of us in many +men's minds, to which your sister's mild rebukes are as nothing. We have +drawn it upon ourselves, not so much by our conduct, which I believe to +be uniformly above reproach, or by any lack of zeal, as by our ignorance +of our calling; by our inability to "convert life into truth," the +capital secret of our profession, as I was once told as a divinity +student. I for one believe that the Church will regain her prestige and +her hold on the heart of the nation, but if she does, it will be mainly +due to a new element in the minds of the clergy, a stronger realization, +not of our responsibilities--we have that--but of the education, the +personal search for truth, the knowledge of human nature, which are +necessary to enable us to meet them.' He went on a long time about that. +I think he grows very wordy. But I did not argue with him. I let him say +what he liked. I knew that I must be obedient to my Bishop, just as I +should expect my clergy to be to me, if I ever am a Bishop myself. Not +that I expect I ever shall be"--Mr. Gresley was overtired--"but it +seemed to me as he talked about the book, that all the time, though he +put me down to the highest motives--he did me that justice--he was +trying to make me own I had done wrong." + +"You didn't say so?" said the little wife, hotly. + +"My dear, need you ask? But I did say at last that I had consulted with +Archdeacon Thursby on the matter, and he had strongly advised me to do +as I did. The Bishop seemed thunderstruck. And then--it really seemed +providential--who should come in but Archdeacon Thursby himself. The +Bishop went straight up to him, and said, 'You come at a fortunate +moment, for I am greatly distressed at the burning of Miss Gresley's +book, and Gresley tells me that you advised it.' And would you believe +it," said Mr. Gresley, in a strangled voice, "the Archdeacon actually +denied it then and there. He said he did not know Hester had written a +book, and had never been consulted on the subject." + +The tears forced themselves out of Mr. Gresley's eyes. He was exhausted +and overwrought. He sobbed against his wife's shoulder. + +"Wicked liar!" whispered Mrs. Gresley, into his parting. "Wicked, +wicked man! Oh, James, I never thought the Archdeacon could have behaved +like that!" + +"Nor I," gasped Mr. Gresley, "but he did. I suppose he did not want to +offend the Bishop. And when I expostulated with him, and reminded him of +what he had advised only the day before, he said that was about a +letter, not a book, as if it mattered which it was. It was the principle +that mattered. But they neither of them would listen to me. I said I had +offered to help to rewrite it, and the Bishop became quite fierce. He +said I might as well try to rewrite Regie if he were in his coffin. And +then he mentioned, casually, as if it were quite an afterthought, that +Hester had sold it for a thousand pounds. All through, I knew he was +really trying to hurt my feelings, in spite of his manner, but when he +said _that_ he succeeded." + +Mr. Gresley groaned. + +"A thousand pounds!" said Mrs. Gresley, turning white. "Oh, it isn't +possible!" + +"He said he had seen the publisher's letter offering it, and that Hester +had accepted it by his advice. He seemed to know all about her affairs. +When he said that, I was so distressed I could not help showing it, and +he made rather light of it, saying the money loss was the least serious +part of the whole affair, but, of course, it is the worst. Poor Hester, +when I think that owing to me she has lost a thousand pounds. Seventy +pounds a year, if I had invested it for her, and I know of several good +investments, all perfectly safe, at seven per cent.--when I think of it +it makes me absolutely miserable. We won't talk of it any more. The +Bishop sat with his head in his hands for a long time after the +Archdeacon had gone, and afterwards he was quite kindly again, and said +we looked at the subject from such different points of view that perhaps +there was no use in discussing it. And we talked of the Church Congress +until the fly came, only he seemed dreadfully tired, quite knocked up. +And he promised to let us know first thing to-morrow morning how Hester +was. He was cordial when we left. I think he meant well. But I can +never feel the same to Archdeacon Thursby again. He was quite my +greatest friend among the clergy round here. I suppose I shall learn in +time not to have such a high ideal of people, but I certainly thought +very highly of him until to-day." + +Mr. Gresley sat upright, and put away his handkerchief with decision. + +"One thing this miserable day has taught us," he said, "and that is that +we must part with Fraeulein. If she is to become impertinent the first +moment we are in trouble, such a thing is not to be borne. We could not +possibly keep her after her behavior to-day." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + + If two lives join, there is oft a scar. --ROBERT BROWNING. + + +Rachel left Westhope Abbey the day after Lord Newhaven's funeral, and +returned to London. And the day after that Hugh came to see her, and +proposed, and was accepted. + +He had gone over in his mind a hundred times all that he should say to +her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to +say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well disposed towards +him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But what he really said, +in a hoarse, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, will you marry me?" He was +looking so intently into a little grove of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps +the hyacinths heard what he said; at any rate, she did not. But she +supposed, from long experience, that he was proposing, and she said +"Yes" immediately. + +She had not intended to say so--at least, not at first. She had made up +her mind that it would be only right to inform him that she was fourteen +months older than he (she had looked him out in Burke where she herself +was not to be found); that she was "old enough to be his mother"; also +that she was of a cold, revengeful temper not calculated to make a home +happy, and several other odious traits of character which she had never +dreamed of confiding to any of the regiment of her previous lovers. + +But the only word she had breath to say when the time came was "Yes." + + * * * * * + +Rachel had shivered and hesitated on the brink of a new love long +enough. Her anxiety about Hugh had unconsciously undermined her +resistance. His confession had given her instantly the confidence in him +which had been wanting. It is not perfection that we look for in our +fellow-creatures, but for what is apparently rarer, a little plain +dealing. + +How they rise before us!--the sweet reproachful faces of those whom we +could have loved devotedly if they had been willing to be +straightforward with us; whom we have lost, not by our own will, but by +that paralysis of feeling which gradually invades the heart at the +discovery of small insincerities. Sincerity seems our only security +against losing those who love us, the only cup in which those who are +worth keeping will care to pledge us when youth is past. + +Rachel was not by nature _de celles qui se jettent dans l'amour comme +dans un precipice_. But she shut her eyes, recommended her soul to God, +and threw herself over. She had climbed down once--with assistance--and +she was not going to do that again. That she found herself alive at the +bottom was a surprise to her, but a surprise that was quickly forgotten +in the constant wonder that Hugh could love her as devotedly as it was +obvious he did. + +Women would have shared that wonder, but not men. There was a home ready +made in Rachel's faithful, dog-like eyes, which at once appealed to the +desire of expansion of empire in the heart of the free-born Briton. + +Hugh had, until lately, considered woman as connected with the downward +slope of life. He would have loudly disclaimed such an opinion if it had +been attributed to him; but nevertheless it was the key-note of his +behavior towards them, his belief concerning them which was of a piece +with his cheap cynicism and dilettante views of life. He now discovered +that woman was made out of something more than man's spare rib. + +It is probable that if he had never been in love with Lady Newhaven, +Hugh would never have loved Rachel. He would have looked at her, as many +men did, with a view to marriage and would probably have dismissed her +from his thoughts as commonplace. He knew better now. It was Lady +Newhaven who was commonplace. His worldliness was dropping from him day +by day as he learned to know Rachel better. + +Where was his cynicism now that she loved him? + +His love for her, humble, triumphant, diffident, passionate, impatient +by turns, now exacting, now selfless, possessed him entirely. He +remembered once, with astonishment, that he was making a magnificent +match. He had never thought of it, as Rachel knew, as she knew well. + + * * * * * + +December came in bleak and dark. The snow did its poor best, laying day +after day its white veil upon the dismal streets. But it was +misunderstood. It was scraped into murky heaps. It melted and then +froze, and then melted again. And London groaned and shivered on its +daily round. + +Every afternoon Hugh came, and every morning Rachel made her rooms +bright with flowers for him. The flower shop at the corner sent her tiny +trees of white lilac, and sweet little united families of hyacinths and +tulips. The time of azaleas was not yet. And once he sent her a bunch of +daffodils. He knew best how he had obtained them. + +Their wild, sweet faces peered at Rachel, and she sat down faint and +dizzy, holding them in her nerveless hands. If one daffodil knows +anything, all daffodils know it to the third and fourth generation. + +"Where is he?" they said. "That man whom you loved once? We were there +when he spoke to you. We saw you stand together by the attic window. We +never say, but we heard, we remember. And you cried for joy at night +afterwards. We never say. But we heard. We remember." + +Rachel's secretary in the little room on the ground-floor was +interrupted by a tap at the door. Rachel came in laden with daffodils. +Their splendor filled the gray room. + +"Would you mind having them?" she said, smiling, and laying them down by +her. "And would you kindly write a line to Jones telling him not to send +me daffodils again. They are a flower I particularly dislike." + + * * * * * + +"Rachel?" + +"Hugh!" + +"Don't you think it would be better if we were married immediately?" + +"Better than what?" + +"Oh, I don't know; better than breaking it off." + +"You can't break it off now. I'm not a person to be trifled with. You +have gone too far." + +"If you gave me half your attention, you would understand that I am only +expressing a wish to go a little further, but you have become so +frivolous since we have been engaged that I hardly recognize you." + +"I suit myself to my company." + +"Are you going to talk to me in that flippant manner when we are +married. I sometimes fear, Rachel, you don't look upon me with +sufficient awe. I foresee I shall have to be very firm when we are +married. When may I begin to be firm?" + +"Are these such evil days, Hugh?" + +"I am like Oliver Twist," he said. "I want more." + + * * * * * + +They were sitting together one afternoon in the fire-light in silence. +They often sat in silence together. + +"A wise woman once advised me," said Rachel at last, "if I married, +never to tell my husband of any previous attachment. She said, Let him +always believe that he was the first + + That ever burst + Into that silent sea. + +I believe it was good advice, but it seems to me to have one +drawback--to follow it may be to tell a lie. It would be in my case." + +Silence. + +"I know that a lie and an adroit appeal to the vanity of man are +supposed to be a woman's recognized weapons. The same woman told me that +I might find myself mistaken in many things in this world, but never in +counting on the vanity of man. She said that was a reed which would +never pierce my hand. I don't think you are vain, Hugh." + +"Not vain! Why, I am so conceited at the fact that you are going to +marry me that I look down on every one else. I only long to tell them +so. When may I tell my mother, Rachel? She is coming to London this +week." + +"You have the pertinacity of a fly. You always come back to the same +point. I am beginning to be rather bored with your marriage. You can't +talk of anything else." + +"I can't think about anything else." + +He drew her cheek against his. He was an ingratiating creature. + +"Neither can I," she whispered. + +And that was all Rachel ever said of all she meant to say about Mr. +Tristram. + + * * * * * + +A yellow fog. It made rings round the shaded electric lamp by which +Rachel was reading. The fire burned tawny and blurred. Even her red gown +looked dim. Hugh came in. + +"What are you reading?" he said, sitting down by her. + +He did not want to know, but if you are reading a book on another +person's knee you cannot be a very long way off. He glanced with feigned +interest at the open page, stooping a little, for he was short-sighted +now and then--at least now. + +Rachel took the opportunity to look at him. You can't really look at a +person when he is looking at you. Hugh was very handsome, especially +side face, and he knew it; but he was not sure whether Rachel thought +so. + +He read mechanically: + + "Take back your vows. + Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; + You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. + You lit those candles in another shrine, + Guttered and cold you offer them on mine. + Take back your vows." + +A shadow fell across Hugh's mind. Rachel saw it fall. + +"You do not think that of me, Rachel," he said, pointing to the verse. +It was the first time he had alluded to that halting confession which +had remained branded on the minds of both. + +He glanced up at her, and she suffered him for a moment to look through +her clear eyes into her soul. + +"I never thought that of you," she said, with difficulty. "I am so +foolish that I believe the candles are lit now for the first time. I am +so foolish that I believe you love me nearly as much as I love you." + +"It is a dream," said Hugh, passionately, and he fell on his knees, and +hid his white face against her knee. "It is a dream. I shall wake, and +find you never cared for me." + +She sat for a moment stunned by the violence of his emotion, which was +shaking him from head to foot. Then she drew him into her trembling +arms, and held his head against her breast. + +She felt his tears through her gown. + +"What is past will never come between us," she said, brokenly, at last. +"I have cried over it too, Hugh; but I have put it from my mind. When +you told me about it, knowing you risked losing me by telling me, I +suddenly trusted you entirely. I had not quite up till then. I can't say +why, except that perhaps I had grown suspicious because I was once +deceived. But I do now, because you were open with me. I think, Hugh, +you and I can dare to be truthful to each other. You have been so to me, +and I will be so to you. I knew about _that_ long before you told me. +Lady Newhaven--poor thing!--confided in me last summer. She had to tell +some one. I think you ought to know that I know. And oh, Hugh, I knew +about the drawing of lots, too." + +Hugh started violently, but he did not move. + +Would she have recognized that ashen, convulsed face if he had raised +it? + +"Lady Newhaven listened at the door when you were drawing lots, and she +told me. But we never knew which had drawn the short lighter till Lord +Newhaven was killed on the line. Only she and I and you know that that +was not an accident. I know what you must have gone through all the +summer, feeling you had taken his life as well. But you must remember it +was his own doing, and a perfectly even chance. You ran the same risk. +His blood is on his own head. But oh, my darling, when I think it might +have been you!" + +Hugh thought afterwards that if her arms had not been round him, if he +had been a little distance from her, he might have told her the truth. +He owed it to her, this woman who was the very soul of truth. But if she +had withdrawn from him, however gently, in the moment when her +tenderness had, for the first time, vanquished her natural reserve, if +she had taken herself away then, he could not have borne it. In deep +repentance after Lord Newhaven's death, he had vowed that from that day +forward he would never deviate again from the path of truth and honor, +however difficult it might prove. But this frightful moment had come +upon him unawares. He drew back instinctively, giddy and unnerved, as +from a chasm yawning suddenly among the flowers, one step in front of +him. He was too stunned to think. When he rallied they were standing +together on the hearth-rug, and she was saying--he did not know what she +was saying, for he was repeating over and over again to himself, "The +moment is past. The moment is past." + +At last her words conveyed some meaning to him. + +"We will never speak of this again, my friend," she said; "but now that +no harm can be done by it, it seemed right to tell you I knew." + +"I ought never to have drawn," said Hugh, hoarsely. + +"No," said Rachel. "He was in fault to demand such a thing. It was +inhuman. But having once drawn he had to abide by it, as you would have +done if you had drawn the short lighter." + +She was looking earnestly at him, as at one given back from the grave. + +"Yes," said Hugh, feeling she expected him to speak. "If I had drawn it +I should have had to abide by it." + +"I thank God continually that you did not draw it. You made him the +dreadful reparation he asked. If it recoiled upon himself you were not +to blame. You have done wrong, and you have repented. You have suffered, +Hugh. I know it by your face. And perhaps I have suffered too, but that +is past. We will shut up the past, and think of the future. Promise me +that you will never speak of this again." + +"I promise," said Hugh, mechanically. + +"The moment to speak is past," he said to himself. + +Had it ever been present? + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + + Dieu n'oublie personne. Il visite tout le monde.--VINET. + + +Hugh did not sleep that night. + +His escape had been too narrow. He shivered at the mere thought of it. +It had never struck him as possible that Rachel and Lady Newhaven had +known of the drawing of lots. Now that he found they knew, sundry small +incidents, unnoticed at the time, came crowding back to his memory. That +was why Lady Newhaven had written so continually those letters which he +had burned unread. That was why she had made that desperate attempt to +see him in the smoking-room at Wilderleigh after the boating accident. +She wanted to know which had drawn the short lighter. That explained the +mysterious tension which Hugh had noticed in Rachel during the last days +in London before--before the time was up. He saw it all now. And, of +course, they naturally supposed that Lord Newhaven had committed +suicide. They could not think otherwise. They were waiting for one of +the two men to do it. + +"If Lord Newhaven had not turned giddy and stumbled on to the line, if +he had not died by accident when he did," said Hugh to himself, "where +should I be now?" + +There was no answer to that question. + +What was the use of asking it? He _was_ dead. And, fortunately, the two +women firmly believed he had died by his own hand. Hugh as firmly +believed that the death was accidental. + +But it could not be his duty to set them right, to rake up the whole +hideous story again. + +By an extraordinary, by a miraculous chance, he was saved, as it were, a +second time. It could do no good to allude to the dreadful subject +again. Besides, he had promised Rachel never to speak of it again. + +He groaned, and hid his face in his hands. + +"Oh, coward and wretch that I am," he said. "Cannot I even be honest +with myself? I lied to her to-day. I never thought I could have told +Rachel a lie, but I did. I can't live without her. I must have her. I +would rather die than lose her now. And I should have lost her if I'd +told her the truth. I felt that. I am not worthy. It was an ill day for +her when she took my tarnished life into her white hands. She ought to +have trodden me under foot. But she does love me, and I will never +deceive her again. She does love me, and, God helping me, I will make +her happy." + +The strain of conflict was upon Hugh--the old, old conflict of the seed +with the earth, of the soul with love. How many little fibres and roots +the seed puts out, pushed by an unrecognized need within itself, not +without pain, not without a gradual rending of its being, not without a +death unto self into a higher life. Love was dealing with Hugh's soul as +the earth deals with the seed, and--he suffered. + +It was a man who did not look like an accepted lover who presented +himself at Rachel's door the following afternoon. + +But Rachel was not there. Her secretary handed Hugh a little note which +she had left for him, telling him that Hester had suddenly fallen ill, +and that she had been sent for to Southminster. The note ended: "These +first quiet days are past. So now you may tell your mother, and put our +engagement in the _Morning Post_." + +Hugh was astonished at the despair which overwhelmed him at the bare +thought that he should not see Rachel that day and not the next either. +It was not to be borne. She had no right to make him suffer like this. +Day by day, when a certain restless fever returned upon him, he had +known, as an opium-eater knows, that at a certain hour he should become +rested and calm and sane once more. To be in the same room with Rachel, +to hear her voice, to let his eyes dwell upon her, to lean his forehead +for a moment against her hand, was to enter, as we enter in dreams, a +world of joy and comfort, and boundless, endless, all-pervading peace. + +And now he was suddenly left shivering in a bleak world without her. +With her he was himself, a released, freed self, growing daily further +and further away from all he had once been. Without her he felt he was +nothing but a fierce, wounded animal. + +He tried to laugh at himself as he walked slowly away from Rachel's +house. He told himself that he was absurd, that an absence of a few days +was nothing. He turned his steps mechanically in the direction of his +mother's lodgings. At any rate, he could tell her. He could talk about +this cruel woman to her. The smart was momentarily soothed by his +mother's painful joy. He wrenched himself somewhat out of himself as she +wept the tears of jealous love, which all mothers must weep when the +woman comes who takes their son away. "I am so glad," she kept +repeating. "These are tears of joy, Hughie. I can forgive her for +accepting you, but I should never have forgiven her if she had refused +you--if she had made my boy miserable. And you have been miserable +lately. I have seen it for a long time. I suppose it was all this coming +on." + +He said it was. The remembrance of other causes of irritation and +moodiness had slipped entirely off his mind. + +He stayed a long time with his mother, who pressed him to wait till his +sister, who was shopping, returned. But his sister tarried long +out-of-doors, and at last the pain of Rachel's absence returning on him, +he left suddenly, promising to return in the evening. + +He did not go back to his rooms. He wandered aimlessly through the +darkening streets, impatient of the slow hours. At last he came out on +the Embankment. The sun was setting redly, frostily, in a gray world of +sky-mist and river-mist and spectral bridge and spire. A shaking +path-way of pale flame came across the gray of the hidden river to meet +him. + +He stood a long time looking at it. The low sun touched and forsook, +touched and forsook point by point the little crowded world which it was +leaving. + +"My poor mother," said Hugh to himself. "Poor, gentle, loving soul whom +I so nearly brought down with sorrow to the grave. She will never know +what an escape she has had. I might have been more to her. I might have +made her happier, seeing her happiness is wrapped up in me. I will make +up to her for it. I will be a better son to her in future. Rachel and I +together will make her last years happy. Rachel and I together," said +Hugh, over and over again. + +And then he suddenly remembered that though Rachel had taken herself +away he could write to her, and--he might look out the trains to +Southminster. He leaped into a hansom and hurried back to his rooms. + +The porter met him in a mysterious manner in the entrance. Lady waiting +to see him. Lady said she was his sister. Had been waiting two hours. In +his rooms now. + +Hugh laughed, and ran up the wide, common staircase. His sister had +heard the news from his mother and had rushed over at once. + +As he stooped a little to fit the latch-key on his chain into the lock a +man, who was coming down the stairs feeling in his pockets, stopped with +a sudden exclamation. It was Captain Pratt, pallid, smiling, hair newly +varnished, resplendent in a magnificent fur overcoat. + +"What luck," he said. "Scarlett, I think. We met at Wilderleigh. Have +you such a thing as a match about you?" + +Hugh felt in his pockets. He had not one. + +"Never mind," he said, opening the door. "I've plenty inside. Come in." + +Hugh went in first, extricating his key. Captain Pratt followed, +murmuring, "Nice little dens, these. A pal of mine lives just +above--Streatham. You know Streatham, son of Lord--" + +The remainder of the sentence was lost. + +The door opened straight into the little sitting-room. + +A woman in deep mourning rose suddenly out of a chair by the fire and +came towards them. + +"Hughie!" she said. + +It was Lady Newhaven. + +It is probable that none of the tableaux she had arranged were quite so +dramatic as this one, in which she had not reckoned on that elaborate +figure in the door-way. + +Captain Pratt's opinion of Hugh, whom he had hitherto regarded as a +pauper with an involved estate, leaped from temperate to summer +heat--blood-heat. After the first instant he kept his eyes steadily +fixed on Hugh. + +"I--er--thank you, Scarlett. I have found my matches. A thousand thanks. +Good-night." + +He was disappearing, but Hugh, his eyes flashing in his gray face, held +him forcibly by the arm. + +"Lady Newhaven," he said, "the porter is inexcusable. These are my rooms +which he has shown you into by mistake, not Mr. Streatham's, your +nephew. He is just above. I think," turning to Captain Pratt, "Streatham +is out of town." + +"He is out of town," said Captain Pratt, looking with cold admiration at +Hugh. "Admirable," he said to himself; "a born gentleman." + +"This is not the first time Streatham's visitors have been shown in +here," continued Hugh. "The porter shall be dismissed. I trust you will +forgive me my share in the annoyance he has caused you. Is your carriage +waiting?" + +"No," said Lady Newhaven, faintly, quite thrown off the lines of her +prepared scene by the sudden intrusion into it of a foreign body. + +"My hansom is below," said Captain Pratt, deferentially, venturing, now +that the situation was, so to speak, draped, to turn his discreet agate +eyes towards Lady Newhaven. "If it could be of the least use, I myself +should prefer to walk." + +Now that he looked at her, he looked very hard at her. She was a +beautiful woman. + +Lady Newhaven's self-possession had returned sufficiently for her to +take up her fur cloak. + +"Thank you," she said, letting Captain Pratt help her on with it. "I +shall be glad to make use of your hansom, if you are sure you can spare +it. I am shocked at having taken possession of your rooms," turning to +Hugh; "I will write to Georgie Streatham to-night. I am staying with my +mother, and I came across to ask him to take my boys to the pantomime, +as I cannot take them myself--so soon," with a glance at her crape. +"Don't come down, Mr. Scarlett. I have given you enough trouble +already." + +Captain Pratt's arm was crooked. He conducted her in his best manner to +the foot of the staircase and helped her into his hansom. His manner was +not so unctuous as his father's, but it was slightly adhesive. Lady +Newhaven shuddered involuntarily as she took his arm. + +Hugh followed. + +"I hope you will both come and see my mother," she said, with an attempt +at graciousness. "You know Lady Trentham, I think?"--to Captain Pratt. + +"Very slightly. No. Delighted!" murmured Captain Pratt, closing the +hansom doors in an intimate manner. "And if I could be of the least use +at any time in taking your boys to the pantomime--er--only too glad. The +glass down, Richards!" + +The hansom with its splendid bay horse rattled off. + +Captain Pratt nodded to Hugh, who was still standing on the steps, and +turned away to buy a box of matches from a passing urchin. Then he +turned up his fur collar, and proceeded leisurely on his way. + +"Very stand-off both of them in the past," he said to himself, "but they +will have to be civil in future. I wonder if he will make her keep her +title. Deuced awkward for them both though, only a month after +Newhaven's death. I wish that sort of _contre-temps_ would happen to me +when I'm bringing in a lot of fellows suddenly. An opening like that is +all I want to give me a start, and I should get on as well as anybody. +The aristocracy all hang together, whatever Selina and Ada may say. +Money don't buy everything, as the governor thinks. But if you're once +in with 'em you're in." + + * * * * * + +Hugh went back to his room and locked himself in. He was a delicate man, +highly strung, and he had not slept the night before. He collapsed into +a chair and remained a long time, his head in his hands. + +It was too horrible, this woman coming back upon him suddenly, like the +ghost of some one whom he had murdered. His momentary infatuation had +been clean forgotten in his overwhelming love for Rachel. His intrigue +with Lady Newhaven seemed so long ago that it had been relegated to the +same mental shelf in his mind as the nibbling of a certain forbidden +ginger-bread when he was home for his first holidays. He could not be +held responsible for either offence after this immense interval of time. +It was not he who had committed them, but that other embryo self, that +envelope of flesh and sense which he was beginning to abhor, through +which he had passed before he reached himself, Hugh, the real man--the +man who loved Rachel, and whom Rachel loved. + +He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. At the +sight of her a sudden passion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in +one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he +used it. He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good +name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for. It was for +her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had concocted the story of the +mistaken rooms. He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel +had not been concerned. + +He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble yet with +her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead lust would be +dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly grave. + +He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to marry +Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. "She will +know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when she sees my +engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get at me somehow, and +make my life a hell to me, while she can. And she will try and come +between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I deserve anything I get. But +Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I will go down to her to-morrow. I +can't go on without seeing her. And she won't mind, as the engagement +will be given out next day." + +He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently his lip +quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to have done +it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage with a whiter +past, not to need her forgiveness on the very threshold of their life +together, not to have been unfaithful to her before he knew her. + +What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanctity of Love, and +then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang? + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + + There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellowship in + thee.--SHAKESPEARE + + +"My mind misgives me, Dick!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as +Dick joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I +am convinced that you have been up to some mischief." + +"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your +wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better." + +"It certainly was my wish. I'm very much obliged to you. But I +remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to Gresley +when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you." + +"I spoke to him all right," said Dick, grimly. "That was why I was so +alacritous to go." + +The Bishop looked steadily at him. + +"Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own business +with my clergy." + +"Just so," said Dick, helping himself to mustard. "But, you see, I'm his +cousin, and I thought it just as well to let him know quietly and +dispassionately what I thought of him. So I told him I was not +particular about my acquaintances. I knew lots of bad eggs out in +Australia, half of them hatched in England, chaps who'd been shaved and +tubbed gratis by Government--in fact, I'd a large visiting list, but +that I drew the line at such a cad as him, and that he might remember I +wasn't going to preach for him at any more of his little cold-water +cures"--a smile hovered on Dick's crooked mouth--"or ever take any +notice of him in future. That was what he wanted, my lord. You were too +soft with him, if you'll excuse my saying so. But that sort of chap +wants it giving him hot and strong. He doesn't understand anything else. +He gets quite beyond himself, fizzing about on his little +pocket-handkerchief of a parish, thinking he is a sort of god, because +no one makes it their business to keep him in his place, and rub it into +him that he is an infernal fool. That is why some clergymen jaw so, +because they never have it brought home to them what rot they talk. +They'd be no sillier than other men if they were only treated properly. +I was very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean sneak, +and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue going, and +that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the right to do +dishonest things with other people's property, though it did save him +from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to interrupt; indeed, he +was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but I did not take any notice, +and I wound up by saying it was men like him who brought discredit on +the Church and on the clergy, and who made the gorge rise of decent +chaps like me. Yes," said Dick, after a pause, "when I left him he +understood, I don't say entirely, but he had a distant glimmering. It +isn't often I go on these errands of mercy, but I felt that the least I +could do was to back you up, my lord. Of course, it is in little matters +like this that lay helpers come in, who are not so hampered about their +language as I suppose the clergy are." + +The Bishop tried, he tried hard, to look severe, but his mouth twitched. + +"Don't thank me," said Dick. "Nothing is a trouble where you are +concerned. It was--ahem--a pleasure." + +"That I can believe," said the Bishop. "Well, Dick, Providence makes use +of strange instruments--the jawbone of an ass has a certain Scriptural +prestige. I dare say you reached poor Gresley where I failed. I +certainly failed. But, if it is not too much to ask, I should regard it +as a favor another time if I might be informed beforehand what +direction your diocesan aid was about to take." + +Dr. Brown, who often came to luncheon at the Palace, came in now. He +took off his leathern driving-gloves and held his hands to the fire. + +"Cold," he said. "They're skating everywhere. How is Miss Gresley?" + +"She knows us to-day," said Rachel, "and she is quite cheerful." + +"Does the poor thing know her book is burned?" + +"No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the spring." + +The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the subject. + +"I travelled from Pontesbury this morning," he said, "with that man who +was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored him at +Wilderleigh. Tall, thin, rather a fine gentleman. I forget his name." + +Dr. Brown aways spoke of men above himself in the social scale as "fine +gentlemen." + +"Mr. Redman," said Miss Keane, the Bishop's sister, a dignified person, +who had been hampered throughout life by a predilection for the wrong +name, and by making engagements in illegible handwriting by last year's +almanacs. + +"Was it Mr. Scarlett?" said Rachel, feeling Dick's lynx eye upon her. "I +was at Wilderleigh when the accident happened." + +"That's the man. He got out at Southminster, and asked me which was the +best hotel. No, I won't have any more, thanks. I'll go up and see Miss +Gresley at once." + +Rachel followed the Bishop into the library. They generally waited there +together till the doctor came down. + +"I don't know many young men I like better than Dick," said the Bishop. +"I should marry him if I were a young woman. I admire the way he acts up +to his principles. Very few of us do. Until he has a further light on +the subject, he is right to, knock a man down who insults him. And from +his point of view he was justified in speaking to Mr. Gresley as he did. +I was sorely tempted to say something of that kind to him myself, but as +one grows gray one realizes that one can only speak in a spirit of love. +A man of Dick's stamp will always be respected, because he does not +assume virtues which belong to a higher grade than he is on at present. +But when he reaches that higher grade he will act as thoroughly upon the +convictions that accompany it as he does now on his present +convictions." + +"He certainly would not turn the other cheek to the smiter." + +"I should not advise the smiter to reckon on it. And unless it is turned +from that rare sense of spiritual brotherhood it would be unmanly to +turn it. To imitate the outward appearance of certain virtues is like +imitating the clothes of a certain class. It does not make us belong to +the class to dress like it. The true foundation for the spiritual life, +as far as I can see it, is in the full development of our human nature +with all its simple trusts and aspirations. I admire Dick's solid +foundation. It will carry a building worthy of him some day. But my +words of wisdom appear to be thrown away upon you. You are thinking of +something else." + +"I was thinking that I ought to tell you that I am engaged to be +married." + +The Bishop's face lit up. + +"I am engaged to Mr. Scarlett. That is why he has come down here." + +The Bishop's face fell. Rachel had been three days at the Palace. Dick +had not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. "That admirable +promptitude," the Bishop had remarked to himself, "deserves success." + +"Poor, dear Dick," he said, softly. + +"That is what Hester says. I told her yesterday." + +"I really have a very high opinion of Dick," said the Bishop. + +"So have I. If I might have two I would certainly choose him second." + +"But this superfluous Mr. Scarlett comes first, eh?" + +"I am afraid he does." + +"Well," said the Bishop, with a sigh, "if you are so ungrateful as to +marry to please yourself, instead of to please me, there is nothing more +to be said. I will have a look at your Mr. Scarlett when he comes to +tea. I suppose he will come to tea. I notice the most _farouche_ men do +when they are engaged. It is the first step in the turning process. I +shall, of course, bring an entirely unprejudiced mind to bear upon him, +as I always make a point of doing, but I warn you beforehand I shan't +like him." + +"Because he is not Mr. Dick." + +"Well, yes; because he is not Dick. I suppose his name is Bertie." + +"Not Bertie," said Rachel, indignantly, "Hugh." + +"It's a poor, inefficient kind of name, only four letters, and a +duplicate at each end. I don't think, my dear, he is worthy of you." + +"Dick has only four letters." + +"I make it a rule never to argue with women. Well, Rachel, I'm glad you +have decided to marry. Heaven bless you, and may you be happy with this +man. Ah! here comes Dr. Brown." + +"Well!" said the Bishop and Rachel, simultaneously. + +"She's better," said the little doctor, angrily; he was always angry +when he was anxious. "She's round the first corner. But how to pull her +round the next corner, that is what I'm thinking." + +"Defer the next corner." + +"We can't now her mind is clear. She's as sane as you or I are, and a +good deal sharper. When she asks about her book she'll have to be told." + +"A lie would be quite justifiable under the circumstances." + +"Of course, of course, but it would be useless. You might hoodwink her +for a day or two, and then she would find out, first, that the _magnum +opus_ is gone, and secondly, that you and Miss West, whom she does trust +entirely at present, have deceived her. You know what she is when she +thinks she is being deceived. She abused you well, my lord, until you +reinstated yourself by producing Regie Gresley. But you can't reinstate +yourself a second time. You can't produce the book." + +"No," said the Bishop. "That is gone forever." + +Rachel could not trust herself to speak. Perhaps she had realized more +fully than even the Bishop had done what the loss of the book was to +Hester, at least, what it would be when she knew it was gone. + +"Tell her, and give her that if she becomes excitable," said Dr. Brown, +producing a minute bottle out of a voluminous pocket. "And if you want +me I shall be at Canon Wylde's at five o'clock. I'll look in anyhow +before I go home." + +Rachel and the Bishop stood a moment in silence after he was gone, and +then Rachel took up the little bottle, read the directions carefully, +and turned to go up-stairs. + +The Bishop looked after her, but did not speak. He was sorry for her. + +"You can go out till tea-time," said Rachel, to the nurse. "I will stay +with Miss Gresley till then." + +Hester was lying on a couch by the fire in a rose-colored wrapper. Her +small face, set in its ruffle of soft lace, looked bright and eager. Her +hair had been cut short, and she looked younger and more like Regie than +ever. + +Her thin hands lay contentedly in her lap. The principal bandages were +gone. Only three fingers of the right hand were in a chrysalis state. + +"I shall not be in too great a hurry to get well," she said to Rachel. +"If I do you will rush away to London and get married. + +"Shall I?" Rachel set down the little bottle on the mantel-piece. + +"When is Mr. Scarlett coming down?" + +"He came down to-day." + +"Then possibly he may call." + +"Such things do happen." + +"I should like to see him." + +"In a day or two, perhaps." + +"And I want to see dear Dick, too." + +"He sent you his love. Mr. Pratt was here at luncheon yesterday, and he +asked me who the old chap was who put on his clothes with a shoe-horn." + +"How like him! Has he said anything more to the Bishop on the uses of +swearing?" + +"No. But the Bishop draws him on. He delights in him." + +"Rachel, are you sure you have chosen the best man?" + +"Quite sure--I mean I never had any choice in the matter. You see I love +Hugh, and I'm only fond of Mr. Dick." + +"I always liked Mr. Scarlett," said Hester. "I've known him ever since I +came out, and that wasn't yesterday. He is so gentle and refined, and +one need not be on one's guard in talking to him. He understands what +one says, and he is charming looking." + +"Of course, I think so." + +"And this is the genuine thing, Rachel? Do you remember our talk last +summer?" + +Rachel was silent a moment. + +"All I can say is," she said, brokenly, "that I thank God, day and +night, that Mr. Tristram did not marry me--that I'm free to marry Hugh." + +Hester's uncrippled hand stole into Rachel's. + +"Everybody will think," said Rachel, "when they see the engagement in +to-morrow's papers that I give him everything because he is poor and his +place involved, and of course I am horribly wealthy. But in reality it +is I who am poor and he who is rich. He has given me a thousand times +more than I could ever give him, because he has given me back the power +of loving. It almost frightens me that I can care so much a second time. +I should not have thought it possible. But I seem to have got the hang +of it now, as Mr. Dick would say. I wish you were down-stairs, Hester, +as you will be in a day or two. You would be amused by the way he shocks +Miss Keane. She asked if he had written anything on his travels, and he +said he was on the point of bringing out a little book on 'Cannibal +Cookery,' for the use of Colonials. He said some of the recipes were +very simple. He began: 'You take a hand and close it round a yam.' But +the Bishop stopped him." + +The moment Rachel had said, "He is on the point of bringing out a book," +her heart stood still. How could she have said such a thing? But +apparently Hester took no notice. + +"He must have been experimenting on my poor hand," she said. "I'm sure I +never burned it like this myself." + +"It will soon be better now." + +"Oh! I don't mind about it now that it doesn't hurt all the time." + +"And your head does not ache to-day, does it?" + +"Nothing to matter. But I feel as if I had fallen on it from the top of +the cathedral. Dr. Brown says that is nonsense, but I think so all the +same. When you believe a thing, and you're told it's nonsense, and you +still believe it, that is an hallucination, isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"I have had a great many," said Hester, slowly. "I suppose I have been +more ill than I knew. I thought I saw, I really did see, the spirits of +the frost and the snow looking in at the window. And I talked to them a +long time, and asked them what quarrel they had with me, their sister, +that since I was a child they had always been going about to kill me. +Aunt Susan always seemed to think they were enemies who gave me +bronchitis. And I told them how I loved them and all their works. And +they breathed on the pane and wrote beautiful things in frost-work, and +I read them all. Now, Rachel, is that an hallucination about the +frost-work, because it seems to me still, now that I am better, though I +can't explain it, that I do see the meaning of it at last, and that I +shall never be afraid of them again." + +Rachel did not answer. + +She had long since realized that Hester, when in her normal condition, +saw things which she herself did not see. She had long since realized +that Hester always accepted as final the limit of vision of the person +she was with, but that that limit changed with every person she met. +Rachel had seen her adjust it to persons more short-sighted than +herself, with secret self-satisfaction, and then with sudden +bewilderment had heard Hester accept as a commonplace from some one else +what appeared to Rachel fantastic in the extreme. If Rachel had +considered her own mind as the measure of the normal of all other minds, +she could not have escaped the conclusion that Hester was a victim of +manifold delusions. But, fortunately for herself, she saw that most +ladders possessed more than the one rung on which she was standing. + +"That is quite different, isn't it," said Hester, "from thinking Dr. +Brown is a gray wolf?" + +"Quite different. That was an hallucination of fever. You see that for +yourself now that you have no fever." + +"I see that, of course, now that I have no fever," repeated Hester, her +eyes widening. "But one hallucination quite as foolish as that is always +coming back, and I can't shake it off. The wolf was gone directly, but +this is just the same now I am better, only it gets worse and worse. I +have never spoken of it to any one, because I know it is so silly. But +Rachel--I have no fever now--and yet--I know you'll laugh at me--I laugh +at my own foolish self--and yet all the time I have a horrible feeling +that"--Hester's eyes had in them a terror that was hardly human--"that +my book is burned." + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + + The soul of thy brother is a dark forest. --_Russian Proverb_. + + +"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Hugh +St. John Scarlett, of Kenstone Manor, Shropshire, only son of the late +Lord Henry Scarlett, and Rachel, only child of the late Joshua Hopkins +West, of Birmingham." + + * * * * * + +This announcement appeared in the _Morning Post_ a few days after +Christmas, and aroused many different emotions in the breasts of those +who read it. + +"She has done it to spite me," said Mr. Tristram to himself over his +morning rasher, in the little eating-house near his studio. "I knew +there was some one else in her mind when she refused me. I rather +thought it was that weedy fellow with the high nose. Will he make her +happy because he is a lord's son? That is what I should like to ask her. +Poor Rachel, if we had been able to marry five years ago we should never +have heard of this society craze. Well, it's all over now." And Mr. +Tristram henceforward took the position of a man suffering from an +indelible attachment to a woman who had thrown him over for a title. + + * * * * * + +The Gresleys were astonished at the engagement. It was so extraordinary +that they should know both persons. Now that they came to think of it, +both of them had been to tea at the Vicarage only last summer. + +"A good many people pop in and out of this house," they agreed. + +"I am as certain as that I stand here," said Mr. Gresley, who was +sitting down, "that that noisy boor, that underbred, foul-mouthed Dick +Vernon wanted to marry her." + +"Don't mention him," said Mrs. Gresley. "When I think of what he dared +to say--" + +"My love," said Mr. Gresley, "I have forgiven him. I have put from my +mind all he said, for I am convinced he was under the influence of drink +at the time. We must make allowance for those who live in hot climates. +I bear him no grudge. But I am glad that a man of that stamp should not +marry Miss West. Drunkenness makes a hell of married life. Mr. Scarlett, +though he looked delicate, had at least the appearance of being +abstemious." + + * * * * * + +Fraeulein heard the news as she was packing her boxes to leave Warpington +Vicarage. She was greatly depressed. She could not be with her dear Miss +Gresley in this mysterious illness which some secret sorrow had brought +upon her; but at least Miss West could minister to her. And now it +seemed Miss West was thinking of "Brauetigams" more than of Hester. + +Fraeulein had been very uncomfortable at the Vicarage, but she wept at +leaving. Mrs. Gresley had never attained to treating her with the +consideration which she would have accorded to one whom she considered +her equal. The servants were allowed to disregard with impunity her +small polite requests. The nurse was consistently, ferociously jealous +of her. But the children had made up for all, and now she was leaving +them; and she did not own it to herself, for she was but five-and-thirty +and the shyest of the shy; but she should see no more that +noble-hearted, that musical Herr B-r-r-rown. + + * * * * * + +"Doll," said Sybell Loftus to her husband at breakfast, "I've made +another match. I thought at the time he liked her. You remember Rachel +West, not pretty, but with a nice expression--and what does beauty +matter? She is engaged to Mr. Scarlett." + +"Quiet, decent chap," said Doll; "and I like _her_. No nonsense about +her. Good thing he wasn't drowned." + +"Mr. Harvey will feel it. He confided to me that she was his ideal. Now +Rachel is everything that is sweet and good and dear, and she will make +a most excellent wife, but I should never have thought, would you, that +she could be anybody's ideal?" + +Doll opened his mouth to say, "That depends," but remembered that his +wife had taken an unaccountable dislike to that simple phrase, and +remained silent. + + * * * * * + +Captain Pratt, who was spending Christmas with his family, was the only +person at Warpington Towers who read the papers. On this particular +morning he came down to a late breakfast after the others had finished. +His father, who was always down at eight, secretly admired his son's +aristocratic habits, while he affected to laugh at them. "Shameful +luxurious ways, these young men in the Guards. Fashionable society is +rotten, sir; rotten to the core. Never get up till noon. My boy is as +bad as any of them." + +Captain Pratt propped up the paper open before him while he sipped his +coffee and glanced down the columns. His travelling eye reached Hugh's +engagement. + +Captain Pratt rarely betrayed any feeling except ennui, but as he read, +astonishment got the better of him. + +"By George!" he said, below his breath. + +The bit of omelette on its way to his mouth was slowly lowered again, +and remained sticking on the end of his fork. + +_What did it mean?_ He recalled that scene in Hugh's rooms _only last +week_. He had spoken of it to no one, for he intended to earn gratitude +by his discretion. Of course, Scarlett was going to marry Lady Newhaven +after a decent interval. She was a very beautiful woman, with a large +jointure, and she was obviously in love with him. The question of her +conduct was not considered. It never entered Captain Pratt's head, any +more than that of a ten-year-old child. He was aware that all the women +of the upper classes were immoral, except newly come-out girls. That was +an established fact. The only difference between the individuals, which +caused a separation as of the sheep from the goats, was whether they +were compromised or not. Lady Newhaven was not, unless he chose to +compromise her. No breath of scandal had ever touched her. + +But what was Scarlett about? Could they have quarrelled? What did it +mean? _And what would she do now?_ + +"By George!" said Captain Pratt, again, and the agate eyes narrowed down +to two slits. + +He sat a long time motionless, his untasted breakfast before him. His +mind was working, weighing, applying now its scales, now its +thermometer. + + * * * * * + +Rachel and Hugh were sitting together looking at a paragraph in the +_Morning Post_. + +"Does Miss Gresley take any interest?" said Hugh. + +He was a little jealous of Hester. This illness, the cause of which had +sincerely grieved him, had come at an inopportune moment. Hester was +always taking Rachel from him. + +"Yes," said Rachel, "a little when she remembers. But she can only think +of one thing." + +"That unhappy book." + +"Yes. I think the book was to Hester something of what you are to me. +Her whole heart was wrapped up in it--and she has lost it. Hugh, +whatever happens, you must not be lost now. It is too late. I could not +bear it." + +"I can only be lost if you throw me away," said Hugh. + +There was a long silence. + +"Lady Newhaven will know to-day," said Rachel at last. "I tried to break +it to her, but she did not believe me." + +"Rachel," said Hugh, stammering, "I meant to tell you the other day, +only we were interrupted, that _she_ came to my rooms the evening before +I came down here. I should not have minded quite so much, but Captain +Pratt came in with me and--found her there." + +"Oh Hugh, that dreadful man! Poor woman!" + +"Poor woman!" said Hugh, his eyes flashing. "It was poor you I thought +of. Poor Rachel! to be marrying a man who--" + +There was another silence. + +"I have one great compensation," said Rachel, laying her cool, strong +hand on his. "You are open with me. You keep nothing back. You need not +have mentioned this unlucky meeting, but you did. It was like you. I +trust you entirely, Hugh. I bless and thank you for loving me. If my +love can make you happy, oh Hughie, you will be happy." + +Hugh shrank from her. The faltered words were as a two-edged sword. + +She looked at the sensitive, paling face with tender comprehension. The +mother-look crept into her eyes. + +"If there is anything else that you wish to tell me, tell me now." + +A wild, overwhelming impulse to fling himself over the precipice out of +the reach of those stabbing words! A horrible nauseating recoil that +seemed to rend his whole being. + +Somebody said hoarsely: + +"There is nothing else." + +It was his own voice, but not his will, that spoke. Had any one ever +made him suffer like this woman who loved him? + + * * * * * + +Lady Newhaven had returned to Westhope ill with suspense and anxiety. +She had felt sure she should successfully waylay Hugh in his rooms, +convinced that if they could but meet the clouds between them (to borrow +from her vocabulary) would instantly roll away. They had met, and the +clouds had not rolled away. She vainly endeavored to attribute Hugh's +evident anger at the sight of her to her want of prudence, to the +accident of Captain Pratt's presence. She would not admit the thought +that Hugh had ceased to care for her, but it needed a good deal of +forcible thrusting away. She could hear the knock of the unwelcome guest +upon her door, and though always refused admittance he withdrew only to +return. She had been grievously frightened, too, at having been seen in +equivocal circumstances by such a man as Captain Pratt. The very +remembrance made her shiver. + +"How angry Edward would have been," she said to herself. "I wonder +whether he would have advised me to write a little note to Captain +Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to mention it. +But, of course, he won't repeat it. He won't want to make an enemy of me +and Hugh. The Pratts think so much of me. And when I marry Hugh"--(knock +at the mental door)--"_if ever_ I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him +and have him to stay. Edward never would, but I don't think so much of +good family, and all that, as Edward did. We will certainly ask him." + +It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after scanning the +_Ladies' Pictorial_, languidly opened the _Morning Post_. + +Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor. She seized it up +and read again the paragraph which had caught her eye. + +"No! No!" she gasped. "It is not true. It is not possible." And she read +it a third time. + +The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it remained +on the floor. + +It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known what +suffering was. She had talked freely of it to others. She had sung, as +if it were her own composition, "Cleansing Fires." She often said it +might have been written for her. + + In the cruel fire of sorrow, + [_slow, soft pedal_. + Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail, + [_both pedals down, quicker_. + Let thy hand be firm and steady, + [_loud, and hold on to last syllable_. + Do not let thy spi-rit quail, + [_bang! B natural. With resolution_. + Bu-ut. . . . + [_hurricane of false notes, etc., etc._ + +But now, poor thing, the fire had reached her, and her spirit quailed +immediately. Perhaps it was only natural that as her courage failed +something else should take its place; an implacable burning resentment +against her two betrayers, her lover and her friend. She rocked herself +to and fro. Lover and friend. "Oh, never, never trust in man's love or +woman's friendship henceforth forever!" So learned Lady Newhaven the +lesson of suffering. + +"Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me," she sobbed, "and mine +acquaintance out of my sight." + +A ring at the door-bell proved that the latter part of the text, at any +rate, was not true in her case. + +A footman entered. + +"Not at home. Not at home," she said, impatiently. + +"I said not at home, but the gentleman said I was to take up his card," +said the man, presenting a card. + +When Captain Pratt tipped, he tipped heavily. + +Lady Newhaven read it. + +"No. Yes. I will see him," she said. It flashed across her mind that she +must be civil to him, and that her eyes were not red. She had not shed +tears. + +The man picked the newspaper from the floor, put it on a side table, and +withdrew. + +Captain Pratt came in, bland, deferential, orchid in button-hole. + +It was not until he was actually in the room, his cold appraising eyes +upon her, that the poor woman realized that her position towards him had +changed. She could not summon up the nonchalant distant civility which, +according to her ideas, was sufficient for her country neighbors in +general, and the Pratts in particular. + +Captain Pratt opined that the weather, though cold, was seasonable. + +Lady Newhaven agreed. + +Captain Pratt regretted the hard frost on account of the hunting. Four +hunters eating their heads off, etc. + +Lady Newhaven thought the thaw might come any day. + +Captain Pratt had been skating yesterday on the parental flooded meadow. +Flooded with fire-engine. Men out of work. Glad of employment, etc. + +How kind of Captain Pratt to employ them. + +Not at all. It was his father. Duties of the landed gentry, etc. He +believed if the frost continued they would skate on Beaumere. + +No; no one was allowed to skate on Beaumere. The springs rendered the +ice treacherous. + +Silence. + +Captain Pratt turned the gold knob of his stick slowly in his thick, +white fingers. He looked carefully at Lady Newhaven, as a connoisseur +with intent to buy looks at a piece of valuable china. She was +accustomed to being looked at, but there was something in Captain +Pratt's prolonged scrutiny which filled her with vague alarm. She +writhed under it. He observed her uneasiness, but he did not remove his +eyes. + +Were the boys well? + +They were quite well, thanks. She was cowed. + +Were they fond of skating? + +Very fond. + +Might he suggest that they should come over and skate at Warpington +Towers to-morrow. He himself would be there, and would take charge of +them. + +He rose slowly, as one who has made up his mind. Lady Newhaven feared it +would be troubling Captain Pratt too much. + +It would be no trouble to Captain Pratt; on the contrary, a pleasure. + +His hand was now extended. Lady Newhaven had to put hers into it. + +Perhaps next week if the frost held. She tried to withdraw her hand. Oh, +well, then, to-morrow; certainly, to-morrow. + +"You may rely on me to take care of them," said Captain Pratt, still +holding her hand. He obliged her to look at him. His hard eyes met her +frightened blue ones. "You may rely on my discretion entirely--in all +matters," he said, meaningly. + +Lady Newhaven winced, and her hand trembled violently in his. + +He pressed the shrinking little hand, let it go, and went away. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + + "Le temps apporte, emporte, mais ne rapporte pas." + + +"May I come in?" said the Bishop, tapping at Hester's door. + +"Do come in." + +Hester was lying propped up by many cushions on a sofa in the little +sitting-room leading out of her bedroom. She looked a mere shadow in the +fire-light. + +She smiled at him mechanically, but her face relapsed at once into the +apathetic expression which sat so ill upon it. Her lustreless eyes fixed +themselves again on the fire. + +"And what are you going to do this afternoon?" she said, politely. It +was obvious she did not care what he did. + +"I am going to Westhope on business," he said, looking narrowly at her. +It was all very well for Dr. Brown to say she must be roused; but how +were his instructions to be carried out? + +"I am a great deal of trouble to you," said Hester. "Could not I be sent +to a home, or a place where you go through a cure, where I should be out +of the way till I'm well?" + +"Have I deserved that, Hester?" + +"No; but you know I always try to wound my best friends." + +"You don't succeed, my child, because they know you are in heavy +trouble." + +"We will not speak of that," said Hester, quickly. + +"Yes, the time has come to speak of it. Why do you shut us out of this +sorrow? Don't you see that you make our burdens heavier by refusing to +let us share yours?" + +"You can't share it," said Hester; "no one can." + +"Do you think I have not grieved over it?" + +"I know you have, but it was waste of time. It's no good--no good. +Please don't cheer me, and tell me I shall write better books yet, and +that this trial is for my good. Dear Bishop, don't try and comfort me. I +can't bear it." + +"My poor child, I firmly believe you will write better books than the +one which is lost, and I firmly believe that you will one day look back +upon this time as a stop in your spiritual life, but I had not intended +to say so. The thought was in my mind, but it was you who put the words +into my mouth." + +"I was so afraid that--" + +"That I was going to improve the occasion?" + +"Yes. Dr. Brown and the nurse are so dreadfully cheerful now, and always +talking about the future, and how celebrated I shall be some day. If you +and Rachel follow suit I shall--I think I shall--go out of my mind." + +The Bishop did not answer. + +"Dr. Brown may be right," Hester went on. "I may live to seventy, and I +may become--what does he call it?--a distinguished author. I don't know +and I don't care. But whatever happens in the future, nothing will bring +back the book which was burned." + +The Bishop did not speak. He dared not. + +"If I had a child," Hester continued, in the exhausted voice with which +he was becoming familiar, "and it died, I might have ten more, beautiful +and clever and affectionate, but they would not replace the one I had +lost. Only if it were a child," a little tremor broke the dead level of +the passionless voice, "I should meet it again in heaven. There is the +resurrection of the body for the children of the body, but there is no +resurrection that I ever heard of for the children of the brain." + +Hester held her thin right hand with its disfigured first finger to the +fire. + +"A great writer who had married and had children, whom she worshipped, +once told me that the pang of motherhood is that even your children +don't seem your very own. They are often more like some one else than +their parents, perhaps the spinster sister-in-law, whom every one +dislikes, or some entire alien. Look at Regie. He is just like me, which +must be a great trial to Minna. And they grow up bewildering their +parents at every turn by characteristics they don't understand. But she +said the spiritual children, the books, are really ours. + +"If you were other than you are," said Hester, after a long pause, "you +would reprove me for worshipping my own work. I suppose love is worship. +I loved it for itself, not for anything it was to bring me. That is what +people like Dr. Brown don't understand. It was part of myself. But it +was the better part. The side of me which loves success, and which he is +always appealing to, had no hand in it. My one prayer was that I might +be worthy to write it, that it might not suffer by contact with me. I +spent myself upon it." Hester's voice sank. "I knew what I was doing. I +joyfully spent my health, my eyesight, my very life upon it. I was +impelled to do it by what you perhaps will call a blind instinct, what +I, poor simpleton and dupe, believed at the time to be nothing less than +the will of God." + +"You will think so again," said the Bishop, "when you realize that the +book has left its mark and influence upon your character. It has taught +you a great deal. The mere fact of writing it has strengthened you. The +outward and visible form is dead, but its spirit lives on in you. You +will realize this presently." + +"Shall I? On the contrary, the only thing I realize is that it is not +God who is mocked, but His foolish children who try to do His bidding. +It seems He is not above putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his +prophets. Do you think I still blame poor James for his bonfire, or his +jealous little wife who wanted to get rid of me? Why should I? They +acted up to their lights as your beloved Jock did when he squeezed the +life out of that rabbit in Westhope Park. In all those days when I did +not say anything, it was because I felt I had been deceived. I had done +my part. God had not done His. He should have seen to it that the book +was not destroyed. You prayed by me once when you thought I was +unconscious. I heard all right. I should have laughed if I could, but it +was too much trouble." + +"These thoughts will pass away with your illness," said the Bishop. "You +are like a man who has had a blow, who staggers about giddy and dazed, +and sees the pavement rising up to strike him. The pavement is firm +under his feet all the time." + +"Half of me knows in a dim blind way that God is the same always," said +Hester, "while the other half says, 'Curse God and die.'" + +"That is the giddiness, the vertigo after the shock." + +"Is it? I dare say you are right. But I don't care either way." + +"Why trouble your mind about it, or about anything?" + +"Because I have a feeling, indeed, it would be extraordinary if I had +not, for Dr. Brown is always rubbing it in, that I ought to meet my +trouble bravely, and not sink down under it, as he thinks I am doing +now. He says others have suffered more than I have. I know that, for I +have been with them. It seems," said Hester, with the ghost of a smile, +"that there is an etiquette about these things, just as the blinds are +drawn up after a funeral. The moment has come for me, but I have not +drawn up my blinds." + +"You will draw them up presently." + +"I would draw them up now," said Hester, looking at him steadily, "if I +could. I owe it to you and Rachel to try, and I have tried, but I +can't." + +The Bishop's cheek paled a little. + +"Take your own time," he said, but his heart sank. + +He saw a little boat with torn sail and broken rudder, drifting on to a +lee shore. + +"I seem to have been living at a great strain for the last year," said +Hester. "I don't know one word from another now, but I think I mean +concentration. That means holding your mind to one place, doesn't it? +Well, now, something seems to have broken, and I can't fix it to +anything any more. I can talk to you and Rachel for a few minutes if I +hold my mind tight, but I can't really attend, and directly I am alone, +or you leave off speaking, my mind gets loose from my body and wanders +away to an immense distance, to long, dreary, desert places. And then if +you come in I make a great effort to bring it back, and to open my eyes, +because if I don't you think I'm ill. You don't mind if I shut them now, +do you?--because I've explained about them, and holding them open does +tire me so. I wish they could be propped open. And--my mind gets farther +and further away every day. I hope you and Rachel won't think I am +giving way if--sometime--I really can't bring it back any longer." + +"Dear Hester, no." + +"I will not talk any more then. If you and Rachel understand, that is +all that matters. I used to think so many things mattered, but I don't +now. And don't think I'm grieving about the book while I'm lying still. +I have grieved, but it is over. I'm too tired to be glad or sorry about +anything any more." + +Hester lay back spent and gray among her pillows. + +The Bishop roused her to take the stimulant put ready near at hand, and +then sat a long time watching her. She seemed unconscious of his +presence. At last the nurse came in, and he went out silently, and +returned to his study. Rachel was waiting there to hear the result of +the interview. + +"I can do nothing," he said. "I have no power to help her. After forty +years ministry I have not a word to say to her. She is beyond human +aid--at least, she is beyond mine." + +"You think she will die?" + +"I do not see what is going to happen to prevent it, but I am certain it +might be prevented." + +"You could not rouse her?" + +"No, she discounted anything I could have said, by asking me not to say +it. That is the worst of Hester. The partition between her mind and that +of other people is so thin that she sees what they are thinking about. +Thank God, Rachel, that you are not cursed with the artistic +temperament! That is why she has never married. She sees too much. I am +not a match-maker, but if I had had to take the responsibility, I should +have married her at seventeen to Lord Newhaven." + +"You know he asked her?" + +"No, I did not know it." + +"It was a long time ago, when first she came out. Lady Susan was anxious +for it, and pressed her. I sometimes think if she had been given time, +and if her aunt had let her alone--but he married within the year. But +what are we to do about Hester? Dr. Brown says something must be done, +or she will sink in a decline. I would give my life for her, but I can +do nothing. I have tried." + +"So have I," said the Bishop. "But it has come to this. We have got to +trust the one person whom we always show we tacitly distrust by trying +to take matters out of His hands. We must trust God. So far we have +strained ourselves to keep Hester alive, but she is past our help now. +She is in none the worse case for that. We are her two best friends save +one. We must leave her to the best Friend of all. God has her in His +hand. For the moment the greater love holds her away from the less, like +the mother who takes her sick child into her arms, apart from the other +children who are playing round her. Hester is in God's keeping, and that +is enough for us. And now take a turn in the garden, Rachel. You are too +much in-doors. I am going out on business." + +When Rachel had left him the Bishop opened his despatch-box and took out +a letter. + +It was directed to Lady Newhaven. + +"I promised to give it into her own hand a month after his death, +whenever that might happen to be," he said to himself. "There was some +trouble between them. I hope she won't confide it to me. Anyhow, I must +go and get it over. I wish I did not dislike her so much. I shall advise +her not to read it till I am gone." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + + The mouse fell from the ceiling, and the cat cried, "Allah!" + --Syrian Proverb. + + +That help should come through such a recognized channel as a Bishop +could surprise no one, least of all Lady Newhaven, who had had the +greatest faith in the clergy all her life, but, nevertheless, so +overwhelmed was she by despair and its physical sensations, that she +very nearly refused to see the Bishop when he called. Her faith even in +lawn sleeves momentarily tottered. Who would show her any good? Poor +Lady Newhaven was crushed into a state of prostration so frightful that +we must not blame her if she felt that even an Archbishop would have +been powerless to help her. + +She had thought, after the engagement was announced, of rushing up to +London and insisting on seeing Hugh; but always, after she had looked +out the trains, her courage had shrunk back at the last moment. There +had been a look on Hugh's face during that last momentary meeting which +she could not nerve herself to see again. She had been to London already +once to see him, without success. + +She knew Rachel was at the Palace at Southminster nursing Hester, and +twice she had ordered the carriage to drive over to see her, and make a +desperate appeal to her to give up Hugh. But she knew that she should +fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women always did over a +defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The frightful injustice of +it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the point of agony. To see her own +property deliberately stolen from her in the light of day, as it were, +in the very market-place, before everybody, without being able to raise +a finger to regain him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as +she was capable of loving anything. And her mind had grown round the +idea that he was hers as entirely as a tree will grow round a nail +fastened into it. + +And now he was to marry Rachel, and soon. Let no one think they know +pain until they know jealousy. + +But when the Bishop sent up a second time, asking to see her on +business, she consented. + +It was too soon to see callers, of course. But a Bishop was different. +And how could she refuse to admit him when she had admitted that odious +Captain Pratt only four days before. She hoped no one would become aware +of that fact. It was as well for her that she could not hear the remarks +of Selina and Ada Pratt, as they skated on the frozen meadows with half, +not the better-half, of Middleshire. + +"Poor Vi Newhaven. Yes, she won't see a creature. She saw Algy for a few +minutes last week, but then he is an old friend, and does not count. He +said she was quite heart-broken. He was quite upset himself. He was so +fond of Ted Newhaven." + +The Bishop would not even sit down. He said he was on the way to a +confirmation, and added that he had been entrusted with a letter for +her, and held it towards her. + +"It is my husband's handwriting," she said, drawing back, with +instinctive fear. + +"It is from your husband," said the Bishop, gently, softening somewhat +at the sight of the ravages which despair had made in the lovely face +since he had last seen it. "He asked me to give it into your own hand a +month after his death." + +"Then he told you that--" + +"He told me nothing, and I wish to hear nothing." + +"I should like to confess all to you, to feel myself absolved," said +Lady Newhaven in a low voice, the letter in her trembling hand. + +He looked at her, and he saw that she would not say all. She would +arrange details to suit herself, and would omit the main point +altogether, whatever it might be, if, as it was more than probable, it +told against herself. He would at least save her from the hypocrisy of a +half-confession. + +"If in a month's time you wish to make a full confession to me," he +said, "I will hear it. But I solemnly charge you in the meanwhile to +speak to no one of this difficulty between you and your husband. +Whatever it may have been, it is past. If he sinned against you, he is +dead, and the least you can do is to keep silence. If you wronged +him"--Lady Newhaven shook her head vehemently--"if you wronged him," +repeated the Bishop, his face hardening, "be silent for the sake of the +children. It is the only miserable reparation you can make him." + +"You don't understand," she said, feebly. + +"I know that he was a kindly, gentle-natured man, and that he died a +hard and bitter one," said the Bishop. "God knows what is in that +letter, but your husband said it would be of the greatest comfort and +assistance to you in a difficulty which he foresaw for you. I will leave +you to read it." + +And he left the room. + +The early December twilight was creeping over everything. Lady Newhaven +took the letter to the window, and after several futile attempts +succeeded in opening it. + +It ran as follows: + + "It is irreligious to mourn too long for the dead. 'I shall go to + him, but he shall not return to me'--II. Sam. xii. 23. In the + meanwhile, until you rejoin me, I trust you will remember that it + is my especial wish that you should allow one who is in every way + worthy of you to console you for my loss, who will make you as + happy as you both deserve to be. That I died by my own hand you and + your so-called friend Miss West are of course aware. That 'the one + love of your life' drew the short lighter you are perhaps not + aware. I waited two days to see if he would fulfil the compact, and + as he did not--I never thought he would--I retired in his place. I + present to you this small piece of information as a + wedding-present, which, if adroitly handled, may add to the harmony + of domestic life. And if by any chance he should have conceived the + dastardly, the immoral idea of deserting you in favor of some + mercenary marriage--of which I rather suspect him--you will find + this piece of information invaluable in restoring his allegiance at + once. He is yours by every sacred tie, and no treacherous female + friend must wrest him from you. + + "NEWHAVEN." + +Lady Newhaven put the letter in her pocket, and then fainted away, with +her fair head on the window-ledge. + + + + +CHAPTER L + + "There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is." + + +The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy of +mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district +visitors' working party in the drawing-room at the Palace. The ladies +knitted and stitched, while one of their number heaped fuel on the flame +of their enthusiasm by reading aloud the "History of the Diocese of +Southminster." + +Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in +her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem, as +a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them, +but her heart was where her treasure was--namely, in her escritoire, +with her list of Bible-classes, and servants' choral unions, and the +long roll of contributors to the guild of work which she herself had +started. + +When she had been up to Hester's room, invariably at hours when Hester +could not see her, and when she had entered Rachel's sledge-hammer +subscriptions in her various account-books, her attention left her +visitors. She considered them superficial, and wondered how it was that +her brother could find time to spend hours talking to both of them, +while he had rarely a moment in which to address her chosen band in the +drawing-room. She was one of those persons who find life a very prosaic +affair, quite unlike the fiction she occasionally read. + +She often remarked that nothing except the commonplace happened. +Certainly she never observed anything else. + +So Hester lay in the room above, halting feebly between two opinions, +whether to live or to die, and Rachel sat in the Bishop's study beneath, +waiting to make tea for him on his return from the confirmation. + +If she did not make it, no one else did. Instead of ringing for it he +went without it. + +Rachel watched the sun set--a red ball dropping down a frosty sky. It +was the last day of the year. The new year was bringing her everything. + +"Good-bye, good-bye," she said, looking at the last rim of the sun as he +sank. And she remembered other years when she had watched the sun set on +the last day of December, when life had been difficult--how difficult! + +"If Hester could only get better I should have nothing left to wish +for," she said, and she prayed the more fervently for her friend, +because she knew that even if Hester died, life would still remain +beautiful; the future without her would still be flooded with happiness. + +"A year ago if Hester had died I should have had nothing left to live +for," she said to herself. "Now this newcomer, this man whom I have +known barely six months, fills my whole life. Are other women as narrow +as I am? Can they care only for one person at a time like me? Ah, +Hester! forgive me, I can't help it." + +Hugh was coming in presently. He had been in that morning, and the +Bishop had met him, and had asked him to come in again to tea. Rachel +did not know what the Bishop thought of him, but he had managed to see a +good deal of Hugh. + +Rachel waited as impatiently as most of us, when our happiness lingers +by us, loth to depart. + +At last she heard the footman bringing some one across the hall. + +Would Hugh's coming ever become a common thing? Would she ever be able +to greet him without this tumult of emotion, ever be able to take his +hand without turning giddy on the sheer verge of bliss? + +The servant announced, "Lady Newhaven." + +The two women stood looking at each other. Rachel saw the marks of +suffering on the white face, and her own became as white. Her eyes fell +guiltily before Lady Newhaven's. + +"Forgive me," she said. + +"Forgive you?" said Lady Newhaven, in a hoarse voice. "It is no use +asking me for forgiveness." + +"You are right," said Rachel, recovering herself, and meeting Lady +Newhaven's eyes fully. "But what is the use of coming here to abuse me? +You might have spared yourself and me this at least. It will only +exhaust you and--wound me." + +"You must give him up," said Lady Newhaven, her hands fumbling under her +crape cloak. "I've come to tell you that you must let him go." + +The fact that Hugh had drawn the short lighter, and had not taken the +consequences, did not affect Lady Newhaven's feelings towards him in the +least, but she was vaguely aware that somehow it would affect Rachel's, +and now it would be Rachel's turn to suffer. + +Rachel paused a moment, and then said, slowly: + +"He does not wish to be let go." + +"He is mine." + +"He was yours once," said Rachel, her face turning from white to gray. +That wound was long in healing. "But he is mine now." + +"Rachel, you cannot be bad all through." Lady Newhaven was putting the +constraint upon herself which that tightly clutched paper, that poisoned +weapon in reserve, enabled her to assume. For Hugh's sake she would only +use it if other means failed. "You must know that you ought to look upon +him as a married man. Don't you see"--wildly--"that we _must_ marry, to +put right what was wrong? He owes it to me. People always do." + +"Yes, they generally do," said Rachel; "but I don't see how it makes the +wrong right." + +"I look upon Hugh as my husband," said Lady Newhaven. + +"So do I." + +"Rachel, he loves me. He is only marrying you for your money." + +"I will risk that." + +"I implore you on my knees to give him back to me." + +And Lady Newhaven knelt down with bare, white outstretched hands. +(Tableau number one. New Series.) + +Rachel shrank back involuntarily. + +"Listen, Violet," she said, "and get up. I will not speak until you get +up." Lady Newhaven obeyed. "If I gave back Hugh to you a hundred times +it would not make him love you any more, or make him marry you. I am not +keeping him from you. This marriage is his own doing. Oh! Violet, I'm +not young and pretty. I've no illusions about myself; but I believe he +really does love me, in spite of that, and I know I love him." + +"I don't believe it," said Lady Newhaven. "I mean about him. Not about +you, of course." + +"Here he is. Let him decide," said Rachel. + +Hugh came in unannounced. Upon his grave face there was that +concentrated look of happiness which has settled in the very deep of the +heart and gleams up into the eyes. + +His face changed painfully. He glanced from one woman to the other. +Rachel was sorry for him. She would fain have spared him, but she could +not. + +"Hugh," she said, gently, her steadfast eyes resting on him, "Lady +Newhaven and I were talking of you. I think it would be best if she +heard from your own lips what she, naturally, will not believe from +mine." + +"I will never believe," said Lady Newhaven, "that you will desert me +now, that all the past is nothing to you, and that you will cast me +aside for another woman." + +Hugh looked at her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her +hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless +reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to +gunpowder. + +Rachel kept his hand. + +"Are you sure you want him, Rachel?" gasped Lady Newhaven, holding +convulsively to a chair for support. "He has cast me aside. He will cast +you aside next, for he is a coward and a traitor. Are you sure you want +to marry him? His hands are red with blood. He murdered my husband." + +Rachel's hand tightened on Hugh's. + +"It was an even chance," she said. "Those who draw lots must abide by +the drawing." + +"It was an even chance," shrieked Lady Newhaven. "But who drew the short +lighter, tell me that? Who refused to fulfil his part when the time was +up? Tell me that." + +"You are mad," said Rachel. + +"I can prove it," said Lady Newhaven, holding out the letter in her +shaking hands. "You may read it, Rachel. I can trust you. Not him, he +would burn it. It is from Edward; look, you know his writing, written to +tell me that he," pointing at Hugh, "had drawn the short lighter, but +that, as he had not killed himself when the time came, he, Edward, did +so instead. That was why he was late. We always wondered, Rachel, why he +was two days late. Read it! Read it!" + +"I will not read it," said Rachel, pushing away the paper. "I do not +believe a word of it." + +"You shall believe it. Ask him to deny it, if he can." + +"You need not trouble to deny it," said Rachel, looking full at Hugh. + +The world held only her and him. And as Hugh looked into her eyes his +soul rose up and scaled the heights above it till it stood beside hers. + +There is a sacred place where, if we follow close in Love's footsteps, +we see him lay aside his earthly quiver and his bitter arrows, and turn +to us as he is, with the light of God upon him, one with us as one with +God. In that pure light lies cease to be. We know them no more, neither +remember them, for love and truth are one. + +Hugh strode across to Lady Newhaven, took the letter from her, and threw +it into the heart of the fire. Then he turned to Rachel. + +"I drew the short lighter," he said. "I meant to take the consequences +at first, but when the time came--I did not. Partly I was afraid, and +partly I could not leave you." + +If Lady Newhaven yearned for revenge she had it then. They had both +forgotten her. But she saw Rachel's eyes change as the eyes of a man at +the stake might change when the fire reached him. She shrank back from +the agony in them. Hugh's face became pinched and thin as a dead man's. +A moment ago he saw no consequences. He saw only that he could not lie +to her. His mind fell headlong from its momentary foothold. What mad +impulse had betrayed him to his ruin? + +"You drew the short lighter, and you let me think all the time he had," +said Rachel, her voice almost inaudible in its fierce passion. "You drew +it, and you let him die instead of you, as any one who knew him would +know he would. And when he was dead you came to me, and kept me in +ignorance even--that time--when I said I trusted you." + +The remembrance of that meeting was too much. + +Rachel turned her eyes on Lady Newhaven, who was watching her +terror-stricken. + +"I said I would not give him up, but I will," she said, violently. "You +can take him if you want him. What was it you said to me, Hugh? That if +you had drawn the short lighter you would have had to abide by it. Yes, +that was it. Your whole intercourse with me has been one lie from first +to last. You were right, Violet, when you said he ought to marry you. It +will be another lie on the top of all the others." + +"It was what Edward wished," faltered his widow. "He says so in the +letter that has just been burned." + +"Lord Newhaven wished it," said Rachel, looking at the miserable man +between them. "Poor Lord Newhaven! First his honor. Then his life. You +have taken everything he had. But there are still his shoes." + +"Rachel!" said Hugh, suddenly, and he fell on his knees before her, +clasping the hem of her gown. + +She pushed him violently from her, tearing her gown in releasing it from +his frenzied grasp. + +"Leave me," she whispered. Her voice was almost gone. "Coward and liar, +I will have nothing more to do with you." + +He got upon his feet somehow. The two gray desperate faces spent with +passion faced each other. They were past speech. + +He read his death-warrant in her merciless eyes. She looked at the +despair in his without flinching. + +He stood a moment, and then feeling his way, like one half blind, left +the room, unconsciously pushing aside Lady Newhaven, whom both had +forgotten. + +She gave one terrified glance at Rachel, and slipped out after him. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + + I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such + As God made women, to save men by love-- + By just my love I might have saved this man." + --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. + + +"Has Lady Newhaven been here?" said the Bishop, coming into the study, +his hands full of papers. "I thought I saw her carriage driving away as +I came up." + +"She has been here." + +The Bishop looked up suddenly, his attention arrested by Rachel's voice. +There is a white heat of anger that mimics the pallor of a fainting fit. +The Bishop thought she was about to swoon, until he saw her eyes. Those +gentle faithful eyes were burning. He shrank as one who sees the glare +of fire raging inside familiar windows. + +"My poor child," he said, and he sat down heavily in his leather +arm-chair. + +Rachel still stood. She looked at him, and her lips moved, but no sound +came forth. + +The Bishop looked intently at her. + +"Where is Scarlett?" he said. + +"Hugh is gone," she said, stammering. "I have broken off my engagement +with him. He will never come back." + +And she fell suddenly on her knees, and hid her convulsed face against +the arm of a chair. + +The Bishop did not move. He waited for this paroxysm of anger to +subside. He had never seen Rachel angry before in all the years he had +known her, but he watched her without surprise. Only stupid people think +that coal cannot burn as fiercely as tow. + +She remained a long time on her knees, her face hidden. The Bishop did +not hurry her. At last she began to sob silently, shuddering from head +to foot. + +Then he came and sat down near her, and took the cold clinched hands in +his. + +"Rachel, tell me," he said, gently. + +She tried to pull her hands away, but he held them firmly. He obliged +her to look up at him. She raised her fierce, disfigured face for a +moment, and then let it fall on his hands and hers. + +"I am a wicked woman," she said. "Don't trouble about me. I'm not worth +it. I thought I would have kept all suffering from him, but now--if I +could make him suffer--I would." + +"I have no doubt he is suffering." + +"Not enough. Not like me. And I loved him and trusted him. And he is +false, too, like that other man I loved; like you, only I have not found +you out yet; like Hester; like all the rest. I will never trust any one +again. I will never be deceived again. This is--the--second time." + +And Rachel broke into a passion of tears. + +The Bishop released her hands and felt for his own handkerchief. + +Then he waited, praying silently. The clock had made a long circuit +before she raised herself. + +"I am very selfish," she said, looking with compunction at the kind, +tired face. "I ought to have gone to my room instead of breaking down +here. Dear Bishop, forgive me. It is past now. I shall not give way +again." + +"Will you make me some tea?" he said. + +She made the tea with shaking hands and awkward, half-blind movements. +It was close on dinner-time, but she did not notice it. He obliged her +to drink some, and then he settled himself in his leather arm-chair. He +went over his engagements for the evening. In half an hour he ought to +be dining with Canon Glynn to meet an old college friend. At eleven he +had arranged to see a young clergyman whose conscience was harrying +him. He wrote a note on his knee without moving, saying he could not +come, and touched the bell at his elbow. When the servant had taken the +note he relapsed into the depths of his arm-chair and sipped his tea. + +"I think, Rachel," he said at last, "that I ought to tell you that I +partly guess at your reason for breaking off your engagement. I have +known for some time that there was trouble between the Newhavens. From +what Lady Newhaven said to me to-day, and from the fact that she has +been here, and that immediately after seeing her you broke your +engagement with Scarlett, I must come to the conclusion that Scarlett +had been the cause of this trouble." + +Rachel had regained her composure. Her face was white and hard. + +"You are right," she said. "He was at one time--her lover." + +"And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become your +husband?" + +"No. He told me about it before he asked me to marry him. I accepted +him, knowing it." + +"Then he was trying to retrieve himself. He acted towards you, at any +rate, like an honorable man." + +Rachel laughed. "So I thought at the time." + +"If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don't see why you should +have thrown him over. One dishonorable action sincerely repented does +not make a dishonorable man." + +"I did not know all," said Rachel. "I do now." + +The Bishop looked into the fire. + +Her next words surprised him. + +"You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?" + +"I did." + +"Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal for the +sake of his children--namely, his wife's misconduct--I think I had +better tell you the rest." + +So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the drawing of +lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained ignorant as to which +had drawn the short lighter. How Hugh had drawn it; how when the time +came he had failed to fulfil the agreement; how two days later Lord +Newhaven had killed himself; and how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of +course, concluded that Lord Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter. + +Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little. + +"Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married woman. +I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he risked losing +me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more. I thought he was, +at any rate, an upright man. After Lord Newhaven's death he asked me to +marry him, and I accepted him. And when we were talking quietly one +day"--Rachel's face became, if possible, whiter than before--"I told him +that I knew of the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except +the dead man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself +for Lord Newhaven's death. He had brought it on himself. I said to +him"--Rachel's voice trembled more and more-"'It was an even chance. You +might have drawn the short lighter yourself.' And--he--said that if he +had, he should have had to abide by it." + +The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand. It seemed cruel to look at +Rachel, as it is cruel to watch a man drown. + +"And how do you know he did draw it?" he said. + +"It seems Lord Newhaven left his wife a letter, which she has only just +received, telling her so. She brought it here to-day to show me." + +"Ah! A letter! And you read it?" + +"No," said Rachel, scornfully, "I did not read it. I did not believe a +word she said about it. Hugh was there, and I told him I trusted him; +and he took the letter from her, and put it in the fire." + +"And did he not contradict it?" + +"No. He said it was true. He has lied to me over and over again; but I +saw he was speaking the truth for once." + +There was a long silence. + +"I don't know how other people regard those things," said Rachel at +last, less harshly--she was gradually recovering herself--"but I know to +me it was much worse that he could deceive me than that he should have +been Lady Newhaven's lover. I did feel that dreadfully. I had to choke +down my jealousy when he kissed me. He had kissed her first. He had made +that side of his love common and profane; but the other side remained. I +clung to that. I believed he really loved me, and that supported me and +enabled me to forgive him, though men don't know what that forgiveness +costs us. Only the walls of our rooms know that. But it seems to me much +worse to have failed me on that other side as well--to have deceived +me--to have told me a lie--just when--just when we were talking +intimately." + +"It was infinitely worse," said the Bishop. + +"And it was the action of a coward to draw lots in the first instance if +he did not mean to abide by the drawing, and the action of a traitor, +once they were drawn, not to abide by them. But yet, if he had told +me--if he had only told me the whole truth--I loved him so entirely that +I would have forgiven--_even that_. But whenever I alluded to it, he +lied." + +"He was afraid of losing you." + +"He has lost me by his deceit. He would not have lost me if he had told +me the truth. I think--I know--that I could have got over anything, +forgiven anything, even his cowardice, if he had only admitted it and +been straightforward with me. A little plain dealing was all I asked, +but--I did not get it." + +The Bishop looked sadly at her. Straightforwardness is so seldom the +first requirement a woman makes of the man she loves. Women, as a rule, +regard men and their conduct only from the point of view of their +relation to women--as sons, as husbands, as fathers. Yet Rachel, it +seemed, could forgive Hugh's sin against her as a woman, but not his +further sin against her as a friend. + +"Yet it seems he did speak the truth at last," he said. + +"Yes." + +"And after he had destroyed the letter, which was the only proof against +him." + +"Yes." + +Another silence. + +"I am glad you have thrown him over," said the Bishop, slowly, "for you +never loved him." + +"I deceived myself in that case," said Rachel, bitterly. "My only fear +was that I loved him too much." + +The Bishop's face had become fixed and stern. + +"Listen to me, Rachel," he said. "You fell desperately in love with an +inferior man. He is charming, refined, well-bred, and with a picturesque +mind, but that is all. He is inferior. He is by nature shallow and hard +(the two generally go together), without moral backbone, the kind of man +who never faces a difficulty, who always flinches when it comes to the +point, the stuff out of which liars and cowards are made. His one +redeeming quality is his love for you. I have seen men in love before. I +have never seen a man care more for a woman than he cares for you. His +love for you has taken entire possession of him, and by it he will sink +or swim." + +The Bishop paused. Rachel's face worked. + +"He deceived you," said the Bishop, "not because he wished to deceive +you, but because he was in a horrible position, and because his first +impulse of love was to keep you at any price. But his love for you was +raising him even while he deceived you. Did he spend sleepless nights +because for months he vilely deceived Lord Newhaven? No. Rectitude was +not in him. His conscience was not awake. But I tell you, Rachel, he has +suffered like a man on the rack from deceiving you. I knew by his face +as soon as I saw him that he was undergoing some great mental strain. I +did not understand it, but I do now." + +Rachel's mind, always slow, moved, stumbled to its bleeding feet. + +"It was remorse," she said, turning her face away. + +"It was not remorse. It was repentance. Remorse is bitter. Repentance is +humble. His love for you has led him to it. Not your love for him, +Rachel, which breaks down at the critical moment; his love for you which +has brought him for the first time to the perception of the higher life, +to the need of God's forgiveness, which I know from things he has said, +has made him long to lead a better life, one worthier of you." + +"Don't," said Rachel. "I can't bear it." + +The Bishop rose, and stood facing her. + +"And at last," he went on--"at last, in a moment, when you showed your +full trust and confidence in him, he shook off for an instant the clogs +of the nature which he brought into the world, and rose to what he had +never been before--your equal. And his love transcended the lies that +love itself on its lower plane had prompted. He reached the place where +he could no longer lie to you. And then, though his whole future +happiness depended on one more lie, he spoke the truth." + +Rachel put out her hand as if to ward off what was coming. + +"And how did you meet him the first time he spoke the truth to you?" +continued the Bishop, inexorably. "You say you loved him, and yet--you +spurned him from you, you thrust him down into hell. You stooped to him +in the beginning. He was nothing until your fancied love fell upon him. +And then you break him. It is women like you who do more harm in the +world than the bad ones. The harm that poor fool Lady Newhaven did him +is as nothing compared to the harm you have done him. You were his god, +and you have deserted him. And you say you loved him. May God preserve +men from the love of women if that is all that a good woman's love is +capable of." + +"I can do nothing," said Rachel, hoarsely. + +"Do nothing!" said the Bishop, fiercely. "You can do nothing when you +are responsible for a man's soul God will require his soul at your +hands. Scarlett gave it into your keeping, and you took it. You had no +business to take it if you meant to throw it away. And now you say you +can do nothing!" + +"What can I do?" said Rachel, faintly. + +"Forgive him." + +"Forgiveness won't help him. The only forgiveness he would care for is +to marry me." + +"Of course. It is the only way you can forgive him." + +Rachel turned away. Her stubborn, quivering face showed a frightful +conflict. + +The Bishop watched her. + +"My child," he said, gently, "we all say we follow Christ, but most of +us only follow him and his cross--part of the way. When we are told that +our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for our transgressions, I +suppose that meant that He felt as if they were His own in His great +love for us. But when you shrink from bearing your fellow-creature's +transgressions, it shows that your love is small." + +Rachel was silent. + +"If you really love him you will forgive him." + +Rachel clinched and unclinched her hands. + +"You are appealing to a nobility and goodness which are not in me," she +said, stubbornly. + +"I appeal to nothing but your love. If you really love him you will +forgive him." + +"He has broken my heart." + +"I thought that was it. It is yourself you are thinking of. But what is +he suffering at this moment? You do not know or care. Where is he now, +that poor man who loves you? Rachel, if you had ever known despair, you +would not thrust a fellow creature down into it." + +"I have known it," said Rachel, hoarsely. + +"Were not you deserted once? You were deserted to very little purpose, +if after that you can desert another. Go back in your mind, +and--remember. Where you stood once he stands now. You and his sin have +put him there. You and his sin have tied him to his stake. Will you +range yourself for ever on the side of his sin? Will you stand by and +see him perish?" + +Silence; like the silence round a death-bed. + +"He is in a great strait. Only love can save him." + +Rachel flung out her arms with an inarticulate cry. + +"I will forgive him," she said. "I will forgive him." + + + + +CHAPTER LII + + "Les ames dont j'aurai besoin, + Et les etoiles 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 endeavored 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 forever." + +"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 color 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 clinched 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. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + + Ueber allen Gipfeln + Ist Ruh; + In allen Wipfeln + Spuerest Du + Kaum einen Hauch; + Die Voegelein 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 carriage 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 stand-still. + +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 +splendor 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 parlor. + +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, unrecognizing 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 hawk-eyes. 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 parlor 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 parlor, 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 passed. 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 splendor 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 Fraeulein, and now Algy Pratt and Lady Newhaven." + +"I was so dreadfully afraid that Fraeulein 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 Fraeulein. 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 passed, 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 +Fraeulein 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." + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + + +We turn the pages of the Book of Life with impatient hands. And if we +shut up the book at a sad page we say, hastily, "Life is sad." But it is +not so. There are other pages waiting to be turned. I, who have copied +out one little chapter of the lives of Rachel and Hester, cannot see +plainly, but I catch glimpses of those other pages. I seem to see Rachel +with children round her, and Dick not far off, and the old light +rekindled in Hester's eyes. For Hope and Love and Enthusiasm never die. +We think in youth that we bury them in the graveyards of our hearts, but +the grass never yet grew over them. How, then, can life be sad, when +they walk beside us always in the growing light towards the Perfect Day. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Pottage, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED POTTAGE *** + +***** This file should be named 14885.txt or 14885.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/8/8/14885/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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