The next day, Sunday, was raw and wet. Mist blotted out the hills, and
beneath it the vale mourned. The trees dripped sadly, pools gathered
about the roots of the beeches, the down-spouts of the eaves gurgled
softly in the ears of those who sat near the windows. Miss Peacock
alone ventured to church in the afternoon, Arthur walking with her as
far as the door, and then going on to the Cottage to have tea with his
mother. Josina stayed at home in attendance on her father, but ten
minutes after the others had left the house, he dismissed her with a
fractious word.
She went down to the dining-room, where she could hear his summons if
he tapped the floor. She poked up the smouldering logs, and looked
through the windows at the dreary scene—the day was already drawing
in—then, settling herself before the fire, she opened a book. But she
did not read, indeed she hardly pretended to read, for across the page
of the Sunday volume, in black capitals, blotting out the type, forcing
itself on her brain, insistent, inexorable, unavoidable, the word
“When?” imprinted itself.
Ay, when? When was she going to summon Clement, and give him leave to
speak? When was she going to keep her word, to make a clean breast of
it to her father and confront the storm, the violence of which her
worst fears could not picture or exaggerate?
“When?”
With every day of the past fortnight the question had confronted her
with growing insistence. Now, in this idle hour, with the house silent
about her, with nothing to distract her thoughts, it rose before her,
grim as the outlook. It would not be denied, it came between her and
the page, it forced itself upon her, it called for, nay, it insisted
upon, an answer. When?
There was no longer any hope that the Squire would regain his sight, no
longer any fear for his general health. He was as well as he ever would
be, as well able to bear the disclosure. Delay on that ground was a
plea which could no longer avail her or deceive her. Then, when? Or
rather, why not now? Her conscience told her, as it had told her often
of late, that she was playing the coward, proving false to her word,
betraying Clement—Clement whom she loved, and whom, craven as she was,
she feared to acknowledge.
Then, when? Surely now, or not at all.
Alas, the longer she dwelt on the avowal she must make, the more
appalling the ordeal appeared. Her father, indeed, had been more gentle
of late; that walk on the hill had brought them closer together, and
since then he had shown himself more human. Glimpses of sympathy, even
of affection, had peeped through the chinks of his harshness. But how
difficult was the position! She must own to stolen meetings, to
underhand practices, to things disreputable; she must proclaim, maid as
she was, her love. And her love for whom? A stranger, and worse than a
stranger—a nobody. Then apart from her father’s contempt for the class
to which Clement belonged, and with which he was less in sympathy than
with the peasants on his lands, his prejudice against the Ovingtons was
itself a thing to frighten her! Hardly a day passed that he did not
utter some jibe at their expense, or some word that betrayed how sorely
Arthur’s defection rankled. And then his blindness—that added the last
touch of deceit to her conduct, that made worse and more clandestine
what had been bad before. As she thought of it, and imagined the avowal
and the way in which he would take it, the color left her cheeks and
she shivered with fright. She did not know how she could do it, or how
she could live through it. He would lose all faith in her. He would
pluck from his heart even that affection for her which she had begun to
discern under the mask of his sternness—to discern and to cherish.
Yet time pressed, she could no longer palter with her love, she must be
true to Clement now or false, she must suffer for him now or play the
coward. She had given him her word. Was she to go back on it?
Oh, never! never! she thought, and pressed her hands together. Those
spring days when she had walked with him beside the brook, when his
coming had been sunshine and her pulses had leapt at the sound of his
footsteps, when his eyes had lured the heart from her and the touch of
his lips had awakened the woman in her, when she had passed whole days
and nights in sweet musings on him—oh, never!
No, he had urged her to be brave, to be true, to be worthy of him; and
she must be. She must face all for him. And it would be but for a time.
He had said that her father might separate them, and would separate
them: but if they were true to one another——
“Miss! Miss Josina!”
She turned, her dream cut short, and saw Molly, the kitchen-maid,
standing in the doorway. She was surprised, for the stillness of a
Sunday afternoon held the house—it was the servants’ hour, and one at
which they were seldom to be found, even when wanted. “What is it?” she
asked, and stood up, alarmed. “Has my father called?” He might have
rapped, and deep in thought she might not have heard him.
“No, miss,” Molly answered—and heaven knows if Molly had an inkling of
the secret, but certainly her face was bright with mischief. “There is
a gentleman asking for you, if you please, miss. He bid me give you
this.” She held out a three-cornered note.
Josina’s face burned. “A gentleman?” she faltered.
“Yes, miss, a young gentleman,” Molly answered demurely.
Josina took the note—what else could she do?—and opened it with shaking
fingers. For a moment, such was her confusion, she failed to read the
few words it contained. Then she collected herself—the words became
plain: “Very urgent—forgive me and see me for ten minutes.—C.”
Very urgent? It must be urgent indeed, or, after all she had said, he
would not come to her unbidden. She hesitated, looking doubtfully and
shamefacedly at Molly. But the eyes of young kitchen-maids are sharp,
and probably this was not the first glimpse Molly had had of the young
mistress’s love story, or of the young gentleman. “You can slip out
easy, miss,” she said, “and not a soul the wiser. They are all off
about their business.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s under the garden wall, miss—down the lane.”
Jos took her courage in her hands. She snatched up a shawl from the
hall-table, and with hot cheeks she went out through the back regions,
Molly accompanying her as far as the yard. “I’ll be about the place,
miss,” the girl said—if no one else was enjoying herself, she was.
“I’ll rattle the milk-pail if—if you’re wanted.”
Josina drew the shawl about her head, and went down the yard, passing
on her right the old stable, which bore over its door the same date as
the table in the hall—1691. A moment, and she saw Clement waiting for
her under the eaves of the Dutch summer-house, of which the sustaining
wall overhung the lane, and, with the last of the opposing outhouses,
formed a sort of entrance to the yard.
She had been red enough under Molly’s gaze, resenting the confederacy
which she could not avoid. But the color left her face as her eyes met
her lover’s, and she saw how sad and downcast he looked, and how
changed from the Clement of her meetings. He was shabby, too—he who had
always been so neat—so that even before he spoke she divined that there
was something amiss, and knew at last, too, that there was nothing that
she would not do, no risk that she would not run, no anger or storm
that she would not face for this man before her. The mother in her
awoke, and longed to comfort him and shield him, to give all for him.
“Clement!” she cried, and, trembling, she held out her hands to him.
“Dear Clement! What is it?”
He took her hands and held them; and if he had taken her in his arms
she would have forgiven him and clung to him. But he did not. He seemed
even to hold her from him. “Forgive me, dear, for sending for you,” he
said. “I thought to catch you going into church, but you were not
there, and there was nothing for it but this. Jos, I have bad news.”
“Bad news?” she exclaimed. “What? Don’t keep me waiting, Clement! What
bad news?”
“The worst for me,” he said. “For we must part. I have come to say
good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” Oh, it was impossible! It was not, it could not be that!
“What do you mean?” she cried, and her eyes pleaded with him to take it
back. “Tell me! You cannot mean that we must part.”
“I do,” he said soberly. “Something has happened, dear—something that
must divide us. Be brave, and I will tell you.”
“You must,” she said.
He told his story—rapidly, in clear short phrases which he had
rehearsed many times as he covered the seven miles from Aldersbury on
this dreary errand. He told her all, that which no one else must know,
that which she must not reveal. They expected a run on the bank. They
were sure, indeed, that a run must come, and though the issue was not
yet quite certain, though his father still had hope, he had, himself,
no hope. Within a week he would be a poor man, little better than a
beggar, dependent on his own exertions; with no single claim, no
possible pretensions to her hand, no ground on which he could appeal to
her father. It must be at an end between them, and he preferred to let
her know now rather than to wait until the blow had fallen. He thought
himself bound in honor to release her while he still had some footing,
some show of equality with her.
She smiled when she had heard him out. She smiled in his face. “But if
I will not be released?” she said. And then, before he could answer
her, she bade him tell her more. What was this run? What did it mean?
She did not understand.
He told her in detail, and, while he told her, they stood, two pathetic
figures in the mist and rain that dripped slowly and sadly from the
eaves of the Dutch summerhouse. She stood, pressing her hands together,
trying to comprehend. And he hid nothing: telling her even of the ten
or twelve thousand that, did they possess it, would save them; telling
her that which had decided him to bid her farewell—an item of news
which had reached the bank on the previous evening, after Arthur had
left for Garth. The great house of Poles, with a wide connection among
country banks, had closed its doors; and not only that, but Williams’s,
Ovington’s agents, had followed suit within six hours. The tidings had
come by special messenger, but would be known in the town in the
morning, and would certainly cause a panic and a run on both banks.
That news had been the last straw, he said. It had pushed him to a
decision. He had felt that he must give her back her word, and without
the loss of a day must put it in her power to say that there was
nothing between them.
Once and again, as he told his tale, she put in a question, or uttered
a pitying exclamation. But for the most part she listened in silence,
controlling herself, suppressing the agitation which shook her. When he
had done, she put a question, but it was one so irrelevant, so
unexpected, so far from the mark, that it acted on him like a douche of
cold water. “What have you done to your coat?” she asked. “My coat?”
“Yes.” She pointed to his shoulder.
He glanced down at his coat, but he felt the check. Surely the ways of
women were strange, their manner of taking things past finding out. He
explained, but he could not hide his chagrin. “I wasn’t thinking, and
took the first that came to hand,” he said—“an old one. Does it
matter?”
But she continued to stare at it. He was wearing a riding coat, high in
the collar, long in the skirts, shaped to the figure. On the light buff
of the cloth a stain spread downwards from shoulder to breast. The
right arm and cuff, too, were discolored, and it said much for the
disorder of his thoughts that he had ridden from town without noticing
it. She eyed the stain with distaste, with something like a shudder.
“It is blood,” she said, “isn’t it?”
He shrugged his shoulders, yet himself viewed it askance. “Yes,” he
said. “I don’t know how you knew. I wore it that night, you know. I did
not mean to wear it again, but in my hurry——”
“Do you mean the night that my father was hurt?”
“Yes.”
“You held him up in the carriage?”
“Yes, but—” squinting at it—“I don’t think that it was done then. I
believe it was done when I was picking him up in the road, Jos, before
Bourdillon came. Indeed, I remember that your father noticed it—before
he fainted, you know.”
“My father noticed it?”
“Well, oddly enough, he did.”
“While you were supporting him?” There was a strange light in her eyes,
and the blood had come back to her cheeks. “But where was Thomas—the
man—then?”
“Oh, he had gone off, across the fields.”
“Before Arthur came up, do you mean?”
“To be sure, some time before. However——”
But, “No, Clement, I want to understand this,” she insisted, breaking
in on him. Her voice betrayed her excitement, and to hold him to the
point she laid her hands on his shoulders, standing before him and
close to him. “Tell me again, and clearly. Do you mean that it was you
who drove Thomas off? Before Arthur came up?”
He stared. “Well, of course it was,” he said. “Didn’t you know that?
Didn’t Arthur tell you?”
She avoided the question, and instead, “Then it was your coat that was
spoiled?” she said. “This coat?”
“Well, of course it was. You can see that.”
She looked at him, her cheeks flushed, her pride in him showing in her
eyes. He had indeed justified her choice of him, her belief in him, her
confidence in him. He had done this and had said nothing. The day was
cold, and she was not warmly clad, but she felt no cold—now. It was
raining, but she was no longer aware of it. There had sprung up in her
heart, not only courage, but a faint, a very faint hope.
He had come to dash her down, to fill her cup of sorrow to the brim, to
leave her lonely in the world and comfortless—for never, never could
she love another! And instead he had given her hope—a hope forlorn and
far off, gleaming faint as the small stars in distant Cassiopeia, and
often doubt, like an evening mist, would veil it. But it sparkled, she
saw it, she drew courage from it.
Meanwhile, surprised by the turn her thoughts had taken, he was still
more surprised by the change in her looks, the color in her cheeks, the
light in her eyes. He did not understand, and for a moment, seeing
himself no hope but only sorrow and parting, he was tempted to think
that she trifled. What mattered it what coat he wore, or what had
stained it, or the details of a story old now, and which he supposed to
be as well known to her as to him? Perhaps she did not comprehend, and,
“Jos,” he said, inviting her to be serious, “do you understand that
this is our parting?”
But “No! no!” she said resolutely. “We are not going to part.”
“But don’t you see,” sadly, “that I cannot go to your father now? That
next week we may be beggars, and my father a ruined man? I could ask no
man, even a poor man, for his daughter now. I must work to live, work
as a clerk—as, I don’t know what, Jos, but in some position far removed
from your life, and far removed from your class. I could not speak to
your father now, and it is that which has brought me to you to—to say
good-bye, dearest—to part, Jos! The gates are closed, we must go out of
the garden, dear. And you”—he looked at her with yearning eyes—“must
forgive me, before we part.”
“Perhaps we are not going to part,” she said.
He shook his head. He would not deceive her. “Nothing else is
possible,” he said.
“Perhaps, and perhaps not. At any rate,” putting her hands in his, and
looking at him with brave, loving eyes, “I would not undo one of those
days—in the garden! No, nor an hour of them. They are precious to me.
And for forgiving, I have nothing to forgive and nothing to regret, if
we never meet again, Clement. But we shall meet. What if you have to
begin the world again? We are both young. You will work for me. And do
you think that I will not wait for you, wait until you have climbed up
again, or until something happens to bring us together? Do you not know
that I love you more now, far more, in your unhappiness—that you are
more to me, a thousand times more to-day—than in your prosperity?”
“Oh, Jos!” He could say no more, but his swimming eyes spoke for him.
“But you must leave it to me now,” she continued. “After all, things
may turn out better than you think. You may not be ruined. People may
not be so foolish as to want all their money at once. Have hope,
and—and remember that I am always here, though you do not see me or
hear from me; that I am always here, thinking of you, waiting for you,
loving you, always yours, Clement, till you come—though it be ten years
hence.”
“Oh, Jos!” His eyes were overflowing now.
“You believe me, you do believe me, don’t you?” she said. “And now you
must go. But kiss me first. No, I do not mind who sees us, or who knows
that I am yours now. I am past that.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, not as he would have kissed her
an hour before, with passion, but in reverence and humility, in love
too sacred for words. Never till now had he known what a woman’s love
was, how much it gave, how little it asked, how pure in its highest
form it could be—and how strong! Nor ever till now had he known her,
this girl to whom he had once presumed to teach firmness, whose
weakness he had taken on himself to guide, whom he had thought to
encourage, to strengthen, to arm—he, who had not been worthy to kiss
the hem of her robe!
Oh, the wonderful power of love, which had transformed her! Which had
made her what she was, and now laid him in the dust before her!
Work for her, wait for her, live for her? Ah, would he not, and deem
himself happy though the years brought him no nearer, though the memory
of her, transfiguring his whole life, proved his only and full reward!