JOEL GOES AWAY
Lucy lay upon the fellside, face down in the grass, hidden by the
bracken fronds. The sun was setting, and the mountains were suffused
with a rosy haze. Over the roof of Forest Hall, on the other side of the
dale, rooks were flying home.
About the recumbent figure pee-weeps wheeled, making a piteous calling,
and the hill-pastures were tremulous with the bleating of sheep, for the
flocks had just been shorn. But Lucy heeded neither sound nor sunset;
the world about her seemed to be as silent and dark as her own soul.
Joel had bidden her good-bye. To-morrow he was going away--and so far
away: to America. Once she had not been able to think of parting without
despair, but now she knew how willingly she would bear it, if they might
only part as lovers. Joel stood firm. Her entreaties and tears had no
effect; he was kind; he was also self-righteous. He had never meant to
tie her to him, he said; he had no right to ask for her love, when he
could not marry her; he had done her a great wrong; further wrong he
would not do.
"When you've made your fortune, you'll come back, Joel?" she had
whispered.
Then had descended upon him a sullen cloud. The exaltation, which he
had felt in Barbara's presence, vanished; he no longer breathed the
clear, invigorating air that had roused him to the strong
resolve--"Heaven help me! I'll return for Lucy." He felt angry, because
his hand had been forced, because his plans had miscarried, because he
had put himself in the power of two women; and, looking at the drooping
form of the girl whom he loved, though she was innocent, he felt glad
that he had the power to hurt her.
"Back!" he had said, "back! Few that go away come back."
The words were no sooner uttered than he had repented of them. The girl
had shrunk back as though struck, and he had been tempted to clasp her
in his arms, to vow that he would return, and marry her, if she would
only wait for him. But, remembering his promise, he had refrained. He
would not be so dastardly a soul as to ask for something he might never
be able to have. Lucy was very fair, gentle, and kind; his love had
brought her little happiness; he would not blight her future. She should
not wear his fetters, she should be free. If luck took sides with him;
if she remained true to her heart, then the last word had not been
spoken between them. But if he found only his old bad fortune dogging
his steps in a foreign land--which he fully expected--and she grew weary
of waiting; then this good-bye was good-bye for ever.
He was going off at dawn. Lucy had seen the last of him, and the future
lay before her like a desolate plain, upon which no hopeful star rose to
lighten the monotony. Just now, however, her mind ignored it, and,
gripping the present, hugged it close to extract its utmost bitterness.
She did not understand Joel, but she was conscious that he had steeled
his heart against her, that his handsome, haughty face was determined
not to relax into its old, loving, intimate look, with which he used to
regard her. He was going away, where he would meet many pretty women,
prettier than she, who would feel the charm of his fine manners and
handsome presence, and who would be only too eager to take his heart
captive.
Lucy knew nothing about Joel's untimely visit to her great-grandmother
in the middle of the night. Neither did she know that the old woman had
given him money. The events, which led up to his sudden determination to
go away, were hidden in obscurity, and his attitude towards her made it
impossible to enquire further. She thought that he was acting wisely, in
all but his newly assumed consideration for her. She wanted to have the
right to think of him, encourage him, dream of him; she wanted, in fact,
to be sure that he would remain hers when he got beyond the reach of her
influence. He had said that she must be free. Free! the word was a
mockery! She had given herself to him. But now he returned the gift,
which he had once pleaded for! Was it, then, he who desired to be free?
Her breast was torn with the hard sobbing of outraged affection.
Unable to bear her loneliness any longer, though shrinking from the
chance of meeting someone, she got up and looked round her. Dusk had
fallen; the pee-weeps were still flying overhead; the undersides of
their bodies glimmered in the gloom; all the glitter had died out of the
sky; and Forest Hall looked grey and frowning above its sea of green.
Lucy pushed her hands through her hair, ordered her dress, which had
become disarranged with lying on the ground, and then she went slowly
down hill. She had no clear idea what she wanted to do, but her feet
took her to Forest Hall. She would, at least, feast her eyes upon the
lamp-light from his window, if she might not look upon his face. It was
the last time she would see him for many years, perhaps for ever. A
shudder swept over her as she thought how his form would slowly vanish
from her memory. Could she keep the intensity of this hour with her till
she died, it would be some comfort through the desolate life which lay
before her. But she knew, she had often been told, that the heart sooner
or later forgot, that wounds always closed, that the mind grew
indifferent, and would some day be able to look back wonderingly upon
itself as it had once suffered. The fear of these things befalling her
became like a nightmare. She cried out against them. She felt that she
could live, so long as she might continue to feel; but life, grown
insensible to that which it had once cherished, was as dreadful a
thought as no life at all beyond the grave.
She came to the rock upon which Forest Hall was built and looked up. Its
remoteness chilled her. She paused, then walked some steps away. She
wanted to see Joel again, to reassure herself that the fears which beset
her were untrue. But if she went to the door and knocked, what could she
say? Had she not said all that was possible for a woman? Must she not
keep silent now unless he spoke? Ah! the bitterness of her sex! Had she
been the man, she would have surrounded the soul that she loved with a
wall of fire. It should never have stood in doubt, wondering if it
might warm its hands. Love would have compassed it.
She drew back into the undergrowth and sat down. The place was damp, and
smelled earthy, but she gave no heed. Here she would stay and watch for
Joel's passing by. She would stay till dawn, if he did not come sooner,
in the hope of seeing some look upon his face that would give her
comfort. She did but crave a crumb to assuage the hunger of her heart.
Lucy's despair had a deeper cause than Joel's departure. At the back of
her mind lay a thought, from which she would not draw the face-cloth to
see what kind of features it bore. It had lain there for months--a
corpse-like thing--having the power to throw a gloom over her brightest
moments. Had it not been for this baleful influence she could have dried
her tears with hopes for the future. She would have acquiesced in his
decision that she must be free, believing him only the more worthy of
her love for having made it; would have smiled bravely at the lonely
years that must pass before he could come back. But her mind was turned
into a charnel-house by that ghastly thing, which she would not bring to
the light.
It was fear.
Had she been wise and strong enough to look at it, she would have known
that below her love for this man was the apprehension that his beauty of
face and form held a shallow soul; that his sincerity was a thin sheet
of gilt over a hollow heart; that he was but a slender reed, which would
break if too heavy a weight were put upon it. But she loved, she
worshipped, she refused to see her idol's feet of clay. And the result
became that which she was trying to escape--a tormented mind.
The forest lay silent. She could still hear the bleating of sheep on the
fells, and the crying of the pee-weeps. But under the dark blue shadow
of the trees nothing moved save a sheaf of flag leaves growing in a
ditch beside the road. After a little while Jake, the rat-catcher, came
along, leading Peter's big brown bear, which he had taken out for
exercise. The thin little man and the ungainly beast passed up the path
to the house on the crag, then the curtain of silence fell again, only
lifted for a moment by the return of Jake alone. He did not see Lucy,
and went home through the forest playing upon his flute.
She wondered what time it was! She began to feel cold and thought that
she would not have the courage to stay there all night. Besides Barbara,
or the hind, or Jan Straw would soon come to look for her, and they
would come first to Forest Hall. She got to her feet meaning to go home.
Then a window was thrown open far over her head, and the loud laughing
of men went jarring above the tree-tops. Some of Joel's friends, from
the country around, had ridden over to see him off and wish him
god-speed. He was making merry, while she was eating her own heart with
hunger. She wavered, took a step forward, then a step back, hesitated,
but, in the end, impelled by a stronger power than her own, she crept up
to the house, and looked in at a window.
The room was lit with many candles, burning with long red tongues, and
much smoke. They shone upon pewter mugs, rough heads, and jocular faces.
Not a man among the lot could match Joel in bearing or grace of
countenance. He stood in the middle of them, with a tankard held high,
for he had just called a toast. She had not been in time to hear what
he had said, but she saw the smile run from lip to lip, and heard again
the loud laughing.
She sank down on the grass under the window. So this was all that Joel
cared! She felt that he had torn out her heart, and flung it still
fluttering in her face. He could amuse himself with his companions,
finding a time for mirth upon his last night in Forest Hall; he could
blot her out of his thoughts with jests and singing.
As a matter of fact Joel was thinking of her, and the toast which he had
called was to 'the lass of his heart.' It was not his nature to be
stiff, when others were genial, or pull a long face in the faces of his
friends.
But to-night he was in a reckless mood. He had torn himself away from
the hands that would have held him; he had been forced to wound the
woman he loved; he was afraid to meditate upon his present frame of mind
or the future upon which he was entering. He craved for distraction, and
was grateful to his friends for providing it. He was ready to enter into
any wild scheme that would make the night spin and the morning come
before he had time to realize what it meant.
Lucy lay stricken upon the ground; she could not tear herself away.
Chilling vapours rose and numbed her limbs. But behind her eyes she felt
flames. At times she was seized with fits of shivering. She knew that it
was dangerous for her to lie there for a heavy dew was falling--the
points of her hair hung with drops, which, now and then, rolled down her
neck into her bosom. But she wished that she might die, she wished that
the morning could find her stiff and stark under the window, with her
sightless eyes gazing up at the room, where Joel had spent the night in
merriment. And above all she wished that he might come there in the
dawn, and find her. She wanted him to carry away the eternal reproach of
a dead girl's face.
This is that which she desired, and the scene which she saw with the
vividness of delirium. His horse stood ready saddled and bridled, his
gay companions were lounging in the doorway, he was about to mount when
his eyes fell upon her body half hidden by the grass. She felt the hush
that would follow his cry of horror. She saw the remorse upon his face,
the clenching of his hands, the sweat on his brow. With grim
satisfaction she lingered over the scene. Then her mind wandered on. She
thought that she followed him into distant lands. She saw him alone in
great forests, alone on wide prairies, alone in solitary huts, but never
alone, because her dead face would be peering into his. She saw him in
crowded cities, in drinking bars, in dancing halls, and even there her
dead eyes would blot out the light of other faces. He should never
escape her, she would follow him and haunt him until in death they met
again. Then she would show him the love and forgiveness of her heart.
Yes, all that she had dreamed would come to pass. Soon she would die,
even now her limbs were dead, only her heart lived and her eyes burned.
But before she died she would look at him once more.
She raised herself with difficulty, and stared into the room. It was
empty, most of the candles had gutted out, the remains of food were
scattered here and there, the mugs lay about, as though they had been
emptied in a hurry and dropped. For a moment she leaned against the
stone, trying to recollect herself, for she was dazed with hunger and
cold and sorrow; then she groped her way round the house to the back,
where she heard voices.
Joel stood in the yard among his friends with half-a-dozen snarling
dogs. The moon was rising and she could see him clearly. But she kept
behind an outhouse so that no one should spy her. The knot of figures
broke up into groups, and in the vacant spot Peter Fleming's bear stood,
chained to the pump. It growled, dogs snapped, men laughed and whips
were cracked.
Lucy looked on aghast. Was she dreaming? Was the scene a painting of her
own imagination or was it real life? Did Joel stand near her, gazing at
the bear-baiting, sometimes with reluctance--as though his heart was not
in it--and then with gradually growing excitement? Lucy's mind was
unstrung. All that she saw and heard came to her as through a mist. She
tried to rally herself, to get a grip of something that would bring her
senses back. Her hand passed up and down the stone wall of the outhouse
beside which she crouched, and finding a big rusty nail, she clung to it
as a drowning man might cling to a spar. It gave her support.
The yard into which she gazed was a chaos. Men with whips and snarling
dogs circled about the pump. Limbs and bodies seemed to be tied together
in a knot that heaved and heaved in an attempt to undo itself and could
not. Lucy thought it was a nightmare. She dared not move, dared hardly
breathe, like one, who, in sleep, is subjugated by dreadful visions.
But a change came over the barbaric revelry. The men surged aside, the
dogs were lashed off and flew howling to the rear. Lucy wondered what
had happened, feeling a vague relief, as though a weight had been
lifted from her brain. She swept her eyes round the yard. Surely her
sister stood yonder! Barbara it must be, for the form was that of a
woman though as tall as the tallest man. She stood in the clearing by
the bear, whose growling still continued to make a thunderous undertone
to the shriller sounds of men and dogs.
The sight of her sister brought a breath of life to the stricken girl.
She had felt as though she were dying, but not peacefully as those who
are willing to lay down existence should die. Her path had been haunted
by evil shapes and visions. The Valley of the Shadow was as Pilgrim
found it--"full of hobgoblins, satyrs, and dragons of the pit, overhung
with the discouraging clouds of confusion." Barbara's coming dispelled
the horror. It was the visitation of an angel. From Lucy's distracted
mind the vapours cleared. She could think and see clearly again.
She looked round for Joel; he had gone in with his friends. Only Barbara
remained to see to the bear and Mally Ray, sour and stern, came out to
help her.
Then Lucy got to her numbed feet, and crept forward.
"Barbara," she whispered, "Barbara."
Her sister turned.
"Why, lass," she said calmly, "I's been looking for thee high and low.
Come home, Lucy, come away home."
The girl clung to her with both hands, sobbing:
"I's been baited like yon beast, Barbara. Oh! I's wounded and sick and
weary. I's been hurt by the hands I kissed, and life's dark as a cloudy
night."