THE CRISIS.
Hester sat still after Harry had left her as if she had been frozen to
stone. But stone was no fit emblem of a frame which was tingling in
every nerve, or of a heart which was on fire with horror and anguish and
black bewilderment. The look which Harry could not understand, which
stopped him in what he was saying, and which even now he could not
forget--was still upon her face. She was contemplating something
terrible enough to bring a soul to pause, a strange and awful solution
of her mystery; and the first glance at it had stunned her. When she had
assured him that Edward was coming back that night, a hurried note which
she had received that morning seemed to unfold itself in the air before
her, where she could read it in letters as of fire. It was written on a
scrap of paper blurred, as if folded while the ink was still wet:--
"The moment has come that I have so long foreseen. I am coming home
to-morrow for a few hours. Meet me at dusk under the holly at the Grange
gate. The most dangerous place is the safest; it must be for ever or no
more at all. Be ready, be calm, we shall be together, my only love.--E.
V."
This was how she knew that he was coming back. God help her! She looked
in Harry's face, with an instantaneous realisation of the horror of it,
of the falsehood that was implied, of her own sudden complicity in some
monstrous wrong. "I know he is coming home to-night." What was it that
turned Medusa into that mask of horror and gave her head its fatal
force? Was it the appalling vision of some unsuspected abyss of
falsehood and treachery suddenly opening at her feet, over which she
stood arrested, turned into an image of death, blinding and slaying
every spectator who could look and see? Hester did not know anything
about classic story, but she remembered vaguely about a face with snaky
locks that turned men to stone. She told Harry the truth, yet it was a
cruel lie. She herself, though she knew nothing and was tortured with
terror and questionings, seemed to become at once an active agent in the
dark mystery, a liar, a traitor, a false friend. Harry looked at her
with concern and wonder, seeing no doubt that she was pale, that she
looked ill, perhaps that she was unhappy, but never divining that she
was helping in a fatal deceit against her will, contrary to her every
desire. He did not doubt for a moment what she said, or put any meaning
to it that was not simply in the words. He never dreamt that Edward's
return was not real, or that it did not at once satisfy every question
and set things if not right, yet in the way of being right. He drew a
long breath of relief. That was all he wanted to know. Edward once back
again at the head of affairs, everything would resume its usual course.
To hear him say "Then that's all right!" and never to say a word, to
feel herself gazing in his eyes--was it with the intention of blinding
those eyes and preventing them from divining the truth? or was it in
mere horror of herself as the instrument of a lie, of him, him whom she
would fain have thought perfect, as falsehood incarnate? There was a
moment when Hester knew nothing more, when, though she was on fire and
her thoughts like flame, lighting up a wild world of dismay about her,
she yet felt as if turned into stone.
The note itself when she received it, in the quiet freshness of the
morning, all ordinary and calm, her mother scarcely awake as yet, the
little household affairs just beginning, those daily processes of
cleaning and providing without which no existence can be--had been
agitation enough. It had come to her like a sudden sharp stroke, cutting
her loose from everything, like the cutting of a rope which holds a
boat, or the stroke that severs a branch. In a moment she was separated
from all that soft established order, from the life that had clasped her
all round as if it would hold her fast for ever. Her eyes had scarcely
run over those hurried lines before she felt a wild sensation of
freedom, the wind in her face, the gurgle of the water, the sense of
flight. She put out her hands to screen herself, not to be carried off
by the mere breeze, the strong-blowing gale of revolution. A thrill of
strange delight, yet of fright and alarm, ran through her veins--the
flood of her sensations overwhelmed her. Its suddenness, its nearness,
its certainty, brought an intoxication of feeling. All this monotony to
be over; a new world of adventure, of novelty, of love, and daring and
movement, and all to begin to-night. These thoughts mounted to her head
in waves. And as the minutes hurried along and the world grew more and
more awake, and Mrs. John came down stairs to breakfast, the fire in
Hester's veins grew hotter and hotter. To-night, in the darkness--for
ever or no more at all. It seemed incredible that she could contain it
all, and keep her secret and make no sign. All this time no question of
it as of a matter on which she must make up her mind, and in which there
was choice, had come into her thoughts. She was not usually passive, but
for the moment she received these words as simple directions which there
could be no doubt of her carrying out. His passion and certainty took
possession of her: everything seemed distinct and necessary--the meeting
in the dusk, the hurried journey, the flight through the darkness. For
great excitement stops as much as it accelerates the action of the mind.
Her thoughts flew out upon the wind, into the unknown, but they did not
pause to discuss the first steps. Had he directed her to do all this at
once, in the morning instead of in the dusk, she would have obeyed his
instructions instinctively like a child, without stopping to inquire
why.
But this mood was changed by the simplest of domestic arguments. Mrs.
John, fresh and smiling in her black gown and her white cap, came down
to breakfast. Not a suspicion of anything out of the ordinary routine
was in Mrs. John's mind. It was a lovely morning; the sunshine pleased
her as it did the flowers who hold up their heads to it and open out and
feel themselves alive. Her chair was on the sunny side of the table, as
it always was. She liked to sit in it and be warmed by it. She began to
talk of all the little household things as she took her tea; of how the
strawberries would soon be cheap enough for jam. That was the one thing
that remained in Hester's mind years after. In a moment, while her
thoughts were full of a final and sudden flight, that little speech
about the jam and the strawberries brought her to herself. She felt
herself to come back with a sudden harsh jarring and stumbling to solid
ground. "The strawberries!" she said, looking at her mother with wild
eyes of dismay as if there had been something tragic in them. "In about
a fortnight, my dear, they will be quite cheap enough," Mrs. John said,
with a contented nod of her head. In a fortnight! a fortnight!--a
century would not mean so much. A fortnight hence what would the mother
be thinking, where would the daughter be? Then there came to Hester
another revelation as sudden, as all-potent as the first--that it was
Impossible--that she must be mad or dreaming. What! fly, go away,
disappear, whatever might be the word? She suddenly laughed out, her
mother could not tell why, dropping a china cup, over which Mrs. John
made many lamentations. It broke a set, it was old Worcester, worth a
great deal of money. It had been her grandmother's. "Oh, my dear, I wish
you would not be so careless!" But of anything else that was broken, or
of the mystery of that sudden laugh which corresponded with no
expression of mirth on Hester's face, Mrs. John knew nothing.
Impossible! Why there was not a word to be said, not a moment's
hesitation. It could not be--how could it be? Edward, a young man full
of engagements, caught by a hundred bonds of duty, of work, of
affection--why, if nothing else, of business--to whom it was difficult
to be absent for a week, who had sometimes to run up and down to town in
twenty-four hours--that he should be able to go away! He must mean
something else by it, she said to herself; the words must bear a second
signification. And she herself, who had no business, or duty, or tie of
any sort except one, but that one enough to move heaven and earth, her
mother--who in a fortnight would be making the jam if the strawberries
were cheap enough. The thought moved her to laughter again, a laugh out
of a strangely solemn, excited countenance. But this sudden revulsion of
feeling had given the whole matter a certain grotesque mixture of the
ludicrous: it demonstrated the impossibility of any such overturn with
such a sarcastic touch. Hester said to herself that she must have been
nearly making some tragical mistake, and compromising her character for
good sense for ever. Of course it was impossible. Whatever he meant by
the words he did not mean that.
After breakfast, when she was alone and had read the note over again,
and could find no interpretation of it but the first one, and had begun
to enter into the agonies of a mental struggle, Hester relieved the
conflict by putting it down on paper--writing to Edward, to herself, in
the first instance, through him. She asked him what he meant, what other
sense there was in his words which she had not grasped? He go away! how
could he, with Catherine trusting in him, with Vernon's depending upon
him, with his work and his reputation, and so much at stake; and she
with her mother? Did not he see that it was impossible? Impossible! He
might say that she should have pointed this out before, but she had
never realised it; it had been words to her, no more; and it was words
now, was it not? words that meant something beyond her understanding--a
test of her understanding; but she had no understanding it appeared.
Hester thought that she would send this letter to await him when he
reached the Grange, and then she would keep his appointment and find
him--ready to laugh at her, as she had laughed at herself. She put it
hurriedly into her desk when Harry appeared, with a guilty sense that
Harry, if he saw it, would not only divine whom it was addressed to, but
even what it said. But Harry was no warlock, and though he saw the
hurried movement and the withdrawal of the papers, never asked himself
what it was.
But after Harry was gone, she wrote no more. She gave one glance at the
pages full of anxious pleading, of tender remonstrances, of love and
perplexity; then closed the lid upon them, as if it had been the lid of
a coffin, and locked it securely. They were obsolete, and out of date,
as if her grandmother had written them. They had nothing to do with the
real question; they were as fictitious as if they had been taken out of
a novel. All that she had said was foolishness, like the drivelling of
an idiot. Duty! she had asked triumphantly, how could he disengage
himself from that? how could she leave her mother behind?--when, great
heaven! all that he wanted was to shake duty off, and get rid of every
tie. Harry's revelation brought such a contrast before her, that Hester
could but stare at the two pictures with dumb consternation. On one side
the bank in gloomy disarray, its ordinary course of action stopped, the
business "all wrong," poor people besieging its doors for their money,
the clerks bewildered, and not knowing what to do; and poor Harry
faithful, but incapable, knowing no better than they. On the other,
Edward, in all a bridegroom's excitement, with the woman he loved beside
him, travelling far away into the night, flushed with pleasure, with
novelty, with the success of his actions whatever they were, and with
the world before him. It seemed to Hester that she saw the two scenes,
although she herself would have to be an actor in one of them if it ever
came to pass. She saw them to the most insignificant details. The bank
(Vernon's--that sheet-anchor of the race, for which she herself felt a
hot partisanship, a desire to build it up with the prop of her own life
if that would do it), full of angry and miserable people cursing its
very name--while the fugitives, with every comfort about them, were fast
getting out of sight and hearing of everything that could recall what
they had left. Deserter! traitor! Were these the words that would be
used? and was he going to fly from the ruin he had made? That last most
terrible question of all began to force itself to her lips, and all the
air seemed to grow alive and be filled with darting tongues and voices
and hissings of reply. And then it was that Hester felt as if her very
hair began to writhe and twist in living horror about her shoulders, and
that her eyes, wide with fright and terror, were becoming like Medusa's,
things that might turn all that was living to stone.
But to think through a long summer day is a terrible ordeal, and many
changes and turns of the mind are inevitable. It was a pitiless long
day, imagine it! in June, when not a moment is spared you. It was very
bright, all nature enjoying the light. The sun seemed to stand still in
the sky, as on that day when he stopped to watch the slaughter in
Ajalon; and even when he disappeared at last, the twilight lasted and
lingered as if it would never be done.
Hester had put away her long letter of appeal, but she wrote a brief,
almost stern note, which she sent to the Grange in the early evening. It
ran thus:--
"Harry has told us that all is going wrong at the bank, that you
are wanted urgently there, that only you can set things right.
You cannot have known this when you wrote to me. I take it for
granted this changes everything, but I will come to-night to the
place you name."
She sent her note in the afternoon, and then waited, like a condemned
criminal, faintly hoping still for a reprieve; for perhaps to know this
would stop him still; perhaps he had not known it. She went out just
after sunset, escaping not without difficulty from her mother's care.
"It is too late for you to go out by yourself," Mrs. John said. "I do
not like it. You girls are so independent. I never went beyond the
garden by myself at your age."
"I am only going to the Common," Hester said, with a quiver in her
voice. She kissed her mother very tenderly. She was not in the habit of
bestowing caresses, so that this a little startled Mrs. John; but she
returned it warmly, and bade her child take a shawl.
Did Hester think she might yet be carried away by the flood of the
other's will, against her own, that she took her leave so solemnly? It
was rather a sort of imaginative reflection of what she might have been
doing if---- She had gone but a little way when she met Captain Morgan.
"Why did not you tell me you were going out?" he said. "I have tired
myself now; I can't go with you. I have been inquiring about the
midnight train for Emma, who did not get off this morning after all."
"Is she going by the midnight train?" Hester asked, with a sense of
inconvenience in it that she could hardly explain.
"Yes, if it is possible to get her off," said the captain; "but, my
dear, it is too late for you to walk alone."
"No, oh no. It is only for this once," Hester cried, with involuntary
passion unawares.
"My dear child!" said the old man. He was disturbed by her looks. "I
will go in and get an overcoat, and join you directly, Hester; for
though I am tired I would rather be over-tired than that you should walk
alone."
The only way that Hester could defend herself was to hurry away out of
sight before he came out again. She had a dark dress, a veil over her
face. Her springy step indeed was not easy to be mistaken, nor the
outline of her alert and vigorous figure, which was so much unlike
loitering. She got away into the fields by a lonely path, where she
could be safe she thought till the time of her appointment came. What
was to happen at that appointment she could not tell. Excitement was so
high in her veins that she had no time to ask herself what she would
answer him if he kept to his intention, or what she should do. Was it on
the cards still that she might follow him to the end of the world?
Edward had arrived late, only in time for dinner. He got Hester's note
and read it with an impatient exclamation.
"The little fool," he said to himself, "as if that was not the very----"
and tore it in a thousand pieces. He dressed for dinner very carefully,
as was his wont, and was very pleasant at table, telling Catherine
various incidents of his journey. "You must make the most of me while
you have me," he said, "for I have a pile of letters in my room that
would make any one ill to look at. I must get through them
to-night--there may be something important. It is a pity Harry doesn't
take more of a share."
"I think for my part it is one of the best things about him," said
Catherine, "that he always acknowledges your superiority. He knows he
will never set the Thames on fire."
"And why should he?" said Edward: "a man may be a very good man of
business without that. I wish he would go into things more; then he
would always be ready in case of an emergency."
"What emergency?" said Catherine, almost sharply. "You are too
far-seeing, I think."
"Oh, I might die, you know," said Edward, with an abrupt laugh.
"Anything might happen," she said; "but there are many more likely
contingencies to be provided for. What is that?" she added quickly.
The butler had brought in and presented to Edward upon a large silver
salver which called attention to it, a small, white, square object.
"Return tickets, ma'am," said the butler solemnly, "as dropped out of
Mr. Edward's overcoat."
"Return tickets! you are not going back again, Edward?"
"I am always running up and down, Aunt Catherine. I constantly take
return tickets," he said quietly, pocketing the tickets and giving the
butler a look which he did not soon forget. For there were two of them,
which Marshall could not understand. As for Catherine, this gave her a
little pang, she could not tell why. But Edward had never found so much
to tell her before. He kept her amused during the whole time of dinner.
Afterwards he took her up stairs into the drawing-room and put her into
her favourite chair, and did everything that a tender son could have
done for her comfort. It was growing dusk by this time, and he had not
been able to keep himself from giving a glance now and then at the sky.
"Do you think we are going to have a storm, Edward?" Catherine asked.
"I think it looks a little like it. You had better have your window
shut," he said.
He had never been more kind. He kissed her hand and her cheek when he
went away, saying it was possible if his letters were very tough that he
might not come up stairs again before she went to bed.
"Your hand is hot," she said, "my dear boy. I am afraid you are a little
feverish."
"It has been very warm in town, and I am always best, you know, in
country air," was what he said.
She sat very quietly for some time after he had left her, then seeing no
appearance of any storm, rose and opened her window again. He was almost
too careful of her. As she did so she heard a faint sound below as of
some one softly closing the door. Was it Edward going out
notwithstanding his letters? She put herself very close to the window to
watch. He had a small bag in his hand, and stood for a moment at the
gate looking up and down; then he made a quick step beyond it as if to
meet some one. Catherine watched, straining her eyes through the gloom.
She was not angry. It brought all her fears, her watchfulness, back in a
moment. But if it was true that he loved Hester, of course he must wish
to see her--if she was so unmaidenly, so unwomanly as to consent to come
out like this to meet him. And was it at her own very door that the
tryst was? This roused Catherine. She heard a murmur of voices on the
other side of the great holly. The summer night was so soft, every sound
was carried by the air. Here was her opportunity to discover who it was.
She did not pause to think, but taking up her shawl in her hand threw it
over her head as she stole down stairs. It was black and made her almost
invisible, her dress being black too. She came out at a side door,
narrowly escaping the curiosity of Marshall. The bright day had fallen
into a very dim evening. There was neither moon nor stars. She stole out
by the side door, avoiding the path. Her footsteps made no sound on the
grass. She crossed the gravel on tiptoe, and wound her way among the
shrubberies till she stood exactly under the holly-tree. The wall there
was about up to a man's shoulders; and it was surmounted by a railing.
She stood securely under the shadow of it, with her heart beating very
loudly, and listened to their voices. Ah, there could be no doubt about
it. She said to herself that she never had any doubt. It was the voice
of _that girl_ which answered Edward's low, passionate appeals. There
are some cases in which honour demands a sacrifice scarcely possible.
She had it in her power to satisfy herself at once as to the terms upon
which they were, and what they expected and wished for. She had no
intention of eavesdropping. It was one of the sins to which Catherine
was least disposed; but to turn back without satisfying herself seemed
impossible now.