A LONDON GARRET.
There was one other place he must see before he went out again from this
region of many memories, to which all that he could call life was
linked--the little farmstead on the hills, which, of all places, had
been his favorite haunt when a boy, and which had been the last spot he
had visited before fleeing from England. Phebe Marlowe he had seen; if
he went away at once he could see her home before her return to it. Next
to his mother and his wife, he knew that Phebe was most likely to
recognize him, if recognition by any one was possible. Most likely old
Marlowe was dead; but if not, his senses would surely be too dull to
detect him.
The long, hot, white highway, dusty with a week's drought, carried back
his thoughts so fully to old times that he walked on unconscious of the
noontide heat and the sultriness of the road. Yet when he came to the
lanes, green overhead and underfoot, and as silent as the
mountain-heights round Engelberg, he felt the solace of the change. All
the recollections treasured up in the secret cells of memory were
springing into light at every step; and these were remembrances less
bitter than those the sight of his lost home had called to mind. He felt
himself less of a phantom here, where no one met him or crossed his
path, than in the streets where many faces looking blankly at him wore
the well-known features of old comrades. By the time he gained the
moorlands, and looked across its purple heather and yellow gorse, his
mind was in a healthier mood than it had been for years. The low
thatched roof of the small homestead, and the stunted and twisted trees
surrounding it, seemed like a possible refuge to him, where for a little
while he might find shelter from the storm of life. He pressed on with
eagerness, and found himself quickly at the door, which he had never met
with fastened.
But it was locked now. After knocking twice he tried the latch, but it
did not open. He went to the little window, uncurtained as usual and
peered in, but all was still and dark; there was not a glimmer of light
on the hearth, where he had always seen some glimmering embers. There
was no sign of life about the place; no dog barking, no sheep bleating,
or fowls fluttering about the little farm-yard. All the innocent,
joyous gayety of the place had vanished; yet he could see that it was
not falling into decay; the thatch was in repair, the dark interior,
dimly visible through the window, was as it used to be. It was not a
ruin, but it was not a home. A home might have received him with its
hospitable walls, or a ruin might have given him an hour's shelter. But
Phebe's door was shut against him, though it would have done him good to
stand within it once more, a penitent man.
He was turning away sadly, when a loud rustic voice called to him; and
Simon Nixey, almost hidden under a huge load of dried ferns, came into
sight. Jean Merle stepped down the stone causeway of the farm-yard to
open the gate for him.
"What are you doing here?" he inquired suspiciously.
"A wood-carver, called old Marlowe, used to live here," he answered,
"what has become of him?"
"Dead!" said Simon; "dead this many a year. Why, if you know anything
you ought to know that."
"What did he die of?" asked Jean Merle.
"A broken heart, if ever man did," answered Simon; "he'd saved a mint o'
money by scraping and moiling; and he lost it all when there was a run
on the Old Bank over thirteen years ago. He couldn't talk about it like
other folks, poor old Dummy! and it struck inwards, as you may say. It
killed him as certain as if they'd shot a bullet into him."
Jean Merle staggered as if Simon had struck him a heavy blow. He had not
thought of anything like this, old Marlowe dying broken-hearted, and
Phebe left alone in the world. Simon Nixey seemed pleased at the
impression his words had produced.
"Ay!" he said, "it was hard on old Marlowe; and drove my cousin, John
Nixey, into desperate ways o' drinking. Not but all the money was paid
up; only it was too late for them two. Every penny was paid, so as folks
had nothing to say against the Old Bank. Only money won't bring a dead
man back to life again. I offered Phebe to make her my wife before I
knew it'ud be paid back; but she always said no, till I grew tired of
it, and married somebody else."
"And where is she now?" inquired Jean Merle.
"Oh! she's quite the fine lady," answered Simon. "Mrs. Roland Sefton,
Lord Riversdale's daughter that was, took quite a fancy to her, and had
her to live with her in London; not as a servant, you know, but as a
friend; and she paints pictures wonderful. My mother, who lives
housekeeper with Mr. Clifford, hears say she can get sixty pounds or
more for one likeness. Think of that now! If she'd been my wife what a
fortune she'd have been to me!"
"Has she sold this place?" asked Jean Merle.
"There it is," he replied; "she gave her father a faithful promise never
to part with it, or I'd have bought it myself. She comes here once a
year with Miss Hilda and Mr. Felix, and they stay a week or two; and
it's shut up all the rest of the time. I've got the key here if you'd
like to look inside at old Dummy's carving."
How familiar, yet how different, the interior of the cottage seemed! He
knew all these carvings, curious and beautiful, which lined the walls
and decorated every article of the old oak furniture. But the hearth was
cold, and there was no pleasant disorder about the small house telling
its story of daily work. In the deep recess of the window-frame, where
the western sun was already shining, stood old Marlowe's copy of a
carved crucifix, which he had himself once brought from the Tyrol, and
lent to him before finding a place for it in his own home. The sacred
head was bowed down so low as to be almost hidden under the shadow of
the crown of thorns. At the foot of the cross, in delicately small old
English letters, the old man had carved the words, "Come unto me all ye
that be weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He remembered
pointing out the mistake that he had made to old Marlowe.
"I like it best," said the dumb man; "I have often been weary, but not
with labor; weary of myself, weary of the world, weary of life, weary of
everything but my Phebe. That is what Christ says to me."
Jean Merle could see the old man's speaking face again, and the fingers
moving less swiftly when spelling out the words to him, than when he was
talking to Phebe. Weary! weary! was it not so with him? Could any man on
earth be more weary than he was?
He loitered back to Riversborough through the cool of the evening, with
the pale stars shining dimly in the twilight of the summer sky;
pondering, brooding over what he had seen and heard that day. He had
already done much of what he had come to England to do; but what next?
What was the path he ought to take now? He was in a labyrinth, where
there were many false openings leading no-whither; and he had no clue to
guide him. All these years he had lain as one dead in the coil he had
wound about himself, but now he was living again. There was agony in the
life that he had entered into, but it was better than the apathy of his
death in life.
He returned to London, and hired a garret for a small weekly rent, where
he would lodge until he could resolve what to do. But week after week
passed without bringing to his mind the solution of the problem.
Remorse had given place to repentance; but despair had not been
succeeded by hope. There was nothing to hope for. The irrevocable past
stood between him and any reparation for his sin which his soul
earnestly desired to make. An easy thing, and light, it would have been
to put himself into the power of his enemy, Mr. Clifford, and bear the
penalty of the law. He had suffered a hundred fold more than justice
would have exacted. The broken law demanded satisfaction, and it would
have been a blessed relief to him to give it. But that could never be.
He could never bear the penalty of his crime without dragging Felicita
into depths of shame and suffering deeper than they would have been if
he had borne it at first. The fame she had won for herself would lift up
his infamy and hers to the intolerable gaze of a keen and bitter
publicity. He must blacken her fair reputation if he sought to appease
his own conscience.
He made no effort to find out where she and his children were living.
But one after another, in the solitude of his garret, he read every book
Felicita had written. They gave him no pleasure, and awoke in him no
admiration, for he read them through different eyes from her other
readers. There was great bitterness of soul for him in many of the
sentences she had penned; now and then he came upon some to which he
alone held the true key. He felt that he, her husband, was dwelling in
her mind as a type of subtle selfishness and weak ambition. When she
depicted a good or noble character it was almost invariably a woman, not
a man; it was never a man past his early manhood. However varied their
circumstances and temperaments, they were in the main worldly and mean;
sometimes they were successful hypocrites, deceiving those nearest and
dearest to them.
It was a wholesome penance to him, perhaps, but it shook and troubled
his soul to its very depths. His sin had ruined the poor weakminded
drunkard, John Nixey, and hastened the end of dumb old Marlowe; these
consequences of it must, at any time, have clouded his own after-life.
But it had also wrought a baneful change in the spirit of the woman whom
he loved. It was he who had slain within her the hope, and the love, and
the faith in her fellow-men which had been needed for the full
perfecting of her genius.