NEAR THE END.
Felicita had followed the urgent advice of her physicians in giving up
writing for a season. There was no longer any necessity for her work,
as some time since the money which Roland Sefton had fraudulently
appropriated, had been paid back with full interest, and she began to
feel justified in accepting the income from her marriage settlement.
During the winter and spring she spent her days much as other women of
her class and station, in a monotonous round of shopping, driving in the
parks, visiting, and being visited, partly for Hilda's sake, and partly
driven to it for want of occupation; but short as the time was which she
gave to this life, she grew inexpressibly weary of it. Early, in May she
turned into Phebe's studio, which she had seldom entered since her
portrait was finished. This portrait was in the Academy Exhibition, and
she was constantly receiving empty compliments about it.
"Dear Phebe!" she exclaimed, "I have tried fashionable life to see how
much it is worth, and oh! it is altogether hollow and inane. I did not
expect much from it, but it is utter weariness to me."
"And you will go back to your writing?" said Phebe.
Felicita hesitated for a moment. There was a worn and harassed
expression on her pale face, as if she had not slept or rested well for
a long time, which touched Phebe's heart.
"Not yet," she answered; "I am going on a journey. I shall start for
Switzerland to-night."
"To Switzerland! To-night!" echoed Phebe. "Oh, no! you must not, you
cannot. And alone? How can you think of going alone?"
"I went alone once," she answered, smiling with her lips, though her
dark eyes grew no brighter, "and I can go again. I shall manage very
well. I fancied you would not care to go with me," she added, sighing.
"But I must go with you!" cried Phebe; "did I not promise long ago? Only
don't go to-night, stay a day or two."
"No, no," she said with feverish impatience, "I have made all my
arrangements. Nobody must know, and Hilda is gone down into Essex for a
week, and my cousins fancy I am going to the sea-side for a few days'
rest. I must start to-night, in less than four hours, Phebe. You cannot
be ready in time?"
But she spoke wistfully, as if it would be pleasant to hear Phebe say
she would go with her. For a few minutes Phebe was lost in bewildered
thought. Felicita had told her some months ago that she must go to
Engelberg before she could give her consent to Felix marrying Alice, but
it had escaped her memory, pushed out by more immediate and more present
cares. And now she could not tell what Jean Merle would have her do. To
discover suddenly that he was alive, and in England, nay, at
Riversborough itself, under their old roof, would be too great a shock
for Felicita. Phebe dared not tell her. Yet, to let her start off alone
on this fruitless errand, to find only an empty hut at Engelberg, with
no trace of its occupant left behind, was heartless, and might prove
equally injurious to Felicita. There was no time to communicate with
Riversborough, she must come to a decision for herself, and at once. The
white, worn face, with its air of sad determination, filled her with
deep and eager pity.
"Oh! I will go with you," she cried. "I could never bear you to go
alone. But is there nothing you can tell me? Only trust me. What trouble
carries you there? Why must you go to Engelberg before Felix marries?"
She had caught Felicita's small cold hand between her own and looked up
beseechingly into her face. Oh! if she would but now, at last, throw off
the burden which had so long bowed her down, and tell her secret, she
could let her know that this painful pilgrimage was utterly needless.
But the sweet, sad, proud lips were closed, and the dark eyes looking
down steadily into Phebe's, betrayed no wavering of her determined
reticence.
"You shall come with me as far as Lucerne, dear Phebe," she answered,
stooping down to kiss her uplifted face, "but I must go alone to
Engelberg."
There was barely time enough for Phebe to make any arrangements, there
was not a moment for deliberation. She wrote a few hurried words to Jean
Merle, imploring him to follow them at once, and promising to detain
Felicita on their way, if possible. Felicita's own preparations were
complete, and her route marked out, with the time of steamers and trains
set down. Through Paris, Mulhausen, and Basle she hastened on to
Lucerne. Now she had set out on this dreary and dolorous path there
could be no rest for her until she reached the end. Phebe recognized
this as soon as they had started. It would be impossible to detain
Felicita on the way.
But Jean Merle could not be far behind them, a few hours would bring him
to them after they had reached Lucerne. Felicita was very silent as they
travelled on by the swiftest trains, and Phebe was glad of it. For what
could she say to her? She was herself lost in a whirl of bewilderment,
and of mingled hope and fear. Could it possibly be that Felicita would
learn that Jean Merle was still living, and the mode and manner of his
life through this long separation, and yet stand aloof from him, afar
off, as one on whom he had no claim, claim for pity and love? But if she
could relent towards him, how must it be in the future? It could never
be that she would own the wrong she had committed openly in the face of
the world. What was to happen now? Phebe was hardly less feverishly
agitated than Felicita herself.
It was evening when they arrived at Lucerne, and Felicita was forced to
rest until the morning. They sat together in a small balcony opening out
of her chamber, which overlooked the Lake, where the moonbeams were
playing in glistening curves over the quiet ripples of the water. All
the mountains round it looked black in the dim light, and the rugged
summit of Pilatus, still slightly sprinkled with snow, frowned down upon
them; but southward, behind the dark range of lower hills, there stood
out against the almost black-blue of the sky a broken line of pale,
mysterious peaks, which might have been merely pallid clouds lying along
the horizon but for their stedfast, unaltering immobility. They were the
Engelberg Alps, with the snowy Titlis gleaming highest among them; and
Felicita's face, wan and pallid as themselves, was set towards them.
"You will let me come with you to-morrow?" said Phebe, in a tone of
painful entreaty.
"No, no," she answered. "I could not bear to have even you at Engelberg
with me. I must visit that grave alone. And yet I know you love me, dear
Phebe."
"Dearly!" she sobbed.
"Yes, you love me dearly," she repeated sorrowfully, "but not as you
once did; even your heart is changed towards me. If you went with me
to-morrow I might lose all the love that is left. I cannot afford to
lose that, my dear."
"You could never lose it!" answered Phebe. "I love you differently? Yes,
but not less. I love you now as Christ loves us all, more for God's sake
than our own; and that is the deepest, most faithful love. That can
never be worn out or repulsed. As Christ has loved me, so I love you, my
Felicita."
Her voice had fallen into an almost inaudible whisper, as she knelt down
beside her, pressing her lips upon the thin, cold hands lying listlessly
on Felicita's lap. It had been as an impulsive girl, worshipping her
from a lowly inferiority, that Phebe had been used long ago to kiss
Felicita's hand. But this was the humility of a great love, willing to
help, and seeking to save her. Felicita felt it through every fibre of
her sensitive nature. For an instant she thought it might be possible
that Phebe had caught some glimmer of the truth. With her weary and dim
eyes lifted up to the pale crests of the mountains, beneath which lay
the miserable secret of her life, she hesitated as to whether she could
tell Phebe all. But the effort to admit any human soul into the inner
recesses of her own was too great for her.
"Christ loves me, you say," she murmured, "I don't know; I never felt
it. But I have felt sure of your love; and next to Felix and Hilda you
have stood nearest to me. Love me always, and in spite of all, my dear."
She lifted up her bowed head and kissed her lips with a long and
lingering kiss. Then Phebe knew that she was bent upon going alone and
immediately to Engelberg.
* * * * *
The icy air of the morning, blowing down from the mountains where the
winter's snow was but partially melted, made Felicita shiver, though her
mind was too busy to notice why. Phebe had seen that she was warmly
clad, and had come down to the boat with her to start her on this last
day's journey; but Felicita had scarcely opened her pale lips to say
good-by. She stood on the quay, watching the boat as long as the white
steam from the funnel was in sight, and then she turned away, blind to
all the scenery about her, in the heaviness of heart she felt for the
sorrowful soul going out on so sad and vain a quest. There had been no
time for Jean Merle to overtake them, and now Felicita was gone when a
few words from her would have stopped her. But Phebe had not dared to
utter them.
Felicita too had not seen either the sunlit hills lying about her, or
Phebe watching her departure. She had no thought for anything but what
there might be lying before her, in that lonely mountain village, to
which, after fourteen years, her reluctant feet were turned. Possibly
she might find no trace of the man who had been so long dead to her and
to all the world, and thus be baffled and defeated, yet relieved, at the
first stage of her search. For she did not desire to find him. Her heart
would be lightened of its miserable load, if she should discover that
Jean Merle was dead, and buried in the same quiet cemetery where the
granite cross marked the grave of Roland Sefton. That was a thing to be
hoped for. If Jean Merle was living still, and living there, what should
she say to him? Wild hopes and desires would be awakened within him if
he found her seeking after him? Nay, it might possibly be that he would
insist upon making their mutual sin known to the world, by claiming to
return to her and her children. It seemed a desperate thing to have
done; and for the first time since she left London she repented of
having done it. Was she not sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind? There
was still time for her to retrace her steps and go back home, the home
she owed altogether to herself; yet one which this man, whom she had not
seen for so long a time, had a right to enter as the master of it. What
fatal impulse had driven her to leave it on so wild and fruitless an
errand?
Yet she felt she could no longer live without knowing the fate of Jean
Merle. Her heart had been gnawing itself ever since they parted with
vague remorses and self-accusations, slumbering often, but now aroused
into an activity that could not be laid to rest. This morning, for the
first time, beneath all her perplexity and fear and hope to find him
dead, there came to her a strange, undefined, scarcely conscious
tenderness towards the miserable man, whom she had last seen standing in
her presence, an uncouth, ragged, weather-beaten peasant. The man had
been her husband, the father of her children, and a deep, keen pain was
stirring in her soul, partly of the old love, for she had once loved
him, and partly of the pity she felt for him, as she began to realize
the difference there had existed between her lot and his.
She scarcely felt how worn out she was, how dangerously fatigued with
this rapid travelling and the resistless current of agitation which had
possessed her. As she journeyed onwards she was altogether unconscious
of the roads she traversed, only arousing herself when any change of
conveyance made it necessary. Her brain was busy over the opinion, more
than once expressed by Phebe, that every man could live down the evil
consequences of his sin, if he had courage and faith enough. "If God
forgives us, man will forgive us," said Phebe. But Felicita pondered
over the possibility of Roland having paid the penalty of his crime, and
going back again to take up his life, walking more humbly in it
evermore, with no claim to preeminence save that of most diligently
serving his fellow-men. She endeavored to picture herself receiving him
back again from the convict prison, with all its shameful memories
branded on him, and looking upon him again as her husband and the father
of her children; and she found herself crying out to her own heart that
it would have been impossible to her. Phebe might have done it, but
she--never!
The journey, though not more than fourteen miles from Stans to
Engelberg, occupied several hours, so broken up the narrow road was by
the winter's rains and the melting snow. The steep ascent between
Grafenort and Engelberg was dangerous, the more so as a heavy
thunderstorm broke over it; but Felicita remained insensible to any
peril. At length the long, narrow valley lay before her, stretching
upwards to the feet of the rocky hills. The thunderstorm that had met
them on the road had been raging fiercely in this mountain caldron, and
was but just passing away in long, low mutterings, echoed and prolonged
amid the precipitous walls of rock. Tall, trailing, spectre-like clouds
slowly followed each other in solemn and stately procession up the
valley, as though amid their light yet impenetrable folds of vapor they
bore the invisible form of some mysterious being; whether in triumph or
in sorrow it was impossible to tell. The sun caught their gray crests
and tinged them with rainbow colors; and as they floated unhastingly
along, the valley behind them seemed to spring into a new life of
sunshine and mirth.