THE AWAKENING
Night after night for a week afterwards, Mysie lay awake till far on
into the morning. She seemed to be face to face with life's realities at
last. The silly, shallow love stories held no fascination for her. The
love affairs of "Jean the Mill Girl" could not rouse her interest. Often
she cried for hours, till exhaustion brought sleep, troubled and
unrefreshing.
She grew silent and avoided company. She sang no more at her work, and
she avoided Peter, and kept out of his way. She often compared Robert
with him now, and loved to let her mind linger on that one mad moment of
delirious joy a year ago, when he had crushed her to his breast, and
cried to her to be his. Thus womanhood dawned for her, and its great
responsibilities frightened her.
Robert, on the other hand, spent a week nursing his injured foot, but
apart from the week's idle time, he suffered very little. He felt sore
at losing the race, but was able now to look upon it as an unfortunate
accident. But that smile which he had seen on the face of Mysie made him
strangely happy, and it helped him to get over his disappointment. He
was impatient to be out upon the moor again. He would wait for Mysie
some night, he concluded, and tell her calmly that he wanted her to
marry him.
His mother's prospects were fairly good now. The youngest boy would soon
be working; besides, two other brothers were at work, while Jennie, his
eldest sister, was in service, and Annie, the younger one, was helping
in the house. He waited, night after night, after his injured foot was
better--lingering on the moor by the path which Mysie must travel. He
lay among the heather and read books, or dreamed of a rosy future, with
her the center of his dreams; but no Mysie came along, and he began to
grow anxious.
He wanted to make enquiries about her, but feared to arouse suspicion of
having too keen an interest in her. By various ways he sought
information, but never heard anything definite.
"I see Matthew Maitland's ither lassie has started on the pit-head," he
said to his mother, as one night they sat by the fire before retiring.
"Ay," answered Mrs. Sinclair. "Matthew has the worst o' it by noo. Wi'
his twa bits o' laddies workin', an' Mysie in service, an' Mary gaun to
the pit-head, it should mak' his burden a wee easier."
"I dinna like the idea o' lasses gaun to work on the pithead," he said
simply. "I aye mind of the time that Mysie an' me wrocht on it. It's no'
a very nice place for lasses or women."
"No," his mother said. "I dinna like it either. Nae guid ever comes o'
lasses gaun there. They lose a' sense o' modesty an' decency, after a
while, an' are no' like women at a' when they grow aulder. Besides, it
mak's them awfu' coorse."
"I wad hardly say that aboot them a'," he ventured cautiously. "Mysie's
no' coorse, an' she worked on the pithead."
"No, Mysie's no' coorse," admitted his mother; "but Mysie didna work
very lang on the pit-head. An' forby, we dinna ken but what Mysie micht
hae been better if she had never been near it, or worse if she had
stayed langer. Just look at Susan Morton, an' that Mag Lindsay. What are
they but shameless lumps who dinna ken what modesty is?" and there was a
spark of the old scorn in her voice as she finished.
"Oh, but I wadna gang as faur as you, mither," he said, "wi' your
condemnations. I ken that baith Susan Morton an' Mag Lindsay are
guid-hearted women. They may be coarse in their talk, an' a' that sort
o' thing; but they are as kind-hearted as onybody else, an' kinder than
some."
"Oh; I hae nae doot," she answered relentingly. "I didna mean that at
a'; but the pit-head doesna make them ony better, an' it's no' wark for
them at a'."
"I mind," said Robert reminiscently, "when Mysie an' me started on the
pit-head, Mag Lindsay was awfu' guid to Mysie; an' I've kent her often
sharin' her piece wi' wee Dicky Tamson, whiles when he had nane, if his
mother happened to be on the fuddle for a day or twa. There's no a
kinderhearted woman in Lowwood, mither, than Mag Lindsay. She'd swear at
Dicky a' the time she was stappin' her piece into him. It was jist her
wye, an' I think she couldna help it."
"Oh, ay, Mag's bark is waur then her bite. I ken that," was the reply.
"An' wi' a' her fauts a body canna help likin' her."
"Speakin' of Mysie," said Robert with caution, "I hinna seen her owre
for a while surely. Wull there be onything wrang?" and then, to hide the
agitation he felt, "she used to come owre hame aboot twice a week, an' I
hinna seen her for a while."
"Oh, there canna be onything wrang," replied Nellie, "or we wad hae
heard tell o' it. But t' is time we were awa' to oor beds, or we'll no'
be able to rise in time the morn," and rising as she spoke, she began to
make preparations for retiring, and he withdrew to his room also.
Still, day after day, he hung about the moorland path, but no Mysie, so
far as he knew, ever came past. She had visited her parents only once
since the games and her mother was struck by her subdued and thoughtful
demeanor. But nothing was said at the time.
Robert grew impatient, and began to roam nearer to Rundell House, in the
hope of seeing her. Always his thoughts were full of Mysie and the
raging passion in his blood for her gave him no rest. He loved to trace
her name linked with his own, and then to obliterate it again, in case
anyone would see it. All day his thoughts were of her; and her sweet,
shy smile that day of the games was nursed in memory till it grew to be
a solace to his heart and its hunger.
He saw likenesses to her in everything, and even the call of the
moor-birds awakened some memory of an incident of childhood, when Mysie
and he had, with other children, played together on the moors. Even the
very words which she had spoken, or the way she had acted, or how she
had looked, in cheap cotton frock and pinafore, were recalled by a
familiar cry, or by the sudden discovery of a bog-flower in bloom.
It was a glorious afternoon in late July. The hum of insect life seemed
to flood the whole moor; the scent of mown hay and wild thyme, and late
hawthorn blossom from the trees on the edge of the moor, was heavy in
the air, and the sun was very hot, and still high in the heavens. The
hills that bordered the moor drowsed and brooded, like ancient gods,
clothed in a lordly radiance that was slowly consuming them as they
meditated upon their coming oblivion.
The heather gave promise, in the tiny purple buds that sprouted from the
strong, rough stems, of the blaze of purple glory that would carpet the
moors with magic in the coming days of autumn. Yet there was a vague
hint, in the too deep silence, and in the great clouds that were slowly
drifting along the sky, of pent-up force merely awaiting the time to be
set free to gallop across the moor in anger and destruction. The clouds,
too, were deeply red, with orange touches here and there, trailing into
dark inky ragged edges.
Far away, at the foot of the hills a crofter's cow lowed lazily, calling
forth a summons to be taken in and relieved of its burden of milk. The
sheep came nearer to the "bughts," and the lambs burrowed for
nourishment, with tails wagging, as they drew their sustenance, prodding
and punching the patient mothers in the operation of feeding. Robert,
noting all, with leisured enjoyment strolled lazily into the little
copse, and lay down beneath the cool, grateful shelter of the trees.
Drugged by the sweetness and the solitude, he fell asleep, and the sun
was low on the horizon when he awoke, the whole copse ringing with the
evening songs of merle and mavis, and other less musical birds, and, as
he looked down the glade, he saw, out on the moorland path, coming
straight for the grove, the form of Mysie--the form of which he had
dreamed, and for which he had longed so much.
The hot blood mounted to his face and raced through his frame, while
his heart thumped at the thought that now, in the quietness of the dell,
he would meet her and speak to her. He would speak calmly, and not
frighten her, as he had done on that former occasion; and he braced
himself to meet her.
Impatiently he waited, and then, as he saw her about to enter the grove,
he rose as unconcernedly as he could, trying hard to assume the air of
one who had met her by accident, and stepped on to the path when Mysie
was within ten yards or so of him.
The color left her face, and her limbs felt weak beneath her, as she
recognized him, and he was quick to note the change in her whole
appearance.
She was paler, he thought, and thinner, and the bloom of a few weeks ago
was gone. Her eyes were listless, and the soft, shy look had been
replaced by an averted shame-stricken one. She was plainly flurried by
the meeting, and looking about trying to find if there were not, even
yet, a way of evading it.
"It's a fine nicht, Mysie," he began, stammering and halting before her,
"though I think it is gaun to work to rain."
"Ay," she responded hurriedly, her agitation growing, as she was forced
to halt before him.
"I've come oot on the muir a wheen o' nichts noo, to try an' meet you,"
he began, getting into the business right away, "an' I had begun to
think you had stopped comin' owre."
But Mysie answered never a word. Her face grew paler, and her agitation
became more evident.
"Mysie," he began, now fully braced for the important matter in view, "I
want you to marry me. I want you to be my wife. You've kenned me a' my
life. We gaed to the school together, and we gaed to work together, an'
I hae aye looked on you as my lass. I canna keep it ony langer noo. I
hae wanted to tell you a lang time aboot it, an' to ask you to be my
wife. My place at hame is easier noo. My mother has the rest o' the
family comin' on to take my place, and her battle is gey weel owre, an'
I can see prospects o' settin' up a hoose o' my ain, if you'll agree to
share it with me. I haven't muckle to offer you, but I think you'll ken
by this time that I'll be guid to you. Mysie, I want you. Will you
come?"
For answer, Mysie burst into tears, her shoulders heaving with the sobs
of her grief, her breast surging and falling, while her little hands
covered her eyes, as she stood with bent head, a pitiable little figure.
"What is it, Mysie?" he enquired, his hands at once going tenderly over
her bent head, and caressing it as he spoke, "What is it, Mysie? Tell
me. Hae I vexed you by speakin' like that? Dinna greet, Mysie," he went
on soothingly, his voice soft and tender, and vibrant with sympathy and
love. "Dinna greet. But tell me what's wrang. I'm sorry if it's me that
has done it, Mysie. Maybe I hae frightened you; but, there now, dinna
greet. I didna mean ony harm!" and he stroked and caressed her hair
softly with his hands, or patted her shoulders at every word, as a
mother does with a fretful child.
"There noo, Mysie, dinna greet," he said again, the soft, soothing note
of vexation in his voice growing more tender and husky with emotion.
"Look up, Mysie, for I dinna like to see you greetin'. It maun be
something gey bad, surely, to mak' you greet like this," and his hands
seemed to stab her with every tender touch, and his soft words but added
more pain to her grief.
But still Mysie never answered. Her tears instead flowed faster, and her
sobs grew heavier, until finally she moaned like a stricken animal in
pain.
"Mysie! Mysie! my dochter, what is it?" unable to control himself
longer. "Surely you can tell me what ails you? What is it, Mysie? Look
up, my dear! Look up an' tell me what ails you!"
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" moaned Mysie, the floodgates of her grief now
wide, and her soul in torture.
"Mysie," he cried, taking her head between his hands and raising it up,
"what is it that's wrang with you? Is it me that is the cause o' you
being vexed?"
"Oh, no, no," she moaned, trying to avert her face. "Oh, dinna, Rob!"
she pleaded, and the old familiar name smote him and thrilled him as of
old.
"Tell me what is the matter," he said, a stronger note in his voice, the
old masterful spirit asserting itself again. "What is wrang wi' you? I
can't understand it, an' I wish to try an' help you."
But still she sobbed and there was no answer.
"Look here," he said. "Tell me plainly if I have been the cause of
this."
"No; oh, no," she sobbed, again hiding her eyes with her hands.
"Very weel, then," he went on. "Will you no' tell me what is wrong? I
canna understand it unless you tell me. Are you in ony trouble o' ony
kind? Speak, Mysie." Then, his voice becoming more pleading in its
tones, "Wad you be feart to be my wife, Mysie? I aye thocht you cared
for me. I hae loved you a' my days. You maun ken that, I think. Speak
up, Mysie, an' tell me if you care for me. I want you, an' I maun ken
what you think o' it. Come, Mysie, tell me!"
"Oh, dinna ask me, Rob," she pleaded. "Dinna ask me!"
"What is the matter then?" he cried. "There's something wrong, an'
you'll no' tell me. Very well, tell me what you mean to do. I hae asked
you a fair question. Are you going to marry me? I want yes or no to
that," and there was a touch of impatience creeping into his voice.
"Come on," he urged, after a short silence, broken only by Mysie's sobs,
"gie me an answer. Or, if you wad raither wait a wee while, till this
trouble has blawn by that is bothering you, I'm quite agreeable to
wait."
"It'll never blaw by, Rob," she sobbed. "Oh, dinna ask me ony mair. I
canna be your wife noo, an' I jist want to be left alane!"
The pain and despair in her voice alarmed him. It was so keen and
poignant, and went to his heart like a knife.
"Oh!" he gasped in surprise, as he strove to call his pride to his
assistance. It was so unlike what he had anticipated that it amazed him
to have such a disappointing reply. Then, recovering somewhat:--"Very
well!" with great deliberation, while his voice sounded unnaturally
strained. Then the effort failing, and his pride breaking down: "Oh,
Mysie, Mysie," he burst out in poignant agony again relapsing into the
pleading wooing tones that were so difficult to withstand, "How I hae
loved you! I thocht you cared for me. I hae built mysel' up in you, an'
I'll never, never be able to forget you! Oh, think what it is! You hae
been life itsel' to me, Mysie, an' I canna think that you dinna care!
Oh, Mysie!"
He turned away, his heart sore and his soul wounded, and strode from the
copse out on to the moor, a thousand thoughts driving him on, a thousand
regrets pursuing, and a load of pain in his heart that was bearing his
spirit down.
"Oh, dear God!" moaned Mysie, kneeling down, her legs unable to support
her longer, "Oh, dear God, my heart'll break!" and a wild burst of
sobbing shook her frame, and her grief overpowering flowed through the
tears--a picture of utter despair and terrible hopelessness.
Robert tore away from the dell, his whole calculation of things upset.
To think that Mysie could not love him had never entered his head. What
was wrong with her? What was the nature of her terrible grief?
He kicked savagely at a thistle which grew upon the edge of the pathway,
his pride wounded, but now in possession of the citadel of his heart;
and on he strode, still driven by the terrible passion raging within
him; resolving already, as many have done under like circumstances, that
his life was finished. Hope had gone, dreams were unreal and vanishing
as the mist that crawled along the bog-pools at night.
At the crest of the little hill, just where it sloped down to the
village, he stood and looked back.
Good God! Was he seeing aright! The figure of a man, who in the gray
gloaming looked well-dressed, was approaching Mysie, and she was slowly
moving to meet him. A few steps more, and the man had the girl, he
thought, in his arms, and was kissing her where they stood.
Was he dreaming? What was the meaning of all this? "Oh, Christ!" he
groaned. "What does it all mean?" and he rubbed his eyes and looked
again, then sat down, all his pride and anger raging within him as he
watched, kindling the jungle instinct within him into a raging fire, to
fight for his mate--his by right of class and association. He doubled
back, as the two figures turned in the direction of the copse--the
resolve in his mind to go back and forcibly tear Mysie from this unknown
stranger. He would fight for her. She was his, and he was prepared to
assert his right of possession before all the world.
In a mad fury he started forward, a raging anger in his heart, striding
along in quick, determined, relentless steps, his blood jumping and his
energy roused, and all the madness of a strong nature coursing through
him; but after a few yards he hesitated, stopped, and then turned back.
After all, Mysie must have made an appointment with this man. She
evidently wanted him, and that was her reason for asking to be left
alone.
"Oh, God!" he groaned again, sitting down. "This is hellish!" and he
began to turn over the whole business in his mind once more.
Long he sat, and the darkness fell over the moor, matching the darkness
that brooded over his heart and mind. He heard the moor-birds crying in
restlessness, and saw the clouds piling themselves up, and come creeping
darkly over the higher ground, bringing a threat of rain in their wake.
The moan in the wind became louder, presaging a storm; but still he sat
or lay upon the rough, withered grass, fighting out his battle, meeting
the demons of despair and gloom, and the legions of pain and misery, in
greater armies than ever he had met them before.
Again he groaned, as his ear caught the plaintive note of a widowed
partridge, which sat behind him upon a grassy knoll of turf, crying out
on the night air, an ache in every cry, the grief and sorrow of his
wounded, breaking heart.
It seemed to Robert that there was a strange sort of kinship between him
and the bird--a kinship and understanding which touched a chord of ready
feeling in his heart. The ominous hoot of an owl in the wood startled
him, and he rose to his feet. He could not sit still. Idleness would
drive him mad. He strode off on to the moor, away from the track, his
whole being burning in torture, and his mind a mass of unconnected
fancies and pains.
Over the bogs and through the marshes, the madness of despair within
him, he heeded not the deep ditches and the bog-pools. They were the
pits of darkness, the sty-pools, which his soul must either cross, or in
which he must perish. He tore up the hills into the mists and the rising
storm, the thick clouds, full of rain, enveloping him, and matching the
terrible fury of his breast.
On, ever on, in the darkness and the mire, through clumps of whin and
stray bushes of wild briar. On, always on, driven and lashed into action
by the resistless desire to get away from himself. He knew not the
direction he had taken. He had lost his bearings on the moor; the
darkness had completely hidden the landmarks, and even had he been
conscious of his actions, he could not have told in which part of the
moor he was.
"Oh, God!" he groaned again, almost falling over a bush of broom; and
sitting down, he buried his face in his hands, and, forgetful of the
wind and the rain, which now drove down in torrents, sat and brooded and
thought, his mind seeking to understand the chaos of despair.
What was the meaning of life? What was beyond it after death? Would
immortality, if such there were, be worth having? Men in countless,
unthinkable millions, had lived, and loved, and lost, and passed on. Did
immortality carry with it pain and suffering for them? If not, did it
carry happiness and balm? To hell with religions and philosophies, he
thought; they were all a parcel of fairy tales to drug men's minds and
keep them tame; and he glared impotently at the pitiless heavens, as if
he would defy gods, and devils, and men. He would be free--free in mind,
in thought, and unhampered by unrealities!
No. Men had the shaping of their own lives. Pride would be his ally. He
would lock up this episode in his heart, and at the end of time for him,
there would be an end of the pain and the regret, when he was laid among
the myriad millions of men of all the countless ages since man had
being.
This was immortality; to be forever robed in the dreamless draperies of
eternal oblivion, rather than have eternal life, with all its
torments--mingling with the legions of the past, and with mother
earth--the dust of success and happiness indistinguishable from the dust
of failure and despair. Time alone would be his relief--the great
physician that healed all wounds.
The wind blew stronger and the rain fell heavier, the one chasing, the
other in raging gusts, and both tearing round and lashing the form of
the man who sat motionless and unaware of all this fury. The wind god
tried to shake him up by rushing and roaring at him; but still there was
no response. Then, gathering re-inforcements, he came on in a mad
charge, driving a cloud of rain in front of him as a sort of spear-head
to break the defense of fearlessness and unconcern of this unhappy
mortal. Yet the figure moved not.
Baffled and still more angry, the wind god retired behind the hills
again to rest; then, driving a larger rain-cloud before him, with a roar
and a crash he tore down the slope, raging and tearing in a wild tumult
of anger, straight against the lonely figure which sat there never
moving, his head sunk upon his breast.
Beaten and sullen, the god again retired to re-collect his strength. He
moaned and growled as he retired, frightening the moor-birds and the
hares, which lay closer to earth, their little hearts quivering with
fear. Young birds were tucked safely under the parent wing, as terror
strode across the moor, striking dread into every fluttering little
heart and shivering body. Low growled the wind, as he ran around his
broken forces, gathering again new forces in greater and greater
multitudes.
Just then, with an oath, the figure rose and faced the storm, striding
again up the slope, as if determined to carry the war into the camp of
the enemy.
A low growl came rumbling from the hills, as the wind god rushed along,
encouraging his legions, threatening, coaxing, pleading, commanding
them to fight, and so to overcome this figure who now boldly faced his
great army.
The advance guard of the storm broke upon him in wild desperation,
rushing and thundering, howling and yelling, sputtering and hissing,
spitting and hitting at him, and then the main body struck him full in
the face, all the bulk and the force of it hurled upon him with terrible
impetuous abandon, and Robert's foot striking a tuft at the moment, he
went down, down into a bog-pool among the slush and moss, and decaying
heather-roots, down before the mad rush of the wind-god's army, who
roared and shouted in glee, with a voice that shook the hills and called
upon the elements to laugh and rejoice.
And the widowed partridge out upon the moor, creeping closer to the lee
side of his tuft of moss, cried out in his pain, not because of the fury
of the blast, but because of the heart that was breaking under the
little shivering body for the dead mate, who had meant so much of life
and happiness to him--cried with an ache in every cry, and the heart of
the man responded in his great, overpowering grief.