IN the days that followed, my life took a dull sad monotone, lightened at
intervals by the reflection of past memories, which lay along its path
like the sunlit pools left on a shore by the receding tide.
Leave-takings are bad enough at any time, unless they form the prelude to
a brighter future. And future before me I had none, except a grim
monotony of work in a curacy at the East End, into which I intended to
throw all the energy I could command, if only to keep my thoughts from
brooding on the past.
And yet of quiet happiness there was something left me still. For
everyone at Fleetwater seemed sorry at my going. Even Higgins, our one
great Calvinist, with whom on questions of theology the Rector and I had
found ourselves at bitter feud, was troubled at my leaving. He had
hoped, I think, to convert me to his theories. But as his arguments went
chiefly to prove that one of the great pleasures of the righteous in the
world to come would be to listen to the tortures of the wicked, I
declined his ministrations, and became to him in his own words as “the
deaf adder that stoppeth her ears.”
Stranger still, even Peggy was sorry, now that the time had come for me
to go the way of all the curates, even though I was fulfilling my
preordained destiny, and going on the question of Marion’s love. Not
even the knowledge that Reggie would soon be home again, to find a fair
field and plenty of her own favour, could reconcile her wholly to the
parting.
And at the Rectory all was sadness and dismay. The Rector seldom alluded
to my going; I think he could not trust himself. But the children, who
had been always fond of me, were less reticent of their grief, especially
as they saw before them a blank future, from which the wedding and its
attendant festivities had been suddenly withdrawn.
And still the dreary days went on. Each day a Good-bye said to some one
who had become a kindly friend, and each day a Good-bye to some haunt in
which Marion and I had walked and loved.
If only I could have shared in her firm confidence, the task before me
would have been lightened. But each day I heard news of the bank that
increased more and more my hopelessness. Already I had been obliged to
borrow funds to meet the calls that were in prospect, and, when they
should have been paid in full, I foresaw myself starting anew in life
with a load of encumbrances about my neck that, out of a curate’s slender
pittance, there was small hope of reducing, granted that I could find the
means of paying the annual interest.
Even now I found myself hampered by the expenses necessitated by my
leaving. And it was in the hope of getting something to relieve my
present embarrassment that I wrote again to Eric, reminding him of his
promise, and asking him in so many words if he had been able to do
anything towards finding me a market for the picture.
He delayed his answer for many days, from the difficulty, I thought, he
had found in getting any offer that he would be warranted in accepting.
And then, when the last day of my time at Fleetwater was come, and I had
almost given up the hope of hearing any news from him, his answer reached
me.