IF NEED, TO DIE--NOT LIVE.--_Chas. Kingsley_.
"Have I changed, or has everything changed?" Eleanor asks herself, as the
days slip by in the old farmhouse.
Mr. and Mrs. Grebby are just the same warm-hearted, genial couple as of
yore; they crack the same jokes at their knife-and-fork tea, while Rover
wags his tail as pleasantly as ever, and Black Bess trots to market.
The school children have not forgotten "Teacher," and, greet her in
demonstrative fashion, flinging their small arms round her neck when she
stoops to kiss them.
Yet Mrs. Roche finds that their mouths are sticky, and the little hands
she clasps in hers hot and unpleasant to the touch.
She rises early, and on churning morning helps her mother even more
industriously than in past days, yet her heart is heavy, and the old
songs never pass her lips without a stifled sob. She tries to hum the
"Miller of Dee," as for the sake of happy recollections she polishes
afresh the pewter service on the parlour table, yet all the while her
eyes are scrutinising the inartistic arrangement of the room. Why should
the horsehair sofa be placed straight against the wall, and those ghastly
wax flowers under glass covers adorn the stiff chimneypiece, which might
be made so pretty? The memorial cards, that are framed and hung on the
wall--how gruesome they appear in the spring sunshine! She longs to pull
them down, and burn them, but to do so would be to violate poor Mrs.
Grebby's most sacred feelings.
She looks in the old family Bible, standing in its accustomed place on a
table by the window. There are the births, deaths, and marriages of the
Grebby family for generations. Oh, if her marriage could be blotted out,
and a date of death mark her name. She envies the twins that died in
their infancy, when she--Eleanor--was only two years old.
The pewter pots tire her arm, unaccustomed, now to rubbing anything but
diamond trinkets. The service she so admired once does not attract her
now. She puts it away half clean, and longs for a novel.
Vegetating was not very soothing after all. The poisoned arrows had
followed her even to Copthorne, and their wounds could not heal. The
thoughts she struggled to suppress, here in the dead calm, proclaimed
themselves more loudly, worked fiercer havoc. She longs, pines, sickens
for a sight of one she must never see, for a voice it would be death to
hear, the touch of a hand it were sin to clasp.
So she wanders about in her strange state of depression, pretending to
enjoy the glorious green of the spring, and seeing only light and
darkness, cold and desolation, in primrose banks and rippling streams.
Mr. Grebby is too preoccupied with his cattle and his land to notice the
change in Eleanor, while Mrs. Grebby takes infinite pains to give her
married daughter the best their house affords, and only remarks on her
lack of appetite, at which she loudly laments.
"You ain't eatin' anything, dearie," she says one morning at breakfast.
"Try a tumbler of new milk to put some strength into you. It's them
towns as makes you pale and spiritless. I knows 'em. We was that done
up after our visit to you and cousin Harriett it was quite surprisin'.
But law, how Pa did make me walk in London. Up them Monument steps, and
down again before I'd got my breath, with poor Rover in charge of a
policeman below, and everyone a laughing 'cause I was puffing so."
Eleanor forces a smile. She was watching for the post.
The moment the man's tread is heard on the gravel she starts up and runs
to the door, dreading every day that Giddy may divulge her address.
She longs to write to Carol Quinton, but dare not. She knows she is too
weak to run the risk.
There are two letters for her, one from Philip, the other from Mrs.
Mounteagle.
She reads Giddy's first.
It is amusing and frivolous as usual. The last half, however, amazes
Eleanor.
"I am going to be married," it says in the middle of a description of a
new bonnet. "My future husband is a wealthy man and a general.
Congratulate me! It will not be a long engagement, as he is seventy-five
to-morrow, but loves with the ardour of a seventeen year old! Talking of
boys, I am asking Bertie to be best man. By this you will see all
arrangements for the ceremony are being left entirely to my management.
It will be costly and elaborate. My gown alone would have swallowed up
dear Bertie's income. I have given him a splendid new watch to console
him, as his was snatched last year at Epsom. I met my General at Lady
MacDonald's. He moves in a very good set--gout permitting. Excuse my
humour.--Your elated and strong-minded GIDDY.
"P.S.--Don't you think I am a noble woman? He is one eye short, which is
rather a recommendation, but _has_ been one of the handsomest men about
town."
"How strange," thinks Eleanor. Then she throws the letter aside in
disgust. "And very loathsome!" she adds, tearing open Philip's envelope.
She reads it slowly at the breakfast table.
"Philip is coming this evening," she says.
Mr. and Mrs. Grebby clap their hands.
"Well, now, I'm right glad," they exclaim together. "We could see 'ow
you missed 'im, dearie."
Eleanor feels uncomfortably guilty. What _if_ they knew that her every
thought was wandering to another!
Already she has begun to try and piece the photograph together again,
regretting her hasty action in the railway carriage. Before reaching
Copthorne she had hidden the fragments safely in a corner of her
dressing-bag. She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that Philip is
coming. It will break the dull monotony of the day. At any rate she
will get herself up to look as much like the old Eleanor as possible,
though the thought of wandering with him through the haunts of past days
is distasteful.
She knows it will please him, however; so, crushing her own feelings, she
dons an old dress made by the village dressmaker, one which has hung in
her wardrobe ever since she left home, then proceeds to search for the
long disused sun bonnet.
The day is almost bright enough to excuse the picturesque headgear,
eventually unearthed from the bottom of a tin trunk, and ironed by
Eleanor's own hands.
She feels as if she were dressed up for amateur theatricals, and even
denies herself the fashionable manner in which her hair is now arranged,
going back to the simple style before she knew London or Giddy Mounteagle.
"It certainly _is_ becoming," she says; "beauty unadorned," viewing her
charms in this rustic guise before a cracked mirror. "Yet I wonder what
the Richmond girls would think of me if I walked on the Terrace, Sunday
morning after church, dressed like this?"
She looks so pretty that her heart sinks at the thought that it is
Philip, not Carol, for whom she has prepared.
As she comes down the stairs Mrs. Grebby meets her pale and trembling.
"What is the matter, mammy?" asks Eleanor, seeing that her mother is
trying to gain breath for speech.
Mrs. Grebby puts her hand to her heart.
"There, there, child!" she says, "don't be frightened," while her legs
seem sinking under her, and she grasps Eleanor's arm for support. "But
the man from the post-office, 'e--e's brought a telegram for you."
"Anything wrong at home?" asks Mrs. Roche.
"Not that I know of--_yet_," continues the shaking woman; "it hasn't been
opened."
Eleanor bursts out laughing, and the amused peal reassures Mrs. Grebby.
"Why, Ma, I get them nearly every day at Richmond, there is nothing to be
alarmed at in a wire. Philip was going to let me know his train. I
thought I told you."
She opens the message, and as she scans it her face falls.
"He is not coming," she says. "Too busy, and won't be able to manage it
now. How like Philip! To let you get all ready for him and then fail."
It is more the annoyance of having dressed herself in vain than
disappointment at not seeing him which vexes Eleanor.
"I dislike people throwing you over at the last moment; it is very
inconsiderate and unkind. But I suppose he can't help it, poor fellow,"
with a touch of regret for her petulance. "I am very extravagant, Ma. I
spend no end on clothes, though you wouldn't think it to look at me now.
Philip just trots off to the City and makes the money, so it does not
matter a bit."
Mr. Grebby expresses lavish sorrow at Mr. Roche's non-appearance, while
Eleanor wanders out down the budding lanes towards the station, just as
if Philip were coming after all, only there is neither tumult of sorrow
nor joy in her heart. She feels just indifferent to everything and
everybody. The hedges are sprouting with young green. Surely the world
is fair to all eyes but Eleanor's!
Her head is bent, she is gazing on the ground.
Suddenly a shadow crosses her path--the shadow of a man.
She looks up slowly, standing still, rooted to the spot.
A cold chill creeps through her veins, gradually changing to burning
fire. She can neither speak nor move, the hedges seem to fly round, the
trees spin, the twittering birds shriek!
"_Carol!_"
The word breaks from her lips at last like a cry.
Why has Philip failed her, why is he not here to save?
Someone is holding her hand in a passionate clasp, someone presses her
cheeks, her lips! Is it a dream or reality, life or death?
The spring bursts suddenly into smiles. Nature laughs loudly, all the
world is one wide pleasure field, a place to love, to die in for joy!
"Why did you run away?" he whispers, still holding her in his arms. "Why
did you hide yourself from me, shut out the light from my days? It was
cruel, Eleanor. Surely you knew I would have gone to the end of the
world to find you, and you thought to evade me here."
"Fate has willed it otherwise. How did you discover me?"
"Giddy Mounteagle gave me your address. I never gave her a moment's
peace till she divulged it, poor woman."
A spark of anger flashes in Eleanor's love-laden eyes.
"The traitress!" she murmurs under her breath.
"Ah! do not say that. She is happy herself, and I was so miserable,
_you_ were so miserable."
"How do you know?"
"I have read your heart like a book--it is mine and no other's. I mean
to take it--cherish it--keep it--always!"
"You stole it from Philip--you stole it from me!" she cries, her voice
shaken by fear and dread. "You see me as I am--weak, defenceless--loving
you to my shame--my destruction. I am in your power body and soul--you
have got my will as well--it is yours--all yours. Think for a moment,
Carol, before you keep these stolen goods--what they cost--you and me.
Pity me in this hopeless moment of surrender--make it less hard to part.
Are we to lose everything? Think of your soul--and my soul. I believe
that we both have them now in the palms of our hands--to cast into
Hell--to lift up to Heaven! You should be the stronger. Remember what
it is to be a man!"
"What is your ideal of poor mankind?" he asks hoarsely.
"To give--not take," replies Eleanor, in the words of Charles Kingsley,
which rise suddenly as an inspiration to her tortured mind. "To
serve--not rule. To nourish--not devour. To help--not crush. If need,
to die--not live!"
"Then I will rise to your standard," he said boldly. "Eleanor, I will
kill myself."
"How?" she asks.
"I care not; but to-day--this same hour--you will have driven me to my
death!"
"Oh, Carol, you are cruel!" she sighs.
Then the words well into her brain, with fierce, upbraiding, horrible
reality: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." She sees the faded
towzled hair of the woman in the train, the dusty crape of her bonnet,
the red upon her lips.
A cry escapes her, and sinking on the green bank by the roadside, Eleanor
buries her face in the grass and sobs in uncontrollable anguish.
Carol cannot bear to watch her misery. He stoops down and gathers the
little figure in his arms, straining it to his heart. He kisses dry the
liquid eyes, and soothes the low deep sobs.
"I have decided," he says.
"And your choice, our fate, the end?" she asks breathlessly.
"To take," he replies, holding her fast, "not give back that which is
mine, now and for ever. To rule (if that is the harsh term you give my
love), to devour, to crush, to live, Eleanor, not die."
The words sound like a shout of victory on the still air. They kindle a
mad delight in the woman's stricken heart.
"We will leave this miserable country, where you are a captive to a man
who cannot hold your love, yet calls himself 'husband.' We will go away,
no matter where, since we shall be together. We have only our two selves
to live for now. The world was created for us alone, we need remember
nothing else, an Eden to love in and be happy. Oh! my darling, how
bright I will make your life, as it never was before."
"You are right," says Eleanor slowly. "I have never known true
happiness. I was very fond of Philip when I married him--the lukewarm
affection that grows cold instantly in the chill air of disagreement or
mistrust. The love which you have kindled in me is something I did not
know or dream of. It is worth all else!"
Carol takes her wedding finger, holds it to his lips a moment, then
places an embossed gold ring below the knuckle, with "Kismet" engraved
upon it.
Eleanor gazes on the ring wistfully. The words are full of meaning to
her just now.
"'Kismet,'" she murmurs. "Only a true Mahommedan should use that
expression."
She draws a cat's eye stone, that Philip gave her, from her hand, and
offers it to Carol.
This is the last, the supreme act of surrender--that, more than all else,
renounces for ever and ever Philip, honour, wifehood, and lays her low in
the dust.
They walk through the green fields hand in hand; they talk of things to
be. The children coming home from school stare at Eleanor, and think how
beautiful she is, wondering at the handsome stranger who gazes in her
eyes, and whispers so low they cannot catch the words.
Yes, she looks just the same, as the evening tints fall with a rosy glow
on her rich hair and simple sun-bonnet. How innocent she appears in the
plain, homely attire, and that strange but glorious smile parting her
lips. There are daisies under her feet, and blue sky over her head; love
is in her heart, but hell is in her eyes.
Her eyes droop. The children cannot see--Hell!