Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est
le pardon qu'elle a fait naître dans votre âme. . . . Mais si la
trahison n'a pas accru la simplicité, la confiance plus haute,
l'étendue de l'amour, on vous aura trahi bien inutilement, et vous
pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrivé.--MAETERLINCK.
Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard wall
where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous occasion.
It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley did
not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk secrets," as they
would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was felt by the Gresleys
to be the appropriate moment to momentarily lay aside their daily
avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in the garden for social
intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. Listeners are generally liked.
Perhaps also her gentle, unassuming manner was not an unpleasant change
after the familiar nonchalance of the Pratts.
The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, and
then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain obtuse
persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and outwitting
them, just as the really wicked people, who give _vivâ voce_
invitations, goad us into crevasses of lies, for which, if there is any
justice anywhere, they will have to answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley
gave the last shove to Hester and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on
what he called socialism. Finding they were discussing some phase of it,
he drew up a chair and informed them that he had "threshed out" the
whole subject.
"Socialism," he began, delighted with the polite resignation of his
hearers, which throughout life he mistook for earnest attention.
"Community of goods. People don't see that if everything were divided up
to-day, and everybody was given a shilling, by next week the thrifty man
would have a sovereign, and the spendthrift would be penniless.
Community of goods is impossible as long as human nature remains what it
is. But I can't knock that into people's heads. I spoke of it once to
Lord Newhaven, after his speech in the House of Lords. I thought he was
more educated and a shade less thoughtless than the idle rich usually
are, and that he would see it if it was put plainly before him. But he
only said my arguments were incontrovertible, and slipped away."
It was after this conversation, or rather monologue, that Hester and
Rachel arranged to meet by stealth.
They were sitting luxuriously in the short grass, with their backs
against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over their eyes.
"I wish I had met this Mr. Dick five or six years ago," said Rachel,
with a sigh.
Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love
disaster.
"Dick always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. "I should
offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a lot of
trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end."
Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put into words
a latent conviction of her own which troubled her.
"Dick is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester,
dispassionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not high
praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his goodness does
not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care for such things, he
has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him
in a little patent safe of his own."
"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture,"
said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. Dick."
There was a short silence.
"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how
commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of second-rate
novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong,
promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of
stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I
have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal
experience. I keep before my mind that other men are _not_ like _him_. I
know they aren't, but yet--somehow I think they are. I am frightened."
Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend.
"Do you still consider, after these four years, that _he_ did you an
injury?"
Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of
midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the
distant hills.
"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw it away.
I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is because I am
naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, "that it seems now,
looking back, such a dreadful waste."
"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks like a
waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless
passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so.
Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the
love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish
prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses
happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for
having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of all the reins.'"
"You mean it did me good," said Rachel, "and that _he_ was a kind of
benefactor in disguise. I dare say you are right, but you see I don't
take a burning interest in my own character. I don't find my mental
stand-point--isn't that what Mrs. Loftus calls it?--very engrossing."
"He was a benefactor, all the same," said Hester, with decision. "I did
not think so at the time, and if I could have driven over him in an
omnibus I would have done so with pleasure. But I believe that the day
will come when you will cover that grave with a handsome monument,
erected out of gratitude to him for not marrying you. And now, Rachel,
will you forgive me beforehand for what I am going to say?"
"Oh!" said Rachel, ruefully. "When you say that I know it is the prelude
to something frightful. You are getting out a dagger, and I shall be its
sheath directly."
"You are a true prophet, Rachel."
"Yes, executioner."
"My dear, dear friend, whom I love best in the world, when that happened
my heart was wrung for you. I would have given everything I had, life
itself--not that that is saying much--to have saved you from that hour."
"I know it."
"But I should have been the real enemy if I had had power to save you,
which, thank God! I had not. That hour had to be. It was necessary. You
may not care about your own character, but I do. There is something
stubborn and inflexible in you--the seamy side of your courage and
steadfastness--which cannot readily enter into the feelings of others or
put itself in their place. I think it is want of imagination--I mean the
power of seeing things as they are. You are the kind of woman who, if
you had married comfortably some one you rather liked, might have become
like Sybell Loftus, who never understands any feeling beyond her own
microscopic ones, and who measures love by her own small preference for
Doll. You would have had no more sympathy than she has. People, like
Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what one has experienced.
That is why they are always saying, 'as a mother,' or 'as a wife.' If
that were true the world would have to get on without sympathy, for no
two people have the same experience. Only a shallow nature believes
that a resemblance in two cups means that they both contain the same
wine. Sybell believes it, and you would have been very much the same,
not from lack of perception, as in her case, but from want of using your
powers of perception. If you had not undergone an agonized awakening,
all the great realities of life--love, hatred, temptation,
enthusiasm--would have remained for you as they have remained for
Sybell, merely pretty words to string on light conversation. That is why
I can't bear to hear her speak of them, because every word she says
proves she has not known them. But the sword that pierced your heart
forced an entrance for angels, who had been knocking where there was no
door--until then."
Silence.
"Since when is it that people have turned to you for comfort and
sympathy?"
No answer.
"Rachel, on your oath, did you ever really care for the London poor
until you became poor yourself, and lived among them?"
"No."
"But they were there all the time. You saw them in the streets. It was
not as if you only heard of them. You saw them. Their agony, their vice,
was written large on their faces. There was a slum almost at the back of
that great house in Portman Square where you lived many years in luxury
with your parents."
"Don't," said Rachel, her lip trembling.
"I must. You did not care then. If a flagrant case came before you you
gave something like other uncharitable people who hate feeling
uncomfortable. But you care _now_. You seek out those who need you.
Answer me. Were they cheaply bought or not, that compassion and love for
the degraded and the suffering which were the outcome of your years of
poverty in Museum Buildings?"
"They were cheaply bought," said Rachel, with conviction, speaking with
difficulty.
"Would you have learned them if you had gone on living in Portman
Square?"
"Oh, Hester! would anybody?"
"Yes, they would. But that is not the question. Would _you?_"
"N--no," said Rachel.
There was a long silence.
Rachel's mind took its staff and travelled slowly, humbly, a few more
difficult steps up that steep path where "Experience is converted into
thought as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin."
At last she turned her grave eyes upon her friend.
"I see what you mean," she said; "I have not reached the place yet; but
I can believe that I shall come to it some day, when I shall feel as
thankful for that trouble as I do feel now for having known poverty.
Yes, Hester, you are right. I was a hard woman, without imagination. I
have been taught in the only way I could learn--by experience. I have
been very fortunate."
Hester did not answer, but bent down and kissed Rachel's hands. It was
as if she had said, "Forgive me for finding fault with one so far above
me." And the action was so understood.
Rachel colored, and they sat for a moment hand close in hand, heart very
near to heart.
"How is it you are so sure of these things, Hester?" said Rachel, in a
whisper. "When you say them I see they are true, and I believe them, but
how do you _know_ them?"
A shadow, a very slight one, fell across Hester's face. "'Love knows the
secret of grief.' But can Love claim that knowledge if he is asked how
he came by it by one who should have known?" The question crept in
between the friends and moved them apart. Hester's voice altered.
"Minna would say that I picked them up from the conversation of James.
You know the Pratts are perfectly aware of what I have, of course, tried
to conceal, namely, that the love-scenes in the _Idyll_ were put
together from scraps I had collected of James's engagement to Minna. And
all the humorous bits are claimed by a colony of cousins in Devonshire
who say that any one 'who had heard them talk' could have written the
_Idyll._ And any one who had not heard them apparently. The so-called
profane passages are all that are left to me as my own."
"You are profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the
flippancy which she had brought upon herself.
A distant whoop distracted their attention, and they saw Regie galloping
towards them, imitating a charger, while Fräulein and the two little
girls followed.
Regie stopped short before Rachel, and looked suspiciously at her.
"Where is Uncle Dick?" he said.
"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and her
eyes falling guiltily before her questioner.
"Then he has not come with you?"
Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley
often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was
quick-witted and flashy.
"No, he has not come with me."
"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come."
"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I knew he
was somewhere else."
Dear little Mary was naturally the Gresleys' favorite child. However
thoroughly they might divest themselves of parental partiality, they
could not but observe that she was as sensible as a grown-up person.
"I thought he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a tree or
something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell with a
conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever Mary may
say?"
"Mary is generally wrong," said Hester, "but she is right for once."
Mary, who was early acquiring the comfortable habit of hearing only the
remarks that found an echo in her own breast, heard she was right, and
said, shrilly:
"I told Regie when we was still on the road that Uncle Dick wasn't
there. Mother doesn't always go with father, but he said he'd run and
see."
"We shall be ver'r late for luncheon," said Fräulein, hastily, blushing
down to the onyx brooch at her turn-down collar, and drawing Mary away.
"Perhaps he left the half-penny with you," said Regie. "Fräulein would
like to see it."
"No, no," said Fräulein, the tears in her eyes. "I do not vish at all. I
cry half the night when I hear of it."
"I only cry when baby beats me," said Mary, balancing on one leg.
"I have not got the half-penny," said Rachel, the three elders
studiously ignoring Mary's personal reminiscences.
The children were borne away by Fräulein, and the friends kissed and
parted.
"I am coming to Wilderleigh to-morrow," said Rachel. "I shall be much
nearer to you then."
"It is no good contending against Dick and fate," said Hester, shaking
her finger at her. "You see it is all decided for you. Even the children
have settled it."