CORRESPONDENCE
I pause in the chase to jot down a note or two. It is when the
quarry lies close, and the hounds are drawing cover, and a little
breathing space is mine for rest and sentiment. A moment, and we shall
be on again.
On the day of our visit to Mother Carey I wrote to Lord Skene, giving
him the full particulars of that interview, of the circumstances which
had led _to_, and of the conclusions to be drawn _from_ it. How he
might choose to regard those conclusions, whether in his former
sceptical spirit, or in one more accommodating, could only now, I
said, affect the temper of my resolution, not its inexorableness. He
might make my purpose a dutiful or a rebellious one; he could not turn
me from it. The inference to be drawn from that confession, I
insisted, was too plain to be mistaken by any not wilfully blind; and
the friends who had taken up my cause for me were at least
sufficiently convinced of its justice to be determined to spare no
trouble nor expense in the effort to secure me its last essential
confirmation. I put the whole case to him in a frank, unimpassioned,
and perfectly respectful manner; but I expressed through all an
insistence on my right to act independently in my own behalf, should
he still see fit to refuse me his countenance in the venture. And with
that I ended.
His answer, when it came, was courteous, unconvinced, _entêté_. He
was obliged to me, he said, for my information regarding a certain
unscrupulous transaction, inasmuch as it furnished him with an
effective retort upon the insolence of a scoundrel, should that
scoundrel ever have the effrontery to attempt a new move in what was
virtually a lost game to him. For the rest, he had not changed in his
opinion that it would be the best wisdom to let sleeping dogs lie,
and, for me, to reconsider his suggestion of a compromise, lest
“aiming at all, I lost all.” In the meantime, he had to inform me that
Mr Dalston--aware somehow, no doubt, of a threatening turn in
events--had disappeared from the neighbourhood, leaving his lady in
sole possession of the Lone Farm; and, consequently, that Lady Skene,
induced by circumstances and fortified by my revelation, had been
persuaded into reconsidering her resolve to renounce the world, and
was now in actual fact returned to her duties as wife and mother at
Evercreech, which was after all the end of all ends, so far as he was
concerned.
I said to myself, with a bitter laugh, as I put the letter into the
fire, that I could quite believe it. It was the end of all ends to
him--had always been, and would always be. And then I broke the seal
of another letter which represented the end of all ends to me. Perhaps
I was inconsistent in blaming him. Was I less infatuated myself? I
would have disputed fifty successions that seemed to bar me from that
one peaceful possession.
She wanted me, my love--how she wanted me! It was the first letter I
had ever received from her--a little sweet pleasance of her soul,
crossed with shadow and sunshine. Had I ever guessed, she asked, how
love could fly? By so much the greater speed than an express train,
that, though she had herself seen me off from Footover Station, she
had been waiting on the platform at Waterloo for two hours--scheduled
time--when I had reached it. And I had never even noticed her waiting
and holding out her arms among the throng; but had jumped into a
hansom (there she was wrong; it was an omnibus), and had sped away
into the shadows, leaving love forlorn. Should she ever find me again?
Lord Skene, she told me, had come to the sudden resolution to take his
whole family up to town--they were going to start in a day or
two--herself included; and that had given her at first a wild thrill
of joy. But then she had remembered that London was farther than
Evercreech from the Continent, and her spirits had fallen again.
Still, it would be sweet to tread the stones--or thereabouts--which my
feet had lately trodden.
She spoke of Death--how dreadful it was that love, like all lesser
things, must die--that four hands, clinging at once, had no greater
hold on life than two. But there I corrected her very confidently,
when I came to answer. “Is not love the seed love the flower, and love
the flower love the seed? What is death but the snake casting its
skin? The old autumn cloak falls off, and there is spring
underneath--not a new spring, Ira, but the same spring as always; you
and I as we are at this moment; you and I as we shall be for ever. Our
love shall ride on waves of day and night, summer and winter, joy and
sorrow, till it reach the shores which are timeless, the shores which
are unfruitful because all the ripe fruit of love is gathered there
never to reproduce itself again, but to enjoy henceforth all the
raptures of itself without the penalties.”
Those were love’s metaphysics. They might not satisfy philosophers;
but they satisfied Ira, which was infinitely more to the point.
Philosophy may endure the thought of death; it is a sweeter wisdom, I
think, to delight in it.
So sounds the view-halloo, and I am off again, fresh from that little
breathing space. But one thought now troubles me--troubles us all.
What has occurred, if anything has occurred, to send our quarry into
hiding?