THE VITA NUOVA.
John had gone out for no particular reason. He had nothing to do, which
was unusual to him, and his mind was perturbed and restless. He was
altogether out of _son assiette_, as the French say, out of his natural
atmosphere, exposed to thoughts, temptations of all kinds, with which
naturally he had nothing to do. A holiday is not always so very good a
thing. When the mind is busy with a delicate piece of engineering, or
with specifications or even estimates, it has not time to get into
mischief. But fancy when suddenly left blank of all those occupations,
deprived of all preservatives, and left to face the most supreme of
youthful impulses without any defence at all, is in a bad way. John did
what of course is the very worst thing he could possibly have done. He
wandered about all day, taking long walks, and turning over and over in
his bewildered brain the same subject--and that subject was Elly. What
else? the only thing that he ought not to have thought about.
He should not have done so--that was too certain. When he felt it coming
on, when she jumped into his mind like that, without rhyme or reason, he
ought to have shut the door sternly against her, he ought to have
betaken himself to some matter of professional difficulty of the hardest
possible sort; he should have devoted himself to the Euphrates Canal or
the St. Gothard Tunnel. Or if he had wanted something nearer home there
was the great subject which had already occupied him for years, and
which we may call the drainage of the Thames valley--which is a thing
waiting to be done, and by which some engineer, and perhaps John, might
yet distinguish himself. He was aware that he ought to do this, but he
did not. Instead of engaging in a course of thought which would have
been both laudable and useful, he thought of Elly and nothing
else--nothing but Elly, as he walked for hours across the common and to
every village in the neighbourhood. Susie, who had not fathomed his
difficulties, thought these long walks very good for him. She could not
herself walk so far, but she had always heard that exercise was the
first necessity for a man, so that, instead of opposing, as she ought to
have done, she encouraged him for the good of his health, and because
his holidays would soon be over, to walk and think--of Elly--though she
did not know anything of this latter exercise.
Percy’s interrupted remonstrances of the previous night, which he had
understood well enough, as he had foreseen all the time that they were
coming, quickened to an almost incalculable extent the current of John’s
thoughts. It gave them a swing and energy which they had never had
before. He had known very well it was coming! From the beginning he had
been aware that things could not go on on this present footing, that
some change there must be; he had foreseen it dimly when Percy said ‘my
sister,’ that the familiar name, the child’s name, might not be given
over to John’s lips. How well he had perceived that! He had even, as he
now remembered, made an effort to obey. He had tried to set things
straight, to call her Miss Spencer, to treat the old childish intimacy
as a thing of the past, if Elly would have allowed it to be so. But she
had not allowed it; she would not suffer it; and now? What was to be
done? for something would have to be done. Even if there were no Percy
in the world, no watchful aunt, all this would have to be altered
somehow. The course of their history could not go on as it was going
now. His thoughts quickened as he pushed on and on for many a flying
mile. He walked, not seeing where he went, the landscape spinning past
him as if he were travelling in an express train. Things could not go on
as they were going now. Either all this whirling world of passion and
excitement must go back and be stilled and relapse into the former calm,
the easy boy and girl friendship, that relation which was entirely of
the past: or else--what else? What was the alternative? There was an
alternative; but even to himself it was difficult to put it into words.
This was what passed while Susie thought that he was taking exercise
for his health and to take advantage of being in the country. When he
came in he brought the scent of the fresh air with him, and a glow as of
vigour and wholesome exertion on his face, the rapidity of his
movements, and the contact of the keen, sweet air keeping him from all
appearance of being sicklied o’er with thought--though no philosopher
could have thought more deeply or sought more diligently a solution of
any problem. This was how he had been engaged on the day when Mr.
Cattley came to set matters right. He had, indeed, taken with him the
books which Elly wanted, which he had to carry to the rectory for her,
but he carried them first for miles along the country roads, always busy
with that problem which he had to solve; and in all likelihood would
have left them at the rectory as he returned home without so much as a
glimpse of Elly. For, as a matter of fact, at the time when her
relatives were most alarmed, and when the course of events seemed to be
most whirling and rapid, John had seen less and less of Elly. They had
both taken fright at the same moment--a mutual terror had seized upon
them; they had begun to avoid instead of seeking each other--he walking
miles about on his way to the rectory to leave those books for her, she
restricting herself to the most limited circuit that she might not
encounter him.
Mrs. Egerton was seated in her room, which commanded the gate of the
rectory, and in fact of the village street, waiting for Mr. Cattley to
come back, and tell her how he had sped; and Mr. Cattley in John
Sandford’s house was sitting with a sort of vague solace and consolation
in the company of the gentle young woman who knew nothing about him,
except that he was her brother’s friend, waiting for John. The afternoon
was a little heavy, as afternoons in the summer often are. It had been
raining all the morning, and the air was warm and damp, and the
atmosphere oppressive. Elly, who had spent the day chiefly at home,
taking her walk round and round the garden, lingering for a long time
under the old pear-tree, had been seized at last by one of those fits of
impatience which so often come upon us in a moment, nullifying the
precautions of many days. She felt as if there was no air, and that a
run across the common to the cottage of one of her pensioners would
deliver her from the stifling of this oppressed and breathless state.
She knew a way amongst the gorse, a wild little track over the moor and
heather, which nobody but herself and the village children ever used.
And she would not, she said to herself, be half-an-hour gone. She seized
upon her little basket, which stood on the hall table, all nicely packed
with certain little matters which made her a welcome visitor; and so
went out, nobody seeing her, if anybody had thought of remarking. But,
indeed, it was not for Elly, but Mr. Cattley that Mrs. Egerton was on
the watch, and no one else took any notice of the goings and comings of
the daughter of the house. She skimmed along as light as a bird, until
she got among the gorse bushes, half ablaze with their yellow blossoms,
filling the numerous bees with a sweet intoxication and the air with a
honeyed balm; and there Elly lingered, her basket hanging from her hand,
her head drooping, her mind full of thought, which was half troublous
and half sweet. She felt the crisis, too, in every vein, but not as
John felt it. The fears, the tribulations, the doubts of that moment
were not for her. Her honour could never be called in question. No one
could think of her as having betrayed any trust placed in her. Her brain
was thrilling with a suppressed excitement and wonder as to the next
step in this wonderful little drama of which she was the heroine. And
she was aware that there would be blame: she was aware that there would
be a struggle; but she was in no ways afraid of either one or the other.
The commotion of the great new thing, the revolution which seemed to be
imminent, the mingled reluctance and eagerness, the hesitation and the
longing, made disturbance enough in her girlish breast.
The mossy undergrowth, so luxurious and soft, was wet with the morning’s
rain, and yielded in all its velvet inequalities and cushions of
brilliant verdure, to her feet, which made no sound. Neither did that of
the other, who was threading the same maze, coming towards her with the
books under his arm, making his way ten miles round to the rectory,
unconscious how near he was to the object of his thoughts. When they
came suddenly in sight of each other round the great headland of the
furze bush, one of the giants of the common, all keen prickles and honey
flowers, Elly nearly dropped her basket and John let fall his books. He
had to stoop to gather them up as he took off his hat: but before even
this their looks had leaped to each other and met and made all
clear--the fright, the panic, the heavenly content and delight flashed
from one to the other. What more could words say? And then, when the
books were collected and the basket held fast, there was a pause.
‘I didn’t know you would be passing here,’ said Elly, with an
unconscious excuse to herself, as if something within had suddenly
accused her of coming on purpose to meet one who--was it not so?--she
was a little anxious to avoid.
‘No--and I didn’t mean it,’ said John. He added, after a moment, ‘I
think it must be fate.’
‘What must be fate? I am going to Betty Mirfield’s cottage, where I go
always every week.’
‘I know,’ said John, humbly; ‘you are always going about doing good,
whereas I never think of anyone but myself.’
This gave Elly strength to laugh, which she had been too much agitated
(which was so ridiculous!) to be capable of before. ‘If you call it
doing good to take old Betty her tea and sugar! You never used to call
things by such fine names.’
‘I never understood what anything meant in those old days,’ said John,
with an air of preternatural seriousness. As a matter of fact, he was in
such a condition of emotion and excitement that he could scarcely speak.
‘Oh, Jack! How can you say such things? I think you understood far
better than you do now. You look almost,’ said Elly, giving him a
succession of furtive glances, ‘as if you were--afraid--of me. How can
you be afraid--of me? or make fine speeches about doing good and that,
Jack, to me!’
‘Elly,’ he said all at once, very tremulously, ‘I am dreadfully unhappy:
if I seem strange that is the cause.’
‘Unhappy!’ she exclaimed, with a little cry of distress. ‘Oh, Jack, why?
Tell me!’ And throwing down her basket she caught his arm with her
hands, and looked up anxiously into his face, her eyes all set in curves
and puckers of sympathy and disquietude. She forgot even for the moment
all the heart-breakings of this critical moment and thought only what
could be the matter. What could she do to comfort him? Unhappy was a
word of dreadful meaning to Elly’s ear.
The books tumbled once more out of John’s hold: they lay upon the mossy
grass amicably in company with the overturned basket, where old Betty’s
little packets of tea and sugar peeped out as if to inquire what was the
cause of all this commotion. John stooped over the hands that had caught
his arm, putting down his head upon them. His heart was going like one
of the clanging engines with which he was so familiar. He half forgot
that Elly was the cause, in the necessity he felt to tell her of his
trouble, and be comforted by her sympathy. And they were so close that
Elly felt the vibration in him and was half frightened by it, yet
anxious only to soothe him.
‘Oh, what is it? Tell me, tell me!’ she said.
‘Elly, do you remember what I said to you the first day? It is all
changed between us, though you thought it need not be. I felt it then,
the first day. I had no right---- Do they think I don’t know that as
well as they do? I have no right. And yet I can’t give you up, and go
away, and hear of you marrying some one else, and having nothing more to
do with me. It’s not possible, it’s not possible!--I can’t, Elly, let
you go and give you up, and be nothing more to you, nor you to me. Elly!
don’t say you want me to do that.’
He was half leaning his weight upon her, quite unconsciously making her
slight figure sway and tremble.
‘Jack,’ she said, her voice trembling too. ‘Is there nothing else that
makes you unhappy but only about you and me?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’ he said, with something of the petulance of
passionate feeling, raising his head to look her indignantly in her
face.
‘Enough for trouble,’ said Elly, shaking her head; ‘but unhappy is a
dreadful word.’
‘Not so dreadful,’ said he, looking at her, not as if she were the
arbiter of fate, but with that intense desire for her sympathy which
seemed now his first feeling. ‘Not half so dreadful as if I have to give
up and go away?’
‘And who is there,’ said Elly, on her side, with a little glow of
indignation too, ‘that can make you give up and go away?’
Then they stood for a moment and looked at each other, far too much in
earnest and too serious to think of confusion, or blushes, or any of the
commonplaces of love-making. At last he said, taking her hands,
‘No one, Elly, if you don’t----’
‘You know,’ she said, still indignantly, ‘that I shan’t. Why should you
give up and go away?’
‘Because I am not good enough for you, Elly. That’s all quite true, not
half good enough.’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you have not any money, Jack. But what does that
matter? You will have some, some day. We can wait. That is nothing to be
unhappy about, anyhow.’
‘There is to me, and there is to them. I’d like you to have everything,
Elly; do you think I could live to bring you to poverty? It wrings my
heart to think of it; that you, who are a lady born, and are too good
for a prince, should come to poverty through me.’
‘Jack,’ said Elly, in that mature and elder-sisterly way with which she
had always taken the charge of him; ‘if you can’t bear to leave me and
go away, and yet can’t bear to keep me and bring me to poverty, what is
to be done? You will have to bear either one or the other, so far as I
can see.’
It was not perhaps the right moment to laugh: but it is difficult to
regulate that sense of the ridiculous, which is one comfort in all our
troubles. Something in the sight of John’s solemn face, so troubled and
serious in the clutch of this dilemma, overcame Elly in her nervous
excitement and she burst into a wild peal of laughter--which rang over
all the damp, sweet wilderness that had become the Garden of Eden of
this primitive natural pair.
By-and-by, they gathered up the basket and the books, and took the tea
and sugar to Betty Mirfield, who had been grumbling that Miss Elly was
so late, and did not hesitate to tell her so. And then they went back
again, lingering across the common, winding their devious way among the
great furze-bushes which caught at them as they passed with prickles
that left marks of dew and a breath of honey; and so very slowly walked
back again to Edgeley, the rectory and the world, from which heaven
knows they had gone far enough afield. They had of course a thousand
things to say, a thousand, and a thousand more; and lost themselves in
that fairyland which by times is near to all of us at every age, but
nearest of all at the age of Elly and John. But when no further delay
was possible, the sun sinking in the skies, signs of home-going and
evening rest penetrating even to their charmed senses, they reached at
last the edge of the common, and saw before them the everyday existence
which they had forgotten, they both awoke from their dream, and standing
still for one awful moment looked each other in the face. Oh, it was all
easy enough between themselves, delightfully easy, needing no troublous
explanations, the very course of nature. But beyond that enchanted
common, and the gorse bushes with their prickles! They stood and
faltered, and Elly, who had been the bravest, felt now for the first
time her heart sink to her shoes. John’s face set into that sternness
which belongs to a forlorn hope. He caught Elly’s hand and drew it
through his arm.
‘We must be honest, whatever else,’ he said. ‘Come and let us have it
out at once.’
‘Oh, Jack!’ cried the other culprit. They were no longer the enchanted
prince and princess. Aunt Mary’s face, severe as fate already, shone
terrible upon them from the window, and there was no escape.