“Greatly to do is great, but greater still
Greatly to suffer.”
J. Noel Paton.
|The following Tuesday proved to be as fine a day as Christine could
have wished. Charlie was delighted to fall in with her suggestion of
driving from Leamington to Warwick, and she left him with Linklater and
his beloved camera to spend a long afternoon in seeing the castle, the
church and the many picturesque places to be found in the old town.
“I have to pay a call in the neighbourhood,” she explained, “and will
meet you here at six o’clock. See that he has plenty to eat, Linklater,
for we made a very early lunch.”
When they were safely within the castle gates she ordered a Victoria at
the hotel and drove in to Stratford. Up to that very moment she had felt
eager and alert, ready to dare anything in her desperation. But now when
there was no longer anything to do, she lay back in the carriage feeling
utterly spent, unable to find the least comfort in the soft spring
air, or in the beautiful expanse of country, or in the hedge-rows just
bursting into leaf, or in the joyous song of the birds. It was not until
they were close to Shakspere’s town that her spirit returned to her once
more, and as they passed the Roman Catholic Church she sat up and called
to her driver.
“I will get out here,” she said adjusting her white gossamer travelling
veil. “You can drive on and put up at the Shakspere Hotel until I come
there.”
The man obeyed and she walked on until upon the left she saw Clopton’s
Bridge, at the further side of which she knew the Swan’s Nest was
situated. As usual she was dressed with scrupulous quietness, there was
nothing in her black serge coat and skirt and sailor hat to distinguish
her from hundreds of other women, and no passer-by would have recognised
her through her veil.
Nevertheless her heart failed her somewhat when the little old-fashioned
inn with its red brick walls and tiled roof came into sight. She fully
realised that she was taking a desperate step.
But then did not desperate diseases require desperate remedies? And had
not Hugh Macneillie in the letter he wrote her three and a half years
ago entreated her to let him serve her if ever she found herself in a
difficulty?
No one else could help her now. He only could shield her and make her
life worth living. And was not he ill and in need of her? Was she not
fully justified in seeking him? She had paused involuntarily on the
bridge lost in thought and now just for a moment the exceeding beauty of
the view drew her attention away from her perplexities.
The silvery Avon, crossed a little further down by an old bridge of
red brick, the irregular buildings of the little town, the finely
proportioned Memorial theatre standing in its gardens upon the river’s
brink; facing it a lovely pastoral bit of green meadows, and budding
trees, and in the distance the old church spire with rooks circling
about it.
In the opposite direction lay peaceful fields, and all along the bank
pollard willows overhung the stream which curved round in a way that
delighted her eye. Just at the bend of the river, moored to a willow
tree, a small golden-brown boat was to be seen. It was empty but on the
bank above it lay the figure of a man with his head propped on his arm
and a book in his hand. She could not distinguish his features at that
distance but from something in his attitude she at once knew that it was
Hugh Macneillie.
Moreover she could see a corner of the plaid which he had invariably
taken about with him, the dark blue and green of the Macneil tartan with
its thin alternate cross lines of white and yellow. It was the very same
one that in old days had often been spread over her knees on some cold
wintry railway journey.
Somehow the sight of this restored her failing heart; she swiftly made
her way down to the river-side and youth and hope seemed to come back
to her as her feet touched the springy turf and passed lightly over the
white and gold of the daisies.
Macneillie, just glancing up from his book, saw a lady approaching clad
in the costume which is almost a uniform; he devoutly hoped, after the
fashion of celebrities on a holiday, that she would not recognise him.
Christine could so well read his thoughts and understand his slightest
gesture that she could hardly help laughing. She put up her veil and
walked straight towards him, her brown eyes full of that soft love-light
which for years he had not seen in them. As she paused close to him he
involuntarily looked up once more, and with a cry sprang to his feet.
“Christine!” he exclaimed taking both her hands in his. “Is it indeed
you!”
Just for one exquisite moment he forgot everything, was only conscious
that she was beside him, and that they loved each other, with a
love which surpassed even the first bliss of the early days of their
betrothal. The next moment, with a horrible revulsion, he remembered the
barrier that lay between them. Neither of them spoke; in the stillness
they were each conscious of the clear birdlike whistle of an errand
boy crossing the bridge. He had caught up one of the prettiest airs in
“Haddon Hall”--“To thine own heart be true”!
“Hugh,” she said softly, “you told me if ever a time came when there was
no one else who could help me more fitly that I was to come to you. I am
driven almost desperate and I have come to claim your promise. Where can
we talk quietly?”
“If you will not find it too cold I could row you up the river towards
Charlcote,” he said. “Later in the week Stratford will be full of
excursionists, but there is no one on the river this afternoon, we shall
be quite unmolested.”
She thought this an excellent plan and let him help her into the boat
and spread the plaid over her knees.
“It was by this dear old tartan that I recognised you, at least chiefly
by that,” she said.
“Like its owner it has seen its best days,” said Macneillie with a
smile. “But I have the same feeling for it that the fellow in Gounod’s
song had for his old coat,
‘Mon viel ami
Ne nous séparons pas.’”
And he sighed a little as he remembered how in the days of their
betrothal he had often taken her under his “plaidie.”
A strange, dreamy, unreal feeling crept over Christine as she leant back
in the stern, while Macneillie with his strong arms rowed her up the
winding river. She almost wished his strokes had not been so long and
steady, for it seemed to her as if this heaven of peace and repose would
end too swiftly. At last he paused.
“We couldn’t well find a more lovely place than this,” he said glancing
over his shoulder and dexterously guiding the boat in between the grassy
bank and the branches of an overhanging willow tree.
“I never saw such a wonderful colour as these new spring shoots of the
willow,” said Christine, as he drew in his oars and sat down beside her
in the stern.
Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves, the flies came out and made
a cheerful droning sound as though summer had already come, a lark was
singing far up in the blue vault above, and everywhere the quiet of
perfect peace seemed to brood.
Macneillie felt that longer silence was perilous, he had learned to
allow himself scant leisure when temptation was rife.
“Tell me now what your trouble is,” he said quietly.
“Oh!” she cried vehemently, “it seems like sacrilege even to speak of it
in such a place as this where all is so peaceful.”
Macneillie, who was very far from being at peace, smiled a little
involuntarily.
“The place is well enough,” he said glancing round. “But now that we are
actually among the ‘pendent boughs’ it reminds me rather too much of
‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook.’
It might be the identical spot where Ophelia was drowned.”
“I wonder if it is,” she said diverted for a minute from her own
anxieties. “Poor Ophelia! Somehow I have never cared for acting that
part of late years. You spoiled me for all other Hamlets. I have often
wondered since, Hugh, how you contrived to get through that last season
in London.”
“Well it was a rough time,” said Macneillie, “for, like the Danish
Prince,
‘In my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep.’
By the end of the season I was as nearly mad as Hamlet feigned to be.
But no more of that. It is of the present we must talk not of the past.
How can I help you? Has anyone been molesting you?”
“Yes,” she faltered. “I will tell you all, and then you will
understand.”
So in her musical voice, and with that extraordinary charm of manner
which made her irresistible, she told him simply and truthfully all the
difficulties she had had to contend with. Lastly she told him of Conway
Sartoris and of the arguments he had used in his letter.
“They seem to me quite unanswerable,” she said, “and he is a man
everyone respects, he is far more intellectual than we are, and he
doesn’t merely theorise, he knows the difficulties of real life. The
more I think of it, the more it seems to me that you and I are wrecking
our lives and suffering so cruelly all for a mistaken idea,--a sort of
fetish-worship for the law of the land.”
Macneillie had grown very pale, his hands trembled, but from long force
of habit his voice was well under control.
“Sin is lawlessness,” he quoted in a low tone.
“Yes, yes,” she said quickly. “But this law that parts us, that makes
our lives a hell--you say it is an unjust law and ought to be reformed.
You said that in your letter.”
“I long for its reform with all my heart,” he replied. “And the greatest
of living statesmen and the most devoted of English Churchmen did his
utmost in 1857 to prevent this wicked double standard of morality from
ever finding a place in the Divorce Law. He said he would deliberately
prefer an increase in the number of cases of divorce to the acceptance
of this shameful inequality between men and women.”
“And are we patiently and tamely to go on enduring it?” she cried. “Why,
surely, all reforms have been won by those who were not afraid to break
the bad laws that had no business to exist. Think of your Covenanters
who gloriously broke the law and saved their country from tyranny!
Almost all heroes and martyrs have broken the law when it deserved to be
broken.”
“Yes, that is true,” he said. “But they only broke it out of obedience
to a higher law, they did not break it for their own gain. My dearest,”
he took her hand and held it closely in his, “though this law cries
aloud for reform, let us be law-abiding citizens, and wait.”
Her eyes filled with tears, her voice quivered pitifully when after
awhile she spoke.
“You talk of waiting, but when one sees how truth and justice are set at
naught in parliament,--how with people agonising and dying, and with
so much that is wrong to be righted our representatives will haggle
miserably for months and years over useless questions, how from sheer
spite they will waste the time of the nation, how from party jealousy
they will thwart measures,--the thought of waiting grows intolerable.”
“But reform is bound to come,” said Macneillie, “most of the fair minded
people who have studied the matter and who know anything of practical
life desire it, we have against us only the narrow minded and the men of
vicious life.”
“You say _only!_” exclaimed Christine with a laugh that was a sob. “But
it is just the narrow good and the vicious bad who work all the misery
of the world. Oh, Hugh! I am not strong and brave like you, I am weak
and tired and worn out. I cannot live longer without you. I have tried
to bear it but I have come to the end of my strength.”
She covered her face with her hands, he could see great tears slowly
falling between her slender white fingers, and the sight wrung his
heart. Yet he did not respond to her appeal. It was not because he
failed to understand that bitter cry of exhaustion, it was because
he understood it so well, had been indeed for the last few weeks so
drearily conscious of just that same feeling that he could endure no
longer, that his strength was gone. It was well that Christine could not
see his face, for the agonising struggle which was going on within him
was only too clearly visible. In the intense stillness of the calm sunny
afternoon it seemed to him that all nature was at rest save themselves,
and as in moments of great physical pain some very slight detail will
attract the sufferer’s attention, so now, while he passed through
the most cruel ordeal of his life, Macneillie was watching half
unconsciously the pretty movements of a little water-rat which had run
up the stem of a bush growing close to the river, and was evidently
enjoying itself to the best of its ability. The birds, too, were singing
as though in a perfect ecstasy of joy.
Their song contrasted mockingly with the torturing thoughts which filled
his mind, and yet nevertheless it was through the joyousness of these
lesser creatures that his help was to come. For it carried him back to
the thought of a great Teacher who, when speaking to “an innumerable
multitude of people,” average men and women, tempest-tossed as he was
now, had told them that not one single bird was forgotten by God, and
had said, “Fear not, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
With that highest courage which in times of dire dismay can rise from
what seems like certain defeat, and kindle hope and strength in the
hearts of others, and win in a desperate fight, Macneillie gripped the
words to his heart and was strong once more, with that trust in God
which is man’s righteousness.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, as Christine at length looked
up and dried her tears. “Many a time I have felt at the end of my
strength. It’s just a device of the devil’s own making. Depend upon it,
God won’t take away His gift just when it is most needed. Is it likely
He would do that?”
“It seems to me that the devil rules,” said Christine. “I can believe in
little but evil in the wretched life I have had to live. Here, with you,
it is different, I seem another being altogether. You can make me good.”
There was truth in what she said. He had always had over her the best
possible influence. Without each other they were incomplete.
“And yet,” he said, “it is just because I so love and honour you that
the arguments of Conway Sartoris which you mentioned just now, clever
and plausible though they are, seem contemptible. Shall I let the one I
love best in all the world bear shame and reproach? Shall you and I who
have tried all these years to be a credit to the profession give such
a handle to its enemies? Shall we dare to bring down upon innocent
children the curse of illegitimacy? And all because we were too weakly
impatient to wait--or too cowardly to suffer? Forgive me, my dear one,
I put these things in a blunt way, but are they not things we must think
out clearly if we would come safely through this ordeal?”
She looked up in his face, it was singularly beautiful just at the
minute, in spite of the havoc which time and suffering had wrought in
it. She fancied that he would wear that look of manly courage, of noble
strength in his resurrection body. The thought seemed to give her new
life. Quietly, indeed with a calmness which surprised herself, she
slipped her hand into his; it was done spontaneously as a child slips
its hand into that of a trusted companion.
“You are right, Hugh, quite right,” she said. “We will wait. You must
forgive me for having come here to-day.”
“You were only keeping your promise,” he said, “and perhaps to talk
things out was best for both of us.”
He was silent for a few minutes, wondering what could be done to render
her life a little more bearable. What was it that had been his own
greatest relief during the last few years? Well, undoubtedly, it had
been the companionship of Ralph and his wife and little Dick. They were
a very fascinating trio and carried about with them an atmosphere of
youth and brightness which was pleasant enough to middle-aged folk
sorely burdened with care and trouble. A sudden idea flashed into his
mind. Many people are ready to assert that they would lay down their
lives for those they love. Macneillie seldom protested in words but had
a way of quietly giving up his most treasured possessions, so quietly,
indeed, that most people hardly noticed that he did it at all.
“And now,” he said, “I am going to ask you to do something for me. Do
you recollect a young fellow who was acting with you at Edinburgh four
summers ago--Ralph Denmead by name?”
“Why yes, to be sure. I met him only last Sunday at the Herefords. What
a nice fellow he seems, and I lost my heart to his dear little wife.”
“I am glad you saw them both, they are a delightful couple. Well now,
could you possibly get him a London engagement? Would Barry Sterne have
any opening for him? It seems to me that there is a very good chance
just now for a young romantic actor. We have no really satisfactory
Romeo or Orlando.”
“But surely you are in no hurry to part with him? I hear he is very
popular everywhere.”
“For myself I am in no hurry,” said Macneillie. “But I should be glad
for him to get a London engagement, he deserves it, and then this
wandering life is a little hard on his wife and child. They had better
settle down, and if they were somewhere in your neighbourhood you would
perhaps befriend them. Evereld is a dear little woman, you would like
her, and she has the greatest admiration for you.”
Christine’s face brightened up, it pleased her greatly that he should
have asked her to do something for him; she resolved to leave no stone
unturned and to do her utmost for his friends.
“I should like to have them near me; you can’t think how lonely it
is often,” she said. “If it were not for my work and for Charlie’s
companionship I don’t think I could have endured it all this time. The
best plan would be for Barry Sterne to see him act. I wonder whether
there would be a chance of getting him to ran down for one of the
performances in the Memorial Week?”
“That is a good idea,” said Macneillie. “By the bye, Sterne will
scarcely remember it, but the boy did go to him some years ago when he
first made up his mind to be an actor. I have often heard him describe
the interview. He got cold comfort from Sterne and a most discouraging
letter from me. But nothing daunts your real genius. He plodded on, and
starved and struggled till things took a turn. And some day if I am not
much mistaken he will be one of our leading actors.”
“His own opinion is that he owes everything to you,” said Christine with
a smile. “I heard a great deal about you on Sunday from both of them.
I shall be so glad if I can really do anything for people you care for,
Hugh. The Denmeads will be quite a new object in life for me.”
Those words and the look which went with them were Macneillie’s comfort
when, shortly after, he parted with Christine. But to stay longer at
Stratford with nothing to do had become impossible for him. The river
was a haunted place, he dared not go on it again, everything which on
his arrival had seemed so peaceful bore upon it now the ineffaceable
stamp of the bitter struggle he had passed through.
To go back to his work was directly against the doctor’s orders, but go
somewhere he must. He packed his portmanteau, and tried to think of any
place in the world he wished to see, but could not care even to
return to his own country. All things were “weary, stale, flat and
unprofitable.”
“Fate shall decide,” he said to himself with the ghost of a smile
playing about his lips. And dragging out an ancient atlas from the pile
of books on the sitting-room table, he opened at the map of Europe and
solemnly spun a threepenny bit. After threatening to come to an end in
the middle of the German Ocean it finally settled down in Holland.
“Via Harwich and the Hook,” said Macneillie pocketing the arbiter of his
fate. “So be it. I will run across and see if the bulbs are coming into
bloom.”