"There are seasons in human affairs when qualities, fit enough to
conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless, when
men must trust to emotion for that safety which reason at such
times can never give."--SYDNEY SMITH.
Annette had been waked early by two young swallows which had flown into
her room, and had circled swiftly round it with sharp, ecstatic cries,
and then had sped out again into the dawn.
She dressed, and went noiselessly into the garden, and then wandered
into the long meadows that stretched in front of the house. The low
slanting sunshine was piercing the mist which moved slowly along the
ground, and curled up into the windless air like smoke. The dew was on
everything. She wondered the blades of grass could each bear such a
burden of it. Every spider's web in the hedgerow, and what numbers there
seemed, all of a sudden had become a glistening silver-beaded pocket.
Surely no fly, however heedless, would fly therein. And everywhere the
yellow tips of the groundsel had expanded into tiny white fluffy balls
of down, strewing the empty fields, floating with the floating mist.
But though it was early, the little world of Riff was astir. In the
distance she could hear the throb of the mill, and close at hand across
the lane two great yellow horses were solemnly pacing an empty
clover-field, accompanied by much jingling of machinery and a boyish
whistle. Men with long rakes were drawing the weeds into heaps, and
wreaths of smoke mingled with the mist. The thin fires leaped and
crackled, the pale flames hardly wavering in the still, sunny air.
Instinctively Annette's steps turned towards the sound of the mill. She
crossed the ford by the white stepping-stones, dislodging a colony of
ducks preening themselves upon the biggest stone, and followed the
willow-edged stream to the mill.
There had been rain in the night, and the little Rieben chafed and
girded against the mill-race.
She watched it, as a year ago she had watched the Seine chafe against
its great stone bastions. The past rose before her at the sight and
sound of the water, and the crinkling and circling of the eddies of
yellow foam.
How unendurable her life had seemed to her on that day! And now to-day
life was valueless. Once again it had been shattered like glass. She had
been cast forth then. Now she was cast forth once more. She had made
herself a little niche, crept into a crevice where she had thought no
angel with a flaming sword would find her and drive her out. But she
was being driven out once more into the wilderness. She had no abiding
city anywhere.
From where she stood she looked past the mill to the released and
pacified water circling round the village, and then stretching away,
silver band beyond silver band, in the direction of Riebenbridge. The
sun had vanquished the mist, and lay warmly on the clustered cottages
and the grey church tower, and on the old red and blue facade of Hulver
among its hollies. And very high up above it all stretched a sky of tiny
shredded clouds like a flock of a thousand thousand sheep.
How tranquil it all was, and how closely akin to her, how fraught with
mysterious meaning!--as the kind meadows and trees ever do seem fraught
where we have met Love, even the Love that is unequal, and presently
passes away.
She must leave it all, and she must part with Roger. She had thought of
him as her husband. She had thought of the children she should bear him.
She looked at the water with eyes as tearless as a year ago, and saw her
happiness pass like a bubble on its surface, break like the iridescent
bubble that it is on life's rough river. But the water held no
temptation for her to-day. She had passed the place where we are
intolerant of burdens. She saw that they are the common lot. Roger and
Janey had borne theirs in patience and in silence and without self-pity
for years. They were her ideal, and she must try to be like them. She
did not need her solemn promise to Dick to keep her from the water's
edge, though her sense of desolation was greater to-day than it had been
a year ago. For there had been pride and resentment in her heart then,
and it is not a wounded devotion but a wounded self-love which arouses
resentment in our hearts.
She felt no anger to-day, no bitter sense of humiliation, but her heart
ached for Roger. Something in her needed him, needed him. There was no
romance now as she had once known it, no field of lilies under a new
moon. Her love for Roger had gone deeper, where all love must go, if it
is to survive its rainbow youth. She had thought she had found an
abiding city in Roger's heart. But he had let her leave him without a
word after her confession. He had not called her back. He had not
written to her since.
"I am not good enough for him," said Annette to herself. "That is the
truth. He and Janey are too far above me."
She longed for a moment that the position might have been reversed, that
it might have been she who was too good for Roger--only it was
unthinkable. But if _he_ had been under some cloud, then she knew that
they would not have had to part.
She had reached the stile where the water meadows begin, and
instinctively she stood still and looked at her little world once more,
and thankfulness flooded her heart. After all, Roger had come in for his
inheritance, for this place which he loved so stubbornly. She was not
what he thought, but if she had been, if she had never had her mad
moment, if she had never gone to Fontainebleau, it was almost certain
Dick would never have made his will. She had at any rate done that for
Roger. Out of evil good had come--if not to her, to him. She crossed the
stile, where the river bent away from the path, and then came back to
it, slow and peaceful once more, whispering amid its reeds, the flurry
of the mill-race all forgotten. Would she one day--when she was very
old--would she also forget?
Across the empty field thin smoke wreaths came drifting. Here too they
had been burning the weeds. At her feet, at the water's edge, blue eyes
of forget-me-not peered suddenly at her. It had no right to be in flower
now. She stooped over the low bank, holding by a twisted willow branch,
and reached it and put it in her bosom. And as she looked at it, it
seemed to Annette that in some forgotten past she had wandered in a
great peace by a stream such as this, a kind understanding stream, and
she had gathered a spray of forget-me-not such as this, and had put it
in her bosom, and she had met beside the stream one that loved her: and
all had been well, exceeding well.
A great peace enfolded her, as a mother enfolds her new-born babe. She
was wrapt away from pain.
Along the narrow path by the water's edge Roger was coming: now dimly
seen through the curling smoke, now visible in the sunshine. Annette
felt no surprise at seeing him. She had not heard of his return, but she
knew now that she had been waiting for him.
He came up to her and then stopped. Neither held out a hand, as they
looked gravely at each other. Then he explained something about having
missed the last train from Ipswich, and how he had slept there, and had
come out to Riebenbridge by the first train this morning.
"I have the will," he said, and touched his breast. And his eyes passed
beyond her to the familiar picture he knew so well, of Riff beyond the
river, and the low church tower, and the old house among the trees. He
looked long at it all, and Annette saw that his inheritance was his
first thought. It seemed to her natural. There were many, many women in
the world, but only one Hulver.
His honest, tired face quivered.
"I owe it to you," he said.
She did not answer. She turned with him, and they went a few steps in
silence; and if she had not been wrapt away from all pain, I think she
must have been wounded by his choosing that moment to tell her that the
notary had pronounced Hulver "Heevair," and that those French lawyers
were a very ignorant lot. But he was in reality only getting ready to
say something, and it was his habit to say something else while doing
so. He had no fear of being _banal_. It was a word he had never heard.
He informed her which hotel he had put up at in Ipswich, and how he had
had a couple of poached eggs on arrival. Then he stopped.
"Annette," he said, "of course you understood about my not writing to
you, because I ought to have written."
Annette said faintly, as all women must say, that she had understood. No
doubt she had, but not in the sense which he imagined.
"I owe it all to you," he said again, "but I shouldn't have any
happiness in it unless I had you too. Annette, will you marry me?"
She shook her head. But there would be no marriages at all if men took
any notice of such bagatelles as that. Roger pressed stolidly forward.
"I had not time to say anything the other day," he said, hurrying over
what even he realized was thin ice. "You were gone all in a flash.
But--but, Annette, nothing you said then makes any change in my feeling
for you. I wanted to marry you before, and I want to marry you now."
"Didn't they--the doctor and the notary--didn't they tell you when you
saw my signature that I was--guilty?"
"Yes," said Roger firmly, "they did. The doctor spoke of you with great
respect, but he did think so. But you have told me you were not. That is
enough for me. Will you marry me, Annette?"
"You are good, Roger," she said, looking at him with a great
tenderness,--"good all through. That is why you think I am good too. But
the will remains. My signature to it remains. That _must_ be known when
the will is proved. Mrs. Stoddart says so. She said my good name must
suffer. I am afraid if I married you that you and Janey would be the
only two people in Riff who would believe that I was innocent."
"And is not my belief enough?"
She looked at him with love unspeakable.
"It is enough for me," she said, "but not for you. You would not be
happy, or only for a little bit, not for long, with a wife whom every
one, every one from the Bishop to the cowman, believed to be Dick's
cast-off mistress."
Roger set his teeth, and became his usual plum colour.
"We would live it down."
"No," she said. "That is the kind of thing that is never lived down--at
least, not in places like this. I know enough to know that."
He knew it too. He knew it better than she did.
He got the will slowly out of his pocket and opened it. They looked
together at her signature. Roger saw it through tears of rage, and
crushed the paper together again into his pocket.
"Oh! Annette," he said, with a groan. "Why did you sign it?"
"I did it to please Dick," she said.
Across the water the church bell called to an early service. Roger
looked once more at his little world, grown shadowy and indistinct in a
veil of smoke. It seemed as if his happiness were fading and eddying
away into thin air with the eddies of blue smoke.
"We must part," said Annette. "I am sure you see that."
The forget-me-not fell from her bosom, and she let it lie. He looked
back at her. He had become very pale.
"I see one thing," he said fiercely, "and that is that I can't live
without you, and what is more, I don't mean to. If you will marry me,
I'll stand the racket about the scandal. Hulver is no good to me without
you. My life is no good to me without you. If you won't marry me, I'll
marry no one, so help me God. If you won't take me, I shall never have
any happiness at all. So now you know!--with your talk of parting."
She did not answer. She stooped and picked up the forget-me-not again,
and put it back in her bosom. Perhaps she thought that was an answer.
"Annette," he said slowly, "do you care for me enough to marry me and
live here with me? You as my wife and Hulver as my home are the two
things I want. But that is all very well for me. The scandal will fall
worst on you. If I can stand it, can you?"
"Yes."
"It will come very hard on you, Annette."
"I don't mind."
"I shan't be able to shield you from evil tongues. There is not a soul
in the village that won't end by knowing, sooner or later. And they
think all the world of you now. Can you bear all this--for my sake?"
"Yes."
"And yet you're crying, Annette."
"I was thinking about the aunts. They will feel it so dreadfully, and so
will Mrs. Nicholls. I'm very fond of Mrs. Nicholls."
He caught her to him and kissed her passionately.
"Do you never think of yourself?" he stammered. "You chucked your name
away to please poor Dick. And you're ready to marry me and brave it
out--to please me."
"You are enough for me, Roger." She clung to him.
He trembled exceedingly, and wrenched himself away from her.
"Am I? Am I enough? A man who would put you through such a thing, even
if you're willing, Annette. You stick at nothing. You're willing.
But--by God--I'm not."
She looked dumbly at him, with anguish in her violet eyes. She thought
he was going to discard her after all.
"I thought I wanted Hulver more than anything in the world," he said
wildly, tearing the will out of his pocket, "but the price is too high.
My wife's good name. I won't pay it. Annette, I will not pay it."
And he strode to the nearest bonfire and flung the will into it.
The smoke eddied, and blew suddenly towards them. The fire hesitated a
moment, and then, as Annette gazed stupefied, a little flame curled
busily along the open sheet.
Before he knew she had moved, she had rushed past him, and had thrust
her hands into the fire and torn out the burning paper. The flame ran
nimbly up her arm, devouring her thin sleeve, and he had only just time
to beat it out with his hands before it reached her hair.
He drew her out of the smoke and held her forcibly. She panted hard,
sobbing a little. The will gripped tight in her hand was pressed against
her breast and his.
"Annette!" he said hoarsely, over and over again. Still holding the will
fast, she drew away from him, and opened it with trembling, bleeding
fingers, staining the sheet.
"It is safe," she said. "It's safe. It's only scorched. You can see the
writing quite clear through the brown. Look, Roger, but you mustn't
touch it. I can't trust you to touch it. _It is safe._ Only the bottom
of the sheet is burnt where there wasn't anything written. Look! Dick's
name is there, and the doctor's, and the notary's. Only mine is gone....
Oh, Roger! Now my name is gone, the will is--just about right, isn't
it?"
Roger drew in his breath, and looked at the blood-smeared, smoke-stained
page.
"It is all right now," he said in a strangled voice. And then he
suddenly fell on his knees and hid his convulsed face in her gown.
"You mustn't cry, Roger. And you mustn't kiss the hem of my gown.
Indeed, you mustn't. It makes me ashamed. Nor my hands: they're quite
black. Oh! how my poor Roger cries!"
THE END
_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
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