Few possessed of any degree of imagination can turn their backs on a
churchyard, after having witnessed there the shovelling upon and
stamping down of the last poor refuge of that which all feel to be
superfluous, a mere fragment of the inevitable _débris_ of life, without
a clinging hope that in some way or other the process may be avoided for
themselves. In spite of philosophy, the body will not picture its
surrender to the sordid thraldom of the undertaker and the mastery of
the spade, and preferably sees itself falling through cold miles of
water to some vague resting-place below the tides, or wedged beyond
search in the grip of an ice crack, or swept as grey ash into a cinerary
urn; anything rather than the prisoning coffin and blind weight of
earth. So Christopher thought impatiently, as he drove back to Bruff
from Mrs. Lambert’s funeral, in the dismal solemnity of black clothes
and a brougham, while the distant rattle of a reaping-machine was like a
voice full of the health and energy of life, that talked on of harvest,
and would not hear of graves.
That the commonplace gloom of a funeral should have plunged his general
ideas into despondency is, however, too much to believe of even such a
supersensitive mind as Christopher’s. It gave a darker wash of colour to
what was already clouded, and probably it was its trite, terrific sneer
at human desire and human convention that deadened his heart from time
to time with fatalistic suggestion; but it was with lesser facts than
these that he strove. Miss Mullen depositing hysterically a wreath upon
her friend’s coffin, in the acute moment of lowering it into the grave;
Miss Mullen sitting hysterically beside him in the carriage as he drove
her back to Tally Ho in the eyes of all men; Miss Mullen lying, still
hysterical, on her drawing-room sofa, holding in her black-gloved hand a
tumbler of sal volatile and water, and eventually commanding her emotion
sufficiently to ask him to bring her, that afternoon, a few books and
papers, to quiet her nerves, and to rob of its weariness the bad night
that would inevitably be her portion.
It was opposite these views, which, as far as tears went, might well be
called dissolving, that his mind chiefly took its stand, in unutterable
repugnance, and faint endeavour to be blind to his own convictions. He
was being chased. Now that he knew it he wondered how he could ever have
been unaware of it; it was palpable to anyone, and he felt in advance
what it would be like to hear the exultant winding of the huntsman’s
horn, if the quarry were overtaken. The position was intolerable from
every rational point of view; Christopher with his lethargic scorn of
social tyrannies and stale maxims of class, could hardly have believed
that he was sensible of so many of these points, and despised himself
accordingly. Julia Duffy’s hoarse voice still tormented his ear in
involuntary spasms of recollection, keeping constantly before him the
thought of the afternoon of four days ago, when he and Francie had been
informed of the destiny allotted to them. The formless and unquestioned
dream through which he had glided had then been broken up, like some
sleeping stretch of river when the jaws of the dredger are dashed into
it, and the mud is dragged to light, and the soiled waves carry the
outrage onward in ceaseless escape. Nothing now could place him where
he had been before, nor could he wish to regain that purposeless
content. It was better to look things in the face at last, and see where
they were going to end. It was better to know himself to be Charlotte’s
prize than to give up Francie.
This was what it meant, he said to himself, while he changed his funeral
garb, and tried to get into step with the interrupted march of the
morning. The alternative had been with him for four days, and now, while
he wrote his letters, and sat at luncheon, and collected the books that
were to interpose between Miss Mullen and her grief, the choice became
more despotic than ever, in spite of the antagonism that met it in every
surrounding. All the chivalry that smouldered under the modern malady of
exhausted enthusiasm ranged itself on Francie’s side; all the poetry in
which he had steeped his mind, all his own poetic fancy, combined to
blind him to many things that he would otherwise have seen. He acquitted
her of any share in her cousin’s coarse scheming with a passionateness
that in itself testified to the terror lest it might be true. He had
idealised her to the pitch that might have been expected, and clothed
her with his own refinement, as with a garment, so that it was her
position that hurt him most, her embarrassment that shamed him beyond
his own.
Christopher’s character is easier to feel than to describe; so conscious
of its own weakness as to be almost incapable of confident effort, and
with a soul so humble and straightforward that it did not know its own
strength and simplicity. Some dim understanding of him must have reached
Francie, with her ignorant sentimentalities and her Dublin brogue; and
as a sea-weed stretches vague arms up towards the light through the
conflict of the tides, her pliant soul rose through its inherited
vulgarities, and gained some vision of higher things. Christopher could
not know how unparalleled a person he was in her existence, of how
wholly unknown a type. Hawkins and he had been stars of unimagined
magnitude; but though she had attained to the former’s sphere with
scarcely an effort, Christopher remained infinitely remote. She could
scarcely have believed that as he drove from Bruff in the quiet sunshine
of the afternoon, and surmounted the hill near its gate, the magic that
she herself had newly learned about was working its will with him.
The corn that had stood high between him and Francie that day when he
had ridden back to look after her, was bound in sheaves on the yellow
upland, and the foolish omen set his pulses going. If she were now
passing along that other road there would be nothing between him and
her. He had got past the stage of reason, even his power of mocking at
himself was dead, or perhaps it was that there seemed no longer anything
that could be mocked at. In spite of his knowledge of the world the
position had an aspect that was so serious and beautiful as to overpower
the others, and to become one of the mysteries of life into which he had
thought himself too cheap and shallow to enter. A few weeks ago a visit
to Tally Ho would have been a penance and a weariness of the flesh, a
thing to be groaned over with Pamela, and endured only for the sake of
collecting some new pearl of rhetoric from Miss Mullen. Now each thought
of it brought again the enervating thrill, the almost sickening feeling
of subdued excitement and expectation.
It was the Lismoyle market-day, and Christopher made his way slowly
along the street, squeezing between carts and barrels, separating groups
locked together in the extremity of bargaining, and doing what in him
lay to avoid running over the old women, who, blinded by their
overhanging hoods and deaf by nature, paraded the centre of the
thoroughfare with a fine obliviousness of dog-carts and their drivers.
Most of the better class of shops had their shutters up in recognition
of the fact that Mrs. Lambert, a customer whom neither co-operative
stores or eighteen-penny teas had been able to turn from her allegiance,
had this morning passed their doors for the last time, in slow,
incongruous pomp, her silver-mounted coffin commanding all eyes as the
glass-sided hearse moved along with its quivering bunches of black
plumes. The funeral was still a succulent topic in the gabble of the
market; Christopher heard here and there such snatches of it as:
“Rest her sowl, the crayture! ’Tis she was the good wife and more than
all, she was the beautiful housekeeper!”
“Is it _he_ lonesome afther her? No, nor if he berrid ten like her.”
“She was a spent little woman always, and ’tis she that doted down on
him.”
“And ne’er a child left afther her! Well, she must be exshcused.”
“Musha, I’d love her bones!” shouted Nance the Fool, well aware of the
auditor in the dog-cart, “there wasn’t one like her in the nation, nor
in the world, no, nor in the town o’ Galway!”
Towards the end of the street, at the corner of a lane leading to the
quay, something like a fight was going on, and, as he approached,
Christopher saw, over the heads of an admiring audience, the infuriated
countenance of a Lismoyle beggar-woman, one of the many who occasionally
legalised their existence by selling fish, between long bouts of
mendicancy and drunkenness. Mary Norris was apparently giving what she
would call the length and breadth of her tongue to some customer who had
cast doubts upon the character of her fish, a customer who was for the
moment quiescent, and hidden behind the tall figure of her adversary.
“Whoever says thim throuts isn’t leppin’ fresh out o’ the lake he’s a
dom liar, and it’s little I think of tellin’ it t’ye up to yer nose!
There’s not one in the counthry but knows yer thricks and yer chat, and
ye may go home out o’ that, with yer bag sthrapped round ye, and ye can
take the tay-leaves and the dhrippin’ from the servants, and huxther
thim to feed yer cats, but thanks be to God ye’ll take nothing out o’ my
basket this day!”
There was a titter of horrified delight from the crowd.
“Ye never spoke a truer word than that, Mary Norris,” replied a voice
that sent a chill down Christopher’s back; “when I come into Lismoyle,
it’s not to buy rotten fish from a drunken fish-fag, that’ll be begging
for crusts at my hall-door to-morrow. If I hear another word out of yer
mouth I’ll give you and your fish to the police, and the streets’ll be
rid of you and yer infernal tongue for a week, at all events, and the
prison’ll have a treat that it’s pretty well used to!”
Another titter rewarded this sally, and Charlotte, well pleased, turned
to walk away. As she did so, she caught sight of Christopher, looking
at her with an expression from which he had not time to remove his
emotions, and for a moment she wished that the earth would open and
swallow her up. She reddened visibly, but recovered herself, and at once
made her way out into the street towards him.
“How are you again, Mr. Dysart? You just came in time to get a specimen
of the _res angusta domi_,” she said, in a voice that contrasted almost
ludicrously with her last utterances. “People like David, who talk about
the advantages of poverty, have probably never tried buying fish in
Lismoyle. It’s always the way with these drunken old hags. They repay
your charity by impudence and bad language, and one has to speak pretty
strongly to them to make one’s meaning penetrate to their minds.”
Her eyes were still red and swollen from her violent crying at the
funeral. But for them, Christopher could hardly have believed that this
was the same being whom he had last seen on the sofa at Tally Ho, with
the black gloves and the sal volatile.
“Oh yes, of course,” he said vaguely; “everyone has to undergo Mary
Norris some time or other. If you are going back to Tally Ho now, I can
drive you there.”
The invitation was lukewarm as it well could be, but had it been the
most fervent in the world Charlotte had no intention of accepting it.
“No thank you, Mr. Dysart. I’m not done my marketing yet, but Francie’s
at home and she’ll give you tea. Don’t wait for me. I’ve no appetite for
anything to-day. I only came out to get a mouthful of fresh air, in
hopes it might give me a better night, though, indeed, I’ve small chance
of it after what I’ve gone through.”
Christopher drove on, and tried not to think of Miss Mullen or of his
mother or Pamela, while his too palpably discreet hostess elbowed her
way through the crowd in the opposite direction.
Francie was sitting in the drawing-room awaiting her visitor. She had
been up very early making the wreath of white asters that Charlotte had
laid on Mrs. Lambert’s coffin, and had shed some tears over the making
of it, for the sake of the kindly little woman who had never been
anything but good to her. She had spent a trying morning in ministering
to Charlotte; after her early dinner she had dusted the drawing-room,
and refilled the vases in a manner copied as nearly as possible from
Pamela’s arrangement of flowers; and she was now feeling as tired as
might reasonably have been expected. About Christopher she felt
thoroughly disconcerted and out of conceit with herself. It was strange
that she, like him, should least consider her own position when she
thought about the things that Julia Duffy had said to them; her motive
was very different, but it touched the same point. It was the effect
upon Christopher that she ceaselessly pictured, that she longed to
understand: whether or not he believed what he had heard, and whether,
if he believed, he would ever be the same to her. His desertion would
have been much less surprising than his allegiance, but she would have
felt it very keenly, with the same aching resignation with which we bear
one of nature’s acts of violence. When she met him this morning her
embarrassment had taken the simple form of distance and avoidance, and a
feeling that she could never show him plainly enough that she, at least,
had no designs upon him; yet, through it all, she clung to the belief
that he would not change towards her. It was burning humiliation to see
Charlotte spread her nets in the sight of the bird, but it did not
prevent her from dressing herself as becomingly as she could when the
afternoon came, nor, so ample are the domains of sentiment, did some
nervous expectancy in the spare minutes before Christopher arrived deter
her from taking out of her pocket a letter worn by long sojourn there,
and reading it with delaying and softened eyes.
Her correspondence with Hawkins had been fraught with difficulties; in
fact, it had been only by the aid of a judicious shilling and an old
pair of boots bestowed on Louisa, that she had ensured to herself a
first sight of the contents of the post-bag, before it was conveyed,
according to custom, to Miss Mullen’s bedroom. Somehow since Mr. Hawkins
had left Hythe and gone to Yorkshire the quantity and quality of his
letters had dwindled surprisingly. The three thick weekly budgets of
sanguine anticipation and profuse endearments had languished into a
sheet or two every ten days of affectionate retrospect in which less and
less reference was made to breaking off his engagement with Miss
Coppard, that trifling and summary act which was his ostensible mission
in going to his _fiancée’s_ house; and this, the last letter from him,
had been merely a few lines of excuse for not having written before,
ending with regret that his leave would be up in a fortnight, as he had
had a ripping time on old Coppard’s moor, and the cubbing was just
beginning, a remark which puzzled Francie a good deal, though its
application was possibly clearer to her than the writer had meant it to
be. Inside the letter was a photograph of himself, that had been done at
Hythe, and was transferred by Francie from letter to letter, in order
that it might never leave her personal keeping; and, turning from the
barren trivialities over which she had been poring, Francie fell to
studying the cheerful, unintellectual face therein portrayed above the
trim glories of a mess jacket.
She was still looking at it when she heard the expected wheels; she
stuffed the letter back into her pocket, then remembering the
photograph, pulled the letter out again and put it into it. She was
putting the letter away for the second time when Christopher came in,
and in her guilty self-consciousness she felt that he must have noticed
the action.
“How did you get in so quickly?” she said, with a confusion that
heightened the general effect of discovery.
“Donovan was there and took the trap,” said Christopher, “and the hall
door was open, so I came in.”
He sat down, and neither seemed certain for a moment as to what to say
next.
“I didn’t really expect you to come, Mr. Dysart,” began Francie, the
colour that the difficulty with the photograph had given her ebbing
slowly away; “you have a right to be tired as well as us, and Charlotte
being upset that way and all, made it awfully late before you got home,
I’m afraid.”
“I met her a few minutes ago, and was glad to see that she was all right
again,” said Christopher perfunctorily; “but certainly if I had been
she, and had had any option in the matter, I should have stayed at home
this morning.”
Both felt the awkwardness of discussing Miss Mullen, but it seemed a
shade less than the awkwardness of ignoring her.
“She was such a friend of poor Mrs. Lambert’s,” said Francie; “and I
declare,” she added, glad of even this trivial chance of showing herself
antagonistic to Charlotte, “I think she delights in funerals.”
“She has a peculiar way of showing her delight,” replied Christopher,
with just enough ill-nature to make Francie feel that her antagonism was
understood and sympathised with.
Francie gave an irrepressible laugh. “I don’t think she minds crying
before people. I wish everyone minded crying as little as she does.”
Christopher looked at her, and thought he saw something about her eyes
that told of tears.
“Do you mind crying?” he said, lowering his voice while more feeling
escaped into his glance than he had intended; “it doesn’t seem natural
that you should ever cry.”
“You’re very inquisitive!” said Francie, the sparkle coming back to her
eye in a moment; “why shouldn’t I cry if I choose?”
“I should not like to think that you had anything to make you cry.”
She looked quickly at him to see if his face were as sincere as his
voice; her perceptions were fine enough to suggest that it would be
typical of Christopher to show her by a special deference and
friendliness that he was sorry for her, but now, as ever, she was unable
to classify those delicate shades of manner and meaning that might have
told her where his liking melted into love. She had been accustomed to
see men as trees walking, beings about whose individuality of character
she did not trouble herself; generally they made love to her, and, if
they did not, she presumed that they did not care about her, and gave
them no further attention. But this test did not seem satisfactory in
Christopher’s case.
“I know what everyone thinks of me,” she said, a heart truth welling to
the surface as she felt herself pitied and comprehended; “no one
believes I ever have any trouble about anything.”
Christopher’s heart throbbed at the bitterness in a voice that he had
always known so wholly careless and undisturbed; it increased his pity
for her a thousandfold, but it stirred him with a strange and selfish
pleasure to think that she had suffered. Whatever it was that was in her
mind, it had given him a glimpse of that deeper part of her nature, so
passionately guessed at, so long unfindable. He did not for an instant
think of Hawkins, having explained away that episode to himself some
time before in the light of his new reading of Francie’s character; it
was Charlotte’s face as she confronted Mary Norris in the market that
came to him, and the thought of what it must be to be under her roof and
dependent on her. He saw now the full pain that Francie bore in hearing
herself proclaimed as the lure by which he was to be captured, and that
he should have brought her thus low roused a tenderness in him that
would not be gainsaid.
“_I_ don’t think it,” he said, stammering; “you might believe that I
think more about you than other people do. I know you feel things more
than you let anyone see, and that makes it all the worse for anyone
who--who is sorry for you, and wants to tell you so--”
This halting statement, so remarkably different in diction from the
leisurely sentences in which Christopher usually expressed himself, did
not tend to put Francie more at her ease. She reddened slowly and
painfully as his shortsighted, grey eyes rested upon her. Hawkins filled
so prominent a place in her mind that Christopher’s ambiguous allusions
seemed to be directed absolutely at him, and her hand instinctively
slipped into her pocket and clasped the letter that was there, as if in
that way she could hold her secret fast.
“Ah, well,”--she tried to say it lightly--“I don’t want so very much
pity yet awhile; when I do, I’ll ask you for it!”
She disarmed the words of her flippancy by the look with which she
lifted her dark-lashed eyes to him, and Christopher’s last shred of
common sense sank in their tender depths and was lost there.
“Is that true?” he said, without taking his eyes from her face. “Do you
really trust me? would you promise always to trust me?”
“Yes, I’m sure I’d always trust you,” answered Francie, beginning in
some inexplicable way to feel frightened; “I think you’re awfully kind.”
“No, I am not kind,” he said, turning suddenly very white, and feeling
his blood beating down to his finger-tips; “you must not say that when
you know it’s--” Something seemed to catch in his throat and take his
voice away. “It gives me the greatest pleasure to do anything for you,”
he ended lamely.
The clear crimson deepened in Francie’s cheeks. She knew in one
startling instant what Christopher meant, and her fingers twined and
untwined themselves in the crochet sofa-cover as she sat, not daring to
look at him, and not knowing in the least what to say.
“How can I be kind to you?” went on Christopher, his vacillation swept
away by the look in her downcast face that told him she understood him;
“it’s just the other way, it’s you who are kind to me. If you only knew
what happiness it is to me--to--to be with you--to do anything on earth
for you--you know what I mean--I see you know what I mean.”
A vision rose up before Francie of her past self, loitering about the
Dublin streets, and another of an incredible and yet possible future
self, dwelling at Bruff in purple and fine linen, and then she looked up
and met Christopher’s eyes. She saw the look of tortured uncertainty and
avowed purpose that there was no mistaking; Bruff and its glories melted
away before it, and in their stead came Hawkins’ laughing face, his
voice, his touch, his kiss, in overpowering contrast to the face
opposite to her, with its uncomprehended intellect and refinement, and
its pale anxiety.
“Don’t say things like that to me, Mr. Dysart,” she said tremulously; “I
know how good you are to me, twice, twice too good, and if I was in
trouble, you’d be the first I’d come to. But I’m all right,” with an
attempted gaiety and unconcern that went near bringing the tears to her
eye; “I can paddle my own canoe for a while yet!”
Her instinct told her that Christopher would be quicker than most men to
understand that she was putting up a line of defence, and to respect it;
and with the unfailing recoil of her mind upon Hawkins, she thought how
little such a method would have prevailed with him.
“Then you don’t want me?” said Christopher, almost in a whisper.
“Why should I want you or anybody?” she answered, determined to
misunderstand him, and to be like her usual self in spite of the
distress and excitement that she felt; “I’m well able to look after
myself, though you mightn’t think it, and I don’t want anything this
minute, only my tea, and Norry’s as cross as the cats, and I know she
won’t have the cake made!” She tried to laugh, but the laugh faltered
away into tears. She turned her head aside, and putting one hand to her
eyes, felt with the other in her pocket for her handkerchief. It was
underneath Hawkins’ letter, and as she snatched it out, it carried the
letter along with it.
Christopher had started up, unable to bear the sight of her tears, and
as he stood there, hesitating on the verge of catching her in his arms,
he saw the envelope slip down on to the floor. As it fell the photograph
slid out of its worn covering, and lay face uppermost at his feet. He
picked it up, and having placed it with the letter on the sofa beside
Francie, he walked to the window and looked sightlessly out into the
garden. A heavily-laden tray bumped against the door, the handle turned,
and Louisa, having pushed the door open with her knee, staggered in with
the tea-tray. She had placed it on the table and was back again in the
kitchen, talking over the situation with Bid Sal, before Christopher
spoke.
“I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer,” he said, in a voice that was at
once quieter and rougher than its wont; “you must forgive me if anything
that I said has--has hurt you--I didn’t mean it to hurt you.” He stopped
short and walked towards the door. As he opened it, he looked back at
her for an instant, but he did not speak again.