The question, ten days afterwards, to anyone who had known all the
features of the case, would have been whether Francie was worth
Christopher’s act of championing.
At the back of the Rosemount kitchen-garden the ground rose steeply into
a knoll of respectable height, where grew a tangle of lilac bushes,
rhododendrons, seringas, and yellow broom. A gravel path wound
ingratiatingly up through these, in curves artfully devised by Mr.
Lambert to make the most of the extent and the least of the hill, and
near the top a garden-seat was sunk in the bank, with laurels shutting
it in on each side, and a laburnum “showering golden tears” above it.
Through the perfumed screen of the lilac bushes in front unromantic
glimpses of the roof of the house were obtainable--eyesores to Mr.
Lambert, who had concentrated all his energies on hiding everything
nearer than the semi-circle of lake and distant mountain held in an
opening cut through the rhododendrons at the corner of the little
plateau on which the seat stood. Without the disturbance of middle
distance the eye lay at ease on the far-off struggle of the Connemara
mountains, and on a serene vista of Lough Moyle; a view that enticed
forth, as to a playground, the wildest and most foolish imaginations,
and gave them elbow-room; a world so large and remote that it needed the
sound of wheels on the road to recall the existence of the petty
humanities of Lismoyle.
Francie and Hawkins were sitting there on the afternoon of the day on
which Lambert was expected to come home, and as the sun, that had stared
in at them through the opening in the rhododendrons when they first went
there, slid farther round, their voices sank in unconscious accord with
the fading splendours of the afternoon, and their silences seemed
momently more difficult to break. They were nearing the end of the phase
that had begun in the wood at Bruff, impelled to its verge by the
unspoken knowledge that the last of the unthinking, dangerous days was
dying with the sun, and that a final parting was looming up beyond.
Neither knew for certain the mind of the other, or how they had dropped
into this so-called friendship that in half a dozen afternoons had
robbed all other things of reality, and made the intervals between their
meetings like a feverish dream. Francie did not dare to think much about
it; she lived in a lime-light glow that surrounded her wherever she
went, and all the world outside was dark. He was going in a fortnight,
in ten days, in a week; that was the only fact that the future had held
for her since Captain Cursiter had met them with the telegram in his
hand on the lake shore at Bruff. She forgot her resolutions; she forgot
her pride; and before she reached home that afternoon the spell of the
new phase, that was the old, only intensified by forgiveness, was on
her. She shut her eyes, and blindly gave house-room in her heart to the
subtle passion that came in the garb of an old friend, with a cant about
compassion on its lips, and perfidious promises that its life was only
for a fortnight.
To connect this supreme crisis of a life with such a person as Mr.
Gerald Hawkins may seem incongruous; but Francie was not aware of either
crisis or incongruity. All she knew of was the enthralment that lay in
each prosaic afternoon visit, all she felt, the tired effort of
conscience against fascination. Her emotional Irish nature, with all its
frivolity and recklessness, had also, far down in it, an Irish girl’s
moral principle and purity; but each day she found it more difficult to
hide the truth from him; each day the under-currents of feeling drew
them helplessly nearer to each other. Everything was against her.
Lambert’s business had, as he expected, taken him to Dublin, and kept
him there; Cursiter, like most men, was chary of active interference in
another man’s affairs, whatever his private opinion might be; and
Charlotte, that guardian of youth, that trusty and vigilant spy, sat in
her own room writing interminable letters, or went on long and
complicated shopping expeditions whenever Hawkins came to the house.
On this golden, still afternoon, Francie strayed out soon after lunch,
half dazed with unhappiness and excitement. To-night her husband would
come home. In four days Hawkins would have gone, as eternally, so far as
she was concerned, as if he were dead; he would soon forget her, she
thought, as she walked to and fro among the blossoming apple trees in
the kitchen-garden. Men forgot very easily, and, thanks to the way she
had tried her best to make him think she didn’t care, there was not a
word of hers to bring him back to her. She hated herself for her
discretion; her soul thirsted for even one word of understanding, that
would be something to live upon in future days of abnegation, when it
would be nothing to her that she had gained his respect, and one tender
memory would be worth a dozen self-congratulations.
She turned at the end of the walk and came back again under the apple
trees; the ground under her feet was white with fallen blossoms; her
fair hair gleamed among the thick embroidery of the branches, and her
face was not shamed by their translucent pink and white. At a little
distance Eliza Hackett, in a starched lilac calico, was gathering
spinach, and meditating no doubt with comfortable assurance on the
legitimacy of Father Heffernan’s apostolic succession, but outwardly the
embodiment of solid household routine and respectability. As Francie
passed her she raised her decorous face from the spinach-bed with a
question as to whether the trout would be for dinner or for breakfast;
the master always fancied fish for his breakfast, she reminded Francie.
Eliza Hackett’s tone was distant, but admonitory, and it dispelled in a
moment the visions of another now impossible future that were holding
high carnival before Francie’s vexed eyes. The fetter made itself coldly
felt, and following came the quick pang of remorse at the thought of the
man who was wasting on her the best love he had to give. Her change of
mood was headlong, but its only possible expression was trivial to
absurdity, if indeed any incident in a soul’s struggle can be called
trivial. Some day, further on in eternity, human beings will know what
their standards of proportion and comparison are worth, and may perhaps
find the glory of some trifling actions almost insufferable.
She gave the necessary order, and hurrying into the house brought out
from it the piece of corduroy that she was stitching in lines of red
silk as a waistcoat for her husband, and with a childish excitement at
the thought of this expiation, took the path that led to the shrubbery
on the hill. As she reached its first turn she hesitated and stopped,
an idea of further and fuller renunciation occurring to her. Turning,
she called to the figure stooping among the glossy rows of spinach to
desire that the parlour-maid should say that this afternoon she was not
at home. Had Eliza Hackett then and there obeyed the order, it is
possible that many things would have happened differently. But fate is
seldom without a second string to her bow, and even if Francie’s message
had not been delayed by Eliza Hackett’s determination to gather a pint
of green gooseberries before she went in, it is possible that Hawkins
would, none the less have found his way to the top of the shrubbery,
where Francie was sewing with the assiduity of Penelope. It was about
four o’clock when she heard his step coming up the devious slants of the
path, and she knew as she heard it that, in spite of all her
precautions, she had expected him. His manner and even his look had
nothing now in them of the confident lover of last year; his flippancy
was gone, and when he began by reproaching her for having hidden from
him, his face was angry and wretched, and he spoke like a person who had
been seriously and unjustly hurt. He was more in love than he had ever
been before, and he was taking it badly, like a fever that the chills of
opposition were driving back into his system.
She made excuses as best she might, with her eyes bent upon her work.
“I might have been sitting in the drawing-room now,” he said petulantly;
“only that Miss Mullen had seen you going off here by yourself, and told
me I’d better go and find you.”
An unreasoning fear came over Francie, a fear as of something uncanny.
“Let us go back to the house,” she said; “Charlotte will be expecting
us.” She said it to contradict the thought that had become definite for
the first time. “Come; I’m going in.”
Hawkins did not move. “I suppose you forget that this is Wednesday, and
that I’m going on Saturday,” he replied dully. “In any case you’ll not
be much good to Charlotte. She’s gone up to pack her things. She told me
herself she was going to be very busy, as she had to start at six
o’clock.”
Francie leaned back, and realised that now she had no one to look to but
herself, and happiness and misery fought within her till her hands
trembled as she worked.
Each knew that this was, to all intents and purposes, their last
meeting, and their consciousness was charged to brimming with
unexpressed farewell. She talked of indifferent subjects; of what
Aldershot would be like, of what Lismoyle would think of the new
regiment, of the trouble that he would have in packing his pictures,
parrying, with a weakening hand, his efforts to make every subject
personal; and all the time the laburnum drooped in beautiful despair
above her, as if listening and grieving, and the cool-leaved lilac sent
its fragrance to mingle with her pain, and to stir her to rebellion with
the ecstasy of spring-time. The minutes passed barrenly by, and, as has
been said, the silences became longer and more clinging, and the
thoughts that filled them made each successive subject more bare and
artificial. At last Hawkins got up, and walking to the opening cut in
the shrubs, stood, with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the
lake and the mountains. Francie stitched on; it seemed to her that if
she stopped she would lose her last hold upon herself; she felt as if
her work were a talisman to remind her of all the things that she was in
peril of forgetting. When, that night, she took up the waistcoat again
to work at it, she thought that her heart’s blood had gone into the red
stitches.
It was several minutes before Hawkins spoke. “Francie,” he said, turning
round and speaking thickly, “are you going to let me leave you in
this--in this kind of way? Have you realised that when I go on Saturday
it’s most likely--it’s pretty certain, in fact--that we shall never see
each other again?”
“Yes, I have,” she said, after a pause of a second or two. She did not
say that for a fortnight her soul had beaten itself against the thought,
and that to hear it in words was as much as her self-command could bear.
“You seem to care a great deal!” he said violently; “you’re thinking of
nothing but that infernal piece of work, that I loathe the very sight
of. Don’t you think you could do without it for five minutes, at all
events?”
She let her hands drop into her lap, but made no other reply.
“You’re not a bit like what you used to be. You seem to take a delight
in snubbing me and shutting me up. I must say, I never thought you’d
have turned into a prig!” He felt this reproach to be so biting that he
paused upon it to give it its full effect. “Here I am going to England
in four days, and to India in four months, and it’s ten to one if I ever
come home again. I mean to volunteer for the very first row that turns
up. But it’s just the same to you, you won’t even take the trouble to
say you’re sorry.”
“If you had taken the trouble to answer my letters last autumn, you
wouldn’t be saying these things to me now,” she said, speaking low and
hurriedly.
“I don’t believe it! I believe if you had cared about me then you
wouldn’t treat me like this now.”
“I _did_ care for you,” she said, while the hard-held tears forced their
way to her eyes; “you made me do it, and then you threw me over, and now
you’re trying to put the blame on me!”
He saw the glisten on her eyelashes, and it almost took from him the
understanding of what she said.
“Francie,” he said, his voice shaking, and his usually confident eyes
owning the infection of her tears, “you might forget that. I’m
miserable. I can’t bear to leave you!” He sat down again beside her,
and, catching her hand, kissed it with a passion of repentance. He felt
it shrink from his lips, but the touch of it had intoxicated him, and
suddenly she was in his arms.
For a speechless instant they clung to each other; her head dropped to
his shoulder, as if the sharp release from the tension of the last
fortnight had killed her, and the familiar voice murmured in her ear:
“Say it to me--say you love me.”
“Yes I do--my dearest--” she said, with a moan that was tragically at
variance with the confession. “Ah, why do you make me so wicked!” She
snatched herself away from him, and stood up, trembling all over. “I
wish I had never seen you--I wish I was dead.”
“I don’t care what you say now,” said Hawkins, springing to his feet,
“you’ve said you loved me, and I know you mean it. Will you stand by
it?” he went on wildly. “If you’ll only say the word I’ll chuck
everything overboard--I can’t go away from you like this. Once I’m in
England I can’t get back here, and if I did, what good would it be to
me? He’d never give us a chance of seeing each other, and we’d both be
more miserable than we are, unless--unless there was a chance of meeting
you in Dublin or somewhere--?” He stopped for an instant. Francie mutely
shook her head. “Well, then, I shall never see you.”
There was silence, and the words settled down into both their hearts. He
cursed himself for being afraid of her, she, whom he had always felt to
be his inferior, yet when he spoke it was with an effort.
“Come away with me out of this--come away with me for good and all!
What’s the odds? We can’t be more than happy!”
Francie made an instinctive gesture with her hand while he spoke, as if
to stop him, but she said nothing, and almost immediately the distant
rush and rattle of a train came quietly into the stillness.
“That’s his train!” she exclaimed, looking as startled as if the sound
had been a sign from heaven. “Oh, go away! He mustn’t meet you coming
away from here.”
“I’ll go if you give me a kiss,” he answered drunkenly. His arms were
round her again, when they dropped to his side as if he had been shot.
There was a footstep on the path immediately below the lilac bushes, and
Charlotte’s voice called to Francie that she was just starting for home
and had come to make her adieux.