BROKEN OFF
Despite that cutting east wind, it was a glorious May evening. The
trees and fields were coming on grandly, and the sun shone
dazzlingly towards his decline, in a heaven of bright blue and gold,
with piles of glorified clouds in a steady bank to the north. The
beams shone slantingly all on the old brown houses, and their rays
were flashed back from the windows of the quaint old sleepy town. As
Roger walked down the street, his heart beating with foreboding, he
was but vaguely conscious of the stir of life around him, the murmur
and bustle of those whose day’s work was done, and who were enjoying
their pipes, their gossip, and their games; for in one part of the
town the youths played quoits in an open space, while many reverend
elders looked on, and made sententious remarks as the sport
progressed. He was conscious of receiving here and there a greeting;
he returned them vaguely, and went on his way, and presently found
himself within Mr. Dixon’s shop, which looked very mean and low and
small, and which seemed quite filled by his tall and broad figure.
Mr. Dixon was alone in the shop.
‘Bless my soul, Roger—you!’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ replied Roger. ‘I got a couple of days’ holiday, so I thought
I’d run over and see Ada. Is she in?’
‘Yes, she’s in. You’ll find her upstairs at her piano. The wife has
gone out to tea. And look you, Roger,’ he added, drawing the young
man aside, and lowering his voice, though they were alone, ‘Ada has
got uncommon twiny and washed-out looking, and has taken to singing
the most sentimental songs. I declare it makes me feel quite low in
my mind to hear her constantly wailing and wailing. Try to cheer her
up a bit.’
‘That I will!’
‘I daresay she’s just fretting a bit after you.’
Roger’s heart bounded, and fell again. It could not be so. Ada knew
she needed not to fret after him. But he said, as cheerfully as he
could—
‘I’ll go upstairs and find her.’
With which he went through the shop into the passage, and quickly up
the stairs. As he ascended, the ‘wailing’ of which Mr. Dixon had
complained became distinctly audible. It was a very, very mournful
song that Ada sang, and Roger’s heart died within him as he heard
it.
He opened the parlour door softly, and looked in. The piano was
opposite to the door; therefore Ada, seated at it, had her back
turned towards him. She had ceased to play within the last minute,
and sat very still, with her hands, he noticed, dropping down at her
sides, in a way that had something very painful and hopeless about
it. His heart went out to her, and as she did not at first appear to
notice any sound or any footstep, he walked softly up behind her;
but not so softly, big and heavy as he was, and unused to treading
gingerly, but that she could hear him distinctly; and he noticed
that she suddenly drew her hands up, and that they were clenched,
and that her shoulders heaved, as if she drew a deep breath—not as
if she were surprised, Roger thought, hope beginning to beat high in
his heart again, _but rather as if she were very glad_. She knew,
then, that he was there. She recognised his footstep, and she was
moved, deeply moved, by his presence.
He laid his hands upon her shoulders, and said, softly and
caressingly—
‘Ada!’
She faced him, with the quickness of lightning, and with a veritable
shriek,—it was too loud, too affrighted to be called an
exclamation—and Roger recoiled before the expression of the face
which was turned towards him. He literally fell back a step or two,
gazing at her alarmed and speechless, while she put her hands, one
to either side of her head, and shrank together, staring at him with
a look of terror and amaze.
‘Ada, my love,’ he began at last, alarmed and bewildered by the
contradiction between her manner before she had seen him, and that
manner now that she beheld him. Then she found her voice, and rose
from the music stool.
‘Roger, Roger!’ she gasped. ‘How can you! Stealing up behind one,
and startling one in that way! It’s enough to turn the head, if
one’s a nervous person.’
‘But, my darling, I saw that you heard me,’ he began; but she burst
into hysterical tears, turning away from him, and flinging herself
upon a sofa, so that he saw it was useless to attempt to explain or
apologise. Once it crossed his mind, ‘She behaves almost as if she
had expected some one else.’ Then he put the idea aside, as we do
put ideas aside which we know would be absurd in regard to
ourselves, often without stopping to make allowances for the
differences in others’ minds and our own.
It was a very distressful scene. Nothing that he could do or say
restored calmness to her, though the first violence of her agitation
presently wore off. In vain he tried to wring from her some
explanation of her altered looks, her nervous terrors; asked her
what ailed her, and tenderly upbraided her with not having told him
she was out of health. Ada would own nothing, say nothing; and when
he rather pitifully said he had hoped to give her a pleasant
surprise by his unexpected arrival, she replied with irritation that
she hated such surprises; he ought to have written or telegraphed.
In fact, Roger, with the deepest alarm, presently saw that his
presence was doing her no good, but harm; it was perfectly evident
that he had better retire, and he decided to do so. But before
going, he said—
‘Now, look here, Ada. Grant me a very great favour, and I’ll not
tease you about anything else. Let Michael Langstroth, or Dr.
Rowntree, see you. Rowntree, perhaps. He’s such a kind, good old
fellow. He would give you something to strengthen you.’
‘I am not ill,’ cried Ada; and she stamped her foot on the ground,
and clenched her teeth. ‘I will see none of your doctors. I hate
them, and I’ll have nothing to do with them. You will _make_ me ill,
if you don’t let me alone.’
Every sign warned Roger that this was a subject it would be best not
to pursue any farther, and he presently left her. He had no heart to
go into the shop again and speak to Mr. Dixon. Slowly and
dispiritedly he made his way back to the Red Gables, and found
Michael there, astonished to see him back again so soon, and looking
the questions he felt he would not ask.
‘I don’t know, Michael,’ said Roger, in answer to this look.
‘There’s something awfully wrong. I must see her father to-morrow.
She denies that anything ails her, but at the same time she goes on
in such a way as no one would who was all right. It is not the end—I
know it is not the end.’
On the following day it seemed as if the end, so far as Roger was
concerned, had arrived. In the forenoon Mr. Dixon made his
appearance, and asked to see Roger. Then, slowly and with
difficulty, he unfolded the fact that Ada had summoned him to her
after her lover’s departure, and had told him that she could never
be Roger’s wife; that her life was a misery to her, so long as she
was engaged to him, and that if her father wished to see her well
and happy again, he was to take this opportunity of telling Roger
so, and of making him understand that she did not wish to see him
again.
The stout, prosperous tradesman looked pinched and miserable as he
told his sorry tale; while the young man sat opposite to him, his
face turning very white, his strong hands shaking, and his mighty
figure trembling all over, like a leaf in the wind. The sun was
shining outside, though not into the room; one could see its glare
in the yellow hue of the grass, and the shadows cast by the trees.
The sound of singing birds came in at the open window, and also a
blast of north-east wind, cold, dry, cutting as a knife.
‘She does not mean it, Mr. Dixon; she does not really mean it?’ he
stammered, fighting for his life.
‘She means it, Roger. I wrestled with her about it for an hour; for
with expecting you to be my son for so long, I’ve got to look upon
you as if you were my son. I wrestled with her till I saw she was
nigh to fainting, and then I had to stop. She pulled this off her
finger, and told me to give it you.’
He pulled a little pearl ring from his pocket, and pushed it across
the table towards Roger, without looking at him. Roger picked it up,
and turned it round in his fingers as if he did not know what it
was—as if the sight of the little jewels dazed him.
‘She said she wished to send no unkind words, for that perhaps she’d
never see you again; but that you must not come nigh her, for
another scene with you would kill her, and she wants to live.’
‘Let her live then,’ said Roger, in a hoarse and laboured voice. ‘It
does not matter what becomes of me.’
Mr. Dixon, sturdy philistine that he was, wiped his eyes with his
handkerchief.
‘Roger,’ he said, with a solemnity and strength of conviction which
gave dignity and something like majesty to his commonplace, outside
man, ‘you have just cause to look upon my girl with suspicion, and
to fight shy and speak ill of us all. But, lad, I tell you, we don’t
know the end of it all yet. I can tell you, my heart is heavy.
There’s a weight on it, as if something uncommon was coming, or
hanging about in the air somewhere. I can’t mind my business, nor
eat my victuals, for thinking of that girl, that looks like a ghost;
and why, that’s what I want to know—why?’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Roger, in a laboured voice, but instinctively
trying to give comfort to the man who was older and weaker than
himself, ‘that she may have begun to care for some one else, who
perhaps doesn’t respond as she could wish. If so, it is best for her
to be free from me.’
‘Choose what it is, it’s a heavy trouble for us all,’ said Mr.
Dixon, wearily. ‘I’m often afraid that she was brought up with
notions far above her station—Miss Wynter, and all that; but
somehow, I never took it to be anything seriously wrong.... You’ll
not look upon me as an enemy, Roger, for I’ve fought for you through
thick and thin?’
‘An enemy—God forbid! I know you have been my friend all through.’
‘We are going to send her away,’ pursued Mr. Dixon. ‘She has asked
to go down to my sister in Devonshire, a widow, who has often wanted
to have a visit from her. She says, if she gets away from all this
(‘all what?’ thought Roger, a thick dread at his heart—‘her home,
her friends, her natural life, with all its hopes and interests?’),
once away, she thinks she’ll be better. So we shall send her. I
won’t stay. I’ve dragged myself here, and I shall drag myself back
again. Can you shake hands with me, my lad?’
Roger unhesitatingly gave him his hand, went with him to the door,
and saw him walk away; then returned, to try and understand the
meaning of what had befallen him. He was surprised to find that
after a time, instead of reproaching Ada, even in thought, he was
occupied in trying to recall any occasions on which he might have
spoken harshly to her, and in mentally imploring her to forgive him
his trespasses, and in wishing that he had but the chance to do it
in so many words; while his sense of the mysterious terror that hung
over her grew greater every moment. He did not leave Bradstane
earlier than he had intended. A great calm and a great pity had
settled upon his soul. He found himself able to speak freely to
Michael of what had happened—to tell him more of his inner thoughts
and feelings than, in all their long intimacy, he had ever divulged
before. He told Michael what Ada was going to do, and he said—
‘When she comes back, for my sake, Michael, you will pay a little
heed to her, and let me know how she looks, at any rate.’
‘You may trust me to do it.’
‘It is all quite over between us. I have a feeling that that is
quite certain; but I don’t feel as if we knew everything yet. And
God forbid that I should judge her in the dark. A girl doesn’t carry
on as she is doing, either from lightness of mind or hardness of
heart.’
This was as Michael drove him along the lanes to Darlington to catch
the night train. Michael said nothing. Friendship demanded that what
Roger required of him in this matter, he should do, whatever he
might think of the cause of his friend’s distress.