inquest. T’ coroner’s cooming at twelve,” the grandmother explained.
“Will ye coome oopstairs, Mr. Burkett--jest--jest to tak’ a look at
him?” Mrs. Matheson asked in a subdued voice.
Alec followed her, squeezing his burly frame up the narrow, creaking
staircase.
The child lay on the clean, white bed. A look of still serenity slept
on his pallid face. His tawny curls were smoothed back, and some
snowdrops were scattered over the coverlet. All was quite simple.
Mrs. Matheson stood in the doorway, struggling noisily with her sobs.
“It is God’s will,” Alec said quietly.
“He was turned four last week,” she blurted out. “Ye’ll excuse me, Mr.
Burkett, but I’m that overdone that I jest canna’ help myself,” and she
sank into a chair.
He knelt by the dead child’s side and prayed, while the slow rise and
fall of the mother’s sobs filled the room. When he rose his eyes were
all moist.
“God will help you, if you ask Him. His ways are secret. We cannot
understand His purpose. But have faith in Him. He has done it for the
best,” he said.
“Ay, I know, I know, Mr. Burkett. But ye see he was the youngest, and
that bonny----”
“Let me try to comfort you,” he said.
* * * * *
When they came downstairs again, her face was calmer and her voice
steadier. The coroner, a dapper man with a bright-red tie, was taking
off his gloves and macintosh; the room was fast filling with silent
figures, and the old grandmother was hobbling to and fro with noisy,
excited importance.
“Will ye na’ stay for t’ inquest?”
Alec shook his head. “No, I can’t stop now. I have a School-board
meeting to go to. But I will come up this afternoon.”
“Thank’ee, Mr. Burkett, God bless thee,” said Mrs. Matheson.
He shook hands with the coroner, who was grumbling concerning the
weather; then strode out back down the valley.
Though long since he had grown familiar with the aspects of suffering,
that scene in the cottage, by reason of its very simplicity, had
affected him strangely. His heart was full of slow sorrow for the
woman’s trouble, and the image of the child, lying beautiful in its
death-sleep, passed and repassed in his mind.
By-and-bye, the moaning of the wind, the whirling of lost leaves, the
inky shingle-beds that stained the fell-sides, inclined his thoughts to
a listless brooding.
Life seemed dull, inevitable, draped in sombre, drifting shadows, like
the valley-head. Yet in all good he saw the hand of God, a mysterious,
invisible force, ever imperiously at work beneath the ravages of
suffering and of sin.
It was close upon six o’clock when he reached home. He was drenched to
the skin, and as he sat before the fire, dense clouds of steam rose
from his mud-stained boots and trousers.
“Now, Mr. Burkett, jest ye gang and tak off them things, while I make
yer tea. Ye’ll catch yer death one of these days--I know ye will. I
sometimes think ye haven’t more sense than a boy, traipsin’ about all
t’ day in t’ wet, and niver takin’ yer meals proper-like.”
A faint smile flickered across his face. He was used to his landlady’s
scoldings.
“A child was drowned yesterday in the beck up at Beda Cottages. I had
to go back there this afternoon to arrange about the funeral,” he
mumbled, half-apologetically.
Mrs. Parkin snorted defiantly, bustling round the table as she spread
the cloth. Presently she broke out again:
“An’ noo, ye set there lookin’ as white as a bogle. Why don’t ye go an’
git them wet clothes off. Ye’re fair wringin’.”
He obeyed; though the effort to rise was great. He felt curiously
cold: his teeth were clacking, and the warmth from the flames seemed
delicious.
In his bedroom a dizziness caught him, and it was a moment before he
could recognise the familiar objects. And he realised that he was ill,
and looked at himself in the glass with a dull, scared expression. He
struggled through his dressing however, and went back to his tea. But,
though he had eaten nothing since the morning, he had no appetite; so,
from sheer force of habit, he lit a pipe, wheeling his chair close to
the fire.
And, as the heat penetrated him, his thoughts spun aimlessly round the
day’s events, till these gradually drifted into the background of his
mind, as it were, and he and they seemed to have become altogether
detached. His forehead was burning, and a drowsy, delicious sense of
physical weakness was stealing over his limbs. He was going to be ill,
he remembered; and it was with vague relief that he looked forward to
the prospect of long days of monotonous inactivity, long days of repose
from the daily routine of fatigue. The details of each day’s work, the
accomplishment of which, before, had appeared so indispensable, now,
he felt in his lassitude, had faded to insignificance. Mrs. Parkin
was right: he had been overdoing himself; and with a clear conscience
he would take a forced holiday in bed. Things in the parish would get
along without him till the end of the week. There was only the drowned
child’s funeral, and, if he could not go, Milner, the neighbouring
vicar, would take it for him. His pipe slipped from his hand to the
hearthrug noiselessly, and his head sank forward....
He was dreaming of the old churchyard. The trees were rocking their
slim, bare arms; drip, drip, drip, the drops pattered on to the
tombstones, tight-huddled in the white, wet light of the moon; the
breath of the old churchyard tasted warm and moist, like the reek of
horses after a long journey.
The child’s funeral was finished. Mrs. Matheson had cried noisily into
her apron; the mourners were all gone now; and alone, he sat down
on the fresh-dug grave. By the moonlight he tried to decipher the
names carved on the slabs; but most of the letters had faded away,
and moss-cushions had hidden the rest. Then he found it--“George
Matheson, aged four years and five days,” and underneath were carved
Mrs. Matheson’s words: “He was the bonniest boy in all the parish.” He
sat on, with the dread of death upon him, the thought of that black
senselessness ahead, possessing him, so sudden, so near, so intimate,
that it seemed entirely strange to have lived on, forgetful of it.
By-and-bye, he saw her coming towards him--Ethel, like a figure from
a picture, wearing a white dress that trailed behind her, a red rose
pinned at the waist, and the old smile on her lips. And she came beside
him, and told him how her husband had gone away for ever, and he
understood at once that he and she were betrothed again, as it had been
five years ago. He tried to answer her, but somehow the words would not
come; and, as he was striving to frame them, there came a great crash.
A bough clattered down on the tombstones; and with a start he awoke.
A half-burned coal was smoking in the fender. He felt as if he had been
sleeping for many hours.
He fell to stupidly watching the red-heat, as it pulsed through
the caves of coal, to imagining himself climbing their ashen
mountain-ridges, across dark defiles, up the face of treacherous
precipices....
Hundreds of times, here, in this room, in this chair, before this
fire, he had sat smoking, picturing the old scenes to himself,
musing of Ethel Fulton (Ethel Winn she had been then; but, after
her marriage, he had forced himself to think of her as bearing her
husband’s name--that was a mortification from which he had derived
a sort of bitter satisfaction). But now, with the long accumulation
of his solitude--five years he had been vicar of Scarsdale--he had
grown so unconscious of self, so indifferent to the course of his own
existence, that every process of his mind had, from sheer lack of
external stimulation, stagnated, till, little by little, the growth
of mechanical habit had come to mould its shape and determine its
limitations. And hence, not for a moment had he ever realised the grip
that this habit of sentimental reminiscence had taken on him, nor the
grotesque extent of its futile repetition. Such was the fervour of his
attitude towards his single chapter of romance.
Five years ago, she and he had promised their lives to one another. And
the future had beckoned them onward, gaily, belittling every obstacle
in its suffusion of glad, alluring colour. He was poor: he had but
his curate’s stipend, and she was used to a regular routine of ease.
But he would have tended her wants, waiting on her, watching over
her, indefatigably; chastening all the best that was in him, that he
might lay it at her feet. And together, hand in hand, they would have
laboured in God’s service. At least so it seemed to him now.
Then had come an enforced separation; and later, after a prolonged,
unaccountable delay, a letter from her explaining, in trite, discursive
phrases, how it could never be--it was a mistake--she had not known her
own mind--now she could see things clearer--she hoped he would forgive
and forget her.
A wild determination to go at once to her, to plead with her, gripped
him; but for three days he was helpless, bound fast by parish duties.
And when at last he found himself free, he had already begun to
perceive the hopelessness of such an errand, and, with crushed and
dogged despair, to accept his fate as irrevocable.
In his boyhood--at the local grammar-school, where his ugliness
had made him the butt of his class, and later, at an insignificant
Oxford college, where, to spare his father, whose glebe was at the
time untenanted, he had set himself grimly to live on an impossibly
slender allowance--at every turn of his life, he had found himself
at a disadvantage with his fellows. Thus he had suffered much,
dumbly--meekly many would have said--without a sign of resentment,
or desire for retaliation. But all the while, in his tenacious,
long-suffering way, he was stubbornly inuring himself to an acceptance
of his own disqualifications. And so, once rudely awakened from his
dream of love, he wondered with heavy curiosity at his faith in its
glamorous reality, and, remembering the tenour of his life, suffered
bitterly like a man befooled by his own conceit.
Some months after the shattering of his romance, the rumour reached him
that James Fulton, a prosperous solicitor in the town, was courting
her. The thing was impossible, a piece of idle gossip, he reasoned with
himself. Before long, however, he heard it again, in a manner that left
no outlet for doubt.
It seemed utterly strange, unaccountable, that she, whose eager echoing
of all his own spiritual fervour and enthusiasm for the work of the
Church still rang in his ears, should have chosen a man, whose sole
talk had seemed to be of dogs and of horses, of guns and of game; a man
thick-minded, unthinking, self-complacent; a man whom he himself had
carelessly despised as devoid of any spark of spirituality.
And, at this moment, when the first smartings of bitter bewilderment
were upon him, the little living of Scarsdale fell vacant, and his
rector, perhaps not unmindful of his trouble, suggested that he should
apply for it.
The valley was desolate and full of sombre beauty; the parish,
sparsely-peopled but extensive; the life there would be monotonous,
almost grim, with long hours of lonely brooding. The living was offered
to him. He accepted it excitedly.
And there, busied with his new responsibilities, throwing himself into
the work with a suppressed, ascetic ardour, news of the outside world
reached him vaguely, as if from afar.
He read of her wedding in the local newspaper: later, a few trite
details of her surroundings; and then, nothing more.
But her figure remained still resplendent in his memory, and, as time
slipped by, grew into a sort of gleaming shrine, incarnating for him
all the beauty of womanhood. And gradually, this incarnation grew
detached, as it were, from her real personality, so that, when twice
a year he went back to spend Sunday with his old rector, to preach a
sermon in the parish church, he felt no shrinking dread lest he should
meet her. He had long ceased to bear any resentment against her, or to
doubt that she had done what was right. The part that had been his in
the little drama seemed altogether of lesser importance.
* * * * *
All night he lay feverishly tossing, turning his pillow aglow with
heat, from side to side; anxiously reiterating whole incoherent
conversations and jumbled incidents.
At intervals, he was dimly conscious of the hiss of wind-swept leaves
outside, and of rain-gusts rattling the window-panes; and later, of
the sickly light of early morning streaking the ceiling with curious
patterns. By-and-bye, he dropped into a fitful sleep, and forgot the
stifling heat of his bed.
Then the room had grown half full of daylight, and Mrs. Parkin was
there, fidgetting with the curtains. She said something which he did
not hear, and he mumbled that he had slept badly, and that his head was
aching.
Some time later--how long he did not know--she appeared again, and
a man, whom he presently understood to be a doctor, and who put a
thermometer, the touch of which was deliciously cool, under his armpit,
and sat down at the table to write. Mrs. Parkin and he talked in
whispers at the foot of the bed: they went away; Mrs. Parkin brought
him a cup of beef-tea and some toast; and then he remembered only the
blurred memories of queer, unfinished dreams.
Consciousness seemed to return to him all of a sudden; and, when it was
come, he understood dimly that, somehow, the fatigue of long pain was
over, and he tasted the peaceful calm of utter lassitude.
He lay quite still, his gaze following Mrs. Parkin, as she moved to and
fro across the room, till it fell on a basket-full of grapes that stood
by the bedside. They were unfamiliar, inexplicable; they puzzled him;
and for awhile he feebly turned the matter over in his mind. Presently
she glanced at him, and he lifted his hand towards the basket.
“Would ye fancy a morsel o’ fruit noo? ’Twas Mrs. Fulton that sent
’em,” she said.
She held the basket towards him, and he lifted a bunch from it. They
were purple grapes, large and luscious-looking. Ethel had sent them.
How strange that was! For an instant he doubted if he were awake, and
clutched the pillow to make sure that it was real.
“Mrs. Fulton sent them?” he repeated.
“Ay, her coachman came yesterday in t’ forenoon to inquire how ye were
farin’, and left that fruit for ye. Ay, Mr. Burkett, but ye’ve had a
mighty quantity o’ callers. Most all t’ parish has been askin’ for
news o’ ye. An’ that poor woman from t’ factory cottages has been doon
forenoon and night.”
“How long have I been in bed?” he asked after a pause.
“Five days and five nights. Ye’ve bin nigh at death’s door, ravin’
and moanin’ like a madman. But, noo, I must’na keep ye chatterin’.
Ye should jest keep yeself quiet till t’ doctor coomes. He’ll be
mighty surprised to find ye so much improved, and in possession of yer
faculties.”
And she left him alone.
He lay staring at the grapes, while excitement quickened every pulse.
Ethel had sent them--they were from Ethel--Ethel had sent them--through
his brain, to and fro, boisterously, the thought danced. And then, he
started to review the past, dispassionately, critically, as if it were
another man’s; and soon, every detail, as he lingered on it, seemed
to disentangle itself, till it all achieved a curious simplification.
The five years at Scarsdale became all blurred: they resembled an
eventless waste-level, through which he had been mechanically trudging.
But the other day, it seemed, he was with her--he and she betrothed
to one another. A dozen scenes passed before his eyes: with a flush
of hot, intolerable shame, he saw himself, clumsy, uncouth, devoid of
personal charm, viewing her bluntly, selfishly through the cumbrous
medium of his own personality. And her attitude was clear too: the
glamour, woven of habitual, sentimental reminiscence, faded, as it
were, from her figure, and she appeared to him simply and beautifully
human; living, vibrating, frail. _Now_ he knew the meaning of that last
letter of hers--the promptings of each phrase; the outpourings of his
ideals, enthusiasms, aspirations--callow, blatant, crude, he named them
bitterly--had scared her: she had felt herself unequal to the strain
of the life he had offered her: in her loveable, womanish frailty, she
had grown to dread it; and he realised all that she had suffered before
she had brought herself to end it--the long struggles with doubt and
suspense. The veil that had clogged his view was lifted: he knew her
now: he could read the writing on her soul: he was securely equipped
for loving her; and now, she had passed out of his life, beyond recall.
In his blindness he had not recognised her, and had driven her away.
How came it that to-day, for the first time, all these things were made
clear?
The clock struck; and while he was listening to its fading note, the
door-handle clicked briskly, and the doctor walked in. He talked
cheerily of the crops damaged by the storm, and the sound of his voice
seemed to vibrate harshly through the room.
“There’s a heavy shower coming up,” he remarked. “By the way, you’re
quite alone here, Mr. Burkett, I believe. Have you no relatives whom
you would like to send for?”
“No--no one,” Alec answered. “Mrs. Parkin will look after me.”
“Yes--but you see,” and he came and sat down by the bedside, “I don’t
say there’s any immediate danger; but you’ve had a very near touch of
it. Now isn’t there any old friend?--you ought not to be alone like
this.” He spoke the last words with emphasis.
Alec shook his head. His gaze had fallen on the basket of grapes again:
he was incoherently musing of Ethel.
“Mind, I don’t say there’s any immediate danger,” he heard the man
repeating; “but I must tell you that you’re not altogether out of the
wood yet.”
He paused.
“You ought to be prepared for the worst, Mr. Burkett.”
The last phrase lingered in Alec’s mind; and slowly its meaning dawned
upon him.
“You mean I might die at any moment?” he asked.
“No, no--I don’t say that,” the other answered evasively. “But you see
the fever has left you very weak; and of course in such cases one can
never be quite sure----”
The rest did not reach Alec’s ears; he was only vaguely aware of the
murmur of the man’s voice.
Presently he perceived that he had risen.
“I will come back in the afternoon,” he was saying. “I’ll tell
Mrs.--Mrs. Parker to bring you in some breakfast.”
After the doctor had gone he dozed a little....
Then remembered the man’s words--“No immediate danger, but you must
be prepared for the worst.” The sense of it all flashed upon him: he
understood what the man had meant: that was the way doctors always told
such things he guessed. So the end was near.... He wondered, a little
curiously, if it would come before to-night, or to-morrow.... It was
near, quite near, he repeated to himself; and gradually, a peacefulness
permeated his whole being, and he was vaguely glad to be alone....
A little while, and he would be near God. He felt himself detached from
the world, and at peace with all men.
His life, as he regarded it trailing behind him, across the stretch
of past years, seemed inadequate, useless, pitiable almost; of his
own personality, as he now realised it, he was ashamed--petty
mortifications, groping efforts, a grotesque capacity for futile,
melancholy brooding--he rejoiced that he was to have done with it. The
end was near, quite near, he repeated once again.
Then, afterwards, would come rest--the infinite rest of the
Saviour’s tenderness, and the strange, wonderful expectation of the
mysterious life to come.... A glimpse of his own serenity, of his
own fearlessness, came to him; and he was moved by a quick flush of
gratitude towards God. He thought of the terror of the atheist’s
death--the world, a clod of dead matter blindly careering through
space; humanity, a casual, senseless growth, like the pullulating
insects on a rottening tree....
A little while, only a little while, and he would be near God. And,
softly, under his breath, he implored pardon for the countless
shortcomings of his service....
The German clock on the mantel-piece ticked with methodical fussiness:
the flames in the grate flickered lower and lower; and one by one
dropped, leaving dull-red cinders. Through the window, under the
half-drawn blind, was the sky, cold with the hard, white glare of the
winter sun, flashing above the bare, bony mountain-backs; and he called
to mind spots in the little, desolate parish, which, with a grim,
clinging love, he had come to regard as his own for always. Who would
come after him, live in this house of his, officiate in the square,
grey-walled church, move and work in God’s service among the people?...
And, while he lay drowsily musing on the unfinished dream, a muffled
murmur of women’s voices reached his ears. By an intuition, akin
perhaps to animal instinct, he knew all at once that it was she,
talking with Mrs. Parkin down in the room below. Prompted by a rush of
imperious impulse he raised himself on his elbow to listen.
There was a rustling of skirts in the passage and the sound of the
voices grew clearer.
“Good day, ma’am, and thank ye very kindly, I’m sure,” Mrs. Parkin was
saying.
No reply came, though he was straining every nerve to catch it.... At
last, subdued, but altogether distinct, _her_ voice:
“You’re sure there’s nothing else I can send?”
The door of his room was ajar. He dug his nails into the panel-edge,
and tried to swing it open. But he could scarcely move it, and in a
moment she would be gone.
Suddenly he heard his own voice--loud and queer it sounded:
“Ethel--Ethel.”
Hurried steps mounted the stairs, and Mrs. Parkin’s white cap and
spectacled face appeared.
“What be t’ matter, Mr. Burkett?” she asked breathlessly.
“Stop her--tell her.”
“Dearie, dearie me, he’s off wanderin’ agin.”
“No, no; I’m all right--tell--ask Mrs. Fulton if she would come up to
see me?”
“There, there, Mr. Burkett, don’t ye excite yeself. Ye’re not fit to
see any one, ye know that. Lie ye doon agin, or ye’ll be catchin’ yer
death o’ cauld.”
“Ask her to come, please--just for a minute.”
“For Heaven’s sake lie doon. Ye’ll be workin’ yeself into a fever next.
There, there, I’ll ask her for ye, though I’ve na notion what t’ doctor
’ud say.”
She drew down the blind and retired, closing the door quietly behind
her.
The next thing he saw was Ethel standing by his bedside.
He lay watching her without speaking. She wore a red dress trimmed
with fur; a gold bracelet was round her gloved wrist, and a veil
half-hid her features.
Presently he perceived that she was very white, that her mouth was
twitching, and that her eyes were full of tears.
“Alec--I’m so sorry you’re so ill.... Are you in pain?”
He shook his head absently. Her veil and the fur on her cloak looked
odd, he thought, in the half-light of the room.
“You will be better soon: the worst is over.”
“No,” he answered, with a dreary smile. “I am going to die.”
She burst into sobs.
“No, no, Alec.... You must not think that.”
He stretched his arm over the coverlet towards her, and felt the soft
pressure of her gloved hand.
“Forgive me, Ethel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pain you. But it is so;
the doctor told me this morning.”
She sat down by the bedside, still crying, pressing her handkerchief to
her eyes.
“Ethel, how strange it seems. Do you know I haven’t seen you since I
left Cockermouth?” The words came deliberately, for his mind had grown
quite calm. “How the time has flown!”
Her grasp on his hand tightened, but she made no answer.
“It was very kind of you to come all this way, Ethel, to see me. Will
you stay a little and let me talk to you? It’s more than five years
since we’ve talked together, you know,” and he smiled faintly. “Don’t
cry so, Ethel, dear. I did not mean to make you cry. There’s no cause
to cry, dear; you’ve made me so happy.”
“My poor, poor Alec,” she sobbed.
“You’d almost forgotten the old days, perhaps,” he continued dreamily,
talking half to himself; “for it’s a long while ago now. But to me it
seems as if it had all just happened. You see I’ve been vegetating
rather, here in this lonely, little place.... Don’t go on crying, Ethel
dear ... let me tell you about things a little. There’s no harm in it
now, because you know I’m----”
“Oh! don’t--don’t say that. You’ll get better. I know you will.”