is done. Besides, I don’t want to get better. I’m so happy.... Stay
a little with me, Ethel.... I wanted to explain.... I was stupid,
selfish, in the old days----”
“It was I--I who----” she protested through her tears.
“No, you were quite right to write me that letter. I’ve thought that
almost from the first.... I’m sure of it,” he added, as if convincing
himself definitely. “It could never be ... it was my fault.... I
was stupid and boorish and wrapped up in myself. I did not try to
understand your nature.... I didn’t understand anything about women....
I never had a sister.... I took for granted that you were always
thinking and feeling just as I was. I never tried to understand you,
Ethel.... I was not fit to be entrusted with you.”
“Alec, Alec, it is not true. You were too good, too noble-hearted.
I felt you were far above me. Beside you I felt I was silly and
frivolous. Your standards about everything seemed so high----”
But he interrupted, unheeding her:
“You don’t know, Ethel, how happy you’ve made me.... I have thought
of you every day. In the evenings, I used to sit alone, remembering
you and all the happy days we had together, and the remembrance of
them has been a great joy to me. I used to go over them all, again and
again. The day that we all went to Morecambe, and that walk along the
seashore, when the tide caught us, and I carried you across the water
... the time that we went to those ruins, and you wore the primroses I
picked for you. And I used to read over all your letters, and remember
all the things you used to say. Downstairs, under the writing-table,
there is a black, tin cash-box--the key is on my bunch--Mrs. Parkin
will give it you. It’s where I’ve kept everything that has reminded
me of you, all this time. Will you take it back with you?... You
don’t know how you’ve helped me all these years--I wanted to tell you
that.... When I was in difficulties, I used to wonder how you would
have liked me to act.... When I was lonely and low-spirited, I used to
tell myself that you were happy.” He paused for breath, and his voice
died slowly in the stillness of the room. “You were quite right,” he
murmured almost inaudibly, “I see it all quite clearly now.”
She was bending over him, and was framing his face in her two hands.
“Say I was wrong,” she pleaded passionately. “Say I was wicked, wrong.
I loved you, Alec.... I was promised to you. I should have been so
happy with you, dear.... Alec, my Alec, do not die.... God will not
let you die.... He cannot be so cruel.... Come back, Alec.... I love
you.... Do you hear, my Alec? I love you.... Ethel loves you.... Before
God I love you.... I was promised to you.... I broke my word.... I
loved you all the time, but I did not know it.... Forgive me, my Alec
... forgive me.... I shall love you always.”
He passed his fingers over her forehead tentatively, as if he were in
darkness.
“Ethel, every day, every hour, all these years, you have been with me.
And now I am going away. Kiss me--just once--just once. There can be no
wrong in it now.”
She tore her veil from her face: their lips met, and her head rested a
moment, sobbing on his shoulder.
“Hush! don’t cry, Ethel dear, don’t cry. You have made me so glad....
And you will remember to take the box.... And you will think of me
sometimes.... And I shall pray God to make you happy, and I shall wait
for you, Ethel, and be with you in thought, and if you have trouble,
you will know that I shall be sorrowing with you. Isn’t it so, dear?...
Now, good-bye, dear one--good-bye. May God watch over you.”
She had moved away. She came back again, however, and kissed his
forehead reverently. But he was not aware of her return, for his mind
had begun to wander.
She brushed past Mrs. Parkin in the passage, bidding her an incoherent
good-bye: she was instinctively impatient to escape to the protection
of familiar surroundings. Inside the house, she felt helpless, dizzy:
the melodrama of the whole scene had stunned her senses, and pity for
him was rushing through her in waves of pulsing emotion.
As she passed the various landmarks, which she had noted on her outward
journey--a group of Scotch firs, a roofless cattle-shed, a pile of
felled trees--each seemed to wear an altered aspect. With what a
strange suddenness it had all happened! Yesterday the groom had brought
back word that he was in delirium, and had told her of the loneliness
of the house. It had seemed so sad, his lying ill, all alone: the
thought had preyed on her conscience, till she had started to drive
out there to inquire if there were anything she could do to help him.
Now, every corner round which the cart swung, lengthened the stretch of
road that separated her from that tragic scene in his room.... Perhaps
it was not right for her to drive home and leave him? But she couldn’t
bear to stay: it was all so dreadful. Besides, she assured herself,
she could do no good. There was the doctor, and that old woman who
nursed him--they would see to everything.... Poor, poor Alec--alone in
that grey-walled cottage, pitched at the far end of this long, bleak
valley--the half-darkened room--his wasted, feverish face--and his
_knowing_ that he could not live--it all came back to her vividly,
and she shivered as if with cold. Death seemed hideous, awful, almost
wicked in the cruelty of its ruthlessness. And the homeward drive
loomed ahead, interminably--for two hours she would have to wait with
the dreadful, flaring remembrance of it all--two hours--for the horse
was tired, and it was thirteen miles, a man by the roadside had told
her....
He was noble-hearted, saint-like.... Her pity for him welled up
once more, and she convinced herself that she could have loved him,
worshipped him, been worthy of him as a husband--and now he lay dying.
He had revealed his whole nature to her, it seemed. No one had ever
understood, as she did now, what a fine character he was in reality.
Her cheeks grew hot with indignation and shame, as she remembered
how she had heard people laugh at him behind his back, refer to him
mockingly as the ‘love-sick curate.’ And all this while--for five whole
years--he had gone on caring for her--thinking of her each day, reading
her letters, recalling the things she used to say--yes, those were his
very words. Before, she had never suspected that it was in his nature
to take it so horribly tragically; yet, somehow, directly he had fixed
his eyes on her in that excited way, she had half-guessed it....
The horse’s trot slackened to a walk, and the wheels crunched over a
bed of newly-strewn stones.... She was considering how much of what had
happened she could relate to Jim. Oh! the awfulness of his _knowing
beforehand_ like that! She had kissed him; she had told him that she
cared for him; she hadn’t been able to help doing that. There was
no harm in it; she had made him happier--he had said so himself....
But Jim wouldn’t understand: he would be angry with her for having
gone, perhaps. He wouldn’t see that she couldn’t have done anything
else. No, she couldn’t bear to tell him: besides, it seemed somehow
like treachery to Alec.... Oh! it must be awful to _know beforehand_
like that!... The doctor should never have told him. It was horrible,
cruel.... In the past how she had been to blame--she saw that now:
thoughtless, selfish, altogether beneath him.
It was like a chapter in a novel. His loving her silently all these
years, and telling her about it on his deathbed. At the thought of it
she thrilled with subtle pride: it illuminated the whole ordinariness
of her life. The next moment the train of her own thoughts shamed her.
Poor, poor Alec.... And to reinforce her pity, she recalled the tragic
setting of the scene.
That woman--his landlady--could she have heard anything, she wondered
with a twinge of dread? No, the door was shut, and his voice had been
very low.
The horse turned on to the main road, and pricking his ears, quickened
his pace.
She would remember him always. Every day, she would think of him, as
he had asked her to do--she would never forget to do that. And, if she
were in trouble, or difficulty, she would turn her thoughts towards
him, just as he had told her he used to do. She would try to become
better--more religious--for his sake. She would read her Bible each
morning, as she knew had been his habit. These little things were all
she could do now. Her attitude in the future she would make worthy of
his in the past.... He would become the secret guiding-star of her
life: _it_ would be her hidden chapter of romance....
The box--that box which he had asked her to take. She had promised, and
she had forgotten it. How could she get it? It was too late to turn
back now. Jim would be waiting for her. She would only just be in time
for dinner as it was.... How could she get it? If she wrote to his
landlady, and asked her to send it--it was under the writing-table in
the sitting-room he had said.... She _must_ get it, somehow....
It was dark before she reached home. Jim was angry with her for being
late, and for having driven all the way without a servant. She paid
no heed to his upbraiding; but told him shortly that Alec was still
in great danger. He muttered some perfunctory expression of regret,
and went off to the stables to order a bran-mash for the horse. His
insensibility to the importance of the tragedy she had been witnessing,
exasperated her: she felt bitterly mortified that he could not divine
all that she had been suffering.
* * * * *
The last of the winter months went, and life in the valley swept its
sluggish course onwards. The bleak, spring winds rollicked, hooting
from hill to hill. The cattle waited for evening, huddled under the
walls of untrimmed stone; and before the fireside, in every farmhouse,
new-born lambs lay helplessly bleating. On Sundays the men would loaf
in churlish groups about the church door, jerk curt greetings at one
another, and ask for news of Parson Burkett. It was a curate from
Cockermouth who took the services in his stead--one of the new-fangled
sort; a young gentleman from London way, who mouthed his words like
a girl, carried company manners, and had a sight of strange clerical
practices.
Alec was slowly recovering. The fever had altogether left him: a
straw-coloured beard now covered his chin, and his cheeks were grown
hollow and peaky-looking. But by the hay-harvest, the doctor reckoned,
he would be as strong as ever again--so it was commonly reported.
Mrs. Parkin declared that the illness had done him a world o’ good.
“It’s rested his mind like, and kept him from frettin’. He was alus
ower given to studyin’ on his own thoughts, till he got dazed like and
took na notice o’ things. An’ noo,” she would conclude, “ye should jest
see him, smilin’ as free as a child.”
So, day after day, floated vaguely by, and to Alec the calm of their
unbroken regularity was delicious. He was content to lie still for
hours, thinking of nothing, remembering nothing, tasting the torpor of
dreamy contemplation; watching through the window the slow drifting
of the shadows; listening to the cackling of geese, and the plaintive
bleating of sheep....
By-and-bye, with returning strength, his senses quickened, and
grew sensitive to every passing impression. To eat with elaborate
deliberation his invalid meals; to watch the myriad specks of gold
dancing across a bar of sunlight--these were sources of keen, exciting
delight. But in the foreground of his mind, transfiguring with its
glamour every trivial thought, flashed the memory of Ethel’s visit. He
lived through the whole scene again and again, picturing her veiled
figure as it had stood by the bedside, wrapped in the red, fur cloak;
and her protesting words, her passionate tears, seemed to form a
mystic, indissoluble bond between them, that brightened all the future
with rainbow colours.
God had given him back to her. Whether circumstances brought them
together frequently, or whether they were forced to live their lives
almost wholly apart, would, he told himself, matter but little. Their
spiritual communion would remain unbroken. Indeed, the prospect of
such separations, proving, as it did to him, the sureness of the bond
between them, almost elated him. There would be unquestioning trust
between them, and, though the world had separated them, the best that
was in him belonged to her. When at length they met, there would be no
need for insistance on common points of feeling, for repeated handling
of past threads, as was customary with ordinary friendships. Since each
could read the other’s heart, that sure intuition born of chastened,
spiritual love would be theirs. If trouble came to her, he would be
there to sacrifice all at a moment’s bidding, after the fashion of the
knights of old. Because she knew him, she would have faith in him. To
do her service would be his greatest joy.
At first the immobile, isolated hours of his convalescence made all
these things appear simple and inevitable, like the events of a great
dream. As time went on, however, he grew to chafe against his long
confinement, to weary of his weakness, and of the familiar sight of
every object in the room; and in the mornings, when Mrs. Parkin brought
him his breakfast, he found himself longing for a letter from her--some
brief word of joy that he was recovering. He yearned for some material
object, the touch of which would recall her to him, as if a particle of
her personality had impregnated the atoms.
Sometimes, he would force himself into believing that she would
appear again, drive out to learn the progress of his recovery....
After luncheon she would leave home ... about half-past one, probably
... soon after three, he would see her.... Now, she was nearing the
cross-roads ... now climbing the hill past Longrigg’s farm ... she
would have to walk the horse there ... now, crossing the old bridge. He
would lie watching the clock; and when the suspense grew intolerable,
to cheat it, he would bury his head in the pillow to count up to a
thousand, before glancing at the hands again. So would slip by the
hour of her arrival; still, he would struggle to delude himself with
all manner of excuses for her--she had been delayed--she had missed
the turning, and had been compelled to retrace her steps. And, when at
length the twilight had come, he would start to assure himself that it
was to be to-morrow, and sink into a fitful dozing, recounting waking
dreams of her, subtly intoxicating....
* * * * *
In April came a foretaste of summer, and, for an hour or two every
day, he was able to hobble downstairs. He perceived the box at once,
lying in its accustomed place, and concluded that on learning that
he was out of danger, she had sent it back to him. The sight of it
cheered him with indefinable hope: it seemed to signify a fresh token
of her faith in him: it had travelled with her back to Cockermouth on
that wonderful day which had brought them together; and now, in his
eyes, it was invested with a new preciousness. He unlocked it, and,
somehow, to discover that its contents had not been disturbed, was a
keen disappointment. He longed for proof that she had been curious to
look into it, that she had thus been able to realise how he had prized
every tiny object that had been consecrated for him by her. Then it
flashed across him that she herself might have brought the box back,
and fearing to disturb him, had gone home again without asking to see
him. All that evening he brooded over this supposition; yet shrank
from putting any question to Mrs. Parkin. But the following morning,
a sudden impulse overcame his repugnance; and the next moment he had
learned the truth. Untouched, unmoved, the box had remained all the
while--she had never taken it--she had forgotten it. And depression
swept through him; for it seemed that his ideal had tottered.
His prolonged isolation and his physical lassitude had quickened his
emotions to an abnormal sensibility, and had led him to a constant
fingering, as it were, of his successive sentimental phases. And
these, since they constituted his sole diversion, he had unconsciously
come to regard as of supreme importance. The cumbersome, complex
details of life in the outside world had assumed the simplification of
an indistinct background: in his vision of her figure he had perceived
no perspective.
But now the grain of doubt was sown: it germinated insidiously; and
soon, the whole complexion of his attitude towards her was transformed.
All at once he saw a whole network of unforeseen obstacles, besetting
each detail of the prospect he had been planning. Swarming uncertainty
fastened on him at every turn; till at last, goaded to desperation,
he stripped the gilding from the accumulated fabric of his idealised
future.
And then his passion for her flamed up--ardent, unreasoning, human.
After all, he loved as other men loved--that was the truth: the rest
was mere calfish meandering. Stubbornly he vindicated to himself his
right to love her.... He was a man--a creature of flesh and blood, and
every fibre within him was crying out for her--for the sight of her
face; the sound of her voice; the clasp of her hand. Body and soul he
loved her; body and soul he yearned for her.... She had come back to
him--she was his again--with passionate tears she had told him that she
loved him. To fight for her, he was ready to abandon all else. At the
world’s laws he jibed bitterly; before God they were man and wife.
The knowledge that it lay in his power to make her his for life,
to bind her to him irrevocably, brought him intoxicating relief.
Henceforward he would live on, but for that end. Existence without her
would be dreary, unbearable. He would resign his living and leave the
church. Together they would go away, abroad: he would find some work to
do in the great cities of Australia.... She was another man’s wife--but
the sin would be his--_his_, not hers--God would so judge it; and
for her sake he would suffer the punishment. Besides, he told himself
exultantly, the sin was it not already committed? “Whosoever looketh on
a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in
his heart.”
He would go to her, say to her simply that he was come for her. It
should be done openly, honestly in the full light of day. New strength
and deep-rooted confidence glowed within him. The wretched vacillation
of his former self was put away like an old garment. Once more he sent
her words of love sounding in his ears--the words that had made them
man and wife before God. And on, the train of his thoughts whirled:
visions of a hundred scenes flitted before his eyes--he and she
together as man and wife, in a new home across the seas, where the past
was all forgotten, and the present was redolent of the sure joy of
perfect love....
* * * * *
He was growing steadily stronger. Pacing the floor of his room, or
the gravel-path before the house, when the sun was shining, each day
he would methodically measure the progress of his strength. He hinted
of a long sea voyage to the doctor: the man declared that it would be
madness to start before ten days had elapsed. Ten days--the stretch
of time seemed absurd, intolerable. But a quantity of small matters
relating to the parish remained to be set in order: he had determined
to leave no confusion behind him. So he mapped out a daily task for
himself: thus he could already begin to work for her; thus each day’s
accomplishment would bring him doubly nearer to her. The curate, who
had been taking his duty, came once or twice at his request to help
him; for he was jealously nursing his small stock of strength. He
broke the news of his approaching departure to Mrs. Parkin, and asked
her to accept the greater portion of his furniture, as an inadequate
token of his gratitude towards her for all she had done for him. The
good creature wept copiously, pestered him with questions concerning
his destination, and begged him to give her news of him in the future.
Next he sent for a dealer from Cockermouth to buy the remainder, and
disputed with him the price of each object tenaciously.
One afternoon his former rector appeared, and with tremulous cordiality
wished him God-speed, assuming that the sea voyage was the result of
doctor’s advice. And it was when the old man was gone, and he was
alone again, that, for the first time, with a spasm of pain, he caught
a glimpse of the deception he was practising. But some irresistible
force within him urged him forward--he was powerless--to look back was
impossible now--there was more yet to be done--he must go on--there was
no time to stop to think. So to deaden the rising conscience-pangs, he
fiercely reminded himself that now, but five days more separated her
from him. He sat down to write to his bishop and resign his living,
struggling with ambiguous, formal phrases, impetuously attributing to
his physical weakness his inability to frame them.
The letter at length finished, instinctively dreading fresh gnawings of
uneasiness, he forced himself feverishly into thinking of plans for the
future, busying his mind with time-tables, searching for particulars of
steamers, turning over the leaves of his bank-book. All the money which
his father had left to him had remained untouched: for three years they
could live comfortably on the capital; meanwhile he would have found
some work.
At last, when, with the growing twilight, the hills outside were
hurriedly darkening, he sank back wearily in his chair. And all at once
he perceived with dismay that nothing remained for him to do, nothing
with which he could occupy his mind. For the moment he was alone with
himself, and looking backwards, realisation of the eager facility
with which he had successively severed each link, and the rapidity
with which he had set himself drifting towards a future, impenetrable
with mysterious uncertainty, stole over him. He had done it all, he
told himself, deliberately, unaided; bewildered, he tried to bring
himself face to face with his former self, to survey himself as he
had been before the fever--that afternoon when he had gone up to Beda
Cottages--plodding indifferently through life in the joyless, walled-in
valley, which, he now understood, had in a measure reflected the spirit
of his own listless broodings. Scared remorse seized him. The prospect
of departure, now that it was close at hand, frightened him; left him
aching as with the burden of dead weight, so that, for a while, he
remained inert, dully acquiescing in his accumulating disquietude.
Then, in desperation, he invoked her figure, imagining a dozen
incoherent versions of the coming scene--the tense words of greeting,
his passionate pleading, her impulsive yielding, and the acknowledgment
of her trust in him....
By-and-bye, Mrs. Parkin brought him his dinner. He chatted to her with
apparent unconcern, jested regarding his appetite; for a curious calm,
the lucidity evoked by suppressed elation, pervaded him.
But through the night he tossed restlessly, waking in the darkness to
find himself throbbing with triumphant exhilaration; each time striking
matches to examine the face of his watch, and beginning afresh to
calculate the hours that separated him from the moment that was to bind
them together--the irrevocable starting towards the future years.
* * * * *
She stood in the bow-window of her drawing-room, arranging some cut
flowers in slender pink and blue vases, striped with enamel of
imitation gold. Behind her, the room, uncomfortably ornamental,
repeated the three notes of colour--gilt paper shavings filling the
grate; gilt-legged chairs and tables; stiff, shiny, pink chintzes
encasing the furniture; on the wall a blue-patterned paper, all
speckled with stars of gold.
Outside, the little lawn, bathed in the fresh morning sunlight, glowed
a luscious green, and the trim flower-beds swelled with heightened
colours. A white fox-terrier came waddling along the garden path: she
lifted the animal inside the window, stroking his sleek sides with an
effusive demonstration of affection. Would Jim remember to be home in
good time, she was idly wondering; she had forgotten to remind him
before he went to his office, that to-night she was to sing at a local
concert.