"Those have most power to hurt us that we love;
We lay our sleeping lives within their arms."
Beaumont and Fletcher.
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There is a curious likeness in the yesterdays and to-days of our lives,
a likeness so strong that it conceals the greater differences from us
until we have gone far enough to look back and compare them
dispassionately. We eat and drink, talk and sleep, more or less;
certain things seem to hold us in chains to which we move obediently.
If it were not so, life would be unendurable, the calls upon our
sympathy would harden our hearts or wear them out, joy and sorrow would
jostle each other too openly in the high road. The mechanism hurts us
sometimes, but it is good discipline nevertheless.
And so at Thorpe Regis the many changes were gradually covered with the
old dress of routine and habit. It is almost sad how soon people become
reconciled to them. A year ago it would have seemed the strangest thing
in the world for anything to have broken through the daily intercourse
between Hardlands and the Vicarage, and here was an alienation so great
that it almost amounted to total estrangement. Not that the Squire
desired it. Unused to keep a very close control over himself, he
allowed his feelings to be seen, and affronted Anthony; but he would
gladly have had everything as of old with Mrs Miles, and was too
autocratic not to be puzzled when he found this not the case.
"It was not her fault. The girls may go to her as much as they please.
The poor woman's to be pitied,--I pity her from the bottom of my heart,"
he would say.
Mrs Miles on her part had no very clear conception of what had
happened, for she had lived in close retirement since her husband's
death, and the few friends who entered that solitude were not likely to
be cruelly communicative. But she was aware that unkind reports had
been set afloat about the will, and, while really too sad and crushed in
spirit to do more than reiterate her assurance that it would not have
happened had the Vicar been alive, she was vaguely willing to take up
cudgels against all the world on Anthony's behalf; in comparison with
whom what was Hardlands, what was the Squire, what even were motherless
Bessie and Winifred?
And so, and so, and so,--a hundred little obstacles magnified themselves
indefinitely, the two sets of lives that had been so blended with each
other fell apart, the little brook widened into a river. Many people
thought that it would have been better if Anthony had left the
neighbourhood for a time, and allowed the exaggerated reports of his
conduct to settle quietly. But perhaps the idea of this sediment of
black mud, only requiring a chance stone to be stirred into turbid
activity, was more hateful to Anthony than the knowledge that the waters
all about him were kept in constant disturbance. He made no pretence of
concealing that he was unhappy, or at least no one could fail to see it
in his face; and his irritation and soreness against all the world were
marked so acutely that it was impossible not to foresee a reaction from
so abrupt a closing of his heart. He remained at Thorpe, partly from
yielding to his mothers clinging desire to do so, partly from pride
which forbade flight from disagreeables, and partly from a failure in
those springs of action which had hitherto urged him forward. But he
could not long endure the position of solitude he had taken up, and some
consciousness of this added to his discomfort.
When the thing of which he was accused had first grown into form,
Winifred had reproached herself for the warm glow with which her heart
assured her that Anthony would never feel her friendship fail him; but
this had long ago faded away under the keen chill of his manner, keener
because her generous spirit had never wavered in its faithfulness and
was enduring all the pangs which he believed himself to be bearing
alone. She would not suffer one throb of resentment to answer his
coldness, but it cost her a daily and bitter struggle to learn her
powerlessness, and to understand that he was himself making it
impossible for her to put out so much as a hand to help him in his
trouble.
She was in the village one day, and just turning out of it towards the
Hardlands meadows when she met old Araunah Stokes and his
daughter-in-law, Faith's mother. It was not very often the old man got
so far from his house, and he was now walking on with a kind of feeble
vigour, as if bent upon making the most of what small strength remained
to him. His daughter-in-law--who had evidently been crying, and now and
then wiped her eyes--gave Miss Chester to understand that it was Faith
who caused their trouble by her persistence in her engagement.
"Whatever us shall do, I don't know, wi' her so contrairy."
"Hold your tongue," said the old man, turning upon her with a weak,
fierce voice. "The women tells and tells, till they talks the very
brains out o' yer head. You'm no better than a baby when they've
clacketed at ye for an hour or two without a word of sense from
beginnin' to end."
"An' me niver so much as openin' my lips," said Mrs Stokes, crying
meekly and holding up her hands. "An' I did think as Faith would ha'
bin a comfort, me so weak, wi' no sproyle, nor nothin', and gran'father
only just fit to totle about."
"It ain't much comfort you'm like to get out o' maedens," said Araunah,
still bitterly. "They'm so hard to manage as a drove o' pegs. Faith
shall bide where her be, though, for all her mother's setting up."
"Has she made up her mind, then, to marry this man?" asked Winifred,
interested.
"He doan't give her the chance," said the grandfather angrily, striking
his stick upon the ground. "Girl's a fule, that's t' long an' short
o't, an' he bain't so beg a wan."
"He knows better nor to persume," said Mrs Stokes, indignant for
Faith's sake. "You see, Miss Winifred, he doan't feel he've got enough
to offer our maed,--I doan't know what her can be thinkin' of,"
continued her mother, dissolving suddenly again.
"An' her'd give up a good pleace. But her shall bide, her shall bide."
"Though it mayn't be for long, with Mr Anthony goin' to be married
hisself."
Self-possession is a wonderful power. We read with a thrill of
amazement of the Spartan boy, and the fox, and the hidden agony, but,
after all, the heroism is repeated day by day around us. There are
people getting stabs from unconscious executioners, and the life dying
out of them, while they are smiling and keeping up the little ball of
conversation, and betraying nothing of the pang. Winifred's voice
became a little gayer than usual as she said,--
"Mr Anthony? Is he going to be married?"
"To Miss Lovell down to Under'm, haven't you heard it, miss? It's that
has set Faith thinkin' more o' that Stephens."
"I woan't have it," said the old man, querulously. "I woan't have she
comin' hoam to we, ating and drinking. Polly has more sense than Faith
and her mother putt together."
Winifred never quite knew what she said, but she walked away with her
heart suddenly hardened against Faith. Why should Faith escape?--why
should she not bear her lot like other people?--why should one be set
free more than another? And, O, what had Faith to endure! What grief
was hers, whose lover only did not think himself worthy, or who would,
perhaps, renounce his happiness for the sake of perishing souls?
Grief?--why, it was an exquisite bliss. Faith stood on one side,
triumphant and happy, while Winifred walked in the valley of
humiliation, with sharpest thorns piercing her feet. Anthony did not
love her, for he loved another. Death builds no wall of separation like
this, nay, death, will break down walls,--only love itself can bar love
with a hopeless fence. She fought against the bitter truth, poor soul,
calling herself by hard names, and laughing drearily at her own folly;
but the anguish was very acute, and she had a feeling as if, though for
a little while she might keep its sharpest suffering at aim's length, it
would overmaster her at last. Was it all true,--real? Was the sun
shining on her, or was it rather a cruel furnace that had suddenly
scorched the earth, and would burn and scorch day after day, day after
day, through long years, through an endless lifetime, grey with shadows
and weary with pain, and with no better hope than forgetfulness? Heaven
pity those whose sorrow brings them face to face with such a thought and
no further! Its very touch gave Winifred a shuddering fear of herself,
and a momentary but clear perception of something that should shine
through grief and overcome it, ah, even make the rugged road beautiful.
But it was difficult for her to disconnect her thoughts as yet while
they were vibrating and ringing with the blow. She walked mechanically
towards home, but she saw Bessie and Mr and Mrs Featherly in the
garden, and feeling it impossible at this moment to join them, she stood
still irresolutely, and then turned and went along the field, where a
little stream was running, and a path led up through a small wood.
The day was delicately bright and hot. Across a pale moon that looked
herself no more than a stationary cloud, little wilful vapours which had
broken away from larger masses were sailing. Red cattle, satisfied with
their rich flowery pastures, had gathered under the hedges to chew the
cud and sleepily whisk away the flies. The brown water hurried along,
washing long grass, and shining up at meadow-sweet and purple clusters
of loosestrife. There were cool flashing lights, and tender depths of
colour, and a sweet content over everything, and poor Winifred growing
sadder and sadder with the sense of contrast, yet walking more slowly
and looking wistfully at the long grass, with a vague longing to lie
down in it, and let everything go by and away forever. It might have
been this which, as she went towards a little wooden bridge crossing the
stream into the wood, deafened her ears to a step until Anthony Miles
himself was close to her. The instant before she had believed herself
safe with the patient cattle and the water and her own sad thoughts, and
it cost her a struggle to master the tumult into which her feelings were
suddenly stirred. But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own thoughts
to notice any disturbance, and as matters had not yet come to such a
pass that they could meet in a lonely meadow and go by without greeting,
he put out his hand, and said,--
"Are you going into the wood? You will find it very hot even there. A
thunder-storm would be a real comfort."
"O, I like this sort of day!" said Winifred, with a hurrying desire to
prove her own perfect contentment. "Everything is looking most
beautiful I see Sniff is as fond as ever of the water--" She hesitated
suddenly, there being a certain awkwardness quick to make itself felt in
any allusion to the past, however slight; but Anthony said carelessly,--
"Sniff was due at Oakham, but as my mother seems to want him more than
Marion, I shall not send him."
"Is Marion quite well?"
"Quite well, thank you."
It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much
strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.
"I have just been told something," she said, looking straight in his
face and smiling. "I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell.
Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon."
There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of
hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs.
Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said "Thank
you" gravely.
That was all. A few words, the river running through the waving grass,
a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff
dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all,
standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf.
That was all. It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except
the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves
in the wood rustled as she passed under them.
Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away. He had a
very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in
many things, and too angry now to be just. A remembrance of old times
was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and
past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps,
an enemy. He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown
water and walked away.
As for Winifred--well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle,
into which neither you nor I need look.
Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when
life, not death, is the phantom they dread. One fear may be as unworthy
as the other, but it is there. Only for both there is a merciful Hand
stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us
gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the
dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.