The October night rang stormily round Great End Farm. The northwest wind
rushing over the miniature pass just beyond the farm, where the road
dropped from the level of the upland in which Ipscombe lay, to the level
of the plain, was blowing fiercely on the square of buildings which stood
naked and undefended against weather from that quarter of the heaven,
while protected by the hills and the woods from the northeast. And
mingled with the noisy or wailing gusts came the shrieking from time to
time of one of the little brown owls that are now multiplying so fast in
the English midlands.
The noise of the storm and the clamour of the owl were not the cause of
Rachel's wakefulness; but they tended to make it more feverish and
irritable. Every now and then she would throw off the bed-clothes, and
sit up with her hands round her knees, a white and rigid figure lit by
the solitary candle beside her. Then again she would feel the chill of
the autumn night, and crouch down shivering among the bed-clothes, pining
for a sleep that would not come. Instead of sleep, she could do nothing
but rehearse the scene with Ellesborough again and again. She watched the
alterations in his face--she heard the changes in his voice--as she told
her story. She was now as sorry for him as for herself! The tears came
flooding into her eyes as she thought of him. In her selfish fears of his
anger she had forgotten his suffering. But the first true love of her
life was bringing understanding. She realized the shock to him, and wept
over it. She saw, too, that she had been unjust and cowardly in letting
the situation go so far without speaking; and that there was no real
excuse for her.
Would he give her up? She had told him that all was at an end between
them; but that was only pride--making a virtue of a necessity. Oh, no,
no, he must not give her up! It was only six weeks since their first
meeting, and though it would be untrue to say that since the meeting he
had wholly possessed her thoughts, she had been capable all through them
of that sort of dallying with the vicar which Janet thought unkind. She
had been able to find plenty of mind for her work, and for the ambitions
of her new profession, and had spent many a careless hour steeped in the
sheer physical pleasure of the harvest. Yet, from the beginning, his
personality had laid its grip on hers. She had never been able to forget
him for long. One visit from him was no sooner over than she was
calculating on and dreaming of the next. And as the consciousness
of some new birth in her had grown, and sudden glimpses had come to her
of some supreme joy, possibly within her grasp, so fear had grown, and
anxiety. She looked back upon her past, and knew it stained--knew that it
must at some point rise as an obstacle between her and him.
But how great an obstacle? She was going to tell him, faithfully,
frankly, all the story of her marriage--accuse her own rash self-will in
marrying Delane, confess her own failings as a wife; she would tell no
hypocritical tale. She would make it plain that Roger had found in her no
mere suffering saint, and that probably her intolerance and impatience
had contributed to send him to damnation. But, after all, when it was
told, what could Ellesborough do but pity her?--take her in his arms--and
comfort her--for those awful years--and her lost child?
The tears rained down her cheeks. He loved her! She was certain of that.
When he had once heard the story, he could not forsake her! She already
saw the pity in his deep grey eyes; she already felt his honest,
protecting arms about her.
Ah--_but then_? Beyond that imagined scene, which rose, as though
it were staged, before her, Rachel's shrinking eyes, in the windy
darkness, seemed to be penetrating to another--a phantom scene in a dim
distance--drawn not from the future, but the past. Two figures moved in
it. One was herself. The other was not Roger Delane.
The brown owl seemed to be shrieking just outside her window. Her
nerves quivered under the sound as though it were her own voice. Why was
life so cruel, so miserable? Why cannot even the gods themselves make
undone what is done? She was none the worse--permanently--for what had
happened in that distant scene--that play within a play? How was she the
worse? She was "not a bad woman!"--as she had said so passionately to
Janet, when they joined hands. There was no lasting taint left in mind
and soul--nothing to prevent her being a pure and faithful wife to George
Ellesborough, and a good mother to his children. It was another Rachel to
whom all that had happened, a Rachel she had a right to forget! She was
weak in will--she had confessed it. But George Ellesborough was strong.
Leaning on him, and on kind Janet, she could be all, she would be all,
that he still dreamed. The past--_that_ past--was dead. It had no
existence. Nothing--neither honour nor love--obliged her to disclose it.
Except in her own mind it was dead and buried--as though it had never
been. No human being shared her knowledge of it, or ever would.
And yet the Accuser came closer and closer, wrestling with her shrinking
heart. "You can't live a lie beside him all your life!" "It won't be a
lie. All that matters to him is what I am now--not what I was. And it
wasn't I!--it was another woman--a miserable, battered creature who
couldn't help herself." "It will rise up between you, and perhaps--after
all--in some way--he will discover it." "How can he? Dick and I--who in
all the world knew, but us two?--and Dick is dead." "Are you sure that no
one knew:--that no one saw you? Think!"