doubtful how to proceed. She, however, did not say a word, but walked on
quickly, as though her only hope was in catching the party before her.
But they also were walking quickly, for Bella was determined that she
would not be caught.
“Bessy, I must speak to you once of what passed between us at
Liverpool.”
“Must you?” said she.
“Unless you positively forbid it.”
“Stop, Godfrey,” she said. And they did stop in the path, for now she no
longer thought of putting an end to her embarrassment by overtaking her
companions. “If any such words are necessary for your comfort, it would
hardly become me to forbid them. Were I to speak so harshly you would
accuse me afterwards in your own heart. It must be for you to judge
whether it is well to reopen a wound that is nearly healed.”
“But with me it is not nearly healed. The wound is open always.”
“There are some hurts,” she said, “which do not admit of an absolute and
perfect cure, unless after long years.” As she said so, she could not
but think how much better was his chance of such perfect cure than her
own. With her,--so she said to herself,--such curing was all but
impossible; whereas with him, it was as impossible that the injury
should last.
“Bessy,” he said, and he again stopped her on the narrow path, standing
immediately before her on the way, “you remember all the circumstances
that made us part?”
“Yes; I think I remember them.”
“And you still think that we were right to part?”
She paused for a moment before she answered him; but it was only for a
moment, and then she spoke quite firmly. “Yes, Godfrey, I do; I have
thought about it much since then. I have thought, I fear, to no good
purpose about aught else. But I have never thought that we had been
unwise in that.”
“And yet I think you loved me.”
“I am bound to confess I did so, as otherwise I must confess myself a
liar. I told you at the time that I loved you, and I told you so truly.
But it is better, ten times better, that those who love should part,
even though they still should love, than that two should be joined
together who are incapable of making each other happy. Remember what you
told me.”
“I do remember.”
“You found yourself unhappy in your engagement, and you said it was my
fault.”
“Bessy, there is my hand. If you have ceased to love me, there is an end
of it. But if you love me still, let all that be forgotten.”
“Forgotten, Godfrey! How can it be forgotten? You were unhappy, and it
was my fault. My fault, as it would be if I tried to solace a sick child
with arithmetic, or feed a dog with grass. I had no right to love you,
knowing you as I did; and knowing also that my ways would not be your
ways. My punishment I understand, and it is not more than I can bear;
but I had hoped that your punishment would have been soon over.”
“You are too proud, Bessy.”
“That is very likely. Frank says that I am a Puritan, and pride was the
worst of their sins.”
“Too proud and unbending. In marriage should not the man and woman adapt
themselves to each other?”
“When they are married, yes. And every girl who thinks of marrying
should know that in very much she must adapt herself to her husband. But
I do not think that a woman should be the ivy, to take the direction of
every branch of the tree to which she clings. If she does so, what can
be her own character? But we must go on, or we shall be too late.”
“And you will give me no other answer?”
“None other, Godfrey. Have you not just now, at this very moment, told
me that I was too proud? Can it be possible that you should wish to tie
yourself for life to female pride? And if you tell me that now, at such
a moment as this, what would you tell me in the close intimacy of
married life, when the trifles of every day would have worn away the
courtesies of guest and lover?”
There was a sharpness of rebuke in this which Godfrey Holmes could not
at the moment overcome. Nevertheless he knew the girl, and understood
the workings of her heart and mind. Now, in her present state, she could
be unbending, proud, and almost rough. In that she had much to lose in
declining the renewed offer which he made her, she would, as it were,
continually prompt herself to be harsh and inflexible. Had he been
poor, had she not loved him, had not all good things seemed to have
attended the promise of such a marriage, she would have been less
suspicious of herself in receiving the offer, and more gracious in
replying to it. Had he lost all his money before he came back to her,
she would have taken him at once; or had he been deprived of an eye, or
become crippled in his legs, she would have done so. But, circumstanced
as he was, she had no motive to tenderness. There was an organic defect
in her character, which no doubt was plainly marked by its own bump in
her cranium,--the bump of philomartyrdom, it might properly be called.
She had shipwrecked her own happiness in rejecting Godfrey Holmes; but
it seemed to her to be the proper thing that a well-behaved young lady
should shipwreck her own happiness. For the last month or two she had
been tossed about by the waters and was nearly drowned. Now there was
beautiful land again close to her, and a strong pleasant hand stretched
out to save her. But though she had suffered terribly among the waves,
she still thought it wrong to be saved. It would be so pleasant to take
that hand, so sweet, so joyous, that it surely must be wrong. That was
her doctrine; and Godfrey Holmes, though he hardly analysed the matter,
partly understood that it was so. And yet, if once she were landed on
that green island, she would be so happy. She spoke with scorn of a
woman clinging to a tree like ivy; and yet, were she once married, no
woman would cling to her husband with sweeter feminine tenacity than
Bessy Garrow. He spoke no further word to her as he walked home, but in
handing her down to the ferry-boat he pressed her hand. For a second it
seemed as though she had returned this pressure. If so, the action was
involuntary, and her hand instantly resumed its stiffness to his touch.
It was late that night when Major Garrow went to his bed-room, but his
wife was still up, waiting for him. “Well,” said she, “what has he said
to you? He has been with you above an hour.”
“Such stories are not very quickly told; and in this case it was
necessary to understand him very accurately. At length I think I do
understand him.”
It is not necessary to repeat at length all that was said on that night
between Major and Mrs. Garrow, as to the offer which had now for a third
time been made to their daughter. On that evening, after the ladies had
gone, and when the two boys had taken themselves off, Godfrey Holmes
told his tale to his host, and had honestly explained to him what he
believed to be the state of his daughter’s feelings. “Now you know all,”
said he. “I do believe that she loves me, and if she does, perhaps she
may still listen to you.” Major Garrow did not feel sure that he “knew
it all.” But when he had fully discussed the matter that night with his
wife, then he thought that perhaps he had arrived at that knowledge.
On the following morning Bessy learned from the maid, at an early hour,
that Godfrey Holmes had left Thwaite Hall and gone back to Liverpool. To
the girl she said nothing on the subject, but she felt obliged to say a
word or two to Bella. “It is his coming that I regret,” she said;--“that
he should have had the trouble and annoyance for nothing. I acknowledge
that it was my fault, and I am very sorry.”
“It cannot be helped,” said Miss Holmes, somewhat gravely. “As to his
misfortunes, I presume that his journeys between here and Liverpool are
not the worst of them.”
After breakfast on that day Bessy was summoned into her father’s
book-room, and found him there, and her mother also. “Bessy,” said he,
“sit down, my dear. You know why Godfrey has left us this morning?”
Bessy walked round the room, so that in sitting she might be close to
her mother and take her mother’s hand in her own. “I suppose I do,
papa,” she said.
“He was with me late last night, Bessy; and when he told me what had
passed between you I agreed with him that he had better go.”
“It was better that he should go, papa.”
“But he has left a message for you.”
“A message, papa?”
“Yes, Bessy. And your mother agrees with me that it had better be given
to you. It is this,--that if you will send him word to come again, he
will be here by Twelfth-night. He came before on my invitation, but if
he returns it must be on yours.”
“Oh, papa, I cannot.”
“I do not say that you can, but think of it calmly before you altogether
refuse. You shall give me your answer on New Year’s morning.”
“Mamma knows that it would be impossible,” said Bessy.
“Not impossible, dearest.
“In such a matter you should do what you believe to be right,” said her
father.
“If I were to ask him here again, it would be telling him that I
would----”
“Exactly, Bessy. It would be telling him that you would be his wife. He
would understand it so, and so would your mother and I. It must be so
understood altogether.”
“But, papa, when we were at Liverpool----”
“I have told him everything, dearest,” said Mrs. Garrow.
“I think I understand the whole,” said the Major; “and in such a matter
as this I will not give you counsel on either side. But you must
remember that in making up your mind, you must think of him as well as
of yourself. If you do not love him;--if you feel that as his wife you
should not love him, there is not another word to be said. I need not
explain to my daughter that under such circumstances she would be wrong
to encourage the visits of a suitor. But your mother says you do love
him.”
“Oh, mamma!”
“I will not ask you. But if you do;--if you have so told him, and
allowed him to build up an idea of his life-happiness on such telling,
you will, I think, sin greatly against him by allowing a false feminine
pride to mar his happiness. When once a girl has confessed to a man that
she loves him, the confession and the love together put upon her the
burden of a duty towards him, which she cannot with impunity throw
aside.” Then he kissed her, and bidding her give him a reply on the
morning of the new year, left her with her mother.
She had four days for consideration, and they went past her by no means
easily. Could she have been alone with her mother, the struggle would
not have been so painful; but there was the necessity that she should
talk to Isabella Holmes, and the necessity also that she should not
neglect the Coverdales. Nothing could have been kinder than Bella. She
did not speak on the subject till the morning of the last day, and then
only in a very few words. “Bessy,” she said, “as you are great, be
merciful.”
“But I am not great, and it would not be mercy.”
“As to that,” said Bella, “he has surely a right to his own opinion.”
On that evening she was sitting alone in her room when her mother came
to her, and her eyes were red with weeping. Pen and paper were before
her, as though she were resolved to write, but hitherto no word had been
written.
“Well, Bessy,” said her mother, sitting down close beside her; “is the
deed done?”
“What deed, mamma? Who says that I am to do it?”
“The deed is not the writing, but the resolution to write. Five words
will be sufficient,--if only those five words may be written.”
“It is for one’s whole life, mamma. For his life, as well as my own.”
“True, Bessy;--that is quite true. But equally true whether you bid him
come or allow him to remain away. That task of making up one’s mind for
life, must at last be done in some special moment of that life.”
“Mamma, mamma; tell me what I should do.”
But this Mrs. Garrow would not do. “I will write the words for you if
you like,” she said, “but it is you who must resolve that they shall be
written. I cannot bid my darling go away and leave me for another
home;--I can only say that in my heart I do believe that home would be a
happy one.”
It was morning before the note was written, but when the morning came
Bessy had written it and brought it to her mother.
“You must take it to papa,” she said. Then she went and hid herself from
all eyes till the noon had passed. “Dear Godfrey,” the letter ran, “Papa
says that you will return on Wednesday if I write to ask you. Do come
back to us,--if you wish it. Yours always,
BESSY.”
“It is as good as though she had filled the sheet,” said the Major. But
in sending it to Godfrey Holmes, he did not omit a few accompanying
remarks of his own.
An answer came from Godfrey by return of post; and on the afternoon of
the sixth of January, Frank Garrow drove over to the station at Penrith
to meet him. On their way back to Thwaite Hall there grew up a very
close confidence between the two future brothers-in-law, and Frank
explained with great perspicuity a little plan which he had arranged
himself. “As soon as it is dark, so that she won’t see it, Harry will
hang it up in the dining-room,” he said, “and mind you go in there
before you go anywhere else.”
“I am very glad you have come back, Godfrey,” said the Major, meeting
him in the hall.
“God bless you, dear Godfrey,” said Mrs. Garrow, “you will find Bessy in
the dining-room,” she whispered; but in so whispering she was quite
unconscious of the mistletoe bough.
And so also was Bessy, nor do I think that she was much more conscious
when that introduction was over. Godfrey had made all manner of promises
to Frank, but when the moment arrived, he had found the moment too
important for any special reference to the little bough above his head.
Not so, however, Patty Coverdale. “It’s a shame,” said she, bursting out
of the room, “and if I’d known what you had done, nothing on earth
should have induced me to go in. I won’t enter the room till I know that
you have taken it out.” Nevertheless her sister Kate was bold enough to
solve the mystery before the evening was over.
RETURNING HOME.
It is generally supposed that people who live at home,--good domestic
people, who love tea and their arm-chairs, and who keep the parlour
hearth-rug ever warm,--it is generally supposed that these are the
people who value home the most, and best appreciate all the comforts of
that cherished institution. I am inclined to doubt this. It is, I think,
to those who live farthest away from home, to those who find the
greatest difficulty in visiting home, that the word conveys the sweetest
idea. In some distant parts of the world it may be that an Englishman
acknowledges his permanent resting place; but there are many others in
which he will not call his daily house, his home. He would, in his own
idea, desecrate the word by doing so. His home is across the blue
waters, in the little northern island, which perhaps he may visit no
more; which he has left, at any rate, for half his life; from which
circumstances, and the necessity of living, have banished him. His home
is still in England, and when he speaks of home his thoughts are there.
No one can understand the intensity of this feeling who has not seen or
felt the absence of interest in life which falls to the lot of many who
have to eat their bread on distant soils. We are all apt to think that a
life in strange countries will be a life of excitement, of stirring
enterprise, and varied scenes;--that in abandoning the comforts of home,
we shall receive in exchange more of movement and of adventure than
would come in our way in our own tame country; and this feeling has, I
am sure, sent many a young man roaming. Take any spirited fellow of
twenty, and ask him whether he would like to go to Mexico for the next
ten years! Prudence and his father may ultimately save him from such
banishment, but he will not refuse without a pang of regret.
Alas! it is a mistake. Bread may be earned, and fortunes, perhaps, made
in such countries; and as it is the destiny of our race to spread itself
over the wide face of the globe, it is well that there should be
something to gild and paint the outward face of that lot which so many
are called upon to choose. But for a life of daily excitement, there is
no life like life in England; and the farther that one goes from England
the more stagnant, I think, do the waters of existence become.
But if it be so for men, it is ten times more so for women. An
Englishman, if he be at Guatemala or Belize, must work for his bread,
and that work will find him in thought and excitement. But what of his
wife? Where will she find excitement? By what pursuit will she repay
herself for all that she has left behind her at her mother’s fireside?
She will love her husband. Yes; that at least! If there be not that,
there will be a hell, indeed. Then she will nurse her children, and talk
of her--home. When the time shall come that her promised return thither
is within a year or two of its accomplishment, her thoughts will all be
fixed on that coming pleasure, as are the thoughts of a young girl on
her first ball for the fortnight before that event comes off.
On the central plain of that portion of Central America which is called
Costa Rica stands the city of San José. It is the capital of the
Republic,--for Costa Rica is a Republic,--and, for Central America, is a
town of some importance. It is in the middle of the coffee district,
surrounded by rich soil on which the sugar-cane is produced, is blessed
with a climate only moderately hot, and the native inhabitants are
neither cut-throats nor cannibals. It may be said, therefore, that by
comparison with some other spots to which Englishmen and others are
congregated for the gathering together of money, San José may be
considered as a happy region; but, nevertheless, a life there is not in
every way desirable. It is a dull place, with little to interest either
the eye or the ear. Although the heat of the tropics is but little felt
there on account of its altitude, men and women become too lifeless for
much enterprise. There is no society. There are a few Germans and a few
Englishmen in the place, who see each other on matters of business
during the day; but, sombre as life generally is, they seem to care
little for each other’s company on any other footing. I know not to what
point the aspirations of the Germans may stretch themselves, but to the
English the one idea that gives salt to life is the idea of home. On
some day, however distant it may be, they will once more turn their
faces towards the little northern island, and then all will be well with
them.
To a certain Englishman there, and to his dear little wife, this
prospect came some few years since somewhat suddenly. Events and
tidings, it matters not which or what, brought it about that they
resolved between themselves that they would start immediately;--almost
immediately. They would pack up and leave San José within four months of
the day on which their purpose was first formed. At San José a period of
only four months for such a purpose was immediately. It creates a
feeling of instant excitement, a necessity for instant doing, a
consciousness that there was in those few weeks ample work both for the
hands and thoughts,--work almost more than ample. The dear little wife,
who for the last two years had been so listless, felt herself flurried.
“Harry,” she said to her husband, “how shall we ever be ready?” And her
pretty face was lighted up with unusual brightness at the happy thought
of so much haste with such an object. “And baby’s things too,” she said,
as she thought of all the various little articles of dress that would be
needed. A journey from San José to Southampton cannot in truth be made
as easily as one from London to Liverpool. Let us think of a month to be
passed without any aid from the washerwoman, and the greatest part of
that month amidst the sweltering heats of the West Indian tropics!
In the first month of her hurry and flurry Mrs. Arkwright was a happy
woman. She would see her mother again and her sisters. It was now four
years since she had left them on the quay at Southampton, while all
their hearts were broken at the parting. She was a young bride then,
going forth with her new lord to meet the stern world. He had then been
home to look for a wife, and he had found what he looked for in the
younger sister of his partner. For he, Henry Arkwright, and his wife’s
brother, Abel Ring, had established themselves together in San José. And
now, she thought, how there would be another meeting on those quays at
which there should be no broken hearts; at which there should be love
without sorrow, and kisses, sweet with the sweetness of welcome, not
bitter with the bitterness of parting. And people told her,--the few
neighbours around her,--how happy, how fortunate she was to get home
thus early in her life. They had been out some ten,--some twenty years,
and still the day of their return was distant. And then she pressed her
living baby to her breast, and wiped away a tear as she thought of the
other darling whom she would leave beneath that distant sod.
And then came the question as to the route home. San José stands in the
middle of the high plain of Costa Rica, half way between the Pacific and
the Atlantic. The journey thence down to the Pacific is, by comparison,
easy. There is a road, and the mules on which the travellers must ride
go steadily and easily down to Punta Arenas, the port on that ocean.
There are inns, too, on the way,--places of public entertainment at
which refreshment may be obtained, and beds, or fair substitutes for
beds. But then by this route the traveller must take a long additional
sea voyage. He must convey himself and his weary baggage down to that
wretched place on the Pacific, there wait for a steamer to take him to
Panamá, cross the isthmus, and reship himself in the other waters for
his long journey home. That terrible unshipping and reshipping is a sore
burden to the unaccustomed traveller. When it is absolutely
necessary,--then indeed it is done without much thought; but in the case
of the Arkwrights it was not absolutely necessary. And there was another
reason which turned Mrs. Arkwright’s heart against that journey by Punt’
Arenas. The place is unhealthy, having at certain seasons a very bad
name;--and here on their outward journey her husband had been taken ill.
She had never ceased to think of the fortnight she had spent there among
uncouth strangers, during a portion of which his life had trembled in
the balance. Early, therefore, in those four months she begged that she
might not be taken round by Punt’ Arenas. There was another route.
“Harry, if you love me, let me go by the Serapiqui.” As to Harry’s
loving her, there was no doubt about that, as she well knew.
There was this other route by the Serapiqui river, and by Greytown.
Greytown, it is true, is quite as unhealthy as Punt’ Arenas, and by that
route one’s baggage must be shipped and unshipped into small boats.
There are all manner of difficulties attached to it. Perhaps no direct
road to and from any city on the world’s surface is subject to sharper
fatigue while it lasts. Journeying by this route also, the traveller
leaves San José mounted on his mule, and so mounted he makes his way
through the vast primeval forests down to the banks of the Serapiqui
river. That there is a track for him is of course true; but it is simply
a track, and during nine months of the twelve is so deep in mud that the
mules sink in it to their bellies. Then, when the river has been
reached, the traveller seats him in his canoe, and for two days is
paddled down,--down along the Serapiqui, into the San Juan River, and
down along the San Juan till he reaches Greytown, passing one night at
some hut on the river side. At Greytown he waits for the steamer which
will carry him his first stage on his road towards Southampton. He must
be a connoisseur in disagreeables of every kind who can say with any
precision whether Greytown or Punt’ Arenas is the better place for a
week’s sojourn.
For a full month Mr. Arkwright would not give way to his wife. At first
he all but conquered her by declaring that the Serapiqui journey would
be dangerous for the baby; but she heard from some one that it could be
made less fatiguing for the baby than the other route. A baby had been
carried down in a litter strapped on to a mule’s back. A guide at the
mule’s head would be necessary, and that was all. When once in her boat
the baby would be as well as in her cradle. What purpose cannot a woman
gain by perseverance? Her purpose in this instance Mrs. Arkwright did at
last gain by persevering.