John wandered through the green woods and fields into the town. He
stood by the railway gates. He saw the people coming and going in and
out of the public-houses; and he watched the trains that whizzed past.
A train stopped. He took a ticket and went to Brighton.
He walked through the southern sunlight of the town. The brown sails
of the fishing-boats waved in translucid green; and the white field of
the sheer cliff, and all the roofs, gables, spires, balconies, and the
green of the verandahs were exquisitely indicated and elusive in the
bright air; and the beach was loud with acrobats and comic minstrels,
and nurse-maids lay on the pebbles reading novels, children with their
clothes tied tightly about them were busy building sand castles.
But he saw not these things; on his mind was engraved a little country
cemetery--graves, yews, a square, impressive spire. He heard not the
laughter and the chatter of the beach, but the terrible words: _Earth
to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,_ and the dread, responsive
rattle given back by the coffin lid. 'And these,' his soul cried, 'are
the true realities, death, and after death Heaven or Hell!'
Then he wondered at the fate that had led him from his calm student
life.... He had come to Thornby Place with the intention of founding a
monastery; instead, he had fallen in love (the word shocked him), and
he asked himself if he had ever thought of her more as a wife than as
a sister; if he could have been her husband? He feared that he had
adventured perilously near to a life of which he could nowise sustain
or fulfil, to a life for which he knew he was nowise suited, and which
might have lost him his soul.
He never could have married her--no, not when it came to the point. He
thought of the wedding-breakfast, the cake, the speeches, the
congratulations, and of the woman with whom he would have gone away,
of the honeymoon, of the bridal chamber! He knew now that he could not
have fulfilled the life of marriage. If those things had happened he
would have had to tell her--ah! when it was too late--that he was
mistaken, that he could not, in any real sense of the word, be her
husband. They could not have lived together. They would have had to
part. His life and hers would have been irretrievably ruined, and
then? John remembered the story of Abelard and Heloise. A new Abelard
--a new Heloise!
The romance of the idea interested him. Then returning suddenly to
reality, he asked himself what had happened to Kitty--what was the
cause of her madness? Something had occurred. Once again, as he
remembered the blithe innocence of her smiling eyes when they parted
on the hill, and he recalled with terror the trembling, forlorn, half-
crazy girl that had sat opposite him in the drawing-room next day. He
remembered the twitch of her lips, the averted eyes, and the look of
mad fear that had crept over her face, her flight from him, her cries
for help, and her desperate escape through the window. His thoughts
paused, and then, like a bolt from the blue, a thought fell into his
mind. 'No,' he cried, 'not that.' He tried to shake himself free from
the thought; it was not to be shaken off. That was the explanation. It
could only be that--ah! it was that, that, and nothing but that.
And as he viewed the delicate, elusive externality of the southern
town, he remembered that he had kissed her--he had kissed her by
force! 'My God! then the difference between us is only one of degree,
and the vilest humanity claims kinship of instinct with me!' He
clasped his hands across his eyes, and feeling himself on the brink
of madness, he cried out to God to save him; and he longed to speak
the words that would take him from the world. Life was not for him. He
had learnt his lesson. Thornby Place should soon be Thornby Abbey, and
in the divine consolation of religion John Norton hoped to find escape
from the ignominy of life.