HER PATH IN THE SHADOW
Yielding to the urgency of Beatrice, who was supported in her entreaty
by Mrs. Birks, Wilfrid had, a little ere this, consented to sit for his
portrait to an artist, a friend of the family, who had already made a
very successful picture of Beatrice herself. The artist resided at
Teddington. Wilfrid was due for a sitting this Wednesday morning, and he
went down into the country, intending to be back for lunch and the House
of Commons. But the weather was magnificent, and, the sitting over,
truant thoughts began to assail the young legislator. Bushey Park was at
hand, with its chestnut avenue leading to Hampton Court. A ramble of
indefinite duration was, in his present frame of mind, much more
attractive than the eloquence of independent members. He determined to
take a holiday.
A very leisurely stroll across the park brought him to the King's Arms,
and the sight of the hostelry suggested pleasant thoughts of sundry
refreshing viands and cooling liquors. He entered and lunched. It was a
holiday, and a truant holiday; he allowed himself champagne. When he
came forth again, his intention to stroll through the galleries of the
Palace had given way before the remembered shadow of the chestnuts; he
returned to the park, and, after idly watching the fish in the shallow
water of the round lake, strayed away into cool retreats, where the
grass irresistibly invited to recumbency. He threw himself down, and let
his eyes dream upon the delicate blades and stalks and leafage which one
so seldom regards. If he chose to gaze further, there were fair tracts
of shadowed sward, with sunny gleamings scattered where the trees were
thinner, and above him the heaven of clustering leaves, here of
impenetrable dark-green, there translucent-golden. A rustling whisper,
in the air and on the ground, was the only voice that came thither.
He had set himself to think of Beatrice. He purposed writing her a long
letter to-night, wherein he would do his best to make her understand the
light in which the past appeared to him, and how little those memories
had to do with the present and its love and its duty. To be sure, he
could not use the words of very truth. He would much have preferred to
speak with unflinching honesty, to confess that he had, even of late,
often dwelt on the thought of Emily with tenderness, with something of
heart-ache; but that the new love had, for all that, triumphed over the
old, and would henceforth grow to perfectness. But the character of
Beatrice would not allow this; in her, feeling was too predominant over
intellect; she could not recognise in this very frankness the assurance
of an affection which would end by being no less than the utmost she
demanded. He had to seek for subtleties of explanation, for ingenuities
of argument, which, unsatisfactory as they seemed to himself, might yet,
he thought, help her to the reconciliation he knew she desired. He was
scarcely less anxious for it. For Beatrice he would never know that
limitless passion, that infinite yearning alike of spirit and of sense,
which had been his love for Emily; but she was very dear to him, and
with all his heart he desired to make her happiness. He imaged her
beauty and her talent with pride which made his veins warmer. Her
husband, he would be loyal to his last breath. Community of life would
establish that intimate alliance of heart and soul which every year
makes more enduring. Were they not young flesh and blood, he and she?
And could a bodiless ghost come between them, a mere voice of
long-vanished time, insubstantial, unseizable, as the murmur in these
chestnut-leaves?
He grew tired of the attitude which at first had been reposeful, and
rose to wander further. Someone else, it seemed, had been tempted to
this quiet corner, away from the road; a woman was walking at a little
distance, and reading as she walked. The thought passed through his mind
that a woman never looked more graceful than when walking with her head
bent over a book. When he looked that way again, he found that she had
come much nearer, still very intent upon her reading. She had, in truth,
a comely figure, one which suggested a face of the nobler kind. She
would look up presently.
Did not that form, that movement as she walked, stir memories? Yes, he
had known someone who might well have paced thus beneath spreading
trees, with her eyes upon a book of poetry; not unlike this stranger,
outwardly. In what black, skyless, leafless town was she pursuing her
lonely life?--Lonely? why should it be so? Emily could not go on her way
without meeting one whom her sweetness and her power would enthral, and
the reasons, whatever they were, that had forbidden her marriage six or
seven years ago, were not likely to resist time. He tried to hope that
the happier lot had by this solaced her. Do we not change so? His own
love--see how it had faded!
Half purposely, he had turned so as to pass near the reader. At the
distance of a few yards from her, he stayed his step. A little nearer
she came, then something made her aware of his presence. She raised her
eyes, the eyes of Emily Hood.
Her hands fell, one still holding the book open. He, who was prepared
already, could watch her countenance change from placid, if grave,
thought, to the awakening of surprise, to startled recognition; he could
see the colour die upon her cheeks, flee from her lips; he could observe
the great heartthrobs which shook her and left her bosom quivering. He
did not uncover his head; conventional courtesies have their season. It
seemed very long before they ceased to look into each other's eyes, but
at length hers fell.
'Is it possible that you are living in London?' were Wilfrid's first
words. He could affect no distance of manner. To him all at once it was
as though they had parted a few days ago.
'Yes,' she answered simply. 'In a far part of London.'
'And we meet here, where I seemed to find myself by the merest chance. I
saw a stranger in the distance, and thought of yourself; I knew you long
before you looked up from your reading.'
Emily tried to smile.
'How little you are changed!' Wilfrid continued, his voice keeping still
its awed quietness, with under-notes of feeling. 'Rather, you are not
changed at all.'
It was not true, but in the few minutes that he had gazed at her, past
and present had so blended that he could not see what another would have
noticed. Emily was appreciably older, and ill-health had set marks upon
her face. A stranger looking at her now would have found it hard to
imagine her with the light of joy in her eyes; her features had set
themselves in sorrow. Her cheeks were very thin; her eyes were dark and
sunken. Wilfrid saw only the soul in her gaze at him, and that was as it
had ever been.
She was unable to speak; Wilfrid found words.
'Do you often walk here? Is your home near?'
'Not very near. I came by the river,' she answered.
'I am very glad that I have met you.' The words sounded insufficient,
but Wilfrid was by this time at battle with himself, and succeeded in
saying less than he felt. 'You will let me walk on a little way with
you? We can't shake hands at once and say good-bye, can we, after such a
long time?'
He spoke in the tone one uses to jest over bygone sadness. Emily made no
verbal answer, but walked along by his side.
'You still have your old habits,' he said, casting an eye at the book.
'Are your tastes still the same, I wonder?'
'It is Dante,' she replied.
The name brought another to Wilfrid's consciousness; he averted his eyes
for a moment, but spoke again without much delay.
'Still faithful to the great names. This is a lovely place to make one's
study. Were you here when the chestnuts flowered?'
'Yes, once or twice.'
'I did not see them this year. And you have been walking here so often,'
he added, wondering again, half to himself. 'I have been to Teddington
several times lately, but only today came into the park.'
'I have not been here for a month,' Emily said, speaking at length with
more case. The shock had affected her physically more than she had
allowed to be seen; it was only now that her voice was perfectly at her
command. Her face remained grave, but she spoke in a tone free from
suggestion of melancholy. 'I teach in a school, and to-day there is a
holiday.'
'Do you live at the school?'
'No. I have my own lodgings.'
He was on the point of asking whether Mrs. Baxendale knew she was in
London, but it seemed better to suppress the question.
'Have you been there long?' he asked instead.
'Half a year.'
As he kept silence, Emily continued with a question, the first she had
put.
'What have you chosen for your life's work?'
Wilfrid could not overcome the tendency of blood to his cheeks. He was
more than half ashamed to tell her the truth.
'You will laugh at me,' he said. 'I am in Parliament.'
'You are? I never see newspapers.'
She added it as if to excuse herself for not being aware of his public
activity.
'Oh, I am still far from being a subject of leading-articles,' Wilfrid
exclaimed. 'Indeed, I gave you no answer to your question. My life's
work is non-existent. All my old plans have come to nothing, and I have
formed no new ones, no serious plans. My life will be a failure, I
suppose.'
'But you aim at success in politics?'
'I suppose so. I was thinking of the other things we used to speak of.'
Emily hazarded a glance at him, as if to examine him again in this new
light.
'You used to say,' she continued, 'that you felt in many ways suited for
a political life.'
'Did I? You mean at home, when I talked in a foolish way. It was not my
serious thought. I never said it to you.'
She murmured a 'No.' They walked on in silence.
'You didn't read Italian then,' Wilfrid said. 'You, I feel sure, have
not wasted your time. How much you must have read since we talked over
our favourite authors.'
'I have tried to keep up the habit of study,' Emily replied,
unaffectedly, 'but of course most of my time is occupied in teaching.'
Their walk had brought them from under the trees, and the lake was just
before them.
'I will go on to the bridge,' Emily said. 'The boat I return by will
leave shortly.'
She spoke as if expecting him to take leave of her. Wilfrid inwardly
bade himself do so. He had seen her, had talked with her; what more for
either? Yet it was beyond his power to stand here and see her walk away
from him. Things were stirring in his heart and mind of which he refused
to take cognisance; he would grant nothing more than a sense of pleasure
in hearing once again a voice which had so long been buried, and there
was no harm in that. Was not his strongest feeling merely surprise at
having met her thus? Even yet he found a difficulty in realising that it
was she with whom he spoke; had he closed his eyes and then looked round
for her in vain it would only have appeared the natural waking from
intense reverie. Why not dream on as long as he might?
'May I not walk as far as the bridge with you?' he asked. 'If I were not
afraid of being tiresome I should even like to go by the boat; it would
be the pleasantest way of getting back to town.'
'Yes, it is pleasant on the river,' Emily said rather absently.
They pursued their walk together, and conversed still much in the same
way. Wilfrid learned that her school was in Hammersmith, a large
day-school for girls; he led her to speak of the subjects she taught,
and of her pupils.
'You prefer it,' he asked, 'to private teaching?'
'I think so.'
Once on the boat their talk grew less consecutive; the few words they
exchanged now and then were suggested by objects or places passed. At
length even these remarks ceased, and for the last half-hour they held
silence. Other people close by were talking noisily. Emily sat with both
hands holding the book upon her lap, her eyes seldom moving from a point
directly before her. Wilfrid glanced at her frequently. He was more
observant now of the traces of bodily weakness in her; he saw how meagre
she had become, how slight her whole frame was. At moments it cost him a
serious effort to refrain from leaning to her and whispering words--he
knew not what--something kind, something that should change her fixed
sadness. Why had he forced his company upon her? Certainly he brought
her no joy, and presently he would take leave of her as any slight
acquaintance might; how otherwise? It would have been better to part
there by the lake where she offered the occasion.
The steamer reached Hammersmith. Only at this last moment he seemed to
understand where he was and with whom, that Emily was sitting by him, in
very deed here by his side, and directly would be gone--he knew not
whither--scarcely to be met again. The silence between them had come of
the difficulty they both had in realising that they were together, of
the dreaminess so strange an event had cast upon them. Were they to fall
apart again without a word, a sign? A sign of what, forsooth?
Wilfrid moved with her to the spot at which she would step from the
deck; seeing him follow, Emily threw back one startled glance. The next
moment she again turned, holding out her hand. He took it, held it,
pressed it; nothing could restrain that pressure; his muscles closed
upon her slight fingers involuntarily. Then he watched her walk
hurriedly from the landing-stage....
Her we follow. She had a walk of nearly half an hour, which brought her
at length to one of the streets of small lodging-houses which abound in
this neighbourhood, and to a door which she opened with her latch-key.
She went upstairs. Here two rooms were her home. That which looked upon
the street was furnished in the poor bare style which the exterior of
the dwelling would have led one to expect. A very hideous screen of
coloured paper hid the fireplace, and in front of the small oblong
mirror--cracked across one corner--which stood above the mantelpiece
were divers ornaments such as one meets with in poor lodging-houses;
certain pictures about the walls completed the effect of vulgarity.
Emily let herself sink upon the chintz-covered couch, and lay back,
closing her eyes; she had thrown off her hat, but was too weary, too
absent in thought, to remove her mantle. Her face was as colourless as
if she had fainted; she kept one hand pressed against her heart.
Unconsciously she had walked home with a very quick step, and quick
movement caused her physical suffering. She sat thus for a quarter of an
hour, when there came a tap at the door.
Her landlady entered.
'Oh, I thought, Miss Hood,' she began, 'you'd maybe rung the bell as
usual, and I hadn't heard it. I do sometimes think I'm getting a little
hard of hearing; my husband tell me of it. Will you have the tea made?'
'Thank you, Mrs. Willis,' Emily replied, rising.
She opened a low cupboard beside the fireplace, took out a tea-pot, and
put some tea into it.
'You'd have a long walk, I suppose,' continued the woman, 'and
delightful weather for it, too. But you must mind as you don't over-tire
yourself. You don't look very strong, if I may say it.'
'Oh, I am very well,' was the mechanical reply.
After a few more remarks the landlady took away the teapot. Emily then
drew out a cloth from the cupboard, and other things needful for her
evening meal. Presently the tea-pot returned filled with hot water.
Emily was glad to pour out a cup and drink it, but she ate nothing. In a
short time she rang the bell to have the things removed. This time a
little girl appeared.
'Eh, Miss,' was the exclamation of the child, on examining the state of
the table, 'you haven't eaten nothing!'
'No, I don't want anything just now, Milly,' was the quiet reply.
'Shall I leave the bread and butter out?'
'No, thank you. I'll have some later.'
'Is there anything I could get you, Miss?'
'Nothing, Milly. Take the things away, there's a good girl.'
Emily had seated herself on the couch again; when the girl was gone she
lay down, her hands beneath her head. Long, long since she had had so
much to think of as to-night.
At first she had found Wilfrid a good deal altered. He looked so much
older; his bearded face naturally caused that. But before he had spoken
twenty words how well she knew that the change was only of appearance.
His voice was a little deeper, but the tone and manner of his speaking
carried her back to the days when they had first exchanged words when
she was a governess at The Firs in Surrey, and Wilfrid was the
interesting young fellow who had overworked himself at college. The
circumstances of to-day's meeting had reproduced something of the
timidity with which he had approached her when they were strangers. This
afternoon she had scarcely looked into his eyes, but she felt their gaze
upon her, and felt their power as of old--ah, fifty-fold stronger!
Was he married? It was more than possible. Nothing had escaped him
inconsistent with that, and he was not likely to speak of it directly.
It would account for the nature of his embarrassment in talking with
her; her keen insight distinguished something more than the hesitation
which common memories would naturally cause. And that pressure of the
hand at parting which had made her heart leap with such agony, might
well be his way of intimating to her that this meeting would have no
sequel. Was it to be expected that he should remain unmarried? Had she
hoped it?
It could not be called hope, but for two or three years something had
grown in her which made life a succession of alternating longings and
despairs. For Emily was not so constituted that the phase of thought and
feeling which had been brought about by the tragedy of her home could
perpetuate itself and become her normal consciousness. When she fled
from Dunfield she believed that the impulses then so strong would
prevail with her to the end of her life, that the motives which were
then predominant in her soul would maintain their ruling force for ever.
And many months went by before she suspected that her imagination had
deceived her; imagination, ever the most potent factor of her being, the
source alike of her strength and her weakness. But there came a day when
the poignancy of her grief was subdued, and she looked around her upon a
world more desolate than that in which she found herself on the day of
her mother's burial. She began to know once more that she was young, and
that existence stretched before her a limitless tract of barren
endurance.
The rare natures which are in truth ruled by the instinct of
renunciation, which find in the mortification of sense a spring of
unearthly joy brimming higher with each self-conquest, may experience
temptation and relapse, but the former is a new occasion for the arming
of the spirit, and the latter speedily leads to a remorse which is the
strongest of all incentives to ascetic struggle. Emily had not upon her
the seal of sainthood. It was certain that at some point of her life
asceticism would make irresistible claim upon the strongholds of her
imagination; none the less certain that it would be but for a time, that
it would prove but a stage in her development. To her misfortune the
occasion presented itself in connection with her strongest native
affections, and under circumstances which led her to an irretrievable
act. Had she been brought up in a Roman Catholic country she would
doubtless have thrown herself into a convent, finding her stern joy in
the thought that no future wavering was possible. Attempting to make a
convent of her own mind, she soon knew too well that her efforts mocked
her, that there was in her an instinct stronger than that of
renunciation, and that she had condemned herself to a life of futile
misery.
Her state of mind for the year following her father's death was morbid,
little differing from madness; and she came at length to understand
that. When time had tempered her anguish, she saw with clear eyes that
her acts had been guided by hallucination. Never would sorrow for her
parents cease to abide with her, but sorrow cannot be the sustenance of
a life through those years when the mind is strongest and the sensations
most vivid. Had she by her self-mortification done aught to pleasure
those dear ones who slept their last sleep? It had been the predominant
feature of her morbid passion to believe that piety demanded such a
sacrifice. Grief may reach such a point that to share the uttermost fate
of the beloved one seems blessedness; in Emily's mind that moment of
supreme agony had been protracted till unreasoning desire took to itself
the guise of duty. Duty so represented cannot maintain its sanction when
the wounds of nature grow towards healing.
She strove with herself. The reaction she was experiencing seemed to her
a shameful weakness. Must she cease to know the self-respect which comes
of conscious perseverance in a noble effort? Must she stand
self-condemned, an ignoble nature, incapable of anything good and
great--and that, after all her ambitions? Was she a mere waif, at the
mercy of the currents of sense? Never before had she felt this
condemnation of her own spirit. She had suffered beyond utterance, but
ever with a support which kept her from the last despair; of her anguish
had come inspiration. Now she felt herself abandoned of all spiritual
good. She came to loathe her life as a polluted stream. The image of
Wilfrid, the memory of her lost love, these grew to be symbols of her
baseness. It was too much to face those with whom daily duty brought her
in contact; surely they must read in her face the degradation of which
she was conscious. As much as possible she kept apart from all, nursing
her bitter self-reproach.
Then it was that she sought relief in the schemes which naturally occur
to a woman thus miserable. She would relinquish her life as a teacher,
and bury her wretchedness beneath physical hardship. There was anguish
enough in the world, and she would go to live in the midst of it, would
undertake the hardest and most revolting tasks in some infirmary: thus
might she crush out of herself the weakness which was her disgrace. It
remained only a vision. That which was terribly real, the waste and woe
of her heart, grew ever.
She yielded. Was not the true sin this that she tried to accomplish--the
slaying of the love which cried so from her inmost being? Glimpses of
the old faith began to be once more vouchsafed her; at moments she knew
the joy of beautiful things. This was in spring-time. Living in the
great seaport, she could easily come within sight of the blue line where
heaven and ocean met, and that symbol of infinity stirred once more the
yearnings for boundless joy which in bygone days she had taught herself
to accept as her creed. Supposing that her father had still knowledge of
the life she led, would it make him happy to know that she had deprived
herself of every pleasure, had for his sake ruined a future which might
have been so fair? Not thus do we show piety to the dead; rather in
binding our brows with every flower our hands may cull, and in drinking
sunlight as long as the west keeps for us one gleam.
She had destroyed herself. Joy could arise to her from but one source,
and that was stopped for ever. For it never came to Emily as the
faintest whisper that other love than Wilfrid's might bless her life.
That was constancy which nothing could shake; in this she would never
fall from the ideal she had set before herself. She no longer tried to
banish thoughts of what she had lost; Wilfrid was a companion at all
hours far more real than the people with whom she had to associate. She
had, alas, destroyed his letters she had destroyed the book in which she
wrote the secrets of her heart that he might some day read them. The
lack of a single thing that had come to her from him made the more
terribly real the severance of his life from hers. She anguished without
hope.
Then there came to her the knowledge that her bodily strength was
threatened by disease. She had fainting fits, and in the comfort
administered by those about her she read plainly what was meant to be
concealed. At times this was a relief; at least she might hope to be
spared long years of weary desolation, and death, come when he might,
would be a friend. In other hours the all but certainty of her doom was
a thought so terrible that reason well-nigh failed before it. Was there
no hope for her for ever, nothing but the grave to rest her tired heart?
Why had fate dealt with her so cruelly? She looked round and saw none
upon whom had fallen a curse so unrelieved.
At last the desire to go once more to the south of England grew
overpowering. If she could live in London, she felt it might console her
to feel that she was near Wilfrid; he would not seem, as now, in a world
utterly remote. Perchance she might one day even see him. If she had
knowledge of the approach of death, Wilfrid would not refuse to come and
see her at the last, and with her hand in his how easy it would be to
die. She sought for means of supporting herself in London; she still had
money saved from that which the sale of her father's house had brought
her, but she did not wish to use more of this than she could help,
keeping it for a certain cherished purpose. After many months of
fruitless endeavour, she found a place in a school in Hammersmith....
And Wilfrid had sat by her, had looked at her with something of the old
tenderness, had pressed her hand as no one else would. Far into the
night she lay thinking over every word he had spoken. Sometimes she
wept--poor Emily! He had not asked her where she lived; for that
doubtless there was good reason. But it was much to have seen him this
once. Again she wept, saying to herself that she loved him,--that he was
lost to her,--that she must die.