A CONVERSATION IN WASTDALE CHURCH.
When I returned with the shoe, I found Dorothy sitting huddled against
the church wall in a very doleful attitude.
"Oh!" she cried remorsefully, as she took the shoe from me, "you are
drenched through and through, and it is I that am to blame."
"It matters nothing at all," I replied. "I have been out upon the tops
of these ridges, and of nights. It would be strange if I were not
inured to a little cold."
"You will take your coat, however."
I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to keep it; for since
I was drenched already, the coat would not dry me, but I should wet
the coat. This was the argument I employed to her, though I had
another, and a more convincing, to satisfy myself--I mean the sight of
her wrapped up in it. It was a big, rough, heavy frieze coat and made
a nest for her; she had drawn the collar of it close about her ears,
and her face, rosy with warmth and the whipping of the wind as we came
across the fields, peeped from the coat, like a moss-rose at the
budding.
We sat for a while in silence--for the whistling of the storm was
grown so loud, that we had need to shout, and even then the wind
snatched up the words out of hearing almost before they had passed our
lips.
In front of us the tempest roistered about the valley, twisting the
sleet and snow this way and that, shrieking about the bases of the
hills, whistling along the invisible ridges; now and again, however,
there came a momentary lull, and during one of these intervals the
clouds broke upon our left and disclosed the peak of Great Gable.
Rising in that way, from the mists that still hid its flanks, the peak
seemed so high that you thought it must be slung in mid-air; it stood
out black against the grey clouds, barren, impregnable. Dorothy
shuddered at the aspect of it.
"You were out upon those heights," she shouted into my ear, "night and
day, after you left Applegarth?"
"Yes!" I nodded. Doubtless I should have pointed out that I did not
make my bed upon the pinnacles, and that there was all the difference
in the world betwixt rain and snow. But, to tell the truth, her
anxiety on my account was of that sweetness to me that I could not
lightly bring myself to dispense with it. I was debating the matter in
my mind, when a tile, loosened by the wind, slid from the roof of the
church and smashed upon the ground, a couple of feet from Dorothy. It
turned the current of my thoughts effectually. The door of the church
I knew to be locked; I crept round to the east end of the building.
There was a great window with the panes set in lead, which reached
from the roof to within three feet of the ground. And in that window a
second window was made by the lowest of these leaded panes. Inserting
my knife, I was able to force up the latch which fastened this second
window, and found that, with some squeezing and compression, a body
might crawl through the opening. I went back to Dorothy. "It will be
safer in the church," said I. I climbed through the window by the side
of the altar, and turned to help Dorothy in after me. But as I was in
the act of helping her, I heard a clatter on the ground without. She
was halfway through the window at the moment, and slipped back with a
laugh.
"This time," said she, as she appeared again, and set her hands upon
the sill--"this time I did not drop it on purpose." And I helped her
in.
The church was barely furnished with perhaps a dozen of rough deal
pews, and had not even a vestry, so that the parson's surplice lay
neatly folded upon a chair in the chancel. Into one of the pews we
entered, and since Dorothy was warm within my coat, I took and wrapped
the surplice about my shoulders. So we sat side by side, silent, in
the gloom of the church, the whitewashed walls glimmering about us,
the sleet whipping the windows and tearing at the door. Somehow the
sound of the storm had now become very pleasant to me, since it seemed
to shut us off, as upon an island, more securely from the world.
It is strange how a man may walk again and again along a quite
familiar path with companions who have grown familiar in his thoughts,
and then on some one day, in a twinkling, and for no reason that he
can afterwards discern, let him think never so hard, the companions
with whom he has fared will lose their familiarity, will become, as it
were, transfigured, and the spot to which he has come will take on a
magical aspect and a magical light He seems to have come thither for
the first time on that day; and let him con over the landmarks to
prove the fancy wrong, the fancy will none the less abide with him,
solid as truth. He recognizes the spot as in some way intimately
concerned with him; it seems to have been waiting for him, and for the
conjunction of this one particular hour with him. And the picture
which he has of it, thus suddenly revealed, becomes henceforth part
and parcel of his being, imperishably treasured within the heart of
recollection. So, at all events, it was with me.
A picture of this valley in which we were, of this church in which we
sat, sprang up before my eyes, and I viewed it with a curious
detachment. It was as though I stood upon the rim of the mountains and
looked down into the hollow. I saw the desolate hills ringing it
about, made yet more desolate by the blurring snow. I saw the little
white church set within its stunted, beaten yews, apart in the
mid-centre of the valley. It was, too, as though I saw, by some
strange clairvoyancy, through the walls, and beheld the two fugitives
securely sheltered, side by side, in the dusk of the pew. And the
picture has remained clamped in my memory ever since, so that I have
but to close my eyes, and not merely do I see it vividly as I did
then, but I experience again that vague sense of a voice crying
somewhere out of Nature's heart, "This spot has been waiting for you
twain, and for this one hour."
It was a movement which Dorothy made, brought me to myself. For she
suddenly clasped her hands together with a shudder.
"You are cold?" I cried.
"No," she replied in a low voice. "I was thinking of that peak we saw
and the horror of it by night," and her voice trembled for an instant,
"and of your watching from the darkness the lights of Applegarth. We
were comfortably in our beds; and it rained that night I remember the
patter of the rain against the windows."
"Nay," said I, "there was little harm done. I am no snow-man to be
washed away by a capful of rain."
She turned to me very quickly.
"Tell me," she said, in a voice no less quick. "The evening that you
went from us--you were talking for a long while at the gate with Mary
Tyson, you will remember. I interrupted your talk."
"Yes! I remember," I answered, staring straight in front of me.
"Well," she continued, "I have often wondered," her voice sank
yet lower, "whether that going of yours was not a flight--flight
from--from us at Applegarth. For, after all, it was something Mary
Tyson said to you that made you go."
I turned towards her with a start.
"You know what Mary Tyson said?"
She looked at me in silence, her eyes shining out of the dusk. Then
she lowered her head.
"I guessed it," she said in a whisper. "I guessed it then, for I know
Mary's care for me. And the next morning when we sent her to warn you
that the sheriff was at the door, I read it in her face. I mean," said
she, recovering herself hastily, "I read your departure in her face,
and I knew it was what she had said to you had driven you out, and not
your own necessities."
She paused; I did not answer.
"The knowledge has troubled me sorely," she said, "for you were our
guest."
"It made but the one night's difference," I urged, "for on the morrow
came the officers."
"Ah! but that was the accident," she answered shrewdly. "They might
not have come--they might never have come--and still you would have
fled. I have said this much to you," she went on with a change of
tone, "because I would have you look on me just as a friend, who
trusts you, who has great cause to trust and thank you, and who would
count it a very real happiness if she could, in any small way, repay
you. I told you when we met on your march that I knew there was some
great trouble."
"And the answer I gave to you then, I must give now. I am bound to
face that trouble by myself. It was my sin brought it about."
"Ah! but one never knows whence help may come," she replied; and the
gentle earnestness with which she spoke so tempted me to unbosom
myself, that instinctively I drew away from her. "You think it is just
a woman's curiosity which prompts me," she cried, mistaking my
movement. "Ah! no. Acquit me of that fault! I am not sure, but it may
be that I can help you."
Did she know? I wondered. My thoughts went back to that last meeting
near Penrith. I had spoken then of a prison-door which must close
between us twain, and she had made an answer which seemed to hint a
suspicion of the truth.
"And even if I cannot, the mere telling sometimes helps," she
continued, "so long as one tells it to a friend. I mean"--and here she
began to speak very slowly, choosing her words, and with a certain
difficulty in the utterance--"I mean I was afraid that something Mary
might have said checks you. There are things one does not confide to
an acquaintance, or, again, to one whom you think to look upon you as
ever so much nearer than an acquaintance. But to a friend, yes! A
friend is a halfway house between, where one can take one's ease;" and
she drew a breath, like one that has come to the end of a dangerous
task.
As for me, I sat listening to that word "friend." The walls seemed to
retain it, and whisper it again to me after she had ceased, and in the
changing tones which she had used. For now Dorothy had spoken it with
an earnest insistence, as though anxious--almost over-anxious--I
should just accept the phrase as the true definition of what she felt
towards me; and now her voice had faltered and stumbled at the word.
It may have been a lack of modesty--I cannot tell--but I think it
would have been the falsest modesty in the world had I affected to
neglect the manner of the speech, while considering the matter of it.
But be it as it may, the one thought which rose in my mind, engrossing
me, distinct, horrible in distinctness, was this: What if that word
"friend" cloaked and concealed another--another which, but for those
few weeks at Blackladies, I might--who knows!--perhaps have persuaded
her to speak? Why then, if that was true, here was I implicating, in
distress, the one woman who was chiefest in the front of my thoughts.
How that sin of mine reached out, making me a ban and a curse, bearing
its evil fruit in unimaginable ways! And in the agony of my heart I
cried--
"Would to God I had never come to Applegarth!"
The cry rang fierce and sharp through the little church. Silence
succeeded it, and then--
"That is not very kind," said Dorothy, with a tremulous reproach, "It
pains me."
"Ah! don't mistake," I went on. "For myself, I could not hope to make
you understand what my visit there has meant to me. I came to
Applegarth on an evening. The day I had passed waiting upon the
hillside, and while I was waiting there, I made a resolve to repair,
under God's will, a great wrong. Well, when I first saw you, I had but
one thought--a thought of very sincere gladness that I had come to
that resolve or ever I had had speech with you. And during the weeks
that followed, this resolve drew strength and vigour from your
companionship. That vigour and that strength it keeps, so that my one
fear now is, lest chance may bar me from the performance. That is your
doing. For until I came to Applegarth, all my life behind me was
littered with broken pledges."
She laid her hand for an instant upon my sleeve.
"But what return have I made to you," I continued, "except a pitiful
hypocrisy? I came to Applegarth an outlaw--yes, my one fault my
loyalty! So you believed; so I let you believe. I wore your brother's
clothes, and he died at Malplaquet. There was hypocrisy in the wearing
of them!" And I turned suddenly towards her. "There was a picture I
once saw--the picture of a dead man speaking. Even then it seemed to
me an image of myself."
"A dead man speaking!" interrupted Dorothy, with a start.
"Yes!" said I, and I told her of the picture which Lord Bolingbroke
had shown to me at the monastery of the Chartreux in Paris, and of the
thought which I had drawn from it.
"A dead man speaking," she repeated, in a voice which seemed hushed
with awe; "how strange!"
The storm had ceased to beat the window; the dusk was deepening to
darkness; the silence was about us like a garment. I sat wondering at
Dorothy's tone, wondering whether I should say what yet remained to
say. But I had made use before of secrecy and deception. It would be
best I should simply speak the truth.
"A dead man speaking," again said Dorothy.
"I had warning enough, you see," said I, "and I recognized the
warning. The picture seized upon my thoughts. I knew it for an
allegory, but made no profit of my knowledge. And so the allegory
turns fact."
"What do you mean?" she asked, catching her breath.
"Oh, don't speak until I have done!" I cried "I find it hard enough to
tell you as it is while you sit silent. But the sound of your voice
cheats me of my strength, sets the duty beyond my reach. For it is a
duty." I paused for a moment to recover the mastery of my senses. "I
spoke to you once of a prison-door which would close between you and
me. But that was not the whole of the truth. That prison-door will
close, but it will open again; I shall come out from it, but upon a
hurdle."
"Oh no!" cried Dorothy in such a voice of pain as I pray God I may
never hear the like of again. I felt it rive my heart. She swayed
forward; her forehead would have struck the rail of the pew in front.
I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her towards me. I felt her
face pressed against my bosom, her fingers twining tightly upon my
coat.
"Yes, yes, it is true," I went on. "The allegory turns fact. Even in
Paris, those months agone, I came to look upon myself as the figure in
the picture, as the dead man speaking, meaning thereby the hypocrite
detected. But now the words take on a literal meaning. It is a dead
man who is speaking to you--no more than that--in very truth a dead
man. You must believe it; and believe this too, that since my cup of
life this long while back has over-brimmed with shame, and since it
was I who filled it why, I could go very lightly to my death, but for
the fear lest it should cause my little friend to suffer pain."
She disengaged herself gently from my clasp.
"I cannot take that fear away from you," she said in a broken whisper.
"And indeed I would not lose it," I replied. "In my heart of hearts I
know that I would not lose it."
"What is it, then, you mean to do?" she asked.
"To travel with my friend as far as Ravenglass, to set her safe on
board the _Swallow_, and then--somewhere there is a man in prison
whose place is mine."
"You do not know where?" she exclaimed suddenly.
"No," said I, "but----"
She interrupted me with a cry.
"Look!" she said hurriedly, and pointed to a little window close
beneath the roof. Through that window the moonlight was creeping like
a finger down the wall, across the floor. "The storm has cleared; we
can go."
She rose abruptly from her seat, and moved out into the chancel
Something--was it the hurry of her movement, the tension of her
voice?--made me spring towards her. I remembered that, when I spoke to
her on the hillside near Penrith, it had seemed to me then that she
had some inkling of the truth.
"You know!" I exclaimed--"you know where the prisoner is?"
"No," she cried, and her voice rose almost to a scream belying the
word she spoke.
How she came by her knowledge I did not consider. She knew! I had no
room for any other thought.
"Oh, you do know!" I implored, and dropping on my knee I seized the
hem of her dress to detain her. I felt the dress drag from me; I held
it the more firmly. "You do not know--oh, tell me! A man innocent of
all wrongdoing, lies in prison--the charge, treason. Think you they
will weigh his innocence after this rebellion? The fetters he wears
are mine, his punishment is mine, and I must claim it. There's no
other way but this plain and simple one. I must needs claim it. Oh
think, ever since I have known you, the necessity that I should do
this thing has grown on me, day by day, as each day I saw you. I have
felt that I owed it to you that I should succeed. Do not you prevent
me!"
She stood stock still; I could hear the quick coming and going of her
breath, but in the uncertain twilight I could not read her face; and
she did not speak.
"Listen!" I continued "If you do not tell me, it will make no
difference. I shall still give myself up. But to the other it may make
all the difference in the world. For it may be that I shall fail to
save him."
Still she kept silence. So, seeing no other way, I stood up before her
and told her the story from end to end, beginning with that day when I
first rode over Coldbarrow Fell to Blackladies in company with Jervas
Rookley, down to the morning when I fled from the garden where the
soldiers searched for me.
I saw her head droop as she listened, and bow into her hands; yet I
had to go on and finish it.
"But," said she, "you were not all to blame. The woman----"
"Nay," said I, "it can serve no purpose to portion out the blame; for,
portion it as you will, you cannot shred away my share."
"Mr. Herbert," she objected again, "would have been taken in your
garden, whether you had returned or no that afternoon."
"But my fault was the instrument used to ruin him. He was taken while
he followed me. He was taken, too, because of me. For had I not ridden
so often into Keswick, he would never have been suspected."
"It was his jealousy that trapped him, and Jervas Rookley provoked the
jealousy."
"But I furnished him with the means."
The arguments were all old and hackneyed to me. I had debated them
before, so that I had the answers ready. There was, besides, one final
argument, and without waiting for her to speak again, I used it.
"And what of the wife waiting in Keswick?"
She turned away with a little swift movement, and again stood silent.
Then she said--
"Yes! I too will face it bravely. Mr. Herbert lies in Carlisle Castle,
waiting his trial. You know, after the message came to Applegarth, my
father and I fled to Carlisle; we took refuge with friends--Whigs, but
of my mother's family, and for her sake they gave us shelter. They
knew the Governor of the Castle. He told them of a prisoner newly
brought thither upon a warrant--a Mr. Herbert, who solaced himself
night and day with the painting of the strangest picture ever known.
You showed to me a letter at Applegarth, wherein a painter was
mentioned and named, and I knew you had some trouble to distress you.
I grew curious to see the prisoner; no one suspected I was in
Carlisle, and so my friends consented to take me. I saw him. It is
true I had no speech with him, but I saw the picture. It was a
portrait of yourself, I thought, but I could not be sure. I was sure
before you told me. I was sure when you spoke to me of that picture
you had seen in Paris. For this portrait, too, that Mr. Herbert
painted, was a portrait of yourself, as a dead man speaking."
I noticed that as she spoke her voice gained confidence and strength,
and at the close it rang without a trace of fear or reluctance.
"Thank you," said I, simply. "Thank you with all my heart."
"Yes!" she replied, "it was right that I should tell you. You will go
to Carlisle?"
"In truth I will;" and as she moved into a line with the window, the
moonlight made a silver glory about her face. I saw with a great joy
that her eyes, her lips were smiling. It seemed to me, indeed, that
both our hearts were lighter. There was this one thing to do, and now
here was the means revealed by which it might be done.
We climbed out of the window, and since it was too late for the
continuance of our journey, we sought lodging for the night at that
farmhouse which I had already visited. I remember walking across the
fields in the star-shine and the moonlight, wondering at this
vicarious revenge Herbert had taken on my picture, and at the strange
destiny which had made this girl, so dear to me, the instrument of my
atonement. And as we waited at the door, I said to her:
"I owed you much before to-night; but to-night you have doubled the
debt."
"And I am proud to hear you say it," she replied.
From the farmer I borrowed a change of clothes, and coming down the
stairs again, found Dorothy, to her evident satisfaction, in her own
shoes, which she had taken from the pocket of my great-coat. We sat
for a long while after our supper over the fire in the kitchen,
talking of the days at Applegarth and laughing over that owl-hunt.
Only twice was any reference made to our conversation in the church.
For once I said:
"Do you remember when I came down to Applegarth, you were singing a
song? It was called, 'The Honest Lover,' and I would fain have the
words of it." And thereupon she wrote out the song upon a sheet of
paper and gave it to me.
And again, when Dorothy had lit her candle, she stood for an instant
by the door.
"That resolve you spoke of?" she said. "You had come to it on the day
that you first reached Applegarth. It was the resolve to free Mr.
Herbert at any cost?"
"Yes," said I.
"And it was that you were so glad you had determined on when you first
saw me?"
"Yes," said I again.
"Well," said she, "it is the sweetest compliment that was ever paid to
a woman."
The next morning we started betimes in the same cheerfulness of
spirits, and making light of that dreaded snow as we crossed Burnmoor,
descended into Eskdale about nine of the forenoon, and so reached
Ravenglass before it was dusk. There, to my inexpressible delight, I
saw the _Swallow_ riding on an anchor a little way out. We crept down
to the beach, and waited there until it was dark. Then I lighted a
lantern which I had brought from the farmhouse for the very purpose,
and lifting it up, swung it to and fro. In a little there was an
answering flash from the sloop, and a little after that I heard the
sound of oars in the water, and fell to wondering what sort of parting
we should make, and, perhaps, in a measure, to dreading it. But the
parting was of the simplest kind.
"It is good-bye, then," said Dorothy, "and we will shake hands, if you
please."
This time I took her hand fairly within my palm, and held it clasped
whilst it clasped mine.
"I am thanking God," said I, "for the truest friend that ever man
had."
"Yes!" said she, nodding her head, "that is very prettily said, and no
more than the truth."
"Ah!" said I, "you ever enjoyed a very proper notion of yourself;" and
with that the boat grounded upon the beach, and, after all, we two
parted with a laugh. I heard the song of the seamen at the windlass,
coming across the water with an airy faintness, and then I set my face
to the hillside.