Castalia was driven home, and walked up the path of the tiny garden in
front of Ivy Lodge with a step much like her ordinary one. She went into
the drawing-room and looked about her curiously, as if she were a
stranger seeing the place for the first time. Then she sat down for a
minute, still in her bonnet and shawl. But she got up again quickly from
the sofa, holding her hand to her throat as if she were choking, and
went out to the garden behind the house, and from thence to the meadows
near the river. There was at the bottom of the garden, and outside of
it, a miserable, dilapidated wooden shed, euphoniously called a
summer-house. There was a worm-eaten wooden bench in it looking towards
the Whit, and commanding a view of the wide meadows on the other side of
it, of a turn in the river, now lead-coloured beneath a dreary sky, and
of the distant spire of Duckwell Church rising beyond the hazy woods of
Pudcombe. No one ever entered this summer-house. It was rotting to
pieces with damp and decay, and was inhabited by a colony of insects and
a toad that squatted in one corner. In this wretched place Castalia sat
down, being indeed unable to walk farther, but feeling a sensation of
suffocation at the mere thought of returning to the house. She fancied
she could not breathe there. A steaming mist was rising from the river
and the damp meadows beyond it. The grey clouds seemed to touch the grey
horizon. It was cold, and the last brown leaf or two, hanging, as it
seemed, by a thread on the boughs of a tree just within sight from the
summer-house, twirled, and shook, and shuddered in the slight gusts of
wind that arose now and again. There was not a sound to be heard except
the mournful lowing of some cattle in a distant field, until all at once
a movement of the air brought from Whitford the sound of the old chimes
muffled by the heavy atmosphere. There sat Castalia and stared at the
river, and the mist, and the brown withered leaves, much as she had
stared at the blank yard wall in the office.
"My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen
upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath
overwhelmed me!"
She heard a voice saying these words distinctly. She did not start. She
scarcely felt surprise. The direful lamentation was in harmony with all
she saw, and heard, and felt.
Again the voice spoke: "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and
thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered; they
trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a
reproach of men, and despised of the people!"
Castalia heard, scarcely listening. The words flowed by her like a tune
that brings tears to the eyes by mere sympathy with its sad sound.
Presently a man passed before her, walking with an unequal pace--now
quick, now slow, now stopping outright. He had his hands clasped at the
back of his neck; his head was bent down, and he was talking aloud to
himself.
"Aye, there have been such. The lot has fallen upon me. I know it with a
sure knowledge. It is borne in upon me with a certainty that pierces
through bone and marrow. I am of the number of those that go down to the
pit. Why, O Lord--Nay! though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him. For
he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come
together in judgment."
He stopped in his walk; stood still for a second or two, and then turned
to pace back again. In so doing he saw Castalia. She also looked full
at him, and recognised the Methodist preacher. David Powell went up to
her without hesitation. He remembered her at once; and he remembered,
too, in a confused way, something of what Mrs. Thimbleby had been
recently telling him about dissensions between this woman and her
husband; of unhappiness and quarrels; and--what was that the widow had
said of young Mrs. Errington being jealous of Rhoda? Ah, yes! He had it
all now.
The time had been when David Powell would have had to wrestle hard with
indignation against anyone who should have spoken evil of Rhoda. He
would have felt a hot, human flush of anger; and would have combated it
as a stirring of the unregenerate man within him. But all such feelings
were over with him. No ray from the outside world appeared able to
pierce the gloom which had gathered thicker and thicker in his own mind,
unless it touched his sense of sympathy with suffering. He was still
sensitive to that, as certain chemicals are to the light.
He went close up to Castalia, and said, without any preliminary or usual
greeting, "You are in affliction. Have you called upon the Lord? Have
you cast your burthen upon him? He is a good shepherd. He will carry the
weary and footsore of his flock lest they faint by the way and perish
utterly."
It was noticeable when he spoke that his voice, which had been of such
full sweetness, was now hoarse, and even harsh here and there, like a
fine instrument that has been jarred. This did not seem to be altogether
due to physical causes; for there still came out of his mouth every now
and then a tone that was exquisitely musical. But the discord seemed to
be in the spirit that moved the voice, and could not guide it with
complete freedom and mastery.
Castalia shook her head impatiently, and turned her eyes away from him.
But she did not do so with any of her old hauteur and intimation of the
vast distance which separated her from her humbler fellow-creatures.
Pain of mind had familiarised her with the conception that she held her
humanity in common with a very heterogeneous multitude. Had Powell been
a sleek, smug personage like Brother Jackson, veiling profound
self-complacency under the technical announcement of himself as a
miserable sinner, she might have turned from him in disgust. As it was,
she felt merely the unwillingness to be disturbed, of a creature in whom
the numbness of apathy has succeeded to acute anguish. She wanted to be
rid of him. He looked at her with the yearning pity which was so
fundamental a part of his nature. "Pray!" he said, clasping his hands
together. "Go to your Father, which is in Heaven, and He shall give you
rest. Oh, God loves you--he _loves_ you!"
"No one loves me," returned Castalia, with white rigid lips. Then she
got up from the bench, and went back into her own garden and into the
house, with the air of a person walking in sleep.
Powell looked after her sadly. "If she would but pray!" he murmured. "I
would pray for her. I would wrestle with the Lord on her behalf. But--of
late I have feared more and more that my prayers are not acceptable;
that my voice is an abomination to the Lord."
He resumed his walk along the river bank, speaking aloud, and
gesticulating to himself as he went.
Meanwhile, Castalia wandered about her own house "like a ghost," as the
servants said. She went from the little dining-room to the drawing-room,
and then she painfully mounted the steep staircase to her bed-room,
opened the door of her husband's little dressing-closet, shut it again,
and went downstairs once more. She could not sit still; she could not
read; she could not even think. She could only suffer, and move about
restlessly, as if with a dim instinctive idea of escaping from her
suffering. Presently she began to open the drawers of a little toy
cabinet in the drawing-room, and examine their contents, as if she had
never seen them before. From that she went to a window-seat, made
hollow, and with a cushioned lid, so that it served as a seat and a box,
and began to rummage among its contents. These consisted chiefly of
valueless scraps, odds and ends, put there to be hidden and out of the
way. Among them were some of poor Mrs. Errington's wedding-presents to
her son and daughter-in-law. Castalia's maid, Slater, had
unceremoniously consigned these to oblivion, together with a few other
old-fashioned articles, under the generic name of "rubbish." There was a
pair of hand-screens elaborately embroidered in silk, very faded and out
of date. Mrs. Errington declared them to be the work of her grand-aunt,
the beautiful Miss Jacintha Ancram, who made such a great match, and
became a Marchioness. There was an ancient carved ivory fan, yellow with
age, brought by a cadet of the house of Ancram from India, as a present
to some forgotten sweetheart. There was a little cardboard box, covered
with fragments of raised rice-paper, arranged in a pattern. This was the
work of Mrs. Errington's own hands in her school-girl days, and was of
the kind called then, if I mistake not, "filagree work." Castalia took
these and other things out of the window-seat, and examined them and put
them back, one by one, moving exactly like an automaton figure that had
been wound up to perform those motions. When she came to the filagree
box, she opened that too. There was a Tonquin bean in it, filling the
box with its faint sweet odour. There was a pair of gold buckles, that
seemed to be attenuated with age; and a garnet-brooch, with one or two
stones missing. And then at the bottom of the box was something flat,
wrapped in silver paper. She unwrapped it and looked at it.
It was a water-colour drawing done by Algernon immediately on his return
from Llanryddan, in the first flush of his love-making, and represented
himself and Rhoda standing side by side in front of the little cottage
where they had lodged there. Algernon had given himself pinker cheeks,
bluer eyes, and more amber-coloured hair than nature had endowed him
with. Rhoda was equally over-tinted. There was no merit in the drawing,
which was stiff and school-boyish, but the very exaggerations of form
and colour emphasised the likeness in a way not to be mistaken.
Castalia trembled from head to foot as she looked on the two rosy
simpering faces. A curious ripple or tremor ran over her body, such as
may be observed in persons recovering consciousness after a swoon. She
tore the drawing into small fragments. Her teeth were set. Her eyes
glared. She looked like a murderess. She trod the scattered bits into
the carpet with her heel. Then, as if with an afterthought, she swept
them contemptuously into the bright steel shovel, and threw them into
the fire, and stood and watched them blaze and smoulder. After that she
wrapped her shawl more tightly round her--she had forgotten to remove
either it or her bonnet on coming in--and went out at the front door,
and walked straight into Whitford, and to Jonathan Maxfield's house.
She asked for "the master." The old man was at home, in the little
parlour, and Sally showed Mrs. Errington into the room almost without
the ceremony of tapping with her knuckles at the door, and then made off
to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Grimshaw. The lady's face had scared her.
Old Max was sitting near the dull fire which burned in the grate. The
big Bible, his constant companion now, lay open on the table. But he had
not been devoting his attention to that solely. He had had a large
old-fashioned wooden desk brought down from his own room, and had been
fingering the papers in it, reading some, and merely glancing at the
outside folds of others. He now looked up at Castalia without
recognising her.
"What is your business with me?" he asked, peering at her in perplexity.
"I've come to speak to you----" began Castalia; and at the first sound
of her voice, Maxfield recognised her. He remembered the only visit she
had paid him previously, when she came to beg that Rhoda might be
allowed to visit her. She had taken a great fancy to his pretty Rhoda,
this skinny, yellow-faced, fine lady. Ha! Well, she might show what
civilities she pleased to Rhoda. No objection to that. Indeed, it was a
proceeding to be encouraged, seeing that it probably caused a good deal
of discomfort and embarrassment to Algernon! So he gave a little nod,
meant to be courteous, and said, "Oh, I didn't just know you at first.
Won't you be seated?"
Castalia refused by a gesture, and stood still opposite to him with one
hand on the table, apparently in some embarrassment how to begin. Then
it flashed on old Max that this "Honourable Missis," as he called her,
had probably come to thank him, and found it not altogether easy to do
so. But what could Castalia have to thank him for? This; Rhoda had so
implored her father to relieve Algernon from his anxiety about the
bills, that at length the old man had said with a chuckle, "Tell you
what, Rhoda, I'll hand 'em over to Mr. Diamond, and maybe he will give
them to you as a wedding present if he gets the school. And then you can
do what you like with 'em. My gentleman won't be above taking a present
from you or your husband. I've seen what meanness she can do and what
dirt he can swallow, and not even make a wry face over it! Aye, dirt as
would turn many a poor labouring man's stomach."
Rhoda, upon this, had consulted Matthew Diamond, and had not found it
difficult to make him agree with her wish to give up the bills to
Algernon. Indeed, although he had almost come to old Max's opinion of
his former pupil, he would not for the world have behaved so as to make
Rhoda suppose that he bore him a grudge. Rhoda's errand to the
post-office that afternoon had been to bring Algernon this comforting
news. She had taken care not to tell her father of Mrs. Algernon's
behaviour, but had come home and cried a little quietly in her own room,
and kept her tears and the cause of them to herself. Therefore it was
that Jonathan Maxfield supposed the fine lady to have come to thank him
for his magnanimity on behalf of her absent husband, and he was already
preparing to give her "a dose," as he phrased it, and to spare her no
item of Rhoda's prosperity, and wealth, and good prospects in the world.
Castalia remained leaning with one hand on the table, and did not
continue her speech during the second or two in which these thoughts and
intentions were passing through old Maxfield's brain. But it was by no
means that she hesitated from embarrassment or lack of words: rather
the words crowded to her lips too quickly and fiercely for utterance.
"I've come to speak to you about your daughter," she said at length.
"Aye, aye. Miss Maxfield's a bit of a friend o' yours. Miss Maxfield's
allus been very kind to all the fam'ly ever since we've known 'em. But
you'd best be seated."
"They say you are an honest, decent man," Castalia went on, neither
seating herself nor noticing the invitation to do so. "It may be so. I
am willing to believe it. But, if so, you are grossly deceived, cheated,
and played upon by that vile girl."
Maxfield brought his two clenched fists heavily down on the table, and
half raised himself in his chair. "Stop!" said he. "Who are you talking
of?"
"You may believe me. I tell you I have watched--I have seen. She was in
love with my husband years ago. She used every art to catch him. And
now--now that he is married, she receives secret visits from him. Do you
know that he came at night--ten o'clock at night--to your house when you
were away? She goes to the post-office slily to see him. I caught her
there this morning leaving a private message for him with the clerk! Is
that decent? Is it what you wish? Do you sanction it? She writes to
him. She has turned his heart against me. He schemes to keep me out of
the office. I know why now. Oh yes; I am not the blind dupe they think
for. She has made him more cruel, more wicked to me than I could have
imagined any man _could_ be. My heart is broken. But as true as there is
a God in Heaven I'll have amends made to me. She shall beg my pardon on
her knees. And you had better look to it, if you don't want her
character to be torn to pieces by every foul tongue in this town. I have
borne enough. Keep her at home. Keep her from decoying other women's
husbands, I warn you----"
Maxfield, who had been struggling to reach the bell, pulled it so
violently that the wire was broken. At the peal Betty Grimshaw came
running in, terrified. "Mercy, brother-in-law!" she cried. "What is it?"
"Get the police," gasped old Max, as if he were choking. "Send some one
for a policeman, to turn that mad quean out of my house. She's not fit
for a decent house. She's--she's----Oh, but you shall repent this! I'll
sell you up, every stick of trumpery in the place. You audacious
Jezebel! Turn her out of doors, I say! Do you hear me?"
Betty and the servant stood white and quivering, looking from the old
man unable to rise from his chair without help, and the lady who stood
opposite to him, glaring with a Medusa face. Neither of the two
frightened women stirred hand or foot to fulfil the master's behest. But
Castalia relieved them from any perplexity on that score, at least, by
voluntarily turning to leave the room. In the doorway she met Rhoda, who
had run downstairs in alarm at the violent pealing of the bell. Castalia
drew herself suddenly aside, as though something unspeakably loathsome
stood in her path, held her dress away from any passing contact with the
amazed girl, and rushed out of the house.