At length the corn was gathered in, all over the valley of the two
rivers. The wool of the sheep grows again after they are shorn, to keep
them warm in the winter: when the dry stubble sticks up short and
bristly over the fields, to keep them warm "He scattereth his snows
like wool."
The master returned from the sea-coast, bringing Truffey with him,
radiant with life. Nothing could lengthen that shrunken limb, but in
the other and the crutch together he had more than the function of two.
And the master was his idol.
And the master was a happier man. The scene of his late failure had
begun to fade a little from his brain. The expanse of the church and
the waiting people was no longer a vision certain to arise in the
darkness that surrounds sleep. He had been loving and helping; and love
and help had turned into a great joy, whose tide washed from out his
heart the bitterness of his remembered sin. When we love truly, all
oppression of past sin will be swept away. Love is the final atonement,
of which and for which the sacrifice of the atonement was made. And
till this atonement is made in every man, sin holds its own, and God is
not all in all.
So the earth and all that was therein did the master good. And he came
back able to look people in the face--humble still, but no longer
humiliated. And when the children gathered once more on a Monday
morning, with the sad feeling that the holidays were over, the master's
prayer was different from what it used to be, and the work was less
irksome than before, and school was not so very hateful after all. Even
the Shorter Catechism was not the instrument of torture which it had
been wont to be. The cords of the rack were not strained so tight as
heretofore.
But the cool bright mornings, and the frosty evenings, with the pale
green sky after sundown, spoke to the heart of Alec of a coming loss.
Not that Kate had ever shown that she loved him, so that he even felt a
restless trouble in her presence which had not been favourable to his
recovery. Yet as he lay in the gloaming, and watched those crows flying
home, they seemed to be bearing something away with them on their black
wings; and as the light sank and paled on the horizon, and the stars
began to condense themselves into sparks amid the sea of green, like
those that fleet phosphorescent when the prow of the vessel troubles
the summer sea, and then the falling stars of September shot across the
darkening sky, he felt that a change was near, that for him winter was
coming before its time. And the trees saw from their high watch-tower
the white robe of winter already drifting up above the far horizon on
the wind that followed his footsteps, and knew what that wind would be
when it howled tormenting over those naked fields. So their leaves
turned yellow and gray, and the frosty red of age was fixed upon them,
and they fell, and lay.
On one of those bright mornings, which make the head feel so clear, the
limbs so strong, and the heart so sad, the doom fell in the expected
form, that of a letter from the Professor. He was at home at last, and
wanted his niece to mix his toddy, and scold his servants for him, from
both of which enjoyments he said he desired to wean himself in time.
Alec's heart sank within him.
"Don't go yet, Kate," he said. But he felt that she must go.
An early day was fixed for her return; and his summer would go with
her.
The day before her departure they were walking together along one of
the rough parish-roads leading to the hills.
"Oh, Kate!" exclaimed Alec, all at once, in an outburst of despair,
"what _shall_ I do when you are gone? Everything will look so hateful!"
"Oh, Alec!" rejoined Kate, in a tone of expostulation.
"They will all look the same as if you had not gone away!--so
heartless, so selfish!"
"But I shall see you in November again."
"Oh, yes. You will see me. But shall I see _you_?--this very _you_? Oh,
Kate! Kate! I feel that you will be different then. You will not look
at me as you do now. You are kind to me because I have been ill. You
pity me for my white face. It is very good of you. But _won't_ you love
me, Kate? I don't deserve it. But I've read so often of beautiful women
loving men who did not deserve it. Perhaps I may be worthy of it some
day. And by that time you will have loved somebody else!"
He turned involuntarily, and walked towards home. He recovered himself
instantly, however, and returning put his hand on Kate's arm, who was
frightened and anxious. Like a child praying to his mother, he
repeated:
"_Won't_ you love me, Kate?--Just a little?--How can I go into that
room after you are gone--and all your things out of it? I am not good
enough ever to sleep there again. _Won't_ you love me, Kate? A little?"
"I do love you dearly. You know that, Alec. Why do you always press me
to say more?"
"Because I do not like the way you say it."
"You want me to speak your way, not my own, and be a hypocrite?"
"Kate! Kate! I understand you too well."
They walked home in silence.
Now, although this was sad enough for Alec, yet there was room for
hope. But she was going away, and he would not know what she was doing
or thinking. It was as if she were going to die. Nor was that
all;--for--to misuse the quotation--
"For, in that sleep of death, what dreams might come!"
She might dream of some one, love some one--yes, marry some one, and so
drive him mad.
When the last night arrived, he followed her up-stairs, and knocked at
her room door, to see her once again, and make one more appeal. Now an
appeal has only to do with justice or pity. With love it is of no use.
With love it is as unavailing as wisdom or gold or beauty. But no lover
believes this.
There was no answer to the first, the inarticulate appeal. He lost his
courage, and dared not knock again; and while Kate was standing with
her head on one side, and her dress half off, wondering if any one had
knocked, he crept away to his bed ashamed. There was only a partition
of lath and plaster between the two, neither of whom could sleep, but
neither of whom could have given the other any comfort. Not even
another thunder-storm could have brought them together again that
night.
At length the pitiless dawn, which _will_ come, awoke Alec, and he saw
the last few aged stars wither away as the great young star came up the
hill, the despot who, crowned with day, drives men up and abroad, be
the weather, inside or out, what it may. It was the dreariest dawn Alec
had ever known.
Kate appeared at breakfast with indescribable signs of preparation
about her. The breakfast was dull and cheerless. The autumn sun was
brilliant. The inevitable gig appeared at the door. Alec was not even
to drive it. He could only help her into it, kiss her gloved hand on
the rail, and see her vanish behind the shrubbery.
He then turned in stern endurance, rushed up into the very room he had
thought it impossible ever to enter again, caught up a handkerchief she
had left behind her, pressed it to his face, threw himself on her bed,
and--well, he fell fast asleep.
He woke not so miserable as he had expected. Of this he was so much
ashamed that he tried hard to make himself more miserable, by going
over all the miseries in store for him. But his thoughts would not obey
him. They would take their own way, fly where they pleased, and alight
where they would. And the meeting in November was the most attractive
object in sight.--So easily is Hope born, when the time of her birth is
come!
But he soon found that Grief is like some maidens: she will not come
when she is called; but if you leave her alone, she will come of
herself. Before the day was over he had sacrificed griefs enough upon
the altar of Love. All at once the whole vacant region rushed in upon
him with a ghostly sense of emptiness and desolation. He wandered about
the dreary house like a phantom about a cenotaph. The flowers having
nothing to say, because they had ceased to mean anything, looked
ashamed of themselves. The sunshine was hastening to have done with it,
and let the winter come as soon as he liked, for there was no more use
in shining like this. And Alec being in love, could feel all this,
although he had not much imagination. For the poetic element has its
share in the most common pug-faced man in creation; and when he is in
love, what of that sort there is in him, as well as what there is of
any sort of good thing, will come to the surface, as the trout do in
the balmy summer evenings. Therefore let every gentle maiden be warned
how she takes such a manifestation of what is in the man for the man
himself. It is the deepest, it is the best in him, but it may not be in
the least his own yet. It is one thing to have a mine of gold in one's
ground, know it, and work it; and another to have the mine still but
regard the story as a fable, throw the aureal hints that find their way
to the surface as playthings to the woman who herself is but a
plaything in the owner's eyes, and mock her when she takes them for
precious. In a word, every man in love shows better than he is, though,
thank God, not better than he is meant to become.
After Kate's departure, Alec's health improved much more rapidly. Hope,
supplied by his own heart, was the sunlight in which he revived. He had
one advantage over some lovers--that he was no metaphysician. He did
not torture himself with vain attempts to hold his brain as a mirror to
his heart, that he might read his heart there. The heart is deaf and
dumb and blind, but it has more in it--more life and blessedness, more
torture and death--than any poor knowledge-machine of a brain can
understand, or even delude itself into the fancy of understanding.
From the first, Kate's presence had not been favourable to his
recovery, irrespectively of the excitement and restlessness which it
occasioned; for she was an absorbent rather than a diffuser of life.
Her own unsatisfied nature, her excitableness, her openness to all
influences from the external world, and her incapacity for supplying
her needs in any approximate degree from inward resources; her
consequent changeableness, moodiness, and dependency--were all
unfavourable influences upon an invalid who loved her.
The first thing he did was to superintend the painting and laying up of
his boat for the winter. It was placed across the rafters of the barn,
wrapt in tarpaulin.
The light grew shorter and shorter. A few rough rainy days stripped the
trees of their foliage; and although the sun shone out again and made
lovely weather,
Saint Martin's summer, halcyon days,
it was plain to all the senses that the autumn was drawing to a close.