"Oh that the things which have been were not now
In memory's resurrection! But the past
Bears in her arms the present and the future."--BAILEY.
Of course it is quite impossible to hide from Clarissa Peyton that
everything is going wrong at Sartoris. Georgie's pale unsmiling face
(so different from that of old), and Dorian's evident determination to
absent himself from all society, tell their own tale.
She has, of course, heard of the uncomfortable gossip that has
connected Ruth Annersley's mysterious disappearance with Dorian,
but--stanch friend as she is--has laughed to scorn all such
insinuations: that Georgie can believe them, puzzles her more than she
cares to confess. For a long time she has fought against the thought
that Dorian's wife can think aught bad of Dorian; but time undeceives
her.
To-day, Georgie, who is now always feverishly restless, tells herself
she will go up to Gowran and see Clarissa. To her alone she
clings,--not outwardly, in any marked fashion, but in her inmost
soul,--as to one who at her worst extremity will support and comfort
her.
The day is warm and full of color. Round her "flow the winds from
woods and fields with gladness laden:" the air is full of life. The
browning grass rustles beneath her feet. The leaves fall slowly one by
one, as though loath to leave their early home; the wind, cruel, like
all love, wooes them only to their doom.
"The waves, along the forest borne," beat on her face and head, and
half cool the despairing thoughts that now always lie hidden deep down
within her breast.
Coming to Gowran and seeing Clarissa in the drawing room window, she
beckons to her, and Clarissa, rising hastily, opens the hall door for
her, herself, and leads her by the hand into another cosier room,
where they may talk without interruption.
It so happens that Georgie is in one of her worst moods; and something
Clarissa says very innocently brings on a burst of passion that
compels Clarissa to understand (in spite of all her efforts to think
herself in the wrong) that the dissensions at Sartoris have a great
deal to do with Ruth Annersley.
"It is impossible," she says, over and over again, walking up and down
the room in an agitated manner. "I could almost as soon believe Horace
guilty of this thing!"
Georgie makes no reply. Inwardly she has conceived a great distaste to
the handsome Horace, and considers him a very inferior person, and
quite unfit to mate with her pretty Clarissa.
"In your heart," says Miss Peyton, stopping before her, "I don't
believe you think Dorian guilty of this thing."
"Yes I do," says Mrs. Branscombe, with dogged calmness. "I don't ask
you to agree with me. I only tell you what I myself honestly believe."
She has given up fighting against her fate by this time.
"There is some terrible mistake somewhere," says Clarissa, in a very
distressed voice, feeling it wiser not to argue the point further.
"Time will surely clear it up sooner or later, but it is very severe
on Dorian while it lasts. I have known the dear fellow all my life,
and cannot now begin to think evil of him. I have always felt more
like a sister to him than anything else, and I cannot believe him
guilty of this thing."
"_I_ am his wife, and I _can_," says Mrs. Branscombe, icily.
"If you loved him as you ought, you could not." This is the one rebuke
she cannot refrain from.
Georgie laughs unpleasantly, and then, all in a little moment, she
varies the performance by bursting into a passionate and most
unlooked-for flood of tears.
"Don't talk to me of love!" she cries, miserably. "It is useless. I
don't believe in it. It is a delusion, a mere mockery, a worn-out
superstition. You will tell me that Dorian loved me; and yet in the
very early days before our marriage, when his so-called love must have
been at its height, he insulted me beyond all forgiveness."
"You are making yourself wretched about nothing," says Clarissa,
kneeling beside her, and gently drawing her head down on her shoulder.
"Don't, darling,--don't cry like that. I know, I feel, all will come
right in the end. Indeed, unless Dorian were to come to me and say, 'I
have done this hateful thing,' I should not believe it."
"I would give all the world to be able to say that from my heart,"
says Mrs. Branscombe, with excessive sadness.
"Try to think it. Afterwards belief will be easy. Oh, Georgie, do not
nourish hard thoughts; tear them from your heart, and by and by, when
all this is explained away, think how glad you will be that, without
proof, you had faith in him. Do you know, unless my own eyes saw it, I
should never for any reason lose faith in Horace."
A tender, heavenly smile creeps round her beautiful lips as she says
this. Georgie, seeing it, feels heart-broken. Oh that she could have
faith like this!
"It is too late," she says, bitterly: "and I deserve all I have got. I
myself have been the cause of my own undoing. I married Dorian for no
other reason than to escape the drudgery of teaching. Yet now"--with a
sad smile--"I know there are worse things than Murray's Grammar. I am
justly punished." Her lovely face is white with grief. I have tried,
_tried_, TRIED to disbelieve, but nothing will raise this cloud of
suspicion from my breast. It weighs me down and crushes me more
cruelly day by day. "I wish--I wish"--cries poor little Georgie, from
her very soul--"that I had never been born, because I shall never know
a happy moment again."
The tears run silently down her cheeks one by one. She puts up her
small hands to defend herself, and the action is pitiable in the
extreme.
"How happy you were only a month ago!" says Clarissa, striken with
grief at the sight of her misery.
"Yes, I have had my day, I suppose," says Mrs. Branscombe, wearily.
"One can always remember a time when
'Every morning was fair,
And every season a May!'
But how soon it all fades!"
"Too soon for you," says Clarissa, with tears in her eyes. "You speak
as though you had no interest left in life."
"Yes, I have," says Georgie, with a faint smile. "I have the
school-children yet. You know I go to them every Sunday to oblige the
dear vicar. He would have been so sorry if I had deserted them,
because they grew fond of me, and he said, for that reason, I was the
best teacher in the parish, because I didn't bore them." Here she
laughs quite merrily, as though grief is unknown to her; but a minute
later, memory returning, the joy fades from her face, leaving it
sadder than before. "I might be Irish," she says, "emotion is so
changeable with me. Come down with me now to the village, will you? It
is my day at the school."
"Well, come up-stairs with me while I put on my things," says
Clarissa; and then, though really sad at heart, she cannot refrain
from smiling. "You are just the last person in the world," she says,
"one would accuse of teaching Scripture, or the Catechism, or that."
"What a very rude remark!" said Georgie, smiling naturally for the
first time to-day. "Am I such a _very_ immoral young woman?"
"No. Only I could not teach Genesis, or the Ten Commandments, or
Watts, to save my life," says Clarissa. "Come, or we shall be late,
and Pullingham Junior without Watts would, I feel positive, sink into
an abyss of vice. They might bark and bite, and do other dangerous
things."
* * * * *
Mrs. Branscombe (with Clarissa) reaching the school-house just in time
to take her class, the latter sits down in a disconsolate fashion
upon a stray bench, and surveys the scene before her with wondering
eyes.
There sits Georgie, a very fragile teacher for so rough a class; here
sits the vicar with the adults before him, deep in the mysteries of
the Thirty-nine Articles.
The head teacher is nearly in tears over the Creed, because of the
stupidity of her pupils; the assistant is raging over the Ten
Commandments. All is gloom! Clarissa is rather delighted than
otherwise, and, having surveyed everybody, comes back to Georgie, she
being the most refreshing object on view.
At the top of the class, facing the big window, sits John Spriggs
(_aetat._ ten) on his hands. He has utterly declined to bestow his body
in any other fashion, being evidently imbued with the belief that his
hands were made for the support of the body,--a very correct idea, all
things considered.
He is lolling from side to side in a reckless way, and his eyes are
rolling in concert with him, and altogether his behavior is highly
suggestive of fits.
Lower down, Amelia Jennings is making a surreptitious cat's cradle,
which is promptly put out of sight, behind her back, every time her
turn comes to give an answer; but, as she summarily dismisses all
questions by declaring her simple ignorance of every matter connected
with Biblical history, the cradle progresses most favorably, and is
very soon fit to sleep in.
Mrs. Branscombe, having gone through the seventh chapter of St. Luke
without any marked success, falls back upon the everlasting Catechism,
and swoops down upon Amelia Jennings with a mild request that she will
tell her her duty to her neighbor.
Amelia, feeling she has no neighbors at this trying moment, and still
less catechism, fixes her big round blue eyes on Mrs. Branscombe, and,
letting the beloved cradle fall to the ground behind her back,
prepares to blubber at a second's notice.
"Go on," says Georgie, encouragingly.
Miss Jennings, being thus entreated, takes heart, and commences the
difficult injunction in excellent hope and spirits. All goes "merry as
a marriage bell," until she comes to the words "Love your neighbor as
yourself," when John Spriggs (who is not by nature a thoroughly bad
boy, but whose evil hour is now full upon him) says audibly, and
without any apparent desire to torment, "and paddle your own canoe."
There is a deadly pause, and then Amelia Jennings giggles out loud,
and Spriggs follows suit, and, after a bit, the entire class gives
itself up to merriment.
Spriggs, instead of being contrite at this flagrant breach of
discipline, is plainly elated with his victory. No smallest sign of
shame disfigures his small rubicund countenance.
Georgie makes a praiseworthy effort to appear shocked, but, as her
pretty cheeks are pink, and her eyes great with laughter, the
praiseworthy effort rather falls through.
At this moment the door of the school-house is gently pushed open, and
a new-comer appears on the threshold: it is Mr. Kennedy.
Going up unseen, he stands behind Georgie's chair, and having heard
from the door-way all that has passed, instantly bends over and hands
the notorious Spriggs a shilling.
"Ah! you again?" says Mrs. Branscombe, coloring warmly, merely from
surprise. "You are like Sir Boyle Roche's bird: you can be in two
places at the same moment. But it is wrong to give him money when he
is bad. It is out of all keeping; and how shall I manage the children
if you come here, anxious to reward vice and foster rebellion?"
She is laughing gayly now, and is looking almost her own bright little
self again, when, lifting her eyes, she sees Dorian watching her.
Instantly her smile fades; and she returns his gaze fixedly, as though
compelled to do it by some hidden instinct.
He has entered silently, not expecting to find any one before him but
the vicar: yet the very first object his eyes meet is his wife,
smiling, radiant, with Kennedy beside her. A strange pang contracts
his heart, and a terrible amount of reproach passes from his eyes to
hers.
He is sad and dispirited, and full of melancholy. His whole life has
proved a failure; yet in what way has he fallen short?
Kennedy, seeing Mrs. Branscombe's expression change, raises his head,
and so becomes aware of her husband's presence. Being a wise young man
in his own generation, he smiles genially upon Dorian, and, going
forward, shakes his hand as though years of devotion have served to
forge a link likely to bind them each to each forever.
"Charming day, isn't it?" he says, with a beatific smile. "Quite like
summer."
"Rather more like January, I think," says Dorian, calmly, who is in
his very worst mood. "First touch of winter, I should say." He laughs
as he says this; but his laugh is as wintry as the day, and chills the
hearer. Then he turns aside from his wife and her companion, and lays
his hand upon the vicar's shoulder, who has just risen from his class,
having carried it successfully through the best part of Isaiah.
"My dear boy,--you?" says the vicar, quite pleased to see him. "But in
bad time: the lesson is over, so you can learn nothing. I don't like
to give them too much Scripture on a week-day. It has a disheartening
effect, and----"
"I wish they could hear you," says Branscombe, with a slight shrug.
"It is as well they cannot," says the vicar; "though I doubt if free
speaking does much harm; and, really, perpetual grinding does destroy
the genuine love for our grand old Bible that we should all feel deep
down in our souls."
"Feeling has gone out of fashion," says Dorian, so distinctly that
Georgie in the distance hears him, and winces a little.
"Well, it has," says the vicar. "There can't be a doubt of it, when
one thinks of the alterations they have just made in that fine old
Book. There are innovations from morning till night, and nothing
gained by them. Surely, if we got to heaven up to this by the teaching
of the Bible as it _was_, it serves no cause to alter a word here and
there, or a sentence that was dear to us from our childhood. It brings
us no nearer God, but only unsettles beliefs that, perhaps, up to this
were sound enough. The times are not to be trusted."
"Is anything worthy of trust?" says Dorian, bitterly.
"I doubt I'm old-fashioned," says the dear vicar, with a deprecating
smile. "I dare say change is good, and works wonders in many ways. We
old people stick fast, and can't progress. I suppose I should be
content to be put on one side."
"I hope you will be put on my side," says Dorian: "I should feel
pretty safe then. Do you know, I have not been in this room for so
many years that I am afraid to count them? When last here, it was
during a holiday term; and I remember sitting beside you and thinking
how awfully jolly glad I was to be well out of it, when other children
were doing their lesson."
"Comfortable reflection, and therefore, as a rule, selfish," says the
vicar, with a laugh.
"Was it selfish? I suppose so." His face clouds again: a sort of
reckless defiance shadows it. "You must not expect much from me," he
says, slowly: "they don't accredit me with any good nowadays."
"My dear fellow," says the vicar, quietly, "there is something wrong
with you, or you would not so speak. I don't ask you now what it is:
you shall tell me when and where you please. I only entreat you to
believe that no one, knowing you as I do, could possibly think
anything of you but what is kind and good and true."
Branscombe draws his breath quickly. His pale face flushes; and a
gleam, that is surely born of tears, shines in his eyes. Clarissa,
who, up to this, has been talking to some of the children, comes up to
him at this moment and slips her hand through his arm. Is he not
almost her brother?
Only his wife stands apart, and, with white lips and dry eyes and a
most miserable heart, watches him without caring--or daring--to go
near to him. She is silent, _distraite_, and has altogether forgotten
the fact of Kennedy's existence (though he still stands close beside
her),--a state of things that young gentleman hardly affects.
"Has your class been too much for you? Or do other things--or
people--distress you?" he asks, presently, in a meaning tone. "Because
you have not uttered one word for quite five minutes."
"You have guessed correctly: some people do distress me--after a
time," says Mrs. Branscombe, so pointedly that Kennedy takes the
hint, and, shaking hands with her somewhat stiffly, disappears through
the door-way.
"Oh, yes," the vicar is saying to Clarissa, in a glad tone, that even
savors of triumph, "the Batesons have given up the Methodist chapel
and have come back to me. They have forgiven about the bread, though
they made a heavy struggle for it. Mrs. Redmond and I put our heads
together and wondered what we should do, and if we couldn't buy
anything there so as to make up for the loss of the daily loaves,
because she would not consent to poison the children."
"And you would!" says Clarissa, reproachfully. "Oh, what a terrible
admission!"
"We won't go into that, my dear Clarissa, if you please," says the
vicar, contritely. "There are moments in every life that one regrets.
But the end of our cogitations was this: that we went down to the
village,--Mrs. Redmond and I,--and, positively, for one bar of soap
and a package of candles we bought them all back to their pew in
church. You wouldn't have thought there was so much grace in soap and
candles, would you?" says the vicar, with a curious gleam in his eyes
that is half amusement, half contempt.
Even Georgie laughs a little at this, and comes nearer to them, and
stands close beside Clarissa, as if shy and uncertain, and glad to
have a sure partisan so near to her,--all which is only additional
pain to Dorian, who notices every lightest word and action of the
woman he has married.
"How did you get on to-day with your little people?" asks Mr. Redmond,
taking notice of her at once,--something, too, in her downcast
attitude appealing to his sense of pity. "Was that boy of the
Brixton's more than usually trying?"
"Well, he was bad enough," says Georgie, in a tone that implies she is
rather letting off the unfortunate Brixton from future punishment.
"But I have known him worse; indeed, I think he improves."
"Indeed, I think a son of his father could never improve," says the
vicar, with a melancholy sigh. "There isn't an ounce of brains in all
that family. Long ago, when first I came here, Sam Brixton (the father
of your pupil) bought a cow from a neighboring farmer called George
Gilbert, and he named it John. I thought that an extraordinary name
to call a cow, so I said to him one day, 'Sam, why on earth did you
christen that poor inoffensive beast John?' 'John?' said he, somewhat
indignantly, 'John? Why wouldn't I call him John, when I bought him
from George Gilbert?' I didn't see his meaning then,--and, I confess,
I haven't seen it since,--but I was afraid to expose my stupidity, so
I held my tongue. Do you see it?" He turns to Dorian.
"Not much," says Dorian, with a faint laugh.