CHAPTER XXXIIIBROKEN OFF
Despite that cutting east wind, it was a glorious May evening. The trees and fields were coming on grandly, and the sun shone dazzlingly towards his decline, in a heaven of bright blue and gold, with piles of glorified clouds in a steady bank to the north. The beams shone slantingly all on the old brown houses, and their rays were flashed back from the windows of the quaint old sleepy town. As Roger walked down the street, his heart beating with foreboding, he was but vaguely conscious of the stir of life around him, the murmur and bustle of those whose day’s work was done, and who were enjoying their pipes, their gossip, and their games; for in one part of the town the youths played quoits in an open space, while many reverend elders looked on, and made sententious remarks as the sport progressed. He was conscious of receiving here and there a greeting; he returned them vaguely, and went on his way, and presently found himself within Mr. Dixon’s shop, which looked very mean and low and small, and which seemed quite filled by his tall and broad figure. Mr. Dixon was alone in the shop.
‘Bless my soul, Roger—you!’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ replied Roger. ‘I got a couple of days’ holiday,so I thought I’d run over and see Ada. Is she in?’
‘Yes, she’s in. You’ll find her upstairs at her piano. The wife has gone out to tea. And look you, Roger,’ he added, drawing the young man aside, and lowering his voice, though they were alone, ‘Ada has got uncommon twiny and washed-out looking, and has taken to singing the most sentimental songs. I declare it makes me feel quite low in my mind to hear her constantly wailing and wailing. Try to cheer her up a bit.’
‘That I will!’
‘I daresay she’s just fretting a bit after you.’
Roger’s heart bounded, and fell again. It could not be so. Ada knew she needed not to fret after him. But he said, as cheerfully as he could—
‘I’ll go upstairs and find her.’
With which he went through the shop into the passage, and quickly up the stairs. As he ascended, the ‘wailing’ of which Mr. Dixon had complained became distinctly audible. It was a very, very mournful song that Ada sang, and Roger’s heart died within him as he heard it.
He opened the parlour door softly, and looked in. The piano was opposite to the door; therefore Ada, seated at it, had her back turned towards him. She had ceased to play within the last minute, and sat very still, with her hands, he noticed, dropping down at her sides, in a way that had something very painful and hopeless about it. His heart went out to her, and as she did not at first appear to notice any sound or any footstep, he walked softly up behind her; but not so softly, big and heavy as he was, and unused to treading gingerly, but that she could hear him distinctly; and he noticed thatshe suddenly drew her hands up, and that they were clenched, and that her shoulders heaved, as if she drew a deep breath—not as if she were surprised, Roger thought, hope beginning to beat high in his heart again,but rather as if she were very glad. She knew, then, that he was there. She recognised his footstep, and she was moved, deeply moved, by his presence.
He laid his hands upon her shoulders, and said, softly and caressingly—
‘Ada!’
She faced him, with the quickness of lightning, and with a veritable shriek,—it was too loud, too affrighted to be called an exclamation—and Roger recoiled before the expression of the face which was turned towards him. He literally fell back a step or two, gazing at her alarmed and speechless, while she put her hands, one to either side of her head, and shrank together, staring at him with a look of terror and amaze.
‘Ada, my love,’ he began at last, alarmed and bewildered by the contradiction between her manner before she had seen him, and that manner now that she beheld him. Then she found her voice, and rose from the music stool.
‘Roger, Roger!’ she gasped. ‘How can you! Stealing up behind one, and startling one in that way! It’s enough to turn the head, if one’s a nervous person.’
‘But, my darling, I saw that you heard me,’ he began; but she burst into hysterical tears, turning away from him, and flinging herself upon a sofa, so that he saw it was useless to attempt to explain or apologise. Once it crossed his mind, ‘She behaves almost as if she had expected some one else.’ Then he put the idea aside, as we do put ideas aside which we know would beabsurd in regard to ourselves, often without stopping to make allowances for the differences in others’ minds and our own.
It was a very distressful scene. Nothing that he could do or say restored calmness to her, though the first violence of her agitation presently wore off. In vain he tried to wring from her some explanation of her altered looks, her nervous terrors; asked her what ailed her, and tenderly upbraided her with not having told him she was out of health. Ada would own nothing, say nothing; and when he rather pitifully said he had hoped to give her a pleasant surprise by his unexpected arrival, she replied with irritation that she hated such surprises; he ought to have written or telegraphed. In fact, Roger, with the deepest alarm, presently saw that his presence was doing her no good, but harm; it was perfectly evident that he had better retire, and he decided to do so. But before going, he said—
‘Now, look here, Ada. Grant me a very great favour, and I’ll not tease you about anything else. Let Michael Langstroth, or Dr. Rowntree, see you. Rowntree, perhaps. He’s such a kind, good old fellow. He would give you something to strengthen you.’
‘I am not ill,’ cried Ada; and she stamped her foot on the ground, and clenched her teeth. ‘I will see none of your doctors. I hate them, and I’ll have nothing to do with them. You willmakeme ill, if you don’t let me alone.’
Every sign warned Roger that this was a subject it would be best not to pursue any farther, and he presently left her. He had no heart to go into the shop again and speak to Mr. Dixon. Slowly and dispiritedly he made his way back to the Red Gables, and foundMichael there, astonished to see him back again so soon, and looking the questions he felt he would not ask.
‘I don’t know, Michael,’ said Roger, in answer to this look. ‘There’s something awfully wrong. I must see her father to-morrow. She denies that anything ails her, but at the same time she goes on in such a way as no one would who was all right. It is not the end—I know it is not the end.’
On the following day it seemed as if the end, so far as Roger was concerned, had arrived. In the forenoon Mr. Dixon made his appearance, and asked to see Roger. Then, slowly and with difficulty, he unfolded the fact that Ada had summoned him to her after her lover’s departure, and had told him that she could never be Roger’s wife; that her life was a misery to her, so long as she was engaged to him, and that if her father wished to see her well and happy again, he was to take this opportunity of telling Roger so, and of making him understand that she did not wish to see him again.
The stout, prosperous tradesman looked pinched and miserable as he told his sorry tale; while the young man sat opposite to him, his face turning very white, his strong hands shaking, and his mighty figure trembling all over, like a leaf in the wind. The sun was shining outside, though not into the room; one could see its glare in the yellow hue of the grass, and the shadows cast by the trees. The sound of singing birds came in at the open window, and also a blast of north-east wind, cold, dry, cutting as a knife.
‘She does not mean it, Mr. Dixon; she does not really mean it?’ he stammered, fighting for his life.
‘She means it, Roger. I wrestled with her about it for an hour; for with expecting you to be my son for solong, I’ve got to look upon you as if you were my son. I wrestled with her till I saw she was nigh to fainting, and then I had to stop. She pulled this off her finger, and told me to give it you.’
He pulled a little pearl ring from his pocket, and pushed it across the table towards Roger, without looking at him. Roger picked it up, and turned it round in his fingers as if he did not know what it was—as if the sight of the little jewels dazed him.
‘She said she wished to send no unkind words, for that perhaps she’d never see you again; but that you must not come nigh her, for another scene with you would kill her, and she wants to live.’
‘Let her live then,’ said Roger, in a hoarse and laboured voice. ‘It does not matter what becomes of me.’
Mr. Dixon, sturdy philistine that he was, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief.
‘Roger,’ he said, with a solemnity and strength of conviction which gave dignity and something like majesty to his commonplace, outside man, ‘you have just cause to look upon my girl with suspicion, and to fight shy and speak ill of us all. But, lad, I tell you, we don’t know the end of it all yet. I can tell you, my heart is heavy. There’s a weight on it, as if something uncommon was coming, or hanging about in the air somewhere. I can’t mind my business, nor eat my victuals, for thinking of that girl, that looks like a ghost; and why, that’s what I want to know—why?’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Roger, in a laboured voice, but instinctively trying to give comfort to the man who was older and weaker than himself, ‘that she may have begun to care for some one else, who perhaps doesn’t respondas she could wish. If so, it is best for her to be free from me.’
‘Choose what it is, it’s a heavy trouble for us all,’ said Mr. Dixon, wearily. ‘I’m often afraid that she was brought up with notions far above her station—Miss Wynter, and all that; but somehow, I never took it to be anything seriously wrong.... You’ll not look upon me as an enemy, Roger, for I’ve fought for you through thick and thin?’
‘An enemy—God forbid! I know you have been my friend all through.’
‘We are going to send her away,’ pursued Mr. Dixon. ‘She has asked to go down to my sister in Devonshire, a widow, who has often wanted to have a visit from her. She says, if she gets away from all this (‘all what?’ thought Roger, a thick dread at his heart—‘her home, her friends, her natural life, with all its hopes and interests?’), once away, she thinks she’ll be better. So we shall send her. I won’t stay. I’ve dragged myself here, and I shall drag myself back again. Can you shake hands with me, my lad?’
Roger unhesitatingly gave him his hand, went with him to the door, and saw him walk away; then returned, to try and understand the meaning of what had befallen him. He was surprised to find that after a time, instead of reproaching Ada, even in thought, he was occupied in trying to recall any occasions on which he might have spoken harshly to her, and in mentally imploring her to forgive him his trespasses, and in wishing that he had but the chance to do it in so many words; while his sense of the mysterious terror that hung over her grew greater every moment. He did not leave Bradstane earlier than he had intended. A great calm and a greatpity had settled upon his soul. He found himself able to speak freely to Michael of what had happened—to tell him more of his inner thoughts and feelings than, in all their long intimacy, he had ever divulged before. He told Michael what Ada was going to do, and he said—
‘When she comes back, for my sake, Michael, you will pay a little heed to her, and let me know how she looks, at any rate.’
‘You may trust me to do it.’
‘It is all quite over between us. I have a feeling that that is quite certain; but I don’t feel as if we knew everything yet. And God forbid that I should judge her in the dark. A girl doesn’t carry on as she is doing, either from lightness of mind or hardness of heart.’
This was as Michael drove him along the lanes to Darlington to catch the night train. Michael said nothing. Friendship demanded that what Roger required of him in this matter, he should do, whatever he might think of the cause of his friend’s distress.