So we must keep apart,You there, I here,With just the door ajarThat oceans are,And prayer,And that pale sustenanceDespair!—Emily Dickenson.
So we must keep apart,You there, I here,With just the door ajarThat oceans are,And prayer,And that pale sustenanceDespair!
So we must keep apart,You there, I here,With just the door ajarThat oceans are,And prayer,And that pale sustenanceDespair!
So we must keep apart,You there, I here,With just the door ajarThat oceans are,And prayer,And that pale sustenanceDespair!
—Emily Dickenson.
It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice of his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness that Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did not lavish on him.
Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything.
He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor had been in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made him drink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. How clear everything was becoming. He raised hishand to his head. He had not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at his wasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these marks on the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he had forgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he should know numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, and held it close to his eyes.
These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. And here over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deep sore once.
When?
If only he could remember!
The mist in his mind cleared a little.
Those bruises were made by chains.
A deadly faintness came over him.
Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back into his feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what he had done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a long time, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious, crouching in the back of his mind.
The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, and he shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want to have the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest to please the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. The doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate grey lilac.
"I remember," said Michael, whitening.
It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering and the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon his brain.
"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it is a purple brown."
The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gently and took it away.
Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which he should see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the very edge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's last desertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark.
A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterflies this time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind, and he feared for his brain. He was too weak to read. He might perhaps like to look at pictures.
The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immense butterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay, but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee.
Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it had been looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender.
Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousands once in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he had been abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in the sunshine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like an army of fairies.
How heavy the book was on his knee.
He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf.
Were there English butterflies here as well?
Yes. Here was a sheet of them.
He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common enough in the south of England.
He looked idly at it.
And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop.
He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly like that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed how beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its wings, one by one, because they were so pretty.
He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly thing with struggling legs.
The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain.
"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand."
And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had done it on purpose to that other poor creature of God.She did not understand.
Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with her pretty hand.
Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more deeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of grief came, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted had been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt.
An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in all the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid heart.
Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light!
Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place.
A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had strength from her to wander away from her—back into her arms.
And no more turn aside and broodUpon Love's bitter mystery.—W. B. Yeats.
And no more turn aside and broodUpon Love's bitter mystery.
And no more turn aside and broodUpon Love's bitter mystery.
And no more turn aside and broodUpon Love's bitter mystery.
—W. B. Yeats.
It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand. Old age ceases to understand.
But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they arelooking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only be loved and served. They cannot love—as yet. They exact love and miss it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyse it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is nothing to be got out of it after all.
They seem inhuman because they are not human—as yet. They seem variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's body and brain must so seem. They are not sane—as yet.
And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth and beauty and tenderness may not come forth—as yet.
We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes.
Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was supported by the illusion—was it an illusion—that it was Fay really who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, unless he helped her through.
He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his,that they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh?
When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go—at last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's.
His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself.
What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest.—Edith Wharton.
What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest.
—Edith Wharton.
On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awake listening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distance away from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorb her, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for so many years past.
Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearing wind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listen intently.
Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the passage to Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none that could be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over the groaning old house.
She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over the dim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay.
Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out her arms.
Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly:
"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?"
Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms.
Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost as much as Fay.
Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane. Within, another storm had broken in a passion of tears.
Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing.
"I was coming to you, Magdalen,—I was trying to come—and I couldn't—I had pushed you away when you came before—and I thought perhaps you would pushmeaway—no—no—I didn't, but I said to myself you would. I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the same because—because,"—Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into a strangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more."
"Tell me about it."
But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself face downwards on the bed.
"I can't," she gasped. "I must and I can't. I must and I can't."
Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that the breaking moment had come and she waited.
She waited a long time.
The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself.
At last Fay sat up.
Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, she blew the dim embers to a glow.
Fay watched her.
Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes fixed upon it.
"I have done something very wicked," said Fay in a hollow voice from the bed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me that you will never tell anybody?"
"I promise," said Magdalen after a moment.
"Swear it."
"I swear."
Fay made several false starts and then said:
"I was very unhappy with Andrea."
Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red.
"He never cared for me," continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and kneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me."
Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passage she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in silence then so she listened in silence now.
"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, those whom God has joined together. Andreanever seemed to remember that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to care for him, and—he brought it on himself—I'm not excusing myself, Magdalen—I see now that I was to blame too—I ended by caring for someone else—someone whodidlove me, who always had since we were boy and girl together."
"Not Michael!"
"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared at last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me."
Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
"Of course he found it out at last and—and we agreed to part. We decided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to say good-bye. Was itverywrong of me to let him come once,—just once?"
"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not he leave Rome?"
"He was arrested the same night," faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to him in the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they were looking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out. And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hid behind the screen in my room. And then—you know the rest—the policecame in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to the murder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing to do to save my reputation, and he did it."
"And what did you say?"
"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak."
"And later on when you were not too faint?"
"I never said anything later on either." Fay's voice had become almost inaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess."
"But when he did not confess?"
"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that he might still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen."
There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures in Magdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefully safeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in the process.
At last she said, "Did Andreaknowthat Michael was innocent of the murder?"
"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he said something cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence for certain, had known it from the first."
"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do you suppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight, after he had ostensibly left the house?"
Fay stared at her sister aghast.
"I never thought of that," she said.
"WhatcanAndrea have thought of that?"
"Andrea was very secretive," faltered Fay. "You never could tell what he was thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. Roman Catholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of the wife."
There was another silence.
Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, but they don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse to weigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quickly confused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all they remember that upholds their own view of the situation and—discard the rest.
Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could only restate her own view of her husband's character.
Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others if they had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waited a moment, and then said:
"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment between yourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had not guessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew itthen—for certain.For certain, Fay. Remember that is settled. There was no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if you bar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea is concerned.Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect for Michael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which would have ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did not understand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me he acted towards you with great nobility and delicacy."
Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husband must not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have any fixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the whole tightly wedged fabric in position.
"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed," she said. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the least hint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison."
"Perhaps he hoped—hoped against hope—that——" Magdalen did not finish her sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them, and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, she went on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without a word to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I see now that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italian hereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such a height as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicions he might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael if he had not followed a very noble instinct, that of entire trust in you both in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Dear Fay, the proof was overwhelming."
Fay was silent.
"Just as we all believed in Michael's innocence of the murder, so Andrea believed in your innocence of a crime even greater, never faltered in his belief, and went to his grave without a word of doubt. Oh! Fay, Fay, do you suppose there are many men like that?"
And Magdalen, who so seldom wept, suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps the thought forced itself through her mind, "If only once long ago I had met with one little shred of such tender faith!"
"Andrea was better than I thought," Fay faltered. The admission made her uneasy. She wished he had not been better, that her previous view of him had not been disturbed.
Magdalen's tears passed quickly. She glanced again at Fay through a veil of them, looking earnestly for something she did not find.
"And Michael," she went on gently. "Dear, dear Michael. He gave himself for you, spent in one moment, not counting the cost, his life, his future, his good name—for your sake. And he goes on day by day, month by month, year in year out, enduring a living death without a word—for your sake. How long has Michael been in prison?"
"Two years." Fay's voice was almost inaudible.
"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But if his strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was any man since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and your lover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish and could not love. I have heard many women say the same. Butyou! How canyousay such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love and serve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever find anything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material of men's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to have stood between two such men who must have crushed you between them if either of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentary selfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and—where wouldyouhave been?"
"No one knows how good Michael is better than I do," said Fay, "but what you don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been forme. He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. No, I don'tthinkit, Iknowit. He can't have suffered as much as I have."
Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always tender.
"You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years? What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!"
Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a more prominent red, witha plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able to tell her sister everything.
The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines of our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the world what only Love may safely know concerning us?
Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. She heard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much that Fay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that it was misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yet repentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of our prisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cells bolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business of leaving our cells when only miseryurges us forth. I think that Magdalen's heart must have sunk many times, but whenever Fay looked up she met the same tender, benignant look bent down upon her.
"Oh! why didn't I tell you before?" she said at last. "I always wanted to, but I thought—at least I felt—I see I did you an injustice—I thought you might press me to—to——"
"To confess," said Magdalen, her low voice piercing to Fay's very soul.
"Y-yes, at least to say something to a policeman or someone, so that Michael might be let out. I was afraid if I told you you would never give me any peace till Michael was released."
"Have youhadany peace since he was put into prison?"
Fay shook her head.
"Make your mind easy, Fay, I shall never urge you to"—Magdalen hesitated—"to go against your conscience."
"What would you have done in my place?" said Fay hastily.
"I should have had to speak."
"You are better than me, Magdalen, more religious. You always have been."
"I should have had to speak, not because I am better or worse than you, but simply because I could not have endured the misery of silence. It would have broken me in two. And if I had not had the courage to speak in Andrea's lifetime, I would have spoken directly he was dead, and have released Michael and married him. You have not told me why you did not do that."
"I never thought of it. I somehow regarded it as all finished. And I have never eventhoughtof marrying Michael or anyone when I was left a widow. I was much too miserable. I had had enough of being married."
There was a difficult silence.
"I should never have a moment's peace if—if Ididspeak," said Fay at last.
"Yes, you would," said Magdalen with sudden intensity. "That is where peace lies."
Fay raised herself to her knees and looked into Magdalen's eyes. The dawn had come up long ago, and in its austere light Magdalen's face showed very sharp and white in a certain tender fixity and compassion. She had seen that look once before in her husband's dying eyes. Now that she was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood it for the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might be given peace!
There is no wild wind in his soul,No strength of flood or fire;He knows no force beyond control,He feels no deep desire.He knows no altitudes above,No passions elevate;All is but mockery of love,And mimicry of hate.—Edgar Vine Hall.
There is no wild wind in his soul,No strength of flood or fire;He knows no force beyond control,He feels no deep desire.He knows no altitudes above,No passions elevate;All is but mockery of love,And mimicry of hate.
There is no wild wind in his soul,No strength of flood or fire;He knows no force beyond control,He feels no deep desire.He knows no altitudes above,No passions elevate;All is but mockery of love,And mimicry of hate.
There is no wild wind in his soul,No strength of flood or fire;He knows no force beyond control,He feels no deep desire.
He knows no altitudes above,No passions elevate;All is but mockery of love,And mimicry of hate.
—Edgar Vine Hall.
The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library at Barford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down lay Priesthope, where Fay was.
He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulated existence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade him only in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid his purpling beeches.
Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those mornings sacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagant surmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards a thing or person—in what he called his point of view—than in the thing viewed.
He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with his feelings about her than with herself. It was these which were now engrossing him.
For some time past he had been working underground—digging out the foundations—and as a rule invisible as a mole within them—of a tedious courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is much more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was not to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. He had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex; and that when he met therightwoman she would set to work like the others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be conveniently arrived at.
But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain turn which affairs might one day take.
At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further masculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. He was aware—at least, hetold himself that he was aware—that extraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how he reconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. The chance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions, and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with muchnaïfdignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other old friend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposed but earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grappling with the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was of estrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning and found he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at the correct moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by the comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse.
I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the verge of being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails from the abyss by a certainnaïvetéand uprightness of character. The Bishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact that dolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond of him.
Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was stillunconsciously meditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancing furtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary, self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman, however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining him with her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by looking back.
Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he did propose he would be accepted—she in short must commit herself—and then—after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still—at any rate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of Pilgrim Road. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would be an entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "short cut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of his return journey from Lostford.
It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down Pilgrim Road feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth was breathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking in the vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossy track dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on the boles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze of myriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. There was a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself.
At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on a fallen tree near the track.
For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he should ride past, just taking off his hat.But he had ridden past in life, just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. He almost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismounted and walked up to Fay, bridle in hand.
"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way."
This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a foot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the actual facts. The moral is—morals cluster like bees round certain individuals—that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like Wentworth.
"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get some palm."
She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he looked at them with grave attention.
The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut.
"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us."
Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig.
Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in his strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, though ofdoubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfect rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere of exquisite manners.
Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much.
A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a choice of subject.
From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of mouse talk, intermittent,affairé, accompanied by sudden rustlings and dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of life in a new soft silken coat!
Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time to time.
"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says."
"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?"
"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not our morbid craving for a listener."
"Do you think—I mean really and truly—that they are talking about themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of his on the subject would be considered final.
"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more like a cavalier than ever.
Then he actually noticed how pale she was.
"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you awake."
"Yes," she said, and hung her head.
Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day, toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night.
He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart.
He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it passed away again, leavinga great tranquillity behind, together with a mounting sense of personal power.
If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking the reed for music!
Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain things exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands?
The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might be ready when the time came.
"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret.
"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always assented to what was said.
"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I sit here any longer I shall never get home at all."
"Let me take you home on Conrad."
Fay hesitated.
"I am frightened of horses."
"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse. And I will lead him."
Fay still hesitated.
He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope.
Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came.
Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it.
She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timidity was reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking beside her, with his hand on the rein.
The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part.
Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind wandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them very often.
Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to indicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point of view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own freedom from ambition, his devotion—unlike other men—to thesmallthings of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had been struck by that sentence when he firstsaid it to the Bishop, and he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more sympathetic listener than the Bishop.
I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under thedébrisof last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired her.Hedid not know anything uncomfortable about her—as Magdalen did. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he talked! What a wide-minded, generous man!
The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they required assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwart figure warded off from herthe sympathy to which her severe cramps undoubtedly entitled her.
"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that the good hour was over.
Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her cheek.
Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a favourite walk of yours?"
"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon."
"I have to pass that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut to Lostford."
He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener minds had had to fight against in dealing with him.
For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense of regret and loss.
Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen who was so good, and so safe, such a comforter—but who knew. Fay shrank back instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs to her own room, and had tea there.