Blue-buskin’d, with the softest turquoise blue,
Faint, as the speedwell’s azure dim with dew;
As far away in hue
As heaven the dainty shade is,
From the dark ultra-blue
Of literary ladies.—The Mask
On the morning that the Rev. Ambrose Bradley, Vicar of Fensea, had his memorable interview with the Bishop of Darkdale and Dells, Miss Alma Craik, of the Larches, walked on the home farm in the immediate neighbourhood of her dwelling, accompanied by her dear friend and companion Agatha Combe, and attended by half a dozen dogs of all sizes, from a melancholy old St. Bernard to a frivolous Dandie Dinmont.
The two ladies, strolling along side by side, presented a curious contrast, which was heightened not a little by their peculiarities of costume. Miss Craik, bright as Eos, and tall and graceful as a willow-wand, was clad in a pink morning dress, with pink plush hat to match, and carried a parasol of the same colour. She walked lightly, with a carriage which her detractors called proud, but which her admirers thought infinitely easy and charming; conveying to the most casual observer that she was a young lady with a will of her own, perfectly mistress of herself, and at home among her possessions. Miss Combe, on the other hand, was very short, scant of breath, and dressed in a costume which looked like widow’s weeds, but which was nothing of the sort, for at five-and-fifty she was still a virgin. Her face was round and sunny, her eyes were bright and cheerful, and few could have recognised, in so homely and kindly looking a person, the champion of Woman’s Rights, the leader-writer of the ‘Morning News,’ and the champion Agnostic of the controversial reviews.
Yet Miss Combe, though mild enough as a woman, was terribly fierce as a writer. She had inherited her style and opinions from her father, a friend and playfellow (if such an expression may be applied to persons whoneverplayed) of John Mill. She had been crammed very early with Greek, Latin, moral science, and philosophy; and she would certainly have developed into a female of the genus Griffin, had it not been for a pious aunt who invited her once a year into the country, and there managed to fill her lungs with fresh air and her mind with a certain kind of natural religion. When Agnosticism was first invented she clutched at the word, and enrolled herself as an amazon militant under the banner of the creed. She hated two things about equally—Materialism and dogmatic Christianity. She was, in fact, a busy little woman, with a kind heart, and a brain not quite big enough to grasp all the issues she was so fond of discussing.
Miss Craik had met her in London, and had taken to her immediately—chiefly, if the truth must be told, on account of her opinions; for though Miss Craik herself was nominally a Christian, she was already a sufficiently lax one to enjoy all forms of heterodoxy. They had come together first on one greatquoestio revata, that of vivisection, for they both adored dogs, and Miss Combe was their most uncompromising champion against the users of the scalpel. So it happened in the course of time that they spent a part of the year together. The Larches was Miss Combe’s house whenever she chose to come to it, which was very often, and she became, in a certain sense, the companion of her rich young friend.
Their way lay along green uplands with a distant sight of the sea, and they followed the footpath which led from field to field.
Presently Miss Combe, somewhat out of breath, seated herself on the foot-rest of a stile.
‘Won’t you take a rest, dear?’ she said; ‘there’s room for two.’
The young lady shook her head. As she fixed her eyes upon her companion, one peculiarity of hers became manifest. She was rather short-sighted, and, whenever examining anything or anybody, slightly closed her eyelashes.
‘If I were as rich as you,’ continued Miss Combe after a pause, ‘I know what I should do with my money.’
‘Indeed! pray tell me.’
‘I should build a church to the New Faith!’
‘Are you serious?’ said Alma merrily. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know what the new faith is.’
‘The faith of Humanity; not Comte’s, which is Frenchified rubbish, but the beautiful faith in human perfection and the divine future of the race. Just think what a Church it would make! In the centre an altar “to the Unknown God”; painted windows all round, with the figures of all the great teachers, from Socrates to Herbert Spencer, and signs of the zodiac and figures of the planets, if you like, on the celestial roof.’
‘I don’t quite see, Agatha, in what respect the new Church would be an improvement on the old one,’ returned Alma; and as she spoke her eyes travelled over the still landscape, and saw far away, between her and the sea, the glittering spire of the church of Fensea.
‘It would be different in every particular,’ said Miss Combe good-humouredly. ‘In the first place, the architecture would be, of course, pure Greek, and there would be none of the paraphernalia of superstition.’
‘And Jesus Christ?—would He have any place there at all? or would you banish Him with the rest of the gods?’
‘Heaven forbid! He should be pictured in the very central window, over the altar—not bleeding, horrible, and crucified, but as the happy painters represented Him in the early centuries, a beautiful young Shepherd—yes, beautiful as Apollo—carrying under His arm a stray lamb.’
Alma sighed, and shook her head again. She was amused with her friend’s opinions, and they never seemed to shock her, but her own attitude of mind with regard to Christianity was very different.
‘Yet,’ she said, still watching the distant spire, ‘If you abolish Christ crucified you abolish Christ the Saviour altogether; for sorrow, suffering, and death were the signs of His heavenly mission. Besides, I am of Mr. Bradley’s opinion, and think we have too many churches already.’
‘Doeshethink so?’ exclaimed Miss Combe with some surprise.
‘Yes, I have often heard him say that God’s temple is the best—the open fields for a floor and the vaulted heavens for a roof.’
Miss Combe rose, and they strolled on together.
‘Is he as heterodox as ever?’ asked Miss Combe.
‘Mr. Bradley? I don’t know what you mean by heterodox, but he has his own opinions on the articles of his religion.’
‘Just so. He doesn’t believe in the miracles, for example.’
‘Have you heard him say so?’
‘Not explicitly, but I have heard——’
‘You mustn’t believe all the nonsense you hear,’ cried Alma eagerly. ‘He is too intellectual for the people, and they don’t understand him. You shall go to church next Sunday, and hear him preach.’
‘But I’m not a church-goer,’ said the elder lady, smiling. ‘On Sundays I always read Herbert Spencer. Sermons are always so stupid.’
‘Not always. Wait till you hear Mr. Bradley. When I listen to him, I always think of the great Abelard, whom they called the “angel of bright discourse.” He says such wonderful things, and his voice is so beautiful. As he speaks, the church seems indeed a narrow place—too small for such words, for such a speaker; and you long to hear him on some mountain top, preaching to a multitude under the open sky.’
Miss Combe did not answer, but peeping sideways at her companion she saw that her face was warmly flushed, and her eyes were strangely bright and sparkling. She knew something, but not much, of Alma’s relations with the vicar, and she hoped with all her heart that they would never lead to matrimony. Alma was too wise a vestal, too precious to the cause of causes, to be thrown away on a mere country clergyman. In fact, Miss Combe had an errant brother of her own who, though an objectionable person, was a freethinker, and in her eyes just the sort of husband for her friend. He was rather poor, not particularly handsome, and somewhat averse to soap and water; but he had held his own in platform argument with divers clergymen, and was generally accounted a ticklish subject for the Christians. So she presently remarked:—
‘The finest speaker I ever heard is my brother Tom. I wish you could hearhim.’
Alma had never done so, and, indeed, had never encountered the worthy in question.
‘Is he a clergyman?’ she asked innocently. ‘Heaven forbid!’ cried Miss Combe. ‘No; he speaks at the Hall of Science.’
‘Oh!’
‘We don’t quite agree philosophically, for he is too thick with Bradlaugh’s party, but I know he’s coming round to Agnosticism. Poor Tom! He is so clever, and has been so unfortunate. He married miserably, you know.’
‘Indeed,’ said Alma, not much interested.
‘There was a black-eyed sibyl of a woman who admired one of the Socialist lecturers, and when he died actually went to his lodgings, cut off his head, and carried it home under her cloak in the omnibus.’
‘Horrible!’ said Alma with a shudder. ‘But what for?’
‘Toboil, my dear, so that she might keep the skull as a sacred relic! When Tom was introduced to her she had it under a glass case on her mantelpiece. Well, she was a very intellectual creature, wonderfully “advanced,” as they call it, and Tom was infatuated enough to make her his wife. They lived together for a year or so; after which she took to Spiritualism, and finally died in a madhouse. So poor Tom’s free, and I hope when he marries again he’ll be more lucky.’
Of course Miss Combe did not for a moment believe that her brother would have ever had any attraction in the eyes of her rich friend; for Tom Combe was the reverse of winsome, even to humbler maidens—few of whom felt drawn to a man who never brushed his hair, had a beard like a Communist refugee, and smelt strongly of beer and tobacco. But blood is thicker than water, and Miss Combe could not forbear putting in a word in season.
The word made little or no impression. The stately beauty walked silently on full of her own thoughts and dreams.
That bore of bores—a tedious male cousin!—Old Play.
Loitering slowly onward from stile to stile, from field to field, and from pasture to pasture, the two ladies at last reached a country road leading right through the heart of the parish, and commanding from time to time a view of the distant sea. They found Fensea, as usual, fast asleep, basking in the midst of its own breath; the red-tiled houses dormant, the population invisible, save in the square or market-place opposite the tavern, where a drowsy cart-horse was blinking into a water trough, and a somnambulistic ostler was vacantly looking on. Even in the open shops such as Radford the linendraper’s and Summerhayes the grocer’s, nothing seemed doing. But just as they left the village behind them, and saw in front of them the spire of the village church peeping through the trees, they suddenly came face to face with a human being who was walking towards them in great haste and with some indications of ill-temper.
‘Ah, here you are!’ ejaculated this individual. ‘I have been hunting for you up and down.’
He was a man under thirty, and looking very little over twenty, though his face showed little of the brightness and candour of early manhood. His hair was cropped close and he was clean-shaven; his eyes were yellowish and large, of an expression so fixed and peculiar as to have been compared by irreverent friends to ‘hard-boiled eggs’; his forehead was low, his jaw coarse and determined. With regard to his dress, it was of the description known as horsey; short coat and tight-fitting trousers of light tweed, a low-crowned hat of the same material, white neckcloth fastened by a horseshoe pin.
This was George Craik, son of Sir George Craik, Bart., of Craik Castle, in the neighbourhood, and Alma’s cousin on her father’s side.
Alma greeted him with a nod, while he shook hands with her companion.
‘Did you ride over, George?’ she inquired.
‘Yes; I put my nag up at the George, and walked up to the Larches. Not finding you at home, I strolled down to the vicarage, thinking to find youthere. But old Bradley is not at home; so I suppose there was no attraction to take you.’
The young lady’s cheek flushed, and she looked at her relation, not too amicably.
‘Old Bradley, as you call him (though he is about your own age, I suppose), is away in London. Did you want to see him?’
George shrugged his shoulders, and struck at his boots irritably with his riding-whip.
‘I wanted to seeyou, as I told you. By the way, though, what’s this they’re telling me about Bradley and the Bishop? He’s come to the length of his tether at last, I suppose? Well, I always said he was no better than an atheist, and a confounded radical into the bargain.’
‘An atheist, I presume,’ returned the young lady superciliously, ‘is a person who does not believe in a Supreme Being. When you describe Mr. Bradley as one, you forget he is a minister of the Church of Christ.’
George Craik scowled, and then laughed contemptuously.
‘Of courseyoudefend him!’ he cried. ‘You will tell me next, I dare say, that you share his opinions.’
‘When you explain to me what they are, I will inform you,’ responded Alma, moving slowly on, while George lounged after her, and Miss Combe listened in amused amazement.
‘It’s a scandal,’ proceeded the young man, ‘that a fellow like that should retain a living in the Church. Cripps tells me that his sermon last Sunday went slap in the face of the Bible. I myself have heard him say that some German fellow had proved the Gospels to be a tissue of falsehoods.’
Without directly answering this invective, Alma looked coldly round at her cousin over her shoulder. Her expression was not encouraging, and her manner showed a very natural irritation.
‘How amiable we are this morning!’ she exclaimed. ‘Pray, do you come all the way from Craik to give me a discussion on the whole duty of a Christian clergyman? Really, George, such attempts at edification have a curious effect, coming fromyou.’
The young man flushed scarlet, and winced nervously under his cousin’s too ardent contempt.
‘I don’t pretend to be a saint,’ he said, ‘but I know what I’m talking about. I call Bradley a renegade! It’s a mean thing, in my opinion, to take money for preaching opinions in which a man does not believe.’
‘Only just now you said that he preached heresy—or atheism—whatever you like to call it.’
‘Yes; and is paid for preaching the very reverse.’
Alma could no longer conceal her irritation.
‘Why should we discuss a topic you do not understand? Mr. Bradley is a gentleman whose aims are too high for the ordinary comprehension, that is all.’
‘Of course you think me a fool, and are polite enough to say so!’ persisted George. ‘Well, I should not mind so much if Bradley had not succeeded in infectingyouwith his pernicious opinions. Hehasdone so, though you may deny it! Since he came to the neighbourhood, you have not been like the same girl. The fellow ought to be horsewhipped if he had his deserts.’
Alma stopped short, and looked the speaker in the face.
‘Be good enough to leave me,—and come back when you are in a better temper.’
George gave a disagreeable laugh.
‘No; I’m coming to lunch with you.’
‘That you shall not, unless you promise to conduct yourself like a gentleman.’
‘Well, hang the parson,—since you can’t bear him to be discussed. I didn’t come over to quarrel.’
‘You generally succeed in doing so, however.’
‘No fault of mine; you snap a fellow’s head off, when he wants to give you a bit of good advice. ‘There, there,’ he added, laughing again, but not cordially, ‘let us drop the subject. I want something to eat.’
Alma echoed the laugh, with about an equal amount of cordiality.
‘Now you are talking of what you do understand. Lunch will be served at two.’
As she spoke they were passing by the church gate, and saw, across the churchyard, with its long rank grass and tombstones stained with mossy slime, the old parish church of Fensea:—a quaint timeworn structure, with an arched and gargoyled entrance, Gothic windows, and a belfry of strange device. High up in the belfry, and on the boughs of the great ash-trees surrounding the burial acre, jackdaws were gathered, sleepily discussing the weather and their family affairs. A footpath, much overgrown with grass, crossed from the church porch to a door in the weather-beaten wall communicating with the adjacent vicarage—a large, dismal, old-fashioned residence, buried in gloomy foliage.
Miss Combe glanced at church and churchyard with the air of superior enlightenment which a Christian missionary might assume on approaching some temple of Buddha or Brahma. George, glancing over the wall, uttered an exclamation.
‘What’s the matter now?’ demanded Alma.
‘Brown’s blind mare grazing among the graves,’ said young Craik with righteous indignation. He was about to enlarge further on the delinquencies of the vicar, and the shameful condition of the parish, of which he had just discovered a fresh illustration, but, remembering his recent experience, he controlled himself and contented himself with throwing a stone at the animal, which was leisurely cropping the grass surrounding an ancient headstone. They walked on, and passed the front of the vicarage, which looked out through sombre ash-trees on the road. The place seemed dreary and desolate enough, despite a few flower-beds and a green lawn. The windows were mantled in dark ivy, which drooped in heavy clusters over the gloomy door.
Leaving the vicarage behind them, the three followed the country road for about a mile, when, passing through the gate of a pretty lodge, they entered an avenue of larch-trees leading up to the mansion to which they gave their name. Here all was bright and well kept, the grass swards cleanly swept and variegated with flower-beds, and leading on to shrubberies full of flowering trees. The house itself, an elegant modern structure, stood upon a slight eminence, and was reached by two marble terraces commanding a sunny view of the open fields and distant sea.
It may be well to explain here that the Larches, with a large extent of the surrounding property, belonged to Miss Alma Craik in her own right, the lady being an orphan and an only child. Her father, a rich railway contractor, had bought the property and built the house just before she was born. During her infancy her mother had died, and before she was of age her father too had joined the great majority; so that she found herself, at a very early age, the heiress to a large property, and with no relations in the world save her uncle, Sir George Craik, and his son. Sir George, who had been knighted on the completion of a great railway bridge considered a triumph of engineering skill, had bought an adjacent property at about the time when his brother purchased the lands-of Fensea.
The same contrast which was noticeable between the cousins had existed between the brothers, Thomas and George Craik. They were both Scotchmen, and had begun life as common working engineers, but there the resemblance ceased. Thomas had been a comparative recluse, thoughtful, melancholy, of advanced opinions, fond of books and abstruse speculation; and his daughter’s liberal education had been the consequence of his culture, and in a measure of his radicalism. George was a man of the world, quick, fond of money, a Conservative in politics, and a courtier by disposition, whose ambition was to found a ‘family,’ and who disapproved of all social changes unconnected with the spread of the railway system and the success of his own commercial speculations. Young George was his only son, and had acquired, at a very early age, all the instincts (not to speak of many of the vices) of the born aristocrat. He was particularly sensitive on the score of his lowly origin, and his great grudge against society was that it had not provided him with an old-fashioned ancestry. Failing the fact, he assumed all the fiction, of an hereditary heir of the soil, but would have given half his heirloom to any one who could have produced for him an authentic ‘family tree,’ and convinced him that, despite his father’s beginnings, his blood had in it a dash of ‘blue.’
George Craik lunched with his cousin and her companion in a spacious chamber, communicating with the terrace by French windows opening to the ground. He was not a conversationalist, and the meal passed in comparative silence. Alma could not fail to perceive that the young man was unusually preoccupied and taciturn.
At last he rose without ceremony, strolled out on the terrace, and lit a cigar. He paced up and down for some minutes, then, with the air of one whose mind is made up, he looked in and beckoned to his cousin.
‘Come out here,’ he said. ‘Never mind your hat—there is no sun to speak of.’
After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped out and joined him.
‘Do you want me?’ she asked carelessly. ‘I would rather leave you to your smoke, and go to the library with Miss Combe. We’re studying Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles” together, and she reads a portion aloud every afternoon.’
She knew that something was coming by the fixed gaze with which he regarded her, and the peculiar expression in his eyes. His manner was far less like that of a lover than that of a somewhat sulky and tyrannical elder brother,—and indeed they had been so much together from childhood upward that she felt the relation between them to be quite a fraternal one. Nevertheless, his mind just then was occupied with a warmer sentiment—the one, indeed, which often leads the way to wedlock.
He began abruptly enough.
‘I say, Alma, how long is this to last?’ he demanded not without asperity.
‘What, pray?’
‘Our perpetual misunderstandings. I declare if I did not know what a queer girl you are, I should think you detested me!’
‘I like you well enough, George,—when you are agreeable, which is not so often as I could wish.’
Thus she answered, with a somewhat weary laugh.
‘But you know I likeyoubetter than anything in the world!’ he cried eagerly. ‘You know I have set my heart on making you my wife.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, George!’ replied Alma. ‘Love between cousins is an absurdity.’
She would have added an ‘enormity,’ having during her vagrant studies imbibed strong views on the subject of consanguinity, but, advanced as she was, she was not quite advanced enough to discuss a physiological and social problem with the man who wanted to marry her. In simple truth, she had the strongest personal objection to her cousin, in his present character of lover.
‘I don’t see the absurdity of it,’ answered the young man, ‘nor does my father. His heart is set upon this match, as you know; and besides, he does not at all approve of your living the life you do—alone, without a protector, and all that sort of thing.’
By this time Alma had quite recovered herself, and was able to reassume the air of sweet superiority which is at once so bewitching in a pretty woman, or so irritating. It did not bewitch George Craik; it irritated him beyond measure. A not inconsiderable experience of vulgar amours in the country, not to speak of the business known as sowing wild oats’ in Paris and London, had familiarised him with a different type of woman. In his cousin’s presence he felt, not abashed, but at a disadvantage. She had a manner, too, of talking down to him, as to a younger brother, which he disliked exceedingly; and more than once, when he had talked to her in the language of love, he had smarted under her ridicule.
So now, instead of taking the matter too seriously, she smiled frankly in his face, and quietly took his arm.
‘You must not talk like that, George,’ she said, walking up and down with him. ‘When you do, I feel as if you were a very little boy, and I quite an old woman. Even if I cared for you in that way—and I don’t, and never shall—we are not at all suited to each other. Our thoughts and aims in life are altogether different. I like you very much as a cousin, of course, and that is just the reason why I can never think of you as a husband. Don’t talk of it again, please!—and forgive me for being quite frank—I should not like you to have any misconception on the subject.’
‘I know what it is,’ he cried angrily. ‘It is that clergyman fellow! He has come between us.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ answered Alma with heightened colour. ‘If there was not another man in the world, it would be all the same so far as you and I are concerned.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it. Bradley is your choice. A pretty choice! A fellow who is almost a beggar, and in a very short time will be kicked out of the Church as a heretic.’
She released his arm, and drew away from him in deep exasperation; but her feeling towards him was still that of an elder sister annoyed at thegaucherieof a privileged brother.
‘If you continue to talk like that of Mr. Bradley, we shall quarrel, George. I think you had better go home now, and think it over. In any case, you will do no good by abusing an innocent man who is vastly your superior.’
All the bad blood of George Craik’s heart now mounted to his face, and his frame shook with rage.
‘Bradley will have to reckon with me,’ he exclaimed furiously. ‘What right has he to raise his eyes towards you? Until he came down here, we were the best of friends; but he has poisoned your heart against me, and against all your friends. Never mind! I’ll have it out with him, before many days are done!’
Without deigning to reply, Alma walked from him into the house.
An hour later, George Craik mounted his horse at the inn, and rode furiously homeward. An observer of human nature, noticing the expression of his countenance, and taking count of his square-set jaw and savage mouth, would have concluded perhaps that Alma estimated his opposition, and perhaps his whole character, somewhat too lightly. He had a bull-dog’s tenacity, when he had once made up his mind to a course of action.
But when he was gone, the high-spirited lady of his affections dismissed him completely from her thoughts. She joined Miss Combe in the library, and was soon busy with the problem of the Unknowable, as presented in the pages of the clearest-headed philosopher of our time.
‘What God hath joined, no man shall put asunder,’
Even so I heard the preacher cry—and blunder!
Alas, the sweet old text applied could he
Only in Eden, or in Arcady.
This text, methinks, is apter, more in season—
‘What man joins, God shall sunder—when there’s reason!’
Mayfair: a Satire=.
Ambrose Bradley came back from London a miserable man. Alighting late in the evening at the nearest railway station, nearly ten miles distant, he left his bag to be sent on by the carrier, and walked home through the darkness on foot. It was late when he knocked at the vicarage doer, and was admitted by his housekeeper, a melancholy village woman, whose husband combined the offices of gardener and sexton. The house was dark and desolate, like his thoughts. He shut himself up in his study, and at once occupied himself in writing his sermon for the next day, which was Sunday. This task occupied him until the early summer dawn crept coldly into the room.
The Sunday came, dull and rainy; and Bradley went forth to face his congregation with a deepening sense of guilt and shame. A glance showed him that Alma occupied her usual place, close under the pulpit, but he was careful not to meet her eyes. Not far from her sat Sir George Craik and his son, both looking the very reverse of pious minded.
It was a very old church, with low Gothic arches and narrow painted windows, through which little sunlight ever came. In the centre of the nave was the tomb of the old knight of Fensea, who had once owned the surrounding lauds, but whose race had been extinct for nearly a century; he was depicted, life-size, in crusader’s costume, with long two-handed sword by his side, and hands crossed lying on his breast. On the time-stained walls around were other tombstones, with quaint Latin inscriptions, some almost illegible; but one of brand-new marble recorded the virtues of Thomas Craik, deceased, the civil engineer.
Alma noticed in a moment that Bradley was ghastly pale, and that he faced his congregation with scarcely a remnant of his old assurance, or rather enthusiasm. His voice, however, was clear and resonant as ever, and under perfect command.
He preached a dreary sermon, orthodox enough to please the most exacting, and on an old familiar text referring to those sins which are said, sooner or later, to ‘find us out.’ All those members of the flock who had signed the letter to the Bishop were there in force, eager to detect new heresy, or confirmation of the old backsliding. They were disappointed, and exchanged puzzled looks with one another. Sir George Craik, who had been warned by his son to expect something scandalous, listened with a puzzled scowl.
The service over, Alma lingered in the graveyard, expecting the clergyman to come and seek her, as he was accustomed to do. He did not appear; but in his stead came her uncle and cousin, the former affectionately effusive, the latter with an air of respectful injury. They went home with her and spent the afternoon. When they had driven away, she announced her intention, in spite of showery weather and slushy roads, of going to evening service. Miss Combe expressed her desire of accompanying her, but meeting with no encouragement, decided to remain at home.
There were very few people at the church that evening, and the service was very short. Again Alma noticed the vicar’s death-pale face and always averted eyes, and she instinctively felt that something terrible had wrought a change in him. When the service was done, she waited for him, but he did not come.
Half an hour afterwards, when it was quite dark, she knocked at the vicarage door. It was answered by the melancholy housekeeper.
‘Is Mr. Bradley at home? I wish to speak to him.’
The woman looked confused and uncomfortable.
‘He be in, miss, but I think he be gone to bed wi’ a headache. He said he were not to be disturbed, unless it were a sick call.’
Utterly amazed and deeply troubled, Alma turned from the door.
‘Tell him that I asked for him,’ she said coldly.
‘I will, miss,’ was the reply; and the door was closed.
With a heavy heart, Alma walked away Had she yielded to her first impulse, she would have returned and insisted on an interview; but she was too ashamed. Knowing as she did the closeness of the relationship between them, knowing that the man was her accepted lover, she was utterly at a loss to account for his extraordinary conduct. Could anything have turned his heart against her, or have aroused his displeasure? He had always been so different; so eager to meet her gaze and to seek her company.Now, it was clear, he was completely changed, and had carefully avoided her; nay, she had no doubt whatever, from the housekeeper’s manner, that he had instructed her to deny him.
She walked on, half pained, half indignant. The night was dark, the road desolate.
All at once she heard footsteps behind her, as of one rapidly running. Presently someone came up breathless, and she heard a voice calling her name.
‘Is ityou, Alma?’ called the voice, which she recognised at once as that of Bradley.
‘Yes, it is I,’ she answered coldly.
The next moment he was by her side.
‘I came after you. I could not let you go home without speaking a word to you.’
The voice was strangely agitated, and its agitation communicated itself to the hearer. She turned to him trembling violently, with an impulsive cry.
‘O Ambrose, what has happened?’
‘Do not ask me to-night,’ was the reply.
‘When I have thought it all over, I shall be able to explain, but notnow. My darling, you must forgive me if I seem unkind and rude, but I have been in great, great trouble, and even now I can scarcely realise it all.’
‘You have seen the Bishop?’ she asked, thinking to touch the quick of his trouble, and lead him to confession.
‘I have seen him, and, as I expected, I shall have to resign or suffer a long persecution. Do not ask me to tell you more yet! Only forgive me for having seemed cold and unkind—I would cut off my right hand rather than cause you pain.’
They were walking on side by side in the direction of the ‘Larches.’ Not once did Bradley attempt to embrace the woman he loved, or even to take her hand. For a time she retained her self-possession, but at last, yielding to the sharp strain upon her heart, she stopped short, and with a sob, threw her arms around his neck.
‘Ambrose, why are you so strange? Have we not sworn to be all in all to one another? Have I not said that your people shall be my people, your God my God? Do not speak as if there was any change. Whatever persecution you suffer I have a right to share.’
He seemed to shrink from her in terror, and tried to disengage himself from her embrace.
‘Don’t, my darling! I can’t bear it! I need all my strength, and you make me weak as a child. Allthatis over now. I have no right to love you.’
‘No right?’
‘None. I thought it might have been, but now I know it is impossible. And I am not worthy of you; I was never worthy.’
‘Ambrose! has your heart then changed?’ ‘It will never change. I shall love you till I die. But now you must see that all is different, that our love is without hope and without blessing. There, there; don’t weep!’ ‘You will always be the same to me,’ she cried. ‘Whatever happens, or has happened, nothing can part you and me, if your heart is still the same.’
‘You do not understand!’ he returned, and as he spoke he gently put her aside. ‘All must be as if we had never met. God help me, I am not so lost, so selfish, as to involve you in my ruin, or to preserve your love with a living lie. Have compassion on me! I will see you again, or better still, I will write to you—and then, you will understand.’
Before she could say another word to him he was gone. She stood alone on the dark road, not far from the lights of the lodge. She called after him, but he gave no answer, made no sign. Terror-stricken, appalled, and ashamed, she walked on homeward, and entering the house, passed up to her room, locked the door, and had her dark hour alone.
The next day Alma rose early after a sleepless night. She found awaiting her on the breakfast table a letter which had been brought by hand. She opened it and read as follows:
My Darling,—Yes, I shall call you so for the last time, though it means almost blasphemy. You would gather from my wild words last night that what has happened forever puts out of sight and hope my dream of making you my wife. You shall not share my degradation. You shall not bear the burthen of my unfortunate opinions as a clergyman, now that my social and religious plans and aims have fallen like a house of cards. It is not that I have ceased to regard you as the one human being that could make martyrdom happy for me, or existence endurable. As long as life lasts I shall know that its only consecration would have come from you, the best and noblest woman I have ever met, or can hope to meet. But the very ground has opened under my feet. Instead of being a free agent, as I believed, I am a slave, to whom love is a forbidden thing. Even to think of it (as I have done once or twice, God help me, in my horror and despair) is an outrage uponyou. I shall soon be far from here. I could not bear to dwell in the same place with one so dear, and to know that she was lost to me for ever. Grant me your forgiveness, and if you can, forget that I ever came to darken your life. My darling! my darling! I cry again for the last time from the depths of my broken heart, that God may bless you! For the little time that remains to me I shall have this one comfort—the memory of your goodness, and that you once loved me!
Ambrose Bradley.
Alma read this letter again and again in the solitude of her own chamber, and the more she read it the more utterly inscrutable it seemed.
That night Bradley sat alone in his study, a broken and despairing man. Before him on his desk lay a letter just written, in which he formally communicated to the Bishop his resignation of his living, and begged to be superseded as soon as possible. His eyes were red with weeping, his whole aspect was indescribably weary and forlorn. So lost was he in his own miserable thoughts, that he failed to notice a ring at the outer door, and a momentary whispering which followed the opening of the door. In another instant the chamber door opened, and a woman, cloaked and veiled, appeared upon the threshold.
‘Alma!’ he cried, recognising the figure in a moment, and rising to his feet in overmastering agitation.
Without a word she closed the door, and then, lifting her veil to show a face as white as marble, gazed at him with eyes of infinite sorrow and compassion. Meeting the gaze, and trembling before it, he sank again into his chair, and hid his face in his hands.
‘Yes, I have come!’ she said in a low voice; then, without another word, she crossed the room and laid her hand softly upon his shoulder.
Feeling the tender touch, he shivered and sobbed aloud.
‘O, why did you come?’ he cried. ‘You—you—have read my letter?’
‘Yes, Ambrose,’ she answered in the same low, far-away, despairing voice. ‘That is why I came—to comfort you if I could. Look up! speak to me! I can bear everything if I can only be still certain of your love.’
He uncovered his face, and gazed at her in astonishment.
‘What! can you forgive me?’
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ she replied mournfully. ‘Can you think that my esteem for you is so slight a thing, so light a straw, that even this cruel wind of evil fortune can blow it away? I know that you have been honourable in word and deed; I know that you are the noblest and the best of men. It is no fault of yours, dear, if God is so hard upon us; no, no,youare not to blame.’
‘But you do not understand! I am a broken man. I must leave this place, and——-’
‘Listen to me,’ she said, interrupting him with that air of gentle mastery which had ever exercised so great a spell upon him, and which gave to her passionate beauty a certain splendour of command. ‘Do you think you are quite just tomewhen you speak—as youhavespoken—of leaving Fensea, and bidding me an eternal farewell? Since this trouble in the church, you have acted as if I had no part and parcel in your life, save that which might come if we were merely married people; you have thought of me as of a woman to whom you were betrothed, not as of a loving friend whom you might trust till death. Do you think that my faith in you is so slight a thing that it cannot survive even the loss of you as a lover, if that must be? Do you not know that I am all yours, to the deepest fibre of my being, that your sorrow is my sorrow, your God my God—even as I said? I am your sister still, even if I am not to be your wife, and whither you go, be sure I shall follow.’
He listened to her in wonder; for in proportion as he was troubled, she was strangely calm, and her voice had a holy fervour before which he bent in reverent humiliation. When she ceased, with her soft hand still upon his shoulder, he raised his eyes to her, and they were dim with tears.
‘You are too good!’ he said. ‘I am the dust beneath your feet.’
‘You are my hero and my master. As Heloise was to Abelard, so would I be to you. So why should you grieve? I shall be to you as before, a loving friend, perhaps a comforter, till death separates us in this world, to meet in a better and a fairer.’
He took her hands in his own, and kissed them, his tears still falling.
‘Thank God you are so true! But how shall I look you in the face after what has happened? You must despise me so much—yes, yes, youmust!’
She would have answered him with fresh words of sweet assurance, but he continued passionately:
‘Think of the world, Alma! Think of your own future, your own happiness! Your life would be blighted, your love wasted, if you continued to care for me. Better to forget me! better to say farewell!’
‘Doyousay that, Ambrose?’ she replied; ‘youwho first taught me that love once born is imperishable, and that those He has once united—not through the body merely, but through a sacrament of souls—can never be sundered? Nay, you have still your work to do in the world, and I—shall I not help you still? You will not go away?’
‘I have written my resignation to the Bishop. I shall quit this place and the Church’s ministry for ever.’
‘Do not decide in haste,’ she said. ‘Isthisthe letter?’
And as she spoke she went to the desk and took the letter in her hand.
‘Yes.’
‘Let meburnthe letter.’
‘Alma!’
‘Give yourself another week to think it over, for my sake. All this has been so strange and so sudden that you have not had time to think it out. For my sake, reflect.’
She held the letter over the lamp and looked at him for his answer; he hung down his head in silence, and, taking the attitude for acquiescence, she suffered the paper to reach the flame, and in a few seconds it was consumed.
‘Good night!’ she said. ‘I must go now.’
‘Good night! and God bless you, Alma!’ They parted without one kiss or embrace, but, holding each other’s hands, they looked long and tenderly into each other’s faces. Then Alma went as she came, slipping quietly away into the night. But no sooner had she left the vicarage than all her self-command forsook her, and she wept hysterically under cover of the darkness.
‘Yes, his God is my God,’ she murmured to herself. ‘May He give me strength to bear this sorrow, and keep us together till the end!’