Decorated HeadingCHAPTER X.CAUGHT.Decorated First Letter.A fewdays later, Nita was laid to her rest in the churchyard at Wellfield, beside the father who had loved her so well, hard by the paved footpath leading to the church-door. Many feet would daily pass beside her grave: lovers walked through the churchyard; the old people strolled there to sit on the bench by the porch at sunset; the feet of those who were full of life and business hastened constantly to and fro; for the gates were always open, and the churchyard path was a much-used thoroughfare.When it was all over, Avice put her hand through her brother’s arm, and turned to the two other persons who had come with them as mourners–John Leyburn and Father Somerville.‘I think we will go home alone, if you do not mind,’ she said, offering her hand first to one, and then to the other of them.Wellfield did not speak; his gaze was blank, and he scarcely knew or saw who was there, or what had passed.‘I will come this evening and ask after you,’ said John; ‘and you can see me if you choose.’With which, and with a mute inclination of the head to the others, he went away to his home. A new love, fresh and strong, had sprung up in his heart. But he had loved Nita well, too, with faithful, brotherly love, and his heart was heavy. Her going made a great blank space in his life.Somerville turned to Avice, and said in a low voice:‘If it gets too much for you, Miss Wellfield’–he glanced significantly at Jerome–‘send for me, and I will come instantly.’With which he, too, turned and left them.Slowly they walked from the churchyard, in at the Abbey gate, up the river walk, and towards the house.It was a soft, mild October noontide. The sun shone with mellow, tempered warmth; the hues were varied of the fading leaves and the autumn flowers; birds chirped here and there, and the river rushed, as the two figures, black, and, as it seemed, incongruous, paced slowly up the walk. As they entered the house, Avice said pleadingly:‘Jerome, won’t you go and see Nita’s baby? He is such a lovely child. I am sure it would make you less grieved.’‘No, no! not yet, at any rate.’‘Do you know, that when he was born we thought he would die? Father Somerville called to ask about you–he did not know you were away–just as they were about to send for the vicar to baptise him; and he offered to do it, so they let him, for fear it should be too late if they waited–for his poor little life seemed to hang by a thread.’‘Why do you saythey?’ asked her brother.‘Simply because to me it seemed absurd–as if it made any difference to the poor little darling whether he was baptised or not! Will you not go and see him, Jerome?’‘Perhaps–presently. SoSomervillebaptised him!’ he said dreamily; and then added:‘I am going upstairs to her sitting-room.’‘Don’t stay there too long, Jerome. It makes me so unhappy to think of you.’‘You must not mind me,’ was all he said, as he slowly took his way upstairs.Passing the rooms which had been set apart as nurseries, he heard achild’s feeble cry, and started, shuddered, and hastened his steps till he came to what had of late been Nita’s favourite room–a little boudoir opening from her bedroom. There was a dimness, subdued and faint. He stood on the threshold, looking round, and by degrees began to distinguish things more clearly. They had not drawn up the blinds here since Nita had last been in the room, the evening before she was taken ill. Everything was as she had left it. There was the couch on which she had spent so many weary hours, and the little table beside it, on which lay one or two books, and her writing-case, and a work-basket. Another book had fallen upon the floor, and something lay beside it, in which Jerome, looking intently, recognised Nita’s great dog, Speedwell, stretched upon the ground beside the couch, waiting, no doubt, for her return, and watching the book which had fallen; it was the book she had read in so much of late–her little ‘Imitation of Christ.’The old dog looked up, with a wistful expression, whined a little, and waved his tail to and fro, as Jerome looked at him. With an inarticulate sound, which ended in a heavy sob, the young man dropped upon one end of the couch, covering his face with one hand, while the other hung down, and the dog licked it, and sat up, and whined again, asking where she was.His anguish at this moment amounted to torture, as he realised how completely everything had come to an end. Here, as he sat alone, with his own miserable thoughts–here and in this moment his wages were paid to him; measure for measure–no more and no less; wages which could not be refused, could not be transferred, must be accepted and counted over, and tasted to the bitter end.Let the future hold what it might, this hour could never be wiped out.In his then state of mind, he could not see any future at all; he could see nothing but the past–could realise nothing except that he had played a dishonest game, and had lost; and that at every turn in his mental path he was confronted by an ‘if.’ ‘If I had done this!’ ‘If I had told her that!’He did not know how long he remained in Nita’s room, feeling the tokens of her recent presence on every side like whips of fire, but when he left the room and went out of the house, it was dusk, and he mechanically took his way towards a field-path by the river, along which one could wander for two or three miles uninterrupted by gate or stile, or barrier of any description. It was lonely and beautiful; it had been one of Nita’s favourite haunts.The path led sometimes through a kind of lane, with a high hedge on either side, and again through broad, level fields beside the river,towards Brentwood, with glorious views of hill and wood on every side.Between those hedges and through those fields Wellfield wandered as one distraught–not with any outward appearance of disorder, but with inwardly such an agony of remorse and self-reproach as was rapidly gaining the ascendency over his judgment and reason. Long fasting, and watching beside that cold mask which had been all that remained of Nita’s countenance, and upon whose placid features he had thought to detect a fixed and marble reproach, silent but terrible, and which haunted him ceaselessly–all this had combined to raise him into a wild, excited frame of mind, in which he was scarce master of his impulses or actions. As he watched, in the rapidly-gathering dusk, the deep and swiftly-running river, the desire presented itself again and again to quench therein this unabating torture of mind: each time the temptation came more insidiously, and the plausible excuse incessantlyrecurred, that he had proved himself unfit to manage his own affairs, and that those who were left behind would much better manage those of his child–his child whom he had not yet been able to look upon.It went so far that at last he stood beside the river, and looked and looked, until to his morbid perceptions it seemed to shape its murmurs into words that invited him to come. Deep down in his nature he was profoundly superstitious. There was an old record of a Wellfield who had been unhappy, and had destroyed himself in this very river. Jerome thought in his madness, ‘Well, wherever he is, I may go too, I suppose. There can be nothing in the future–on the other side, as bad as this.... I believe all I have gone through has been sent to show me that I have no right to remain here any longer ... besides, a life fora life! I have taken Nita’s, and...’He stood on the very edge of the stream towards which he had unconsciously drawn, and was looking down into it as it hurried past, with a vague, fascinated gaze. Would it ever have come to the point of throwing himself in? Probably not. Suicides are not such as he. His remorse doubtless was horrible. But if hehadtaken that cold plunge, it would have been, not from a sense that he was too unworthy a wretch to live, but because life was so intensely uncomfortable–tohim. Be that as it may, he stood on the brink, in a dreamy ecstasy–a luxury, as it were, of grief and self-reproach, interspersed with vague wonder why women would fall in love with him, when:‘You walk late beside the river, Wellfield,’ said Somerville’s voice, while at the same moment the priest laid his slender, fragile-looking, yet muscular fingers upon his arm.‘Ah!’ breathed Wellfield, with a kind of prolonged sigh; and then, looking up, he could see, even through the gathering darkness, the calm, clear, commanding eyes which were fixed upon his face. The stronger nature subdued him–subdued everything about him: his anguish of remorse; his poignant grief; his wild desire to bring his misery to an end in some way or other, but to put it to an end. He felt that Somerville had read his half-formed wish, nor did the latter hesitate to avow it.‘You had no good purpose in your mind?’ he said, composedly.For all answer, Wellfield gave a half-groan, and propped himself up against an ancient, gnarled crab-tree which overhung the stream. Then, after a pause, he said:‘I had no purpose at all, except to end my wretchedness. I tell you I cannot live through much more of this. Why did you come in my way?’‘Because another lot is appointed to you than to make an end of yourself in that river,’ was the reply; ‘and I–I recognise it distinctly–was sent to tell you of that different lot.’‘Then give me peace–give me ease from these torments that I am enduring,’ said Wellfield, fiercely, his sombre eyes, clouded over with his anguish, flashing suddenly. ‘You it was who first put the cursed idea into my head of marrying that girl; you told me then, when I hesitated, that if I belonged to you–you could make it all smooth and right for me. Make it right now–now that I have murdered her and got her money.’‘Yes, I will do so,’ was the rejoinder, in a tone of such perfect assurance, such calm conviction, that his hearer felt it strike something like conviction to his heart. ‘You are in a labyrinth, but I can guide you out of it, for I have the clue. Yield yourself only to my guidance. That is all I demand. And for me to guide you, I must knowall, unreservedly–every secret of your heart, every thought that distracts you. Then I can help you.’Who shall deny the healing virtue of confession now and then? The temptation to confess now was irresistible to Jerome; to Somerville it suddenly gave the power he so ardently desired; suddenly, and far more easily than he had expected. It was not the first case, by many, of remorse gone mad, which he had had to deal with. A dullard, an unsympathetic nature might have driven the patient to worse lengths. Somerville was neither the one nor the other, and by this time he thoroughly understood the nature he had to deal with–the hot southern impetuousness which raged and rebelled under misfortune, which met grief as a hated foe, to be wrestled with–not as a fact inseparable from life itself, to be accepted; the half-hysterical remorse, the stinging, intolerable sense of humiliation and degradation whichso tortured the man who loved to see things smooth, and to find circumstances bland. Somerville’s hand was at once light and firm. Walking with Wellfield to the Abbey, he heard out the whole miserable story; the confession of all that had happened from the time Jerome had left Wellfield for Frankfort, up to this very day, when he had gone into Nita’s room and found her old dog watching beside her couch.It was an opportunity which the priest did not fail to turn in a masterly manner to the very best advantage. Already he saw the Abbey and its wealth once more in the hands of firm adherents of the Roman Catholic Church–of the Society of Jesus. Had not the child been, by his own hand, baptised into that Church? He distracted Jerome’s mind from its purely emotional pain, by reminding him that Nita and her father had left things behind them–the one land and money, the other a life–for the disposal of which things he alone was now answerable.He found Wellfield only too ready to own that he wanted guidance, only too eager to clasp the first helping hand extended to him. Somerville remained all night at the Abbey, with every hour binding his silken chain more firmly and more intricately around his–penitent. He sent word to the Superior at Brentwood on what mission he was engaged, and during the long vigil he kept with the broken man, he succeeded in the most vital part of the work which he had set himself. He convinced Wellfield that he was indispensable to his peace of mind, and he promised not to desert him.In the morning, before leaving for Brentwood, after promising that he would return again, Somerville, passing through the drawing-room, found Avice standing there, with the motherless baby in her arms. She held it tenderly, with a motherly, protecting gesture, and looked down withlove and pity into its face. He paused, smiling, and said:‘I have forgotten to ask how your charge goes on, Miss Wellfield?’‘Both nurse and the doctor say he is going to thrive, father. Look into his dear little face–he looks rosy and healthy. Poor little darling, how I love him! and how I wish Jerome would take to him!’‘I will do what I can to persuade him when I call again. At present he is utterly worn out with grief and watching.’‘Yes,’ said Avice, tears dimming her violet eyes. ‘Do you know, I did not think Jerome cared so much for my sister as it seems he does. I have done him an injustice.’‘One naturally cares more or less for the person who is of most importance to one,’ replied Somerville, with a sweet and polished smile. He looked again at the child, whose dark eyes dwelt unconsciously and with the vague, meaningless gaze of infancy upon hisface, and bending over it, he blessed it, slow and solemnly. ‘Since I baptised him, I may do that?’ he said.‘Surely!’ replied Avice; and added, with a musing look, ‘Oh, if Nita could have but lived to see him like this, I think mere love would have given her courage to fight her way back to life again, and she would have struggled through.’‘It may be so,’ replied Somerville, wishing her good-morning, and wondering within himself, as he went away, how long it would be–whether he should be still living, and still teaching, when that baby should be a student at Brentwood. ‘For that he will be,’ he said within himself. ‘What strides I have made in this affair! and how truly providential that the mother died at that precise time! Had she lived, we should never have had the child ... and if he marries again, we must see that the woman is a Catholic.’
Decorated HeadingCHAPTER X.CAUGHT.Decorated First Letter.A fewdays later, Nita was laid to her rest in the churchyard at Wellfield, beside the father who had loved her so well, hard by the paved footpath leading to the church-door. Many feet would daily pass beside her grave: lovers walked through the churchyard; the old people strolled there to sit on the bench by the porch at sunset; the feet of those who were full of life and business hastened constantly to and fro; for the gates were always open, and the churchyard path was a much-used thoroughfare.When it was all over, Avice put her hand through her brother’s arm, and turned to the two other persons who had come with them as mourners–John Leyburn and Father Somerville.‘I think we will go home alone, if you do not mind,’ she said, offering her hand first to one, and then to the other of them.Wellfield did not speak; his gaze was blank, and he scarcely knew or saw who was there, or what had passed.‘I will come this evening and ask after you,’ said John; ‘and you can see me if you choose.’With which, and with a mute inclination of the head to the others, he went away to his home. A new love, fresh and strong, had sprung up in his heart. But he had loved Nita well, too, with faithful, brotherly love, and his heart was heavy. Her going made a great blank space in his life.Somerville turned to Avice, and said in a low voice:‘If it gets too much for you, Miss Wellfield’–he glanced significantly at Jerome–‘send for me, and I will come instantly.’With which he, too, turned and left them.Slowly they walked from the churchyard, in at the Abbey gate, up the river walk, and towards the house.It was a soft, mild October noontide. The sun shone with mellow, tempered warmth; the hues were varied of the fading leaves and the autumn flowers; birds chirped here and there, and the river rushed, as the two figures, black, and, as it seemed, incongruous, paced slowly up the walk. As they entered the house, Avice said pleadingly:‘Jerome, won’t you go and see Nita’s baby? He is such a lovely child. I am sure it would make you less grieved.’‘No, no! not yet, at any rate.’‘Do you know, that when he was born we thought he would die? Father Somerville called to ask about you–he did not know you were away–just as they were about to send for the vicar to baptise him; and he offered to do it, so they let him, for fear it should be too late if they waited–for his poor little life seemed to hang by a thread.’‘Why do you saythey?’ asked her brother.‘Simply because to me it seemed absurd–as if it made any difference to the poor little darling whether he was baptised or not! Will you not go and see him, Jerome?’‘Perhaps–presently. SoSomervillebaptised him!’ he said dreamily; and then added:‘I am going upstairs to her sitting-room.’‘Don’t stay there too long, Jerome. It makes me so unhappy to think of you.’‘You must not mind me,’ was all he said, as he slowly took his way upstairs.Passing the rooms which had been set apart as nurseries, he heard achild’s feeble cry, and started, shuddered, and hastened his steps till he came to what had of late been Nita’s favourite room–a little boudoir opening from her bedroom. There was a dimness, subdued and faint. He stood on the threshold, looking round, and by degrees began to distinguish things more clearly. They had not drawn up the blinds here since Nita had last been in the room, the evening before she was taken ill. Everything was as she had left it. There was the couch on which she had spent so many weary hours, and the little table beside it, on which lay one or two books, and her writing-case, and a work-basket. Another book had fallen upon the floor, and something lay beside it, in which Jerome, looking intently, recognised Nita’s great dog, Speedwell, stretched upon the ground beside the couch, waiting, no doubt, for her return, and watching the book which had fallen; it was the book she had read in so much of late–her little ‘Imitation of Christ.’The old dog looked up, with a wistful expression, whined a little, and waved his tail to and fro, as Jerome looked at him. With an inarticulate sound, which ended in a heavy sob, the young man dropped upon one end of the couch, covering his face with one hand, while the other hung down, and the dog licked it, and sat up, and whined again, asking where she was.His anguish at this moment amounted to torture, as he realised how completely everything had come to an end. Here, as he sat alone, with his own miserable thoughts–here and in this moment his wages were paid to him; measure for measure–no more and no less; wages which could not be refused, could not be transferred, must be accepted and counted over, and tasted to the bitter end.Let the future hold what it might, this hour could never be wiped out.In his then state of mind, he could not see any future at all; he could see nothing but the past–could realise nothing except that he had played a dishonest game, and had lost; and that at every turn in his mental path he was confronted by an ‘if.’ ‘If I had done this!’ ‘If I had told her that!’He did not know how long he remained in Nita’s room, feeling the tokens of her recent presence on every side like whips of fire, but when he left the room and went out of the house, it was dusk, and he mechanically took his way towards a field-path by the river, along which one could wander for two or three miles uninterrupted by gate or stile, or barrier of any description. It was lonely and beautiful; it had been one of Nita’s favourite haunts.The path led sometimes through a kind of lane, with a high hedge on either side, and again through broad, level fields beside the river,towards Brentwood, with glorious views of hill and wood on every side.Between those hedges and through those fields Wellfield wandered as one distraught–not with any outward appearance of disorder, but with inwardly such an agony of remorse and self-reproach as was rapidly gaining the ascendency over his judgment and reason. Long fasting, and watching beside that cold mask which had been all that remained of Nita’s countenance, and upon whose placid features he had thought to detect a fixed and marble reproach, silent but terrible, and which haunted him ceaselessly–all this had combined to raise him into a wild, excited frame of mind, in which he was scarce master of his impulses or actions. As he watched, in the rapidly-gathering dusk, the deep and swiftly-running river, the desire presented itself again and again to quench therein this unabating torture of mind: each time the temptation came more insidiously, and the plausible excuse incessantlyrecurred, that he had proved himself unfit to manage his own affairs, and that those who were left behind would much better manage those of his child–his child whom he had not yet been able to look upon.It went so far that at last he stood beside the river, and looked and looked, until to his morbid perceptions it seemed to shape its murmurs into words that invited him to come. Deep down in his nature he was profoundly superstitious. There was an old record of a Wellfield who had been unhappy, and had destroyed himself in this very river. Jerome thought in his madness, ‘Well, wherever he is, I may go too, I suppose. There can be nothing in the future–on the other side, as bad as this.... I believe all I have gone through has been sent to show me that I have no right to remain here any longer ... besides, a life fora life! I have taken Nita’s, and...’He stood on the very edge of the stream towards which he had unconsciously drawn, and was looking down into it as it hurried past, with a vague, fascinated gaze. Would it ever have come to the point of throwing himself in? Probably not. Suicides are not such as he. His remorse doubtless was horrible. But if hehadtaken that cold plunge, it would have been, not from a sense that he was too unworthy a wretch to live, but because life was so intensely uncomfortable–tohim. Be that as it may, he stood on the brink, in a dreamy ecstasy–a luxury, as it were, of grief and self-reproach, interspersed with vague wonder why women would fall in love with him, when:‘You walk late beside the river, Wellfield,’ said Somerville’s voice, while at the same moment the priest laid his slender, fragile-looking, yet muscular fingers upon his arm.‘Ah!’ breathed Wellfield, with a kind of prolonged sigh; and then, looking up, he could see, even through the gathering darkness, the calm, clear, commanding eyes which were fixed upon his face. The stronger nature subdued him–subdued everything about him: his anguish of remorse; his poignant grief; his wild desire to bring his misery to an end in some way or other, but to put it to an end. He felt that Somerville had read his half-formed wish, nor did the latter hesitate to avow it.‘You had no good purpose in your mind?’ he said, composedly.For all answer, Wellfield gave a half-groan, and propped himself up against an ancient, gnarled crab-tree which overhung the stream. Then, after a pause, he said:‘I had no purpose at all, except to end my wretchedness. I tell you I cannot live through much more of this. Why did you come in my way?’‘Because another lot is appointed to you than to make an end of yourself in that river,’ was the reply; ‘and I–I recognise it distinctly–was sent to tell you of that different lot.’‘Then give me peace–give me ease from these torments that I am enduring,’ said Wellfield, fiercely, his sombre eyes, clouded over with his anguish, flashing suddenly. ‘You it was who first put the cursed idea into my head of marrying that girl; you told me then, when I hesitated, that if I belonged to you–you could make it all smooth and right for me. Make it right now–now that I have murdered her and got her money.’‘Yes, I will do so,’ was the rejoinder, in a tone of such perfect assurance, such calm conviction, that his hearer felt it strike something like conviction to his heart. ‘You are in a labyrinth, but I can guide you out of it, for I have the clue. Yield yourself only to my guidance. That is all I demand. And for me to guide you, I must knowall, unreservedly–every secret of your heart, every thought that distracts you. Then I can help you.’Who shall deny the healing virtue of confession now and then? The temptation to confess now was irresistible to Jerome; to Somerville it suddenly gave the power he so ardently desired; suddenly, and far more easily than he had expected. It was not the first case, by many, of remorse gone mad, which he had had to deal with. A dullard, an unsympathetic nature might have driven the patient to worse lengths. Somerville was neither the one nor the other, and by this time he thoroughly understood the nature he had to deal with–the hot southern impetuousness which raged and rebelled under misfortune, which met grief as a hated foe, to be wrestled with–not as a fact inseparable from life itself, to be accepted; the half-hysterical remorse, the stinging, intolerable sense of humiliation and degradation whichso tortured the man who loved to see things smooth, and to find circumstances bland. Somerville’s hand was at once light and firm. Walking with Wellfield to the Abbey, he heard out the whole miserable story; the confession of all that had happened from the time Jerome had left Wellfield for Frankfort, up to this very day, when he had gone into Nita’s room and found her old dog watching beside her couch.It was an opportunity which the priest did not fail to turn in a masterly manner to the very best advantage. Already he saw the Abbey and its wealth once more in the hands of firm adherents of the Roman Catholic Church–of the Society of Jesus. Had not the child been, by his own hand, baptised into that Church? He distracted Jerome’s mind from its purely emotional pain, by reminding him that Nita and her father had left things behind them–the one land and money, the other a life–for the disposal of which things he alone was now answerable.He found Wellfield only too ready to own that he wanted guidance, only too eager to clasp the first helping hand extended to him. Somerville remained all night at the Abbey, with every hour binding his silken chain more firmly and more intricately around his–penitent. He sent word to the Superior at Brentwood on what mission he was engaged, and during the long vigil he kept with the broken man, he succeeded in the most vital part of the work which he had set himself. He convinced Wellfield that he was indispensable to his peace of mind, and he promised not to desert him.In the morning, before leaving for Brentwood, after promising that he would return again, Somerville, passing through the drawing-room, found Avice standing there, with the motherless baby in her arms. She held it tenderly, with a motherly, protecting gesture, and looked down withlove and pity into its face. He paused, smiling, and said:‘I have forgotten to ask how your charge goes on, Miss Wellfield?’‘Both nurse and the doctor say he is going to thrive, father. Look into his dear little face–he looks rosy and healthy. Poor little darling, how I love him! and how I wish Jerome would take to him!’‘I will do what I can to persuade him when I call again. At present he is utterly worn out with grief and watching.’‘Yes,’ said Avice, tears dimming her violet eyes. ‘Do you know, I did not think Jerome cared so much for my sister as it seems he does. I have done him an injustice.’‘One naturally cares more or less for the person who is of most importance to one,’ replied Somerville, with a sweet and polished smile. He looked again at the child, whose dark eyes dwelt unconsciously and with the vague, meaningless gaze of infancy upon hisface, and bending over it, he blessed it, slow and solemnly. ‘Since I baptised him, I may do that?’ he said.‘Surely!’ replied Avice; and added, with a musing look, ‘Oh, if Nita could have but lived to see him like this, I think mere love would have given her courage to fight her way back to life again, and she would have struggled through.’‘It may be so,’ replied Somerville, wishing her good-morning, and wondering within himself, as he went away, how long it would be–whether he should be still living, and still teaching, when that baby should be a student at Brentwood. ‘For that he will be,’ he said within himself. ‘What strides I have made in this affair! and how truly providential that the mother died at that precise time! Had she lived, we should never have had the child ... and if he marries again, we must see that the woman is a Catholic.’
Decorated Heading
Decorated First Letter.
A fewdays later, Nita was laid to her rest in the churchyard at Wellfield, beside the father who had loved her so well, hard by the paved footpath leading to the church-door. Many feet would daily pass beside her grave: lovers walked through the churchyard; the old people strolled there to sit on the bench by the porch at sunset; the feet of those who were full of life and business hastened constantly to and fro; for the gates were always open, and the churchyard path was a much-used thoroughfare.
When it was all over, Avice put her hand through her brother’s arm, and turned to the two other persons who had come with them as mourners–John Leyburn and Father Somerville.
‘I think we will go home alone, if you do not mind,’ she said, offering her hand first to one, and then to the other of them.
Wellfield did not speak; his gaze was blank, and he scarcely knew or saw who was there, or what had passed.
‘I will come this evening and ask after you,’ said John; ‘and you can see me if you choose.’
With which, and with a mute inclination of the head to the others, he went away to his home. A new love, fresh and strong, had sprung up in his heart. But he had loved Nita well, too, with faithful, brotherly love, and his heart was heavy. Her going made a great blank space in his life.
Somerville turned to Avice, and said in a low voice:
‘If it gets too much for you, Miss Wellfield’–he glanced significantly at Jerome–‘send for me, and I will come instantly.’
With which he, too, turned and left them.
Slowly they walked from the churchyard, in at the Abbey gate, up the river walk, and towards the house.
It was a soft, mild October noontide. The sun shone with mellow, tempered warmth; the hues were varied of the fading leaves and the autumn flowers; birds chirped here and there, and the river rushed, as the two figures, black, and, as it seemed, incongruous, paced slowly up the walk. As they entered the house, Avice said pleadingly:
‘Jerome, won’t you go and see Nita’s baby? He is such a lovely child. I am sure it would make you less grieved.’
‘No, no! not yet, at any rate.’
‘Do you know, that when he was born we thought he would die? Father Somerville called to ask about you–he did not know you were away–just as they were about to send for the vicar to baptise him; and he offered to do it, so they let him, for fear it should be too late if they waited–for his poor little life seemed to hang by a thread.’
‘Why do you saythey?’ asked her brother.
‘Simply because to me it seemed absurd–as if it made any difference to the poor little darling whether he was baptised or not! Will you not go and see him, Jerome?’
‘Perhaps–presently. SoSomervillebaptised him!’ he said dreamily; and then added:
‘I am going upstairs to her sitting-room.’
‘Don’t stay there too long, Jerome. It makes me so unhappy to think of you.’
‘You must not mind me,’ was all he said, as he slowly took his way upstairs.
Passing the rooms which had been set apart as nurseries, he heard achild’s feeble cry, and started, shuddered, and hastened his steps till he came to what had of late been Nita’s favourite room–a little boudoir opening from her bedroom. There was a dimness, subdued and faint. He stood on the threshold, looking round, and by degrees began to distinguish things more clearly. They had not drawn up the blinds here since Nita had last been in the room, the evening before she was taken ill. Everything was as she had left it. There was the couch on which she had spent so many weary hours, and the little table beside it, on which lay one or two books, and her writing-case, and a work-basket. Another book had fallen upon the floor, and something lay beside it, in which Jerome, looking intently, recognised Nita’s great dog, Speedwell, stretched upon the ground beside the couch, waiting, no doubt, for her return, and watching the book which had fallen; it was the book she had read in so much of late–her little ‘Imitation of Christ.’
The old dog looked up, with a wistful expression, whined a little, and waved his tail to and fro, as Jerome looked at him. With an inarticulate sound, which ended in a heavy sob, the young man dropped upon one end of the couch, covering his face with one hand, while the other hung down, and the dog licked it, and sat up, and whined again, asking where she was.
His anguish at this moment amounted to torture, as he realised how completely everything had come to an end. Here, as he sat alone, with his own miserable thoughts–here and in this moment his wages were paid to him; measure for measure–no more and no less; wages which could not be refused, could not be transferred, must be accepted and counted over, and tasted to the bitter end.
Let the future hold what it might, this hour could never be wiped out.In his then state of mind, he could not see any future at all; he could see nothing but the past–could realise nothing except that he had played a dishonest game, and had lost; and that at every turn in his mental path he was confronted by an ‘if.’ ‘If I had done this!’ ‘If I had told her that!’
He did not know how long he remained in Nita’s room, feeling the tokens of her recent presence on every side like whips of fire, but when he left the room and went out of the house, it was dusk, and he mechanically took his way towards a field-path by the river, along which one could wander for two or three miles uninterrupted by gate or stile, or barrier of any description. It was lonely and beautiful; it had been one of Nita’s favourite haunts.
The path led sometimes through a kind of lane, with a high hedge on either side, and again through broad, level fields beside the river,towards Brentwood, with glorious views of hill and wood on every side.
Between those hedges and through those fields Wellfield wandered as one distraught–not with any outward appearance of disorder, but with inwardly such an agony of remorse and self-reproach as was rapidly gaining the ascendency over his judgment and reason. Long fasting, and watching beside that cold mask which had been all that remained of Nita’s countenance, and upon whose placid features he had thought to detect a fixed and marble reproach, silent but terrible, and which haunted him ceaselessly–all this had combined to raise him into a wild, excited frame of mind, in which he was scarce master of his impulses or actions. As he watched, in the rapidly-gathering dusk, the deep and swiftly-running river, the desire presented itself again and again to quench therein this unabating torture of mind: each time the temptation came more insidiously, and the plausible excuse incessantlyrecurred, that he had proved himself unfit to manage his own affairs, and that those who were left behind would much better manage those of his child–his child whom he had not yet been able to look upon.
It went so far that at last he stood beside the river, and looked and looked, until to his morbid perceptions it seemed to shape its murmurs into words that invited him to come. Deep down in his nature he was profoundly superstitious. There was an old record of a Wellfield who had been unhappy, and had destroyed himself in this very river. Jerome thought in his madness, ‘Well, wherever he is, I may go too, I suppose. There can be nothing in the future–on the other side, as bad as this.... I believe all I have gone through has been sent to show me that I have no right to remain here any longer ... besides, a life fora life! I have taken Nita’s, and...’
He stood on the very edge of the stream towards which he had unconsciously drawn, and was looking down into it as it hurried past, with a vague, fascinated gaze. Would it ever have come to the point of throwing himself in? Probably not. Suicides are not such as he. His remorse doubtless was horrible. But if hehadtaken that cold plunge, it would have been, not from a sense that he was too unworthy a wretch to live, but because life was so intensely uncomfortable–tohim. Be that as it may, he stood on the brink, in a dreamy ecstasy–a luxury, as it were, of grief and self-reproach, interspersed with vague wonder why women would fall in love with him, when:
‘You walk late beside the river, Wellfield,’ said Somerville’s voice, while at the same moment the priest laid his slender, fragile-looking, yet muscular fingers upon his arm.
‘Ah!’ breathed Wellfield, with a kind of prolonged sigh; and then, looking up, he could see, even through the gathering darkness, the calm, clear, commanding eyes which were fixed upon his face. The stronger nature subdued him–subdued everything about him: his anguish of remorse; his poignant grief; his wild desire to bring his misery to an end in some way or other, but to put it to an end. He felt that Somerville had read his half-formed wish, nor did the latter hesitate to avow it.
‘You had no good purpose in your mind?’ he said, composedly.
For all answer, Wellfield gave a half-groan, and propped himself up against an ancient, gnarled crab-tree which overhung the stream. Then, after a pause, he said:
‘I had no purpose at all, except to end my wretchedness. I tell you I cannot live through much more of this. Why did you come in my way?’
‘Because another lot is appointed to you than to make an end of yourself in that river,’ was the reply; ‘and I–I recognise it distinctly–was sent to tell you of that different lot.’
‘Then give me peace–give me ease from these torments that I am enduring,’ said Wellfield, fiercely, his sombre eyes, clouded over with his anguish, flashing suddenly. ‘You it was who first put the cursed idea into my head of marrying that girl; you told me then, when I hesitated, that if I belonged to you–you could make it all smooth and right for me. Make it right now–now that I have murdered her and got her money.’
‘Yes, I will do so,’ was the rejoinder, in a tone of such perfect assurance, such calm conviction, that his hearer felt it strike something like conviction to his heart. ‘You are in a labyrinth, but I can guide you out of it, for I have the clue. Yield yourself only to my guidance. That is all I demand. And for me to guide you, I must knowall, unreservedly–every secret of your heart, every thought that distracts you. Then I can help you.’
Who shall deny the healing virtue of confession now and then? The temptation to confess now was irresistible to Jerome; to Somerville it suddenly gave the power he so ardently desired; suddenly, and far more easily than he had expected. It was not the first case, by many, of remorse gone mad, which he had had to deal with. A dullard, an unsympathetic nature might have driven the patient to worse lengths. Somerville was neither the one nor the other, and by this time he thoroughly understood the nature he had to deal with–the hot southern impetuousness which raged and rebelled under misfortune, which met grief as a hated foe, to be wrestled with–not as a fact inseparable from life itself, to be accepted; the half-hysterical remorse, the stinging, intolerable sense of humiliation and degradation whichso tortured the man who loved to see things smooth, and to find circumstances bland. Somerville’s hand was at once light and firm. Walking with Wellfield to the Abbey, he heard out the whole miserable story; the confession of all that had happened from the time Jerome had left Wellfield for Frankfort, up to this very day, when he had gone into Nita’s room and found her old dog watching beside her couch.
It was an opportunity which the priest did not fail to turn in a masterly manner to the very best advantage. Already he saw the Abbey and its wealth once more in the hands of firm adherents of the Roman Catholic Church–of the Society of Jesus. Had not the child been, by his own hand, baptised into that Church? He distracted Jerome’s mind from its purely emotional pain, by reminding him that Nita and her father had left things behind them–the one land and money, the other a life–for the disposal of which things he alone was now answerable.
He found Wellfield only too ready to own that he wanted guidance, only too eager to clasp the first helping hand extended to him. Somerville remained all night at the Abbey, with every hour binding his silken chain more firmly and more intricately around his–penitent. He sent word to the Superior at Brentwood on what mission he was engaged, and during the long vigil he kept with the broken man, he succeeded in the most vital part of the work which he had set himself. He convinced Wellfield that he was indispensable to his peace of mind, and he promised not to desert him.
In the morning, before leaving for Brentwood, after promising that he would return again, Somerville, passing through the drawing-room, found Avice standing there, with the motherless baby in her arms. She held it tenderly, with a motherly, protecting gesture, and looked down withlove and pity into its face. He paused, smiling, and said:
‘I have forgotten to ask how your charge goes on, Miss Wellfield?’
‘Both nurse and the doctor say he is going to thrive, father. Look into his dear little face–he looks rosy and healthy. Poor little darling, how I love him! and how I wish Jerome would take to him!’
‘I will do what I can to persuade him when I call again. At present he is utterly worn out with grief and watching.’
‘Yes,’ said Avice, tears dimming her violet eyes. ‘Do you know, I did not think Jerome cared so much for my sister as it seems he does. I have done him an injustice.’
‘One naturally cares more or less for the person who is of most importance to one,’ replied Somerville, with a sweet and polished smile. He looked again at the child, whose dark eyes dwelt unconsciously and with the vague, meaningless gaze of infancy upon hisface, and bending over it, he blessed it, slow and solemnly. ‘Since I baptised him, I may do that?’ he said.
‘Surely!’ replied Avice; and added, with a musing look, ‘Oh, if Nita could have but lived to see him like this, I think mere love would have given her courage to fight her way back to life again, and she would have struggled through.’
‘It may be so,’ replied Somerville, wishing her good-morning, and wondering within himself, as he went away, how long it would be–whether he should be still living, and still teaching, when that baby should be a student at Brentwood. ‘For that he will be,’ he said within himself. ‘What strides I have made in this affair! and how truly providential that the mother died at that precise time! Had she lived, we should never have had the child ... and if he marries again, we must see that the woman is a Catholic.’