CHAPTER X
It now seemed that a new and different life had begun—one in which the sky was dark and cold and grey, and in which there was no beauty.
They had been very, very poor once before, but now they seemed even poorer, and life seemed a misery and an uncertain drag.
There was still Elinor and Maggie and Deborah at home besides Marion, and Jack, who had come home to study for a Civil Service examination, had not yet obtained an appointment, although he had passed.
He would probably have had to give it up but for the kindly help of a nobleman, the son of a duke, whose tenant the farmer had been, and he was thus enabled to obtain an appointment in the same town.
Elinor went away from home to keep house for an uncle, she being about this time nineteen.
Then set in those days of poverty and greyness and lovelessness which are so bitter to old and young hearts alike. But to Deborah, for the time, the feeling of utter emptiness and desolation deadened all others.
There was no one to come home for, no one to want to look nice for, no one to watch for at the window, no one to work hard at lessons for, no one, in fact, to do anything for.
They called it “home.” Perhaps in some ways it still was home, but where is the real spirit of home when father and mother have both gone?
There was little of light or warmth in this home now. It had dwindled down to four, two being children and two grown up.
And so things went on, without much love anywhere, chill and comfortless.
Besides the desolation caused by the sudden cutting of loved companionship there hung round the house the feeling which always follows on a tragedy.
It appeared as if in every room there hovered a silent, fleeting cloud of pain—none the less felt because it was not seen.
On the stairs, in the hall, in the sitting-rooms, in the shabby little bedroom, and in the kitchen one felt as if the dead face were still looking out, hopelessly, miserably, silently, and many a time, when Deborah passed through, the sharp aching pain she was getting to understand so well would rise full in her heart to think of him.
Her mind constantly dwelt on him; it was impossible to forget.
Nightly she dreamt about him, and it was always that he had come back again.
Each night for months the same dream would come, each time with some little change to give it more reality, and each morning she awoke to find it but a dream.
Each night and morning tears filled the place of prayers, since father was gone, and along with him everything worth living for, and the remembrance of his misery remained alone.
These terrible dreams went on for months—horrible, hateful things, like some refined torture, holding the brightness of hope for one minute only to supplant it the next by the blackness of despair.
Deborah always believed that he had really come, as sometimes he would take her hand and smile and say, “I have really come this time, it is now no dream at all,” and she would awake happy, only to get up miserable.
At last there came another quite different dream, one whose beauty and reality was like cool, healing balm to hot suffering.
She had been walking in a straggling village street, filled with small houses and everyday people. There had been no aim about this walk; she remembered stopping to talk to some persons by the way and looking in a little sweet-shop window at some large pink sweets marked four-a-penny.
In the midst of all this triviality there had come a dreamy, far-off voice which said, “Follow me on to the end—follow me to the end.” Thereupon, looking onwards, she saw at the end of the street a narrow gateway.
“I expect that’s the end,” she said idly, and walked on slowly, not thinking much about it. But when she came to the gate it led into a silent wood, and somehow the silence spoke so loudly that she was constrained to go in.
A path led onward—a narrow, ragged path shaded with heavy trees.
Onward she went, on, on, and ever as she went the path grew wilder, lonelier, and the great branching avenues and trees more grand.
It was a hard and weary road to tread, and at last her feet began to grow very tired from the rough stones and the long way she had come.
“Why am I going on?” she said. “The voice was so far away that I scarcely heard it; perhaps it was only a dream. Besides, whom am I following?” She walked on again. “I expect it’s father,” she said at last. “He’s the only thing worth following. If I could find him I should be happy.”
As this grew into a conviction she gained hope and courage and pressed onward. But still the great gnarled forest grew in silence and in grandeur, and ever the path grew harder to tread.
It seemed then as if she grew so very tired that one foot would scarcely move before the other, but still she went along, till at last in extreme weariness and pain she fell down under a large tree among a great heap of dying leaves.
Then through one of the big black avenues of trees had come the figure from the picture, the man on whom she had looked with such curious interest when the print was first hung.
It seemed as if from that point a good many roads branched off, all dark and rutted and gloomy.
He glanced down some of the paths and bent his brows as if to try to pierce the darkness, and presently his eyes lighted on Deborah lying there.
Now Deborah was very pleased to find this man. By some curious process which she did not understand he had long ago left the picture and passed, a real and substantial figure, into that other world of hers, so that in the midst of all this loneliness she quite felt she had found a friend.
Instead of that he only looked at her very thoughtfully and coldly, and with a rather unfriendly surprise, and turned away.
It was a very great blow to her, as naturally she could not realise that although she had always been looking at him he never before had looked at her.
Just as he was turning away he turned back again.
“Will you keep your father waiting?” he asked. But he said it as if it were an afterthought, and rather uncertainly.
After that he disappeared, but where she could not tell.
So there was nothing to do but to get up again and go on alone.
Presently the road seemed to grow worse still, and it seemed as if it would never end.
“Why am I coming?” she kept saying to herself. “No one told me I was coming for anything, and I’m beginning to think father can’t be here at all.”
And then in the darkest, weariest part the road bent suddenly to the right and there was father!
She was so pleased to see him that for the time she thought of nothing else.
But after a while she looked around, and there on one side she saw the forest, and behind him on the other a glorious, pure white light was streaming. What it was, or what its shape, she could not tell, but it was something like a cross, and then an altar.
And this meeting was full of happiness which had in it no pain.
Why, even as she stayed there he left her and went away to walk in the glorious garden beyond the light, but she scarcely felt the parting, and laughed and said, “Why, I’ve let father go;” and he answered,“No, I’m here. I walk here, whilst you walk in the shade.”
And she woke from her dream comforted and happier and lighter than she had ever been for months. But afterwards she thought about it very much.
“I wonder what that light was. I really wonder what it was. As soon as it shone on me I felt happy. I’ll go back into the forest again and find out.”
But she never went, neither did she dream of him again in any form.
“I want to go back again, I want to go,” she cried. “I want to find him and talk with him again, for I felt no pain when I awoke.”