CHAPTER XXXVII.
Time goes by. Since Joshua, God-bidden, commanded sun and moon to standstill, who has been able to stop it?
Gerard still remains at Blessington--remains, despite the six-o'clockdinners; despite the inarticulate and inharmonious mumblings withwhich old Blessington takes away the appetites of such as feast withhim; despite the utter failure of his endeavours to draw from the mindof his betrothed any ideas but such as _Le Follet_ and _Le Journaldes Demoiselles_ had just put into it. Latterly he has abandoned theattempt, has taken to reading the _Times_, _Field_, anything in theevening, instead; has even, in his despair--modern works of fictionbeing, as I have before observed, unknown at Blessington--waded throughtwo chapters and a half of "Pamela," which Esther had inadvertentlyleft on the table. Sometimes, to his own surprise, he catches himselfwishing that his wedding-day were over. "When we are married, we neednever speak to one another," he reflects. "Thank God, we shall not beso poor as to be obliged to keep together from economy; a dinner ofherbs and hatred, or, worse still, indifference therewith, _would_be hard to digest; she may go her way, and I mine. I will get up agreat stock of beads, and looking-glasses, and red calico, and make anexpedition to Central Africa; learn some euphonious African tongue, allmade up of Ms and Ns; and carefully abstain from engaging in argumentsupon the immortality of the soul with intelligent natives."
Now and again conscience's voice thunders at him in the recesses of hissoul: "You are paltering with temptation. Arise!--flee!--begone!" Buthe, strong in the innocence of his acts and words, replies doughtily:"Temptation is there none for me here. The occupations of my life aresuch as they would be at home; I am struggling to know and like betterher with whom my life is to be passed. As to that other woman, I seeher rarely, speak to her never, look at her as seldom as it is possibleto me."
And, in the meantime, that other woman droops like an unwatered flower,day by day. When the mainspring of a watch is broken, must it not stop?If hope, the mainspring of life, be broken, must not life stop--not allat once, as the watch does, but by gentle yet sure degrees? A slow fireburns in the child's veins; before this man had come, she had peace--asad stagnant peace, indeed, but still peace. _Now_ she lives in a stateof perpetual concealed excitement. True, they meet but rarely, speak toeach other never; but the same roof covers them both. From her outlookin the China Gallery, she can watch his going forth in the morning,his coming back at evening. At breakfast and dinner he sits oppositeto her; she can study his face, with stealthy care, lest she may beobserved, while he drives heavily through slow trite talk with her thatfills the place in his life that, for a golden day, from one sundownto another, was Esther's. Sometimes they meet upon the stairs; herblack dress lightly touches him, as they pass one another dumbly. Atnight she lies awake, waiting to catch the sound of his footfall in thegallery past her door; has to wait long hours often; for he, unknowingthat any one takes note of his vigils, sits in the smoking-room farinto the small hours, puffing out of his well-coloured meerschaumgreat volumes of smoke--wishing, not seldom, I think, that he couldpuff away Constance, his beloved, into smoke volumes and thin air.
Fed by no kindly words, nourished only upon neglect and cold looks,Esther's love for Gerard yet strikes out great roots downwards--shootsforth strong branches upwards. A tree of far statelier growth it standsthan in the days when the soft gales and gentle streams of answeringlove fanned and watered it. Who cares for what they can have? Whocries for the moon? It is the intermediate something--the somethingthat lies just a handbreadth beyond the utmost stretch of our mostpainfully-strained arms, that we eat out our hearts in longing for.
Esther never goes beyond the park palings now, deterred by the fear ofbeing waylaid by Linley. She need not have been alarmed. As long as shecame naturally in his way, he was delighted to see her: as we stoop andpick gladly the fruit that drops off the tree at our feet. He had even,on a day when the frost forbade hunting, and when he had got tired ofskating, taken the unwonted trouble of riding over to Blessington, towarm himself at the fire of those great black eyes, that have stillfor him the charm of novelty upon them; but women, many and fair, cametoo readily to his hand to make him very keen in the chase of any oneindividual woman. In former generations men used to be the pursuers,women the pursued. In this generation we, who have set right mostthings, have set right this also. _Now_, the hares pursue the harriers,the foxes the hounds, and the doves swoop upon the falcons.
During these latter evenings Mr Blessington has been very alert andwakeful--has insisted on being read to from tea to bed-time--a liberalhour. But, however hoarse and voiceless the young reader may be, Gerardnever now comes to the rescue, never interferes, though the frequentteasing cough of the "damnable flirt" goes through his heart like asword. With steady certainty, through frost and thaw, rain and shine,through all the alternations of an English winter, the young girl'shealth declines. To all but herself is this fact evident, and she,unaccustomed to illness--never having seen the signs of premature decayin others--thinks it is but a little weariness, a little languor, anothing. It will pass when the swooned world revives into spring andthe buttercups come.
Sunday is here again, the initial letter in the week's alphabet:
"The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on Time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King."
Ah me! the languid, yawning Sundays of most of us will make but sorrybracelets for any one, methinks. Sunday--the day on which the Shelfordshopboys and shopgirls walk about gloriously apparelled, arm-in-arm,man and maid, filling their lungs with country air,--day on which thegentlefolks, such as are men of them, debarred from horse and hound andcue, smoke a cigar or two more than usual over the instructive pages ofMessieurs De Kock, Sue, Balzac, etc.; while such as are women, being forthe most part piously disposed, hold Goulburn's "Thoughts on PersonalReligion," or Hannay's "Last Day of Our Lord's Passion," open on theirvelvet laps, and kill a reputation between each paragraph.
On this especial Sunday Esther has risen, feeling feebler, morenerveless than usual. Something in the influence of the weather--soft,sodden, sunless--weighs upon her with untold oppression. She would fainnot go to church, remain at home, and lie on her bed; but this cannotbe. Foremost in importance, in indispensability, among her dutiesare these Sunday ones. If the weather be tolerable, Mr. Blessingtonis always scrupulously punctual in attending Divine worship. Leaningon his valet's arm, he totters up the church, in his old tail-coat,tightly buttoned over his sunken chest, and, arrived at the Blessingtonpew, is deposited in a little nook thereof, partitioned (in some quirkof his, while he could yet see) from the rest. In this nook there isroom for two people--to wit, for Mr. Blessington, and for the happyperson who is to guide his devotions. And to conduct Mr. Blessington'sprayers and praises is, I assure you, no sinecure. Almost entirelydeaf, almost entirely blind, he is yet resolute to take a part inthe services by no means less prominent than the clerk's. It is,therefore, his attendant's duty to shout the responses in his ear, inorder to give him some clue to the portion of the ritual which hasbeen arrived at and to check him with elbowings and nudgings, whenhis aberrations from the right path become so flagrantly noticeableas to distract the attention of the other worshippers. But too often,however, the attempts at repression on the part of the acolyte are somuch labour lost. In the region of darkness and silence in which hisinfirmities have placed him, the old man frequently becomes impatientof the slow progress of the service as notified to him by the roarsof his companion. Not seldom he proclaims, in a voice distinctlyaudible throughout the building, the point at which, according tohis reckoning, priest and people should have arrived. "And with thyspirit," cries the squire, with unction in his deep, tremulous bass,while the sleek young rector's gentle "The Lord be with you" does notfollow till five minutes later. In the Creed there is but one courseto pursue: to start him, if possible, fair--happy, indeed, if he doesnot insist on turning to the altar somewhere towards the close ofthe second lesson or
beginning of the Jubilate,--to start him fair,I say, and then in despair, give him his head. Fervently, loudly,rapidly, he announces his belief in the articles of the Christianfaith, while parson, clerk, and congregation toil after him in vain.Occasionally--especially at such portions of the service as refer toour need of forgiveness, our sinfulness, our mortality,--he breaks outinto senile tears; too deaf to hear his own penitent sobs, he has noidea of the loudness with which they reverberate through the church.Strangers, hearing, perk their heads up above their pews, and thenfling them down again on their pocket-handkerchiefs convulsed withinextinguishable laughter; but the greater part of the assemblage areused to these spasms of grotesque devotion--it is only "t'oud squoire."
Esther always draws a long breath of relief when
"Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!"
has been safely tided over without any unusually noisy burst oflamentation.
On the Sunday I speak of "t'oud squoire's" prayers were more unrulythan usual. Whether it was that Esther's weakened voice was unableto guide them into the right channel, or to whatever other causeassignable, certain it is that his vagaries were more painfullyevident--ludicrously to the congregation, distressingly to hisfamily--than on any former Sunday within the memory of man. Many headsturn towards the Blessington pew; even the rector--meekest amongM.A.s--looks now and again with gentle reproach at the old man, whois, with such aggressive loudness, usurping his office of leading thedevotions of his flock. A proud woman is Esther Craven when the Liturgycomes to a close. In the sermon there are, thank God, no responses forthe congregation to make; it is not even customary to cry, "Hear,hear!" "Hallelujah!" "More power to you!" at intervals. In the sermon,therefore, the old gentleman composes himself to sleep, and there ispeace.
The Blessington pulpit is to-day occupied by a stranger--a Boanerges,or Son of Thunder, in the shape of a muscular, half-educated, fluentIrishman--a divine who would fain _flog_ his hearers to heaven, showthem the way upwards by the light of hell's flambeaux--one of thattoo numerous class who revel in disgusting descriptions, and similesdrawn from our mortality. It is impossible to help listening to him,and difficult to help being sick. Esther listens, trembling, while hedescants with minute relish on "the worm that never dies." The wormthat never dies! Surely, a terrible picture enough, in its simplebareness, without enlargement thereupon! With imagination renderedmore vivid, and reason weakened by sickness, the unhappy girl picturesthat worm gnawing at her brother's heart--gnawing, crawling, torturingeternally. She covers her face with her hands; it is too horrible! Asort of sick feeling comes over her--a giddy faintness. If she canbut reach the open air! She rises unsteadily, opens the pew-door, andwalks as in a mist down the aisle, between the two rows of questioningfaces, and so out. As she passes through the church-door she staggersslightly, and catches at the wall for support. Gerard, watchingher anxiously, sees her unsteady gait, and the involuntary gestureof reaching out for some stay for her tottering figure. Instantly,without giving thought to the light in which his beloved may regard hisproceeding, he, rising, quickly follows the young girl. She has justmanaged to reach a flat tombstone, and there sits, with her face turnedthirstily westwards, whence a small soft wind blows fitfully.
"You are ill," he says, bending solicitously over her, and layingaside in that compassionate moment the armour of his coldness.
She does not answer for awhile; then, drawing a long breath, and tryingto smile: "The church was so close," she says, sighingly; "and thatsmell of escaped gas always makes me feel faint, and--and" (with ashudder)--"that dreadful man--with his metaphors all taken from thecharnelhouse!"
"I wish he were there himself, with all my heart," answers Gerard,devoutly; "he might there frame metaphors to his taste at his leisure."
"And it is so terrible to think that it is all _true_, isn't it?" shesays, fixing her great awestruck eyes upon, his face, as if trying tofind comfort and reassurance there; "that the reality exceeds evenhis revolting word-painting; that we _shall_ be _loathsome_, all ofus!--you and I and everybody--young and old, beautiful and ugly! How_could_ God be so cruel as to let us know it beforehand?"
"Knowing it beforehand is better than knowing it at the time, which, atleast, we are spared," replies St. John, composedly.
"But are we?" she cries, eagerly: "that is the question! Latterly Ihave been beset by a fearful idea that death is but a long catalepsy.In a catalepsy, you know, a person seems utterly without consciousnessor volition; breath is suspended, and all the vital functions; and yethe feels and sees and hears more acutely than when in strong health.Why may not death, too, be a catalepsy?"
"Absurd!" he says. "My poor child, it is thoughts like these, gonewild, that fill madhouses. According to your theory, at what pointof time does your catalepsy end? When we are dissolved into minutestparticles of dust does each atom still feel and suffer?"
"My theory, as you call it, will not hold water, I know," she answersgravely, "but it does not haunt me any the less. There are times whenone cannot reason--one can only _fear_."
"You should not give way to these morbid fancies," he says, chidingly;"they are making you ill."
"Am I ill, do you think? Do I look ill?" she asks, with startledeagerness.
The havoc worked in face and figure by the last few months is toodirectly under his eyes for him to answer anything but truthfully."Very ill."
"You don't think I'm going to _die?_" she says, lowering her voice, andlaying her hand on his arm, while her great feverish eyes burn into hisvery soul. "People are not any the more likely to die for being thinand weak, are they? Creaky doors hang the longest."
"Die!--God forbid!" he replies, trying to speak lightly. "Let us banishdeath from our talk. I suppose it is this place of tombs that has madehim take such a leading part in it. Come, you are not at all fit to goback into church, and I am not anxious to hear the tail-end of thatwormy discourse. The smell of brimstone is quite strong enough in mynostrils already. Let us go home!"
So they return to the house, and he still shows no inclination to leaveher. He draws a chair for her near an open window, and stands with hishand resting on the back. It is almost like the old times--the oldtimes that he thinks of,
"As dead men of good days, Ere the wrong side of death was theirs, when God Was friends with them."
Something in the recollection of those days makes soft his voice, whichis not wont to be soft. "You are not fit for this life," he says,stooping down his face towards her small wan one. "It requires a toughseasoned woman, in middle life. Tell me why you have undertaken it?Why are you not--not married?"
She turns away, crimsoning painfully. "Because no one has asked me, Isuppose," she answers, trying to speak banteringly.
"But you were engaged when--when we parted?"
"Yes."
"And you are not now?"
With ungovernable, unaccountable impatience, he awaits the slow briefanswer.
"No."
"Had he then--h'm! h'm!--_discovered_ anything?" Gerard asks, findingsome difficulty in framing the question politely.
She fires up quickly. "_Discovered_ anything!" she repeats,indignantly. "Do you think it is impossible for me to be honest even_once_ in my life? I told him myself."
"_You_ broke it off, then?"
"No, I didn't."
"_He_ did?"
"Yes."
"Poor fellow! he had good cause to be angry," says St. John; the oldbitterness surging back upon him, as he reflects on the cowardlyduplicity that had made waste two honest lives.
"But he was _not_ angry," she cries, eagerly: "he was grieved--oh, _so_grieved! Shall I ever forgive myself when I think of how he looked whenI told him?" (her eyes gazing out abstractedly at the "Rape of theSabines," as her thoughts fly back to that quarried nook on the bleakautumnal hillside, where she had broken a brave man's heart). "But hewas not angry. Oh, no! he never thought of himself! he thought onlyabout me! Ah! _that was_
love!"
"He would not marry you, however?" says St. John, exasperated at theselaudations, which he imagines levelled as reproaches against himself.
"No," she answered quietly, "you are right; he would not marry me,though I begged him. But that was for my sake, too--not his own; hetold me that he could not make me happy, for that I did not love him.He was wrong, though. I did love him--I love him now. If I did not lovethe one friend I have in all this great empty world, what should I bemade of?" she concludes, while the tears come into her eyes.
"You have a great capacity for loving," says St. John, who, thoughnot usually an ungenerous fellow, is maddened by the expressions ofaffection, the tears and regretful looks bestowed upon his rival. "Ienvy, though I despair of emulating you."
"Men have but _one_ way of loving," she answers, gently; "women haveseveral. I love him as the one completely unselfish being I ever met.I agree with you, that the way of loving you mean comes but once in alifetime."
At her words, and the fidelity to himself which they so innocentlyimply, a fierce bright joy upleaps in his heart--a joy that clamoursfor utterance in violent fond words, in the wild closeness of forbiddenembraces; but honour, that strong gaoler that keeps so many under lockand key, keeps him too.
"For Love himself took part against himself To warn us off; and Duty, loved of love-- Oh! this world's curse, beloved but hated--came, Like death, betwixt thy dear embrace and mine, And crying, 'Who is this? Behold thy bride!' She push'd me from thee."
He only holds out his hand to her. "Esther, let us be friends. I amtired of this silence and estrangement; let there be peace between us!"
"I have always wished for it," she answers meekly, laying her littletrembling hand in his--"you know I have; but let us be at peace_apart_, and not _together_; that will be better. How long," she asks,impulsively, lifting quivering red lips and dew-soft eyes to his--"howlong--how much longer--do you mean to stay here?"
"Why do you ask?" he says, in a troubled voice, hurt pride and hotpassion struggling together. "Surely in this great wide house there isroom for you and me; I am not much in your way, surely?"
"You are," she answers, feverishly--"you are in my way; you would be,in the widest house that ever was built. Every day I long more and moreto be a great way off from you. I think I could breathe better if Iwere."
He does not answer: leaning still over her in a dumb agonised yearning,that--with the chains of another still dragging about him--may not beoutspoken.
"That day we met upon the stairs," she continues, eyes and cheeksaflame and lustrous with the consuming fire within her, "you promisedme you would avail yourself of the first opportunity to leave thisplace; a month or more is gone since then. Surely the most exactingmistress could spare you for awhile now? Why have you broken your word,then? Why are you here?"
He is silent for a few moments, questioning his own soul--questioningthat conscience whose monitions he has hitherto so stoutly resisted.Then he speaks, a flush of shame making red his bronzed cheek: "BecauseI have been dishonest to myself and to you. This place has had anattraction for me which I see now it would not have had had _she_ onlybeen here. I linger about it as a man lingers about the churchyardwhere his one hope lies buried."
"Don't linger any longer, then," she cries, passionately, taking hishand between both hers; "don't be dishonest any more! Tell _yourself_the truth, if you tell no one else, and go _at once_, before it is toolate; for if you won't, _I_ must!"
She is weeping freely as she speaks; her tears drop hot and slow, oneafter another, upon his hand.
He flings himself on his knees beside her, his mastery over himselfreeling in the strong rush of long-pent passion.
"You tell me to go," he says, in a voice choked and altered withemotion, "and in the very act of telling me you cry. Which am I tobelieve, your words or your tears?"
"My words," she answers, trying to speak collectedly, and by gainingcalmness herself to bring it back to him. "I have been dishonourableonce--you know it; don't let me have the remorse of thinking that Imade an honourable man palter with temptation--made him sully hishonour for me. If _I_ am the inducement that keeps you here, _go; formy sake, go!_ I say it a hundred times; promise me you will go--_soon,this week._ Let me hear you swear it; you will not break your oath, Iknow!"
He is silent; hesitating to take that step of irrevocablebanishment--banishment from the woman that he cast away in righteouswrath, and in whose frail life his own now seems to be bound up.
"Swear!" she says again, earnestly, with a resolute look in her softface. "I beg it of you as a favour; for if you won't, though my onlychance of daily bread lies here, I must go to-night."
The determination in her voice recalls him to his senses. "I will notdrive you to such extremities," he says, coldly. "Give me only tillto-morrow morning--twenty-four hours cannot make much difference toyou, and a man going to be hanged likes to have a little respite--giveme till to-morrow, and I will swear whatever you wish."
"That is right," she answers, trying to smile through her tears. "Someday you will thank me; you will say, 'She was a bad girl, but she didme one good turn!'"
The people are flocking out of church; the squire, in a lowpony-chaise, driven by a groom as old and toothless as himself, anddrawn by a pony (considering the comparative ages of horses and men)also nearly as old, is bowling gently up the drive.
"I must go," Esther says, rising hastily; "Mrs. Blessington hates redeyes as she hates a black dress, and for the same reason!"