make?"
"Then let me go," she urged, speaking in a low, distinct voice, palealmost to the lips. "We must part--therefore perhaps the sooner thebetter, and the sooner my life is ended the more swiftly will peace andhappiness come to me. For me the grave holds no terrors. Only becauseI leave you alone shall I regret," she sobbed.
"And yet I must in future be alone," I said, swallowing the lump thatarose in my throat. "No, Ella!" I cried, "I cannot bear it. I cannotagain live without your presence."
"Alas! you must," was her hoarse reply. "You must--you must."
Wandering full of grief and bitter thoughts, vivid and yet confused, thehours sped by uncounted.
To the cosmopolitan, like I had grown to be, green plains have a certainlikeness, whether in Belgium, Germany or Britain. A row of poplarsquivering in the sunshine looks much alike in Normandy or inNorthamptonshire. A deep forest all aglow with red and gold in autumntints is the same thing, after all, in Tuscany, as in Yorkshire.
But England, our own dear old England, has also a physiognomy that isall her own; that is like nothing else in all the world; pasturesintensely green, high hawthorn hedges and muddy lanes, which to someminds is sad and strange and desolate and painful, and which to othersis beautiful, but which, be it what else it may, is always wholly andsolely English, can never be met with elsewhere, and has a smile ofpeace and prosperity upon it, and a sigh in it that make other landsbeside it seem as though they were soulless and were dumb.
We had unconsciously taken a path that, skirting a wood, ran up over alow hill southward. To our left lay the beautiful Cornish country inthe sweet misty grey of the morning light. The sun was shining and thetremulous wood smoke curled up in the rosy air from a cottage chimney.
Was that to be our last walk together, I wondered? I sighed when Irecollected how utterly we were the children of circumstance.
Beside her I walked with a swelling heart. I consumed my soul inmuteness and bitterness, my eyes set before me to the grey hills behindwhich the sun had risen.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
"I AM NOT FIT!"
Of a sudden, she turned her head and glanced full in my eyes. Herthoughts were, like mine, of the past--of those glad and gracious days.
I stood still for a moment, and catching her hands kissed them; my ownwere burning.
We went on by the curving course outside the wood quite silent, for thegloom of the future had settled upon us.
The past! Those days when my Ella was altogether mine! I loved tolinger on those blissful days, for they were lighted with the sweetestsunlight of my life. Never since, for me, had flowers blossomed, andfruits ripened, and waters murmured, and grasshoppers sung, and wavesbeat joyous music as in the spring and summer of that wondrous time.
To rise when all the world was flushed with the soft pink of theearliest dawn, and to go hand in hand with her through the breast-highcorn with scarlet poppies clasping the gliding feet; to see the purplewraith of rain haunting the silvery fairness of the hills; to watch theshadows chase the sun rays over the wide-open mysterious sea; to feelthe living light of the cloudless day beat us with a million pulses amidthe hum of life all around; to go out into the lustre of the summer'snight; to breathe the air soft as the first kisses of our own new-foundlove, and rich as wine with the strong odours of a world of flowers.These had in those never-to-be-forgotten days been her joys and mine,joys at once of the senses and the soul.
I loved her so--God knows! and yet almost I hated her. She had, on thatnight in Bayswater, deceived me! She had deceived me!
This was the iron in my soul. It is an error so common. Women lie tomen--and men to women for the matter of that--out of mistaken tendernessor ill-judged compassion, or that curious fear of recrimination fromwhich the firmest courage is not exempt. A woman deceives a man withuntruth, not because she is base, but because she fears to hurt him withthe truth; fears his reproaches; fears a painful scene, and even when heis quite worthless she is reluctant to wound his weakness. It is anerror so common in this everyday life of ours: an error that is fatalalways.
Had she been quite frank with me on that night when we had parted wemight not have found ourselves fettered as we now were--she held to aman who was clearly an adventurer and a blackguard to boot.
Yet how could I reproach her for what was a great and completeself-sacrifice. No. She had done what was, perhaps, strictly her duty,even though both our lives had been wrecked in consequence.
"My love!" I murmured passionately, as with a cry I caught her in myarms, and held her close to me, as a man will hold some dear dead thing.And was she not, alas! now dead to me?
Our lips met again, but she was still silent. How many moments went Ido not know; as there are years in which a man does not live a moment,so there are moments in which one lives a lifetime.
Her soft blue eyes closed beneath my kisses, my sense grew faint, theworld became dark, all light and life shut out from me--all dark. Butit was the sweet warm darkness, as though of the balmy night in June;and even then I know I prayed, prayed to Him that she might still bemine.
The trance of passion passed. How long it lasted I cannot tell.
After a while, the cloud that had enveloped my senses seemed suddenly tolift; the sweet unconsciousness died away. I lifted my head andstrained myself backward, still holding her, and yet I shivered as Istood.
I remembered.
She, with a quick vague fear awakening in her eyes, held herself fromme.
"Why look at me like that?" she cried. "I--I cannot bear it. Let uspart now--at once. I must return, or my absence will be known and Ishall be questioned."
I do not know what I said in answer. All madness of reproach that everman's tongue could frame left my lips in those blind cruel moments. Allexcuse for her; all goodness in her I forgot! Ah! God forgive me, Iforgot! She had deceived me; that was all I knew, or cared to know.
In that mad moment all the pride in me, fanned by the wind of jealousy,flamed afresh, and burned up love. In that sudden passion of love andhate my brain had gone.
Yet she stood motionless, pale as death, and trembling, her eyes filledwith the light of unshed tears.
I do not know what she said in response to my cruel bitter reproaches.
All I know is that I next became suddenly filled with shame. I kneltthen before her, asking forgiveness, kissing her hands, her dress, herfeet, pouring out to her in all the eager impetuousness of my nature therapture, the woe, the sorrow, the shame and the remorse that turn byturn had taken possession of my heart.
"I love you, Ella!" I cried. "I love you and as I love am I jealous.Mine is no soulless vagary or mindless folly. You are mine--mine thoughyou may be bound to this blackguard whose victim you have fallen. I amjealous of you, jealous of the wind that touches you, of the sun thatshines upon you, of the air you breathe, of the earth you tread, forthey are with you while I am not."
Her head was bowed. She shut her ears to the pleading of my heart. Shewrenched her hands from me, crying:--
"No, no, Godfrey! Enough--enough! Spare me this!"
And she struggled from my arms.
"My darling!" I cried, "I know! I know! Yet you cannot realise allthat I suffer now that we are to part again and for ever. I hate thatman. Ah! light of my eyes, when I think that you are to be his I--Iwould rather a thousand times see you lying cold and dead at my feet,for I would then know that at least you would be spared unhappiness."
It seemed that she dared not trust herself to look on me. She flungback her head and eluded my embrace.
"My love!" I cried, "all life in me is yearning for your life; for thesoftness of silent kisses; for the warmth of clasped hands; for thegladness of summer hours beside the sea. Do you remember them? Do youremember the passion and peace of our mutual love that smiled at thesun, and knew that heaven held no fairer joys than those which were itsown, at the mere magic of a single touch?"
"Yes, dear," she sighed, "I remember--I reme
mber everything. And youhave a right to reproach me as you will," she added very gently.
She was still unyielding; her burning eyes were now tearless, and shestood motionless.
"But you have forgiven me, my love?" I cried humbly. "I was mad tohave uttered those words."
"I have forgiven, Godfrey," she answered. A heavy sigh ran through thewords and made them barely audible.
"And you still love me?"
All the glow and eagerness and fervour or passion had died off her face;it grew cold and colourless and still, with the impenetrable stillnessof a desperate woman's face that masks all pain.
"Do you doubt I loved you--I?"
That reproach cut me to the quick. I was passionate with man's passion;I was cruel with children's cruelty.
My face, I felt, flushed crimson, then grew pale again. I shrank alittle, as though she had struck me a blow, a blow that I
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