“You have given your honour — that to such a woman as you is sometimes more than life.”
“Honour or life, I could not count the cost of either for his sake.”
“And he must be a villain if he can refuse to give you back to the position from which you have fallen — for his sake.”
“It will come — it will come in time. I feel that he will do what is right — in his own good time.”
“You cannot afford to wait for that. You are far too good to occupy your present position for another day or hour, unless your betrayer will consent to make wrong right. Pray trust me, my dear young lady. Though I am a rustic I have seen something of human nature, and I will act with discretion. I will not be precipitate.”
“I would much rather you did not interfere. You don’t know him. He is wayward and fanciful — you may turn him against me — and we are so happy now — utterly happy — and it may be only for a short time. He has been told that he may die young. When he has gone all my life may be one long repentance — one long atonement for having made his last years happy.”.
“My poor child, women have a natural bent for self-sacrifice, which too often leads them into sin. Come, come, my dear, don’t cry; and remember whatever may happen I mean to be your friend.” Hester sighed. The circle of perfect love — that narrow, isolated spot in the universe in which she had been living for the last seven weeks was broken in upon suddenly from the outside world, and everything in this golden dream of hers took new lights and new colours when looked at by other eyes. In that sweet solitude of two, they had been like Hero and Leander, like Rosalind and Orlando, like any two creatures who exist only for each other, and for whom all the rest of creation is no more than a picturesque background to that dual life. Love in its first brief intensity scarcely believes in that outer world.
“Yes, my dear, however this story of yours may end — and I hope and believe it will not end badly — you may rely upon my friendship,” said the Rector, “and if you want a woman’s help or counsel my old maiden sister will not withhold it from you. When the world was thirty years younger I had a young wife whom I adored, and who had something of your complexion and contour, and a baby daughter. Before my little girl was three years old God took her; and her mother, who had been in weak health from the time of the child’s birth, died within a year of our loss. Those two angel faces have followed me down the vale of years. I never see a child of my daughter’s age without a little thrill of tenderness or pity. I never see an interesting girl of your age without thinking that my little girl might have grown up like her. So you see, Mrs. Hanley, I have a reason for being interested in you over and above my duty as a parish priest.”
“You are all that is kind,” faltered Hester, “and I wish I were worthier—”
“It is not you who are unworthy. No, I will say no more, lest I should seem harsh to one you love. May I walk part of the way home with you?”
“I shall be very pleased to have your company, but I have a boat close by.”
“Then let me take you to your boat?”
He went with her to a little reedy inlet, where she had moored her dinghy, and he stood on the bank and watched her as she sculled the light boat away towards the setting sun, with the easy air of one used to the work.
“Poor child,” sighed the Rector. “How strange that one is so apt to feel more interested in a sinner than in a saint. It is the mystery of human life that takes one’s fancy, perhaps; the sinner’s appeal to pity, as against the saint’s confidence in her own holiness. I suppose that is why Mary Magdalene is the most popular character in the Gospel.”
Hester rowed slowly up the sunlit river, creeping close in shore by the stunted willows which spread their low shadows across the water. She crept into the shadow as the wounded deer creeps away to die, stricken to the heart by her conversation with Mr. Gilstone. It was the first time she had been brought face to face with stern reality since she had allowed her lover to lead her by the hand into the fool’s paradise of unsanctioned love. He had taught her to believe that the sanction meant very little, and that the loyalty and unselfishness of a mutual attachment were an all sufficient proof of its purity; but these modern views of his did not stand by her for a quarter of an hour under the earnest interrogation of a village parson. All her old-fashioned ideas, her reverence for God’s Word, her shrinking from man’s disdain, rushed back into her mind, and Philosophy and Free Thinking were scattered to the winds. She stood confessed a woman dishonoured by the sacrifice love had exacted from her. She looked back to those quiet evenings by the river, when she and her father had walked up and down in the starlight, with Gerard Hillersdon beside them, sympathetic, respectful almost to reverence. Ah, what bliss it had been to listen or to talk with him in that tranquil hour when the burden of daily care had been laid down! What unalloyed happiness, without thought or fear of the future — without regret for the past!
How altered now were her thoughts, when to look back upon the past was horror, when to think of the future filled her whole being with aching fear!
This had been one of her rare days of solitude, and it was ending badly. Gerard had left for London after their leisurely breakfast, and was not to return till the eight-o’clock dinner. Business or whim had urged him to spend a day in the metropolis — to lunch at one of his clubs, and to hear the gossip of town and country from men who were “passing through” — to breathe that more piquant atmosphere of the world in which everybody knows everybody else’s latest secret. The freshness and the quiet of the country would be all the more delicious, he told himself, after that brief plunge into the dust and movement of the town.
Hester had not pouted or looked sorrowful at his departure, but the day had been sorely long; and now this chance meeting with the Rector had filled her with sadness and apprehension — dread lest he should break the spell that held their tranquil lives, by a vain interposition upon her behalf. And then came the agonising thought that her lover, in spite of a devotion that seemed all-absorbing, did not love her well enough to make her his wife. Sophistry might make their union seem beautiful without the bond of marriage; but still that question remained unanswered — Why were they not married?
At this quiet evening hour, perhaps one of the saddest in Hester’s life, there came suddenly upon her the sound of laughter — a man’s frank laughter, joyous as the song of birds, joyous almost to ecstasy, and round the bend of the river a steam launch, gaily decked with crimson draperies and Oriental cushions, came quickly towards her, with the figures of its occupants defined against the brightness of the western sky. Foremost of the group stood the tall and lissom form of a young man with yellowish auburn hair and sharply cut features, and grouped about him were women in light summer gowns and airy hats, and other young men in white flannels. A ripple of laughter and joyous voices went past her as they passed, and then above it all rose that same mirthful laugh she had heard before the boat came in sight. The laughter of the man with auburn hair and pale, sharp-cut face was wafted up the river, in the wake of the boat, on the soft evening air. That joyous group of youthful strangers touched her with a keener sense of her own loneliness; her father mysteriously vanished out of her life; the friendship of all old friends for ever forfeited by her conduct; nothing and no one left to her save the man for whom she had surrendered all. If he should grow weary of her, if he should change, what had she on earth? Nothing! Her glances turned involuntarily to one deep shadowy pool she knew of under an inward curve of the hank. Nothing but death! And in the new dispensation of Darwin, Spencer, and Clifford, death by suicide was no more terrible than death by inevitable decay. There was no afterwards. There was no Great Father outside this little world to whom the self-destroyer had to render up his account.
At a quarter to eight came the glad sound of wheels — sound for which Hester had been listening for the last half-hour, and two minutes later Gerard was in the lamp-lit hall, amidst the cool freshness of newly cut roses, and Hester was
in his arms, faltering her fond welcome between tears and laughter.
“Why, my darling, you are almost hysterical. This won’t do, Hettie.”
“The day has been so long. But you are home at last,” she sighed, drying her tears, the first he had seen since one stormy burst of weeping which he must needs remember all his life — the passionate tears of a woman betrayed by the man she loved too well to punish, even by her resentment.
“Home at last — home by the very train and at the very hour I named — and uncommonly glad to be home, sweet wife!”
How glibly he pronounced the name — and yet, and yet, she blushed at the sound, as she had not done since its novelty had worn off, and she accepted the gospel of free thought. All that the good old parson had said to her was in her mind that night, though she smiled and brightened and grew happy in the companionship of the man she adored.
He had come home laden with gifts for her — books, trinkets — not valuable gems, since she steadfastly refused any such gifts — but the light and airy inventions of modern art — new settings of moonstones or starstones, fairy-like silver hair-pins, ornaments that would be worthless when their fashion was past, dainty toys and trifles to scatter about the tables, eccentricities in silver and enamel, Dresden china bonbon boxes, Japanese idols.
“Throw them into the river if you don’t like them,” he said, as they sat at the cosy round table after dinner, with the lamplight shining upon the glittering toys which Gerard produced one after another from a capacious leather bag, taking childlike pleasure in Hester’s wondering admiration. I am growing richer and richer — appallingly rich. My stocks and shares were chosen with such extraordinary foresight by that marvellous old man with the umbrella that the value of them has gone on increasing ever since he bought them. My Rosarios, my South-Westerns, ray Waterworks. British and Foreign, my London Guarantee Shares — everything I own has an upward tendency. I cannot spend a quarter of my income, unless I do something wild and foolish. Think of something, Hester! Imagine some mad, delightful escapade which would cost us twenty thousand pounds. We must launch out somehow!”
“I can imagine nothing so wild or so foolish as my love for you,” said Hester, growing suddenly thoughtful, “for when you cease to care for me I must die. There will be nothing left.”
“Cease to care for you! While there is consciousness here” — touching his forehead—” that will never be!”
“And you really love me — with all your heart?”
“With all my heart, and mind, and strength. There’s the Church Catechism for you. I am surprised I can remember so much of it.”
CHAPTER XXI. “AS GENTLE AND AS JOCUND AS A JEST.”
Mr. GILSTONE thought long and seriously of his interview with the young lady who was known to Lowcombe as Mrs. Hanley. In his many years’ widowhood, during which his maiden sister Tabitha had cared for his creature comforts, kept his servants in order, maintained a spotless propriety throughout his roomy old house, and assisted him with counsel and manual labour in his cherished garden and churchyard, her mind had become the other half of his mind, and he had no secrets from her, not even the secrets of other people; so within a few hours of that conversation in God’s Acre Tabitha Gilstone knew as much about Mrs. Hanley as her brother had been able to discover.
Tabitha was not surprised to hear that there was something wrong. That had been decided by the consentient voices of Lowcombe some weeks ago. Tabitha sorrowed for this poor young woman, as she always sorrowed for human error, with its inevitable sequence of human suffering, most especially when the sinner was young, and perhaps with just one extra touch of tenderness when the sinner was fair. She was sorrowful, but she was not surprised. She was not one of those women who are quick to pronounce the female sinner a calculating minx, and the male sinner an artless victim. She felt very angry with the unknown owner of the Rosary, and denounced him in unmeasured terms. “The scoundrel,” she cried, “not content with having brought disgrace upon a pretty, refined young creature, he must needs try to pervert her mind. First he makes her an outcast, and then he makes her an Atheist.”
“Don’t be too hard, Bertha,” remonstrated the Rector. “I dare say Mr. Hanley does not think he is doing any wrong in introducing this poor girl to the new learning. He thinks that he is leading her into the light of truth, not into the darkness of infidelity. You don’t know how arrogant the new school of agnosticism is, how confident in materialism as the royal road to the well-being of mankind. For us who believe the unbelievers can find nothing but contemptuous pity. I expect to find this young man a difficult subject. He has been spoilt by too much wealth and a little learning.”
“But you will do all you can, Basil,” urged Miss Gilstone. “You will persuade him to behave honourably; or if he is wicked enough to refuse, I hope you will persuade that poor girl to leave him at once and for ever. Let her come to us if she is friendless; I will find a home for her, either in this house or with some of my friends.”
“Ah, Tabitha, how many girls have we ever succeeded in turning from the way of evil while there were any flowers along the path? It is only when they come to the thorns and briers that they can be persuaded to turn back. However, I mean to do my uttermost in this case.”
“And how much good you have done in such cases, Basil; how many happy wives and mothers on the other side of the world have to thank you that they are not outcasts in the streets of London!”
The keen impression made by her conversation with the Rector wore off as the dreamy days went by, and Hester once more was happy, and unashamed of her happiness, like Eve in Eden. The river was still at its loveliest, and Gerard and Hester spent the greater part of their days in a punt moored in some romantic backwater, or by some willowy eyot, he stretched in sybarite idleness among silken cushions, she reading aloud to him. She had a beautiful voice, and by long habit reading aloud had become very easy to her. Together in this way they dipped into W. K. Clifford and Herbert Spencer, Comte and Mill — he picking out chapters or essays for her to road, she accepting meekly whatever he put before her as the best. They read the poets also, in these golden afternoons, when there was just enough of coolness to make’ the west wind crisp and pleasant, and no hint of a wind from the east.
One morning she happened to mention the launch and the fairhaired, pale-faced young man whose joyous laughter had intensified her sadness.
“I felt very despondent that afternoon,” she said, “and his laughter saddened me.”
“Describe him to me again, Hester,” said Gerard. “Stay.” Ho sketched a profile lightly on the fly-leaf of a book, and handed the hook to her. “Was your laughing youth like that?”
“Yes,” she cried wonderingly, “that is the very face. You know him, then?”
“Yes, I know him.”
He took a letter out of his pocket and re-read it frowningly, a letter that had come to him with his last batch from the Post Office at Reading.
“What has become of you? Where are you hiding yourself?” wrote Justin Jermyn. “Surely you are tired of your Garden of Eden by this time. I heard of you in London the other day, so you have not carried your bliss to some untrodden valley where the novelty of your environment might prolong the freshness of your feelings. I can fancy no impassioned love lasting more than sis weeks. The strain upon mind and imagination is too great.
“May not one see you? Is your happiness too sacred for the vulgar eye of a friend? I feel sure the dear young lady would like me, however she may object to the ruck of your acquaintance — and for the rest I am discretion itself — a very lion’s mouth for any secret you may drop into me; as deep, as silent as that deep water near the Church of St. George the Greater, where the enemies of the Venetian Republic sleep so soundly. Seriously, I am pining to see you. Tell me when and where I am to go to yon. Remember, there is a mystic sympathy which links your life to mine. You cannot escape me. Whether you will or no, in your joys and in your sorrows, I shall be near you. — Yours for life
,—”J. J.”
A hateful letter to Gerard in his present mood, rendered still more hateful by the idea that Justin Jermyn might be his near neighbour.
“Did you see the name of the launch?” he asked.
“No; I only noticed the young man’s face, and that the girls who were grouped about him were handsome and attractive. Is ho a man whom you dislike?”
“Yes, when I am away from him. But when I am in his company he always contrives to amuse and interest me, so that, in spite of myself, he seems my dearest friend.”
“I understand, “ said Hester. “He is very clever — but not a good man. And yet he had such a joyous laugh, and seemed so happy.”
“My dearest, do you think only the good people are happy? Some of the most joyous spirits in this world have gone along with hearts utterly and innately bad.”
They were taking tea on the lawn a day or two after this conversation, their rustic table and restful wicker chairs grouped under a great weeping ash which had once been the chief feature of the cottage garden, when a boat shot rapidly towards the rustic landing stage, and a lissom form appeared upon the steps, and came with airy footsteps, mercurial, vivid as light, across the close-shorn turf.
“At last,” cried Justin Jermyn. “I thought I could not be mistaken.”
“In whom, or in what?” asked Gerard, starting to his feet and contemplating the uninvited guest with a most forbidding frown.
“In my old friend Mr. Hanley. I am staying with Matt Muller, the landscape painter, on his house-boat hard by Wargrave; and I heard, casually, the description of a certain Mr and Mrs. Hanley, who are in some wise a mystery to the neighbourhood — the lady exquisitely beautiful (with a bow and a smile for Hester), the gentleman inordinately rich, young, idle — all that my dear friend Gerard is, in short. So I made a shrewd guess as to Mr. Hanley’s identity, and — me voici. Pray present me to Mrs. Hanley.”
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