What of her religion of beauty, the faith which had seen its end in the nourishment of every instinct demanding loveliness within and without? What of the ideal which saw the crown of life in passion triumphant, which dreaded imperfectness, which allowed the claims of sense equally with those of spirit, both having their indispensable part in the complete existence? Had it not conspicuously failed where religion should be most efficient? She understood now the timidity which had ever lurked behind her acceptance of that view of life. She had never been able entirely to divest herself of the feeling that her exaltation in beauty-worship was a mood born of sunny days, that it would fail amid shocks of misfortune and prove a mockery in the hour of the soul’s dire need. It shared in the unreality of her life in wealthy houses, amid the luxury which appertained only to fortune’s favourites, which surrounded her only by chance. She had presumptuously taken to herself the religion of her superiors, of those to whom fate allowed the assurance of peace, of guarded leisure wherein to cultivate the richer and sweeter flowers of their nature. How artificial had been the delights with which she soothed herself! Here, all the time, was the reality; here in this poor home, brooded over by the curse of poverty, whence should come shame and woe and death. What to her now were the elegance of art, the loveliness of nature? Beauty had been touched by mortality, and its hues were of the corpse, of the grave. Would the music of a verse ever again fill her with rapture? How meaningless were all such toys of thought to one whose path lay through the valley of desolation!
Thus did Emily think and feel in this sombre season, the passionate force of her imagination making itself the law of life and the arbiter of her destiny. She could not take counsel with time; her temperament knew nothing of that compromise with ardours and impulses which is the wisdom of disillusion. Circumstances willed that she should suffer by the nobleness of her instincts those endowments which might in a happier lot have exalted her to such perfection of calm joy as humanity may attain, were fated to be the source of misery inconceivable by natures less finely cast.
CHAPTER XVII
THEIR SEVERAL WAYS
As Wilfrid quitted the house, the gate was opened by Jessie Cartwright, who, accompanied by one of her sisters, was bringing Emily some fine grapes, purchased, in the Cartwright manner, without regard to expense. The girls naturally had their curiosity excited by the stranger of interesting, even of aristocratic, appearance, who, as he hurried by, east at them a searching look.
‘Now, who ever may that be?’ murmured Jessie, as she approached the door.
‘A doctor, I dare say,’ was her sister’s suggestion.
‘A doctor! Not he, indeed. He has something to do with Emily, depend upon it.’
The servant, opening to them, had to report that Miss Hood was too unwell to-day to receive visitors. Jessie would dearly have liked to ask who it was that apparently had been an exception, but even she lacked the assurance necessary to the putting of such a question. The girls left their offering, and went their way home; the stranger afforded matter for conversation throughout the walk.
Wilfrid did not go straight to the Baxendales’. In his distracted state he felt it impossible to sit through luncheon, and he could not immediately decide how to meet Mrs. Baxendale, whether to take her into his confidence or to preserve silence on what had happened. He was not sure that he would be justified in disclosing the details of such an interview; did he not owe it to Emily to refrain from submitting her action to the judgment of any third person? If in truth she were still suffering from the effects of her illness, it was worse than unkind to repeat her words; if, on the other hand, her decision came of adequate motives, or such as her sound intelligence deemed adequate, was it possible to violate the confidence implied in such a conversation between her and himself? Till his mind had assumed some degree of calmness, he could not trust himself to return to the house. Turning from the main road at a point just before the bridge over the river, he kept on the outskirts of the town, and continued walking till he had almost made the circuit of Dunfield. His speed was that of a man who hastened with some express object; his limbs seemed spurred to activity by the gallop of his thoughts. His reason would scarcely accept the evidence of consciousness that he had indeed just heard such things from Emily’s lips; it was too monstrous for belief; a resolute incredulity sustained him beneath a blow which, could he have felt it to be meant in very earnest, would have deprived him of his senses. She did not, she could not, know what she had said! Yet she spoke with such cruel appearance of reasoning earnestness; was it possible for a diseased mind to assume so convincingly the modes of rational utterance? What conceivable circumstances could bring her to such a resolution? Her words, ‘I do not love you,’ made horrible repetition in his ears; it was as though he had heard her speak them again and again. Could they be true? The question, last outcome of the exercise of his imagination on the track of that unimaginable cause, brought him to a standstill, physically and mentally. Those words had at first scarcely engaged his thought; it was her request to be released that seriously concerned him; that falsehood had been added as a desperate means of gaining her end. Yet now, all other explanations in vain exhausted, perforce he gave heed to that hideous chime of memory. It was not her father’s death that caused her illness that she admitted, Had some horrible complication intervened, some incredible change come upon her, since he left England? He shook off this suggestion as blasphemy. Emily? His high-souled Emily, upon whose faith he would stake the breath of his life? Was his own reason failing him?
Worn out, he reached the house in the middle of the afternoon, and went to his own sitting-room. Presently a servant came and asked whether he would take luncheon. He declined. Lying on the sofa, he still tormented himself with doubt whether he might speak with Mrs. Baxendale. That lady put an end to his hesitation by herself coming to his room. He sprang up.
‘Don’t move, don’t move!’ she exclaimed in her cheery way. ‘I have only come to ask why you resolve to starve yourself. You can’t have had lunch anywhere?’
‘No; I am not hungry.’
‘A headache?’ she asked, looking at him with kind shrewdness.
‘A little, perhaps.’
‘Then at all events you will have tea. May I ask them to bring it here?’
She went away, and, a few minutes after her return, tea was brought.
‘You found Emily looking sadly, I’m afraid?’ she said, with one of the provincialisms which occasionally marked her language.
‘Yes,’ Wilfrid replied; ‘she looked far too ill to be up.’
He had seated himself on the sofa. His hands would not hold the tea-cup steadily; he put it down by his side.
‘I fear there is small chance of her getting much better in that house of illness,’ said Mrs. Baxendale, observing his agitation. ‘Can’t we persuade her to go somewhere? Her mother is in excellent hands.’
‘I wish we could,’ Wilfrid replied, clearly without much attention to his words.
‘You didn’t propose anything of the kind?’
He made no answer. A short silence intervened, and he felt there was no choice but to declare the truth.
‘The meeting was a very painful one,’ he began. ‘It is difficult to speak to you about it. Do you think that she has perfectly recovered?—that her mind is wholly—’
He hesitated; it was dreadful to be speaking in this way of Emily. The sound of his voice reproached him; what words would not appear brutal in such a case?
‘You fear—?’
Wilfrid rose and walked across the room. It seemed impossible to speak, yet equally so to keep his misery to himself.
‘Mrs. Baxendale,’ he said at length, ‘I am perhaps doing a very wrong thing in telling you what passed between us, but I feel quite unable to decide upon any course without the aid of your judgment. I am in a terrible position. Either I must believe Emily to speak without responsibility, or something inexplicable, incredible, has come to pass. She has asked me to release
her. She says that something has happened which makes it impossible for her ever to fulfil her promise, something which must always remain her secret, which I may not hope to understand. And with such dreadful appearance of sincerity—such a face of awful suffering—’
His voice failed. The grave concern on Mrs. Baxendale’s visage was not encouraging.
‘Something happened?’ the latter repeated, in low-toned astonishment. ‘Does she offer no kind of explanation?’
‘None—none,’ he added, ‘that I can bring myself to believe.’
Mrs. Baxendale could only look at him questioningly.
‘She said,’ Wilfrid continued, pale with the effort it cost him to speak, ‘that she has no longer any affection for me.’
There was another silence, of longer endurance than the last. Wilfrid was the first to break it.
‘My reason for refusing to believe it is, that she said it when she had done her utmost to convince me of her earnestness in other ways, and said it in a way—How is it possible for me to believe it? It is only two months since I saw her on the Castle Hill.’
‘I thought you had never been here before?’
‘I have never spoken to you of that. I came and left on the same day, It was to see her before I went to Switzerland.’
‘I am at a loss,’ said Mrs. Baxendale. ‘I can only suggest that she has had a terrible shock, and that her recovery, or seeming recovery, has been too rapid. Yet there is no trace of wandering in her talk with me.’
‘Nor was there to-day. She was perfectly rational. Think of one’s being driven to hope that she only seemed so!’
‘Did you speak of correspondence?’
‘No. I said that I could not agree to what she asked of me until she had repeated it after a time. I left her scarcely knowing what I spoke. What shall I do? How can I remain in doubt such as this? I said I wished for your help, yet how can you—how can anyone—help me? Have I unconsciously been the cause of this?’
‘Or has anyone else consciously been so?’ asked the lady, with meaning.
‘What? You think—? Is it possible?’
‘You only hinted that your relatives were not altogether pleased.’
Wilfrid, a light of anger flashing from his eyes, walked rapidly the length of the room.
‘She admitted to me,’ he said, in a suppressed voice, ‘that her illness began before her father’s death. It was not that that caused it. You think that someone may have interfered? My father? Impossible! He is a man of honour; he has written of her in the kindest way.’
But there was someone else. His father was honourable; could the same be said of Mrs. Rossall? He remembered his conversation with her on the lake of Thun; it had left an unpleasant impression on his mind—under the circumstances, explicable enough. Was his aunt capable of dastardly behaviour? The word could scarcely be applied to a woman’s conduct, and the fact that it could not made disagreeably evident the latitude conceded to women in consideration of their being compelled to carry on warfare in underhand ways. Suppose an anonymous letter. Would not Mrs. Rossall regard that as a perfectly legitimate stratagem, if she had set her mind on resisting this marriage? Easy, infinitely easy was it to believe this, in comparison with any other explanation of Emily’s behaviour. In his haste to seize on a credible solution of the difficulty, Wilfrid did not at first reflect that Emily was a very unlikely person to be influenced by such means, still more unlikely that she should keep such a thing secret from him. It must be remembered, however, that the ways of treachery are manifold, and the idea had only presented it to his mind in the most indefinite form. As it was, it drove him almost to frenzy. He could not find a calm word, nor was it indeed possible to communicate to Mrs. Baxendale the suspicion which occupied him. She, watching him as he stood at a distance, all but forgot her anxious trouble in admiration of the splendid passion which had transformed his features. Wilfrid looked his best when thus stirred—his best, from a woman’s point of view. The pale cast of thought was far from him; you saw the fiery nature asserting itself, and wondered in what direction these energies would at length find scope. Mrs. Baxendale, not exactly an impressionable woman, had a moment of absent-mindedness.
‘Come here and sit down,’ she said, the motherly insistance of the tone possibly revealing her former thought.
He threw himself on the couch.
‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘this must remain between Emily and yourself my own relations to her must be precisely as they have been, as if I had heard nothing. Now I think we may conclude that the poor girl is perfectly aware of what she is doing, but I no more than yourself believe her explanation. In some way she has come to regard it as a duty to abandon you. Let Emily once think it a duty, and she will go through with it if it costs her life; so much I know of her; so much it is easy to know, if one has the habit of observing. May I advise you? Do not try to see her again, but write briefly, asking her whether the mystery she spoke of in any way connects itself with you. You will know how to put it so as to exact the answer you require. Suppose you write such a note at once; I will send it as soon as it is ready. You are in the torment of doubts; no misery as bad as that. Does this plan recommend itself to you?’
‘Yes; I will write.’
‘Then I will take myself off whilst you do so. Ring the bell and send for me as soon as you are ready. It is only half-past four; Emily will have your letter in an hour, and surely will reply at once.’
The letter was written, at greater length perhaps than was quite necessary, and Mrs. Baxendale speeded it on its way. Wilfrid begged that he might be excused from attendance at the dinner-table.
‘By all means,’ was Mrs. Baxendale’s reply. ‘The more so that we have politicians again, and I fear you would not be in the mood to make fun of them as you did the other night.’
‘Make fun of them? No, I was in earnest. I got interested in their subjects, and found I had more to say than I thought.’
‘Well, well; that is your politeness. Now lie down again, poor boy. But you must promise to cat what I send you; we have quite enough illness on our hands, remember.’
‘I may have the answer before then,’ Wilfrid said, moodily.
He had; it came in less than two hours from the messenger’s departure. He was alone when the servant brought it to him. Emily wrote:—
‘Wilfrid,—The change is in myself, in my heart, in my life. Nothing have I heard against you; nothing have I imagined against you; the influence of which I spoke is in no way connected with you. Let this, I implore you, be final. Forgive me, forgive me, that I seem to inflict pain on you so heedlessly. I act as I must; my purpose is unchangeable.’
Having been apprised of the messenger’s return, Mrs. Baxendale entered Wilfrid’s room as soon as she had dressed for dinner. He sat at the table, the letter lying open before him. As Mrs. Baxendale approached, he held the sheet to her.
‘Then my last conjecture is fruitless,’ she said, letting her hand fall. ‘We cannot doubt her word.’
‘Doubt it? No. There is nothing for me but to believe all she said.’
He let his face fall upon his hands; the bitterness of fate was entering his inmost heart.
‘No, no, you shall not give way,’ said his friend, just touching his fingers. ‘It all looks very sad and hopeless, but I will not believe it is hopeless. Refuse to believe that one worst thing, the only thing for which there is no remedy. Come, defy yourself to believe it! You are strong enough for that; there is manhood in you for anything that is worth bearing, however hard.’
He could not reply to her encouragement; who cannot devise words of exhortation? and what idler than such words when the heart agonises?
‘Try and listen to me, Wilfrid. If I make you angry with me, it is better than abandoning yourself to despondency. I firmly believe that this is a matter which time will bring right. Emily is acting hastily; I am convinced of that. Time is on your side; try and accept him as a friend. We are not living in a novel; there are no
such things as mysteries which last a lifetime. Your part is to draw upon all the manliness you own, to have faith in yourself, and to wait. Have faith in her, too; there are few like her; some day you will see that this only made her better worth winning.—Now answer me a question.’
Wilfrid raised his head.
‘Do you not in your heart believe that she is incapable of folly or wrongheadedness?’
‘I believe that no truer woman lives.’
‘And rightly, be sure of it. Believing that, you know she cannot break her word to you without some reason which you would yourself say was good and sufficient. She imagines she has such a reason; imagines it in all sincerity. Time will show her that she has been in error, and she will confess it. She has all her faculties, no doubt, but a trial such as this leads her to see things in ways we cannot realise.’
‘You forget that it is not this shock that has so affected her.’
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