"Don't," said Rachel. "I can't bear it."
The Bishop rose, and stood facing her.
"And at last," he went on—"at last, in a moment, when you showed your full trust and confidence in him, he shook off for an instant the clogs of the nature which he brought into the world, and rose to what he had never been before—your equal. And his love transcended the lies that love itself on its lower plane had prompted. He reached the place where he could no longer lie to you. And then, though his whole future happiness depended on one more lie, he spoke the truth."
Rachel put out her hand as if to ward off what was coming.
"And how did you meet him the first time he spoke the truth to you?" continued the Bishop, inexorably. "You say you loved him, and yet—you spurned him from you, you thrust him down into hell. You stooped to him in the beginning. He was nothing until your fancied love fell upon him. And then you break him. It is women like you who do more harm in the world than the bad ones. The harm that poor fool Lady Newhaven did him is as nothing compared to the harm you have done him. You were his god, and you have deserted him. And you say you loved him. May God preserve men from the love of women if that is all that a good woman's love is capable of."
"I can do nothing," said Rachel, hoarsely.
"Do nothing!" said the Bishop, fiercely. "You can do nothing when you are responsible for a man's soul God will require his soul at your hands. Scarlett gave it into your keeping, and you took it. You had no business to take it if you meant to throw it away. And now you say you can do nothing!"
"What can I do?" said Rachel, faintly.
"Forgive him."
"Forgiveness won't help him. The only forgiveness he would care for is to marry me."
"Of course. It is the only way you can forgive him."
Rachel turned away. Her stubborn, quivering face showed a frightful conflict.
The Bishop watched her.
"My child," he said, gently, "we all say we follow Christ, but most of us only follow him and his cross—part of the way. When we are told that our Lord bore our sins, and was wounded for our transgressions, I suppose that meant that He felt as if they were His own in His great love for us. But when you shrink from bearing your fellow-creature's transgressions, it shows that your love is small."
Rachel was silent.
"If you really love him you will forgive him."
Rachel clinched and unclinched her hands.
"You are appealing to a nobility and goodness which are not in me," she said, stubbornly.
"I appeal to nothing but your love. If you really love him you will forgive him."
"He has broken my heart."
"I thought that was it. It is yourself you are thinking of. But what is he suffering at this moment? You do not know or care. Where is he now, that poor man who loves you? Rachel, if you had ever known despair, you would not thrust a fellow creature down into it."
"I have known it," said Rachel, hoarsely.
"Were not you deserted once? You were deserted to very little purpose, if after that you can desert another. Go back in your mind, and—remember. Where you stood once he stands now. You and his sin have put him there. You and his sin have tied him to his stake. Will you range yourself for ever on the side of his sin? Will you stand by and see him perish?"
Silence; like the silence round a death-bed.
"He is in a great strait. Only love can save him."
Rachel flung out her arms with an inarticulate cry.
"I will forgive him," she said. "I will forgive him."
Chapter LII
*
"Les âmes dont j'aurai besoin,
Et les étoiles sont trop loin;
Je mourral dans un coin."
How Hugh shook off Lady Newhaven when she followed him out of the Palace he did not know. There had been some difficulty. She had spoken to him, had urged something upon him. But he had got rid of her somehow, and had found himself sitting in his bedroom at the Southminster Hotel. Anything to be alone! He had felt that was the one thing in life to attain. But now that he was alone, solitude suddenly took monstrous and hideous proportions, and became a horror to flee from. He could not bear the face of a fellow-creature. He could not bear this ghoul of solitude. There was no room for him between these great millstones. They pressed upon him till he felt they were crushing him to death between them. In vain he endeavored to compose himself, to recollect himself. But exhaustion gradually did for him what he could not do for himself.
Rachel had thrown him over. He had always known she would, and—she had.
They were to have been married in a few weeks; three weeks and one day. He marked a day off every morning when he waked. He had thought of her as his wife till the thought had become part of himself. Its roots were in his inmost being. He tore it out now, and looked at it apart from himself, as a man bleeding and shuddering looks upon a dismembered limb.
The sweat broke from Hugh's forehead. The waiting and daily parting had seemed unbearable, that short waiting of a few weeks. Now she would never be his. That long, ever-growing hunger of the heart would never be appeased. She had taken herself away, taking away with her her dear hands and her faithful eyes and the low voice, the very sound of which brought comfort and peace. They were his hands and eyes. She had given them to him. And now she had wrenched them away again, those faithful eyes had seared him with their scorn, those white hands, against which he had leaned his forehead, had thrust him violently from her. He could not live without her. This was death, to be parted from her.
"I can't, Rachel, I can't," said Hugh, over and over again. What was any lesser death, compared to this, compared to her contempt?
She would never come back. She despised him. She would never love him any more. He had told her that it must be a dream that she could love him, and that he should wake. And she had said it was all quite true. How sweetly she had said it. But it was a dream, after all, and he had waked—in torment. Life as long as he lived would be like this moment.
"I will not bear it," he said, suddenly, with the frantic instinct of escape which makes a man climb out of a burning house over a window-ledge. Far down is the pavement, quiet, impassive, deadly. But behind is the blast of the furnace. Panic staggers between the two, and—jumps.
"I will not bear it," said Hugh, tears of anguish welling up into his eyes.
He had not only lost her, but he had lost himself. That better, humble, earnest self had gone away with Rachel, and he was thrust back on the old false cowardly self whom, since she had loved him, he had abhorred. He had disowned it. He had cast it off. Now it enveloped him again like a shirt of fire, and a voice within him said, "This is the real you. You deceived yourself for a moment. But this is the real you—the liar, the coward, the traitor, who will live with you again forever."
"I am forsaken," said Hugh. He repeated the words over and over again. "Forsaken! Forsaken!" And he looked round for a way of escape.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a picture hung which he had seen once and never looked at again. He turned and looked at it now, as a man turns and looks at a picture on the wall behind him.
He saw it again, the still upturned face of the little lake among its encircling trees, as he had seen it that day when he and Doll came suddenly upon it in the woods. What had it to do with him? He had escaped from it once. He understood now.
Who, that has once seen it, has ever forgotten it, the look that deep water takes when life is unbearable! "Come down to me among my tall water-plants," it says. "I am a refuge, a way of escape. This horror and nightmare of life cannot reach you in my bosom. Come down to me. I promise nothing but to lay my cool hand upon the fire in your brain, and that the world shall release its clutch upon you, the world which promises, and will not keep its promises. I will keep mine."
Hugh's mind wavered, as the flame of a candle wavers in a sudden draught. So had it wavered once in the fear of death, and he had yielded to that fear. So it wavered now in a greater fear, th
e fear of life, and he yielded to that fear.
He caught up his hat and went out.
It was dark, and he hit against the people in the feebly lighted streets as he hurried past. How hot it was! How absurd to see those gathered heaps of snow, and the muffled figures of men and women.
Presently he had left the town, and was in the open country. Where was he going along this interminable road in this dim snow light?
The night was very still. The spirit of the frost stooped over the white face of the earth. The long homely lines of meadow and wold and hedgerow showed like the austere folds of a shroud.
Hugh walked swiftly, looking neither to right nor left. The fire in his brain mounted, mounted. The moon, entangled in a dim thicket, got up behind him.
At last he stopped short. That farm on the right! He had seen it before. Yes. That was Greenfields. Doll had pointed it out to him when they had walked on that Sunday afternoon to Beaumere. They had left the road here, and had taken to the fields. There was the gate. Hugh opened it. Crack had been lost here and had rejoined them in the wood. The field was empty. A path like a crease ran across it.
He knew the way. It was the only way of escape from this shadow in front of him, this other self who had come back to him, and torn Rachel from him, and made her hate him. She loved him really. She was faithful. She would never have forsaken him. But she had mistaken this evil creeping shadow for him, and he had not been able to explain. But she would understand presently. He would make it all very clear and plain, and she would love him again, when he had got rid of this other Hugh. He would take him down and drown him in Beaumere. It was the only way to get rid of him. And he, the real Hugh, would get safely through. He had done it once, and he knew. He should stifle and struggle for a little while. There was a turn exceeding sharp to be passed, but he should reach that place of peace beyond, as he had done before, and find Rachel waiting for him, her arms round him again.
"It is the only way," he said, over and over again, "the only way."
He reached the wood. The moon was up now, and smote white and sharp down the long winding aisle of the cathedral, which God builds Him in every forest glade, where the hoar-frost and the snow held now their solemn service of praise.
Hugh saw the little light of the keeper's cottage, and instinctively edged his way to the left. He was pressed for time. A wheel was turning in his head, so quickly, so quickly in this great heat that, unless he were quicker than it, it would out-distance him altogether.
At last he saw the water, and ran down swiftly towards it. The white tree-trunks were in league against him, and waylaid him, striking him violently. But he struck back, and got through them. They fell behind at last. His shadow was beside him now, short and nimble. He looked round once or twice to make sure it was still with him.
He reached the water's edge and then stopped short, aghast. Where was the water gone? It had deceived him and deserted him, like everything else. It was all hard as iron, one great white sheet of ice stretching away in front of him. He had thought of the little lake as he had last seen it, cool and deep, and with the shadows of the summer trees in it. It was all changed and gone. There was no help here. The way of escape was closed. With a hoarse cry he set off, running across the ice in the direction of the place where he had been nearly drowned before.
It was here, opposite that clump of silver birch. The ice was a different color here. It tilted and creaked suddenly beneath his feet. He flung himself down upon it and struck it wildly with his fist. "Let me through," he stammered. But the ice resisted him. It made an ominous dry crackling, as if in mockery. It barely resisted him, but it did resist him. And he had no time, no time. He scrambled to his feet again, and it gave way instantly. The other self pounced suddenly upon him and came through with him, and they struggled furiously together in deep water.
"I must, I must," gasped Hugh, between his clinched teeth.
"You shall not," said the other self, mad with terror. "Hold on to the ice."
Hugh saw his bleeding hands holding tightly to the jagged edge. It broke. He clutched another piece. It broke again. The current was sucking him slowly under the ice. The broken pieces pushed him. One arm was under already, and he could not get it out. The animal horror of a trap seized him. He had not known it would be like this. He was not prepared for this.
The other self fought furiously for life, clutching and tearing at the breaking ice.
"Call," it said to him, "while there is still time."
Hugh set his teeth.
The ice broke in a great piece and tilted heavily against him. It was over one shoulder.
"Call," said the other self, sharply, again, "or you will be under the ice."
And up to the quiet heaven rose once and again a hoarse, wild cry of human agony and despair.
Chapter LIII
*
Ueber allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest Du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest Du auch.
—GOETHE.
The doctor was very late. Rachel, who was going to the Watch Service, waited for the Bishop in the hall till he came out of his study with the curate, who had doubts.
When the young man had left, Rachel said, hesitating:
"I shall not go to the service if Dr. Brown does not arrive before then. Hugh was to have come with us. I don't want him to go all through the night thinking—perhaps if I am prevented going you will see him, and speak a word to him."
"My dear," said the Bishop, "I went across to his rooms two hours ago, directly you went up to Hester."
He loved Rachel, but he wondered at her lack of imagination.
"Two hours ago! And what did you say to him?"
"I did not see him. I was too late. He was gone."
"Gone!" said Rachel, faintly. "Where?"
"I do not know. I went up to his rooms. All his things were still there."
"Where is he now?"
"I do not know."
The Bishop looked at her compassionately. She had been a long time forgiving him. While she hesitated he had said to her, "Where is he now?" and she had not understood.
Her face became pinched and livid. She understood now, after the event.
"I am frightened for him," she said.
The Bishop had been alarmed while she poured out his tea before they began to talk.
"Perhaps he has gone back to London," she said, her eyes widening with a vague dread.
The Bishop had gone on to the station, and had ascertained that Hugh had not left by the one train which had stopped at Southminster between seven and nine. But he did not add to her anxiety by saying so.
The doctor's brougham, coming at full speed, drew up suddenly at the door.
"There he is at last," said the Bishop, and before the bell could be rung he opened the door.
A figure was already on the threshold, but it was not Dr. Brown. It was Dick.
"Where is Dr. Brown?" said Rachel and the Bishop simultaneously, looking at the doctor's well-known brougham and smoking horses.
"He asked me to come," said Dick, measuring Rachel with his eye. Then he did as he would be done by, and added, slowly: "He was kept. He was on his way here from Wilderleigh, where one of the servants is ill, and as I was dining there he offered me a lift back. And when we were passing that farm near the wood a man stopped us. He said there had been an accident—some one nearly drowned. I went, too. It turned out to be Scarlett. Dr. Brown remained with him, and sent me to take you to him."
"Is he dead?" asked Rachel, her eyes never leaving Dick's face.
"No, but he is very ill."
"I will come now."
The chaplain came slowly across the hall, laden with books and papers.
"Let Canon Sebright know at once that I cannot take part in the service," said the Bishop, sharply; and he hurried down the s
teps after Rachel, and got into the carriage with her. Dick turned up the collar of his fur coat, and climbed up beside the coachman.
The carriage turned warily, and then set off at a great pace.
The cathedral loomed up suddenly, all aglow with light within. Out into the night came the dirge of the organ for the dying year.
The Bishop kept his eyes fixed on the pane. The houses were left behind. They were in the country.
"Who is that?" said Rachel, suddenly, as a long shadow ran beside them along the white hedgerow.
"It is only Dick. There is a rise in the ground here, and he is running to ease the horses."
There was a long silence.
"I believe he did it on purpose," said Rachel, at last. "I forsook him in his great need, and now he has forsaken me."
"He would never forsake you, Rachel."
"Not knowingly," she said. "I did it knowing. That is the difference between him and me."
She did not speak again.
For a lifetime, as it seemed to the Bishop, the carriage swayed from side to side of the white road. At last, when he had given up all hope, it turned into a field and jolted heavily over the frozen ruts. Then it came to a stand-still.
Rachel was out of the carriage before Dick could get off the box.
She looked at him without speaking, and he led the way swiftly through the silent wood under the moon. The Bishop followed.
The keeper's cottage had a dim yellow glimmer in it. Man's little light looked like a kind of darkness in the great white, all-pervading splendor of the night. The cottage door was open. Dr. Brown was looking out.
Rachel went up to him.
"Where is he?" she said.
He tried to speak; he tried to hold her gently back while he explained something. But he saw she was past explanation, blind and deaf except for one voice, one face.
"Where is he?" she repeated, shaking her head impatiently.
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