Part 3, Chapter VII.
Life and Death.
Constancy’s college career ended, as had always been anticipated, with credit, and even with a share of renown. She helped to prove the power of her sex to compete for laurels formerly reserved for the other, and she was made much of accordingly. She was very much pleased, and not greatly surprised, for the kind of power that she possessed is rarely unconscious. It was not through the sense of intellectual failure that the gospel was to come to her. She was not even tired with the hard work, only ready for a holiday, and Kitty and Violet Staunton were glad enough to share it with her.
So off they went, prepared for every sort of exercise and adventure. After about a fortnight of successful sight-seeing the three ladies found themselves in a charming little settlement in a broad mountain valley, which we will here call Zwei-brücken, where cool green rivers rushed through green fields and flowed from the heart of dark, snow-tipped mountains. There were large fawn-coloured oxen and little fawn-coloured goats, houses surprisingly like toy Swiss cottages, and a new hotel in the same style, with the usual variety of tourists. It was a centre for mountain ascents and for excursions, and Constancy and Violet sat under a wide verandah, on the afternoon of their arrival, and watched the groups of travellers.
“Don’t you remember,” said Constancy, “talking about the feeling of London? What’s the feeling of this? It’s green, it’s cool, it’s windy, it’s rushing and fresh.”
“When Guy Waynflete came in in the middle, and we settled about Moorhead,” said Violet, “I was provoked with him this year for not going abroad when he promised, for Cuthbert simply buried himself in the British Museum, and said all the sources of culture were to be found there.”
Constancy did not answer; she had fallen into a dream. She leant her chin on her hand, and looked over the wide valley, while into her open eyes there came the same look with which Florella “saw” the picture in her flowers. At such moments there was a promise for the future in Constancy’s young face of which, with all her successes, the present had shown no performance. Suddenly her intent look brightened.
“The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,” she exclaimed. “You can’t get ‘back of that.’ Free, free, free! That’s the feeling of it! The river, the wind, the sky—every one out on a holiday, and—the curate there in his flannels, how he enjoys them. It makes one a little mad— Why, Vi! Good gracious!”
For Violet, in startling confirmation of the last words, had suddenly rushed forward and launched herself on the neck of a young man in brown tweed, who was coming up the steps of the verandah.
“Cuth, Cuth! Oh, how lovely! Oh, did you know we were here?”
“I have known long enough to mitigate my alarm at your greeting. Your letters were at the post-office. Yes—here we are. How do you do, Miss Vyner?”
“I shall believe in brain-waves in future,” said Constancy, as she gave him her hand. “I had just recalled a conversation with you and Mr Waynflete, and I see you coming. Is he with you?”
“Yes, at last. His brother thought him overworked, and very sensibly wrote to me to come and carry him off. There he is.”
Constancy had not seen Guy for more than nine months, her last remembrance of him was among the dancers at the Kirkton Hall garden-party, and she realised at once, as he came along the verandah, that the slight youth with his pathetic eyes had grown into a very remarkable person.
“Why—he looks like a mystic, or a martyr!” she thought. “No wonder people turn and look at him. It’s a startling face.”
Guy’s greeting was, however, simple enough. He was cordial, but he smiled his little reserved smile as he said—
“Yes, it was very good of Staunton to wait for me. I couldn’t get away before. When I go back, I hope Godfrey will go to Scotland and get some shooting.”
“And Rawdie? Is he thriving? And have you seen my aunt and Florella? Are they quite settled at Waynflete?”
Guy answered appropriately, and presently took his letters, and went away to study them.
He was still sitting in a quiet corner of the verandah, when Staunton, who had remained to exchange news and plans with his sisters, came in search of him.
“The girls are getting coffee,” he said, “and then they are going to stroll out and see the bridges. Will you come?”
“Better not. I walk so slowly. I’ll come and meet you.”
“Come now,” said Cuthbert. “This trip isn’t quite answering for you. What is it? You must tell me just what you like.”
“Well—new places and so many changing people worry me. He—it looks uncommonly grim and grotesque in new combinations. It spoils the look of the world. It’s a little queer, you know, and tiring. I’m much stronger, really; I can do what I’ve got to do. But I expect that’s about all. It’s months since the real trouble touched me; but I think there’s something more to come—some day.”
“Suppose we find some more out-of-the-way place, and stay there quietly. What you really want is rest.”
“No. I like this place, and everything is really going on well with us. Godfrey shall get out of his hole yet. Oh no, I’m not beaten. We’re not going to the dogs ourselves, nor is Waynflete. And as for other things—well—the world goes wrong with others.”
He glanced at Cuthbert for a moment, then sat upright, and said—
“It won’t do, of course, to shirk any of it. I’ll come. I want to cultivate Miss Constancy, and improve my mind.”
Cuthbert made no demur. He thought that the change, however painful, had not come a moment too soon. He had never favoured the notion of a definite task to be accomplished; a definite foe to be conquered. He could not square such a view with any habit of his mind. But Guy had certainly accomplished something. Was it given to man to do so much, and yet to have more? Cuthbert knew well how sweet the outlook was into “the level of every day,” how natural and healthful were the hopes, and even the fears, that had dawned on Guy’s spirit. But could flowers grow on such a field of battle?
Constancy and her friends intended to spend at least a week at Zwei-brücken.
Guy said that it looked bad to ride when the ladies were walking, but he was able in this way to share in mountain expeditions, and Cuthbert hoped that he enjoyed them. Constancy had always liked him, and was ready to plunge into all the new discussions for which her recent studies had prepared her. She was well aware that he now and then said things which enabled her to think as well as talk, and he argued with her, and drew her out, feeling as if she were a clever and agreeable child. When he cut out a square of tiny flowerets and still tinier growths of leaf and blade, and packed it carefully in a sandwich box to send it home, he felt as if he was laying an offering before a shrine. When he studied the names of the flowers with Constancy, he felt that he had a good comrade in a mountain ramble.
One day something happened to her. She went out alone by a little craggy path behind the hotel, which led along the top of a steep descent to the river. She pursued it thinking of nothing but of adding a new specimen or two to her store of flowers, and presently saw a dog-rose of a peculiarly bright pink, hanging over the edge, and bent to pick it; the stone on which she stepped gave way, and she slid downwards, and stopped herself by catching at the rose just on the edge of—nothing. An inch further, and she would have fallen into the roaring torrent a hundred feet below.
For one awful moment, she believed that she could not turn and save herself; the next, strong, cool, and active, she had cautiously felt for hand and foot hold, and began to climb up again, to find her hand, as she neared the top, enclosed in a firm clasp, while Guy’s voice said—
“Steady; you’re all right. Hold on. I can’t lift you, but I won’t let you go.”
As he spoke, she was safe on the path again, but shaking from head to foot. He drew her away from the edge of the precipice, and she sat down on a bit of rock, and hid her face in her hands. She was mentally, as well as physically, dizzy, and he did not speak to her till she dropped her hands on her lap, and said, with an odd ring in her voice—
“Well! I was nearly killed!”
“Your nerve saved you. You were nearly safe when I came up, but it was an awkward place. Remember, you can’t be too careful on a mountain.”
“Well!” she said again, “I thought I should be killed; I thought of everything. I thought of the bit in the college magazine about me—about my being found—and Florella—”
“Yes,” said Guy, “one does think, in such moments, of the dearest.”
Constancy was silent. A deep crimson blush burned over her face and neck down to her very finger-tips.
Suddenly she turned, and looked up in his face.
“If I had been killed, there’d have been an end of me to all intents and purposes. I don’t care for anything that could go on. Oh, I don’t mean anything about opinions; but there couldn’t be anything afterwards that’s real to me. There couldn’t be anything that I want.”
“You have found that out,” said Guy.
“I never thought about God at all,” she said abruptly. “He never came into my head!”
“Well, He has come now,” said Guy.
She recognised his tone of conviction. Thoughts, speculations, flashed into her mind, at last, not as words, but as facts.
“Well,” she cried again, “if I didn’t believe in Him, I’d have stood to it, and not been afraid. But I do—I always have—and yet I just forgot Him—then.”
“But not now,” said Guy. “I think I ought to take you back,” he added; “you ought to rest, and recover yourself.”
“I’ll go back,” she said, standing up. “But I’m quite well.”
She walked on slowly beside him; but presently broke out again.
“You’ve been very ill, I know. Did you think then that to die, and leave off everything would be—horrid?”
“No,” he answered. “For one thing, when I’ve been in danger, I’ve been too bad to know it. But I do know what it is to face—destruction. And certainly there is something beyond it.”
She turned round to him as they came up to the hotel.
“I’m awfully obliged to you,” she said, in girlish speech, but in a deeply moved voice.
“You’ll not tell any one, will you? I want to think about it quietly.”
Guy promised, and they came back on to the verandah together.