Chapter Nineteen.
“Those have most power to hurt us that we love;
We lay our sleeping lives within their arms.”
Beaumont and Fletcher.
There is a curious likeness in the yesterdays and to-days of our lives, a likeness so strong that it conceals the greater differences from us until we have gone far enough to look back and compare them dispassionately. We eat and drink, talk and sleep, more or less; certain things seem to hold us in chains to which we move obediently. If it were not so, life would be unendurable, the calls upon our sympathy would harden our hearts or wear them out, joy and sorrow would jostle each other too openly in the high road. The mechanism hurts us sometimes, but it is good discipline nevertheless.
And so at Thorpe Regis the many changes were gradually covered with the old dress of routine and habit. It is almost sad how soon people become reconciled to them. A year ago it would have seemed the strangest thing in the world for anything to have broken through the daily intercourse between Hardlands and the Vicarage, and here was an alienation so great that it almost amounted to total estrangement. Not that the Squire desired it. Unused to keep a very close control over himself, he allowed his feelings to be seen, and affronted Anthony; but he would gladly have had everything as of old with Mrs Miles, and was too autocratic not to be puzzled when he found this not the case.
“It was not her fault. The girls may go to her as much as they please. The poor woman’s to be pitied,—I pity her from the bottom of my heart,” he would say.
Mrs Miles on her part had no very clear conception of what had happened, for she had lived in close retirement since her husband’s death, and the few friends who entered that solitude were not likely to be cruelly communicative. But she was aware that unkind reports had been set afloat about the will, and, while really too sad and crushed in spirit to do more than reiterate her assurance that it would not have happened had the Vicar been alive, she was vaguely willing to take up cudgels against all the world on Anthony’s behalf; in comparison with whom what was Hardlands, what was the Squire, what even were motherless Bessie and Winifred?
And so, and so, and so,—a hundred little obstacles magnified themselves indefinitely, the two sets of lives that had been so blended with each other fell apart, the little brook widened into a river. Many people thought that it would have been better if Anthony had left the neighbourhood for a time, and allowed the exaggerated reports of his conduct to settle quietly. But perhaps the idea of this sediment of black mud, only requiring a chance stone to be stirred into turbid activity, was more hateful to Anthony than the knowledge that the waters all about him were kept in constant disturbance. He made no pretence of concealing that he was unhappy, or at least no one could fail to see it in his face; and his irritation and soreness against all the world were marked so acutely that it was impossible not to foresee a reaction from so abrupt a closing of his heart. He remained at Thorpe, partly from yielding to his mothers clinging desire to do so, partly from pride which forbade flight from disagreeables, and partly from a failure in those springs of action which had hitherto urged him forward. But he could not long endure the position of solitude he had taken up, and some consciousness of this added to his discomfort.
When the thing of which he was accused had first grown into form, Winifred had reproached herself for the warm glow with which her heart assured her that Anthony would never feel her friendship fail him; but this had long ago faded away under the keen chill of his manner, keener because her generous spirit had never wavered in its faithfulness and was enduring all the pangs which he believed himself to be bearing alone. She would not suffer one throb of resentment to answer his coldness, but it cost her a daily and bitter struggle to learn her powerlessness, and to understand that he was himself making it impossible for her to put out so much as a hand to help him in his trouble.
She was in the village one day, and just turning out of it towards the Hardlands meadows when she met old Araunah Stokes and his daughter-in-law, Faith’s mother. It was not very often the old man got so far from his house, and he was now walking on with a kind of feeble vigour, as if bent upon making the most of what small strength remained to him. His daughter-in-law—who had evidently been crying, and now and then wiped her eyes—gave Miss Chester to understand that it was Faith who caused their trouble by her persistence in her engagement.
“Whatever us shall do, I don’t know, wi’ her so contrairy.”
“Hold your tongue,” said the old man, turning upon her with a weak, fierce voice. “The women tells and tells, till they talks the very brains out o’ yer head. You’m no better than a baby when they’ve clacketed at ye for an hour or two without a word of sense from beginnin’ to end.”
“An’ me niver so much as openin’ my lips,” said Mrs Stokes, crying meekly and holding up her hands. “An’ I did think as Faith would ha’ bin a comfort, me so weak, wi’ no sproyle, nor nothin’, and gran’father only just fit to totle about.”
“It ain’t much comfort you’m like to get out o’ maedens,” said Araunah, still bitterly. “They’m so hard to manage as a drove o’ pegs. Faith shall bide where her be, though, for all her mother’s setting up.”
“Has she made up her mind, then, to marry this man?” asked Winifred, interested.
“He doan’t give her the chance,” said the grandfather angrily, striking his stick upon the ground. “Girl’s a fule, that’s t’ long an’ short o’t, an’ he bain’t so beg a wan.”
“He knows better nor to persume,” said Mrs Stokes, indignant for Faith’s sake. “You see, Miss Winifred, he doan’t feel he’ve got enough to offer our maed,—I doan’t know what her can be thinkin’ of,” continued her mother, dissolving suddenly again.
“An’ her’d give up a good pleace. But her shall bide, her shall bide.”
“Though it mayn’t be for long, with Mr Anthony goin’ to be married hisself.”
Self-possession is a wonderful power. We read with a thrill of amazement of the Spartan boy, and the fox, and the hidden agony, but, after all, the heroism is repeated day by day around us. There are people getting stabs from unconscious executioners, and the life dying out of them, while they are smiling and keeping up the little ball of conversation, and betraying nothing of the pang. Winifred’s voice became a little gayer than usual as she said,—
“Mr Anthony? Is he going to be married?”
“To Miss Lovell down to Under’m, haven’t you heard it, miss? It’s that has set Faith thinkin’ more o’ that Stephens.”
“I woan’t have it,” said the old man, querulously. “I woan’t have she comin’ hoam to we, ating and drinking. Polly has more sense than Faith and her mother putt together.”
Winifred never quite knew what she said, but she walked away with her heart suddenly hardened against Faith. Why should Faith escape?—why should she not bear her lot like other people?—why should one be set free more than another? And, O, what had Faith to endure! What grief was hers, whose lover only did not think himself worthy, or who would, perhaps, renounce his happiness for the sake of perishing souls? Grief?—why, it was an exquisite bliss. Faith stood on one side, triumphant and happy, while Winifred walked in the valley of humiliation, with sharpest thorns piercing her feet. Anthony did not love her, for he loved another. Death builds no wall of separation like this, nay, death, will break down walls,—only love itself can bar love with a hopeless fence. She fought against the bitter truth, poor soul, calling herself by hard names, and laughing drearily at her own folly; but the anguish was very acute, and she had a feeling as if, though for a little while she might keep its sharpest suffering at aim’s length, it would overmaster her at last. Was it all true,—real? Was the sun shining on her, or was it rather a cruel furnace that had suddenly scorched the earth, and would burn and scorch day after day, day after day, through long years, through an endless lifetime, grey with shadows and weary with pain, and with no better hope than forgetfulness? Heaven pity those whose sorrow brings them face to face with such a thought and no further! Its very touch gave Winifred a shuddering fear of herself, and a momentary but clear perception of something that should shine through grief and overcome it, ah, even make the rugged road beautiful.
But it was difficult for her to disconnect her thoughts as yet while they were vibrating and ringing with the blow. She walked mechanically towards home, but she saw Bessie and Mr and Mrs Featherly in the garden, and feeling it impossible at this moment to join them, she stood still irresolutely, and then turned and went along the field, where a little stream was running, and a path led up through a small wood.
The day was delicately bright and hot. Across a pale moon that looked herself no more than a stationary cloud, little wilful vapours which had broken away from larger masses were sailing. Red cattle, satisfied with their rich flowery pastures, had gathered under the hedges to chew the cud and sleepily whisk away the flies. The brown water hurried along, washing long grass, and shining up at meadow-sweet and purple clusters of loosestrife. There were cool flashing lights, and tender depths of colour, and a sweet content over everything, and poor Winifred growing sadder and sadder with the sense of contrast, yet walking more slowly and looking wistfully at the long grass, with a vague longing to lie down in it, and let everything go by and away forever. It might have been this which, as she went towards a little wooden bridge crossing the stream into the wood, deafened her ears to a step until Anthony Miles himself was close to her. The instant before she had believed herself safe with the patient cattle and the water and her own sad thoughts, and it cost her a struggle to master the tumult into which her feelings were suddenly stirred. But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to notice any disturbance, and as matters had not yet come to such a pass that they could meet in a lonely meadow and go by without greeting, he put out his hand, and said,—
“Are you going into the wood? You will find it very hot even there. A thunder-storm would be a real comfort.”
“O, I like this sort of day!” said Winifred, with a hurrying desire to prove her own perfect contentment. “Everything is looking most beautiful I see Sniff is as fond as ever of the water—” She hesitated suddenly, there being a certain awkwardness quick to make itself felt in any allusion to the past, however slight; but Anthony said carelessly,—
“Sniff was due at Oakham, but as my mother seems to want him more than Marion, I shall not send him.”
“Is Marion quite well?”
“Quite well, thank you.”
It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.
“I have just been told something,” she said, looking straight in his face and smiling. “I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell. Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon.”
There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs. Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said “Thank you” gravely.
That was all. A few words, the river running through the waving grass, a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all, standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf. That was all. It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves in the wood rustled as she passed under them.
Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away. He had a very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in many things, and too angry now to be just. A remembrance of old times was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps, an enemy. He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown water and walked away.
As for Winifred—well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle, into which neither you nor I need look.
Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when life, not death, is the phantom they dread. One fear may be as unworthy as the other, but it is there. Only for both there is a merciful Hand stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.