Chapter Thirty Three.
“For Love himself took part against himself
To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love.”
Tennyson.
That afternoon Winifred was at home alone, rather an unusual thing for her, but Mrs Orde had occasion to go to Aunecester, and her son and Bessie had gone with her, while Winifred was glad of some excuse for staying at home, not having yet become accustomed to the sight of the street where her eyes were constantly picturing what had happened such a little time ago. A large fire was blazing, and she opened the long window, and sat down with some pretence of work in her hand, but after a few minutes’ attention her eyes wandered away to the grey familiar view before her. The firs to the left looked thin and dreary, the grass of the field which stretched beyond the lawn had grown a little coarse, no lights flashed from a mass of low heavy-lying clouds, all colours except cold greys and browns seemed to, have been drawn from the distant trees, the cottages, the little line of sea, the sad hills. Winifred’s eyes filled with tears as she looked out. It would have been so natural for the Squire’s strong figure to have made the foreground of the picture, his voice might so well have been heard calling the dogs, and gathering around him a little circle of cheery life, that the blank solitude smote her with desolate pain. It is, however, possible that when such a sad and unacknowledged jar has grown into a girls life as had come to Winifred, there is a certain luxury in a permitted sorrow. It seems at the time as if trouble were being heaped upon trouble, but it really takes away that hard feeling of repression which is like an iron band on a wound. Perhaps there is hardly a grief over which we mourn, but has those hidden behind it of which the world knows nothing. How imperceptibly do other memories weave themselves round the one remembrance that is so sad and yet so dear! How heavy with longing may be the thoughts which creep softly back to days not very long ago, except for that drag which makes time seem interminable! It was not only over her father’s image that Winifred was crying softly when she heard a sound, and Anthony Miles came in.
It may have been that he was too preoccupied with his own feelings to notice her tears, or that he did not dare to notice them. Winifred herself rose hastily, and sat down again a little hastily too, taking care to turn her back to the light which she had before been facing. She knew that her hand was trembling, and although it might have been caused by the momentary surprise, the feeling of weakness it produced unnerved her, and she was thankful that Anthony, when he sat down, sat leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, and his face on his hand, looking straight before him through the open window at the dull greyness, as if he saw nothing on either side.
A minute before Winifred had not felt as if it were possible to speak, but it is often necessary to fly from silence and take refuge in commonplaces, and she gathered up the work which lay in her lap and said,—
“I hope you did not want to see the others, for they have driven to Aunecester.”
“I did not want to see any one but you, Winifred,” said Anthony, without changing his position.
The words were so unlike what she expected, that she trembled again with a thrill that was neither joy nor fear, but something more exquisitely painful. Anthony went on after a moment’s pause,—“I suppose you do not know what happened last night?”
“Last night? No.”
“That poor fellow of whom we were speaking the other evening, David Stephens, fell into the water, and died in a few hours.”
“O poor Faith!” said Winifred, touched by an instantaneous sympathy.
“Yes,” said Anthony, gravely. “We would have sent her home, but she has begged my mother to let her stay.”
“Were you there?—how did you know about it?—where was it?”
“Yes, I was there. It was in Underham,” said Anthony. He had spoken throughout in the same short abstracted tone, as if a fit of absence were upon him; but what he had told her was sufficient to account for it, and she had forgotten herself in its sadness, and was looking at him with compassionate eyes, when he turned round for the first time, and said slowly, “I wished to see you alone, because you may as well know that it is proved—sufficiently, I suppose, for the satisfaction of my friends—that I am not quite the rogue they made me out to be. I can’t answer any questions, and it is not possible now, any more than then, to explain exactly what did take place. Therefore, there is, of course, still room for doubt. At the same time David, before he died, poor fellow, declared that the letter never reached my hand, so—you may take the evidence for what it is worth. You are the only person to whom I shall repeat it.”
Passionate tears sprang into Winifred’s eyes. This clearing of Anthony’s honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they implied. Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was choked. Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely reproachful. He started up and walked quickly to the window. That look thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter joy. Had her faith been, after all, unshaken? Had it been he who had thrust her from him?—his pride which had separated them forever? He turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding back her own emotion.
“I am so thankful,” she said. “Now all that has past will lose its pain. I don’t want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for you,—for us all,” she added softly.
“Pain does not go away so easily as you believe. I think it has only just begun,” said poor Anthony. “Answer me one thing, Winifred. Does this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?”
“How should it!—how should it!” she cried out with an impetuosity of rejection which startled him. “O, how could you think so! Do we not know each other?—are we not friends?—can you suppose that for one moment I ever doubted you?” She stood up and looked at him with reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation. He, looking also, knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers. And yet she said that now the past would lose its pain! He turned away with something like a groan.
“What is the use of it all then?” he said.
“One thinks of other people, I suppose,” said Winifred, trying to understand his mood. “So many people are ready to believe evil. If you are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you care—”
She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and leapt up. For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either measurement or control,—for an instant and no more. Her voice had scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence when she said in a low tone,—
“For Miss Lovell, especially.”
She was looking away from him and did not know whether he had changed his position or not, for he did not answer. There was a strange heavy silence in which she could hear a watch ticking, the sigh of the wind among the fir-trees, a scream from the distant train, the throbbing of her heart. All her strength seemed to have gone out in those four words.
“Yes,” said Anthony, at last, hoarsely, “for Miss Lovell, especially.”
Something in his voice or in the mechanical repetition of her words brought back Winifred’s courage.
“For her sake and your mother’s,” she said, earnestly. “However insignificant an accusation may be, its falseness must be a grief to the friends who best know how very false it is. I hope you will not try to prevent our being glad, although I dare say the poor man’s fate makes rejoicing seem heartless.”
“It makes me believe that failure is the end of our best hopes,—of all that is best in us,” said Anthony, standing with his back to her and speaking in a tone of deep despondency.
“Not failure, really,” said Winifred, with a flush of lovely eager colour rising in her cheeks. “Surely it is not possible that what is best can fail. It may seem so even to ourselves, but it cannot be the thing itself, only our way of thinking of it. Don’t you believe that failure and victory are sometimes one?” Anthony was silent. Was it so indeed? Sometimes one, triumph and defeat, death and life, the end and the beginning? Was it now—when he was ready to cry out that all was at its dreariest, with pangs of which he was tasting the most utter sharpness—now that he caught, through the clouds, a glimpse of something beyond change and beyond sorrow? He came and stood in front of Winifred, and put out his hand.
“I can’t tell,” he said. “It may be so, and I think you are more lively to be right than I. At all events, one has to learn how to accept failure, and perhaps—some day—one will understand better. God bless you, Winifred.”
She sat where he left her; she heard doors open and shut, and, turning round, saw him presently go quickly down the little path, pass under the fir-trees, and disappear from sight. Her breath came and went rapidly, a light was in her eyes. With all her struggle, those minutes had not been so bitter to her as to him; there was a joy in knowing that he loved her, it seemed to lift a secret reproach off her heart; and though this knowledge might bring sharper sadness to her by and by, for the moment the relief was so great as to make all sadness seem endurable.