Chapter Twenty Eight.
Faith, when she heard the knock at the back door, knew very well who had come, and her heart leaped up, for all day she had felt as if she could scarcely longer endure the suspense in which she was placed, and had been blaming David with the unreasonableness of impatience for not coming during the hours in which he was employed at the post-office. She jumped up and stopped a younger girl who was going to answer the knock. But when she had opened the door and saw David himself, all her little reproachful speeches were forgotten.
“I don’t know that you’d best come in,” she said hurriedly. “Sarah would be pleased to see you, but she and Jane are both there, and there’s things I want to hear.”
“No, I must see you by yourself,” said Stephens. “The wind’s high, but it’s not so sharp, and if you stand by the door you’ll not feel much of it.”
“You’re tired,” interrupted Faith.
“Ay, no doubt. A man must be tired whose work lies where mine does. They’re rough paths along which one has to go to find those poor sinners, and the enemy doesn’t make them more easy to those who are searching.”
“Mother says you’ll wear out yourself, and everybody else,” Faith said, with a touch of petulance,—“going on so.”
David was silent for a moment. It was often the case that in the first sweetness of being with her he lost sight of the purpose which had gradually been strengthening in his mind, but such words as these brought it back with a sudden shock. And he knew that to-night he must speak plainly, whatever it cost him.
“Your mother is right, dear Faith,” he said gently. His speech was often abrupt, and rather fiery than persuasive, but he had a full and mellow voice, and it was at this moment modulated into the tenderest tones. “I’ve thought it over on my knees, and I know I’ve been over-hasty in asking you to be my wife. I didn’t ought to have done it, and I can never blame myself enough. For you couldn’t bear it, any more than I could bear to see it.”
His voice failed him in these last words, and he held his breath tightly, waiting with an eager faint hope for Faith to make some answer which would show that she would work by his side. She understood what he meant, knowing it was the self-imposed hardships of his life to which he was alluding, and she took the most effectual method of replying by putting up her apron, and beginning to cry piteously.
Stephens made one step towards her, but then he suddenly checked himself, though the dim light that came from the kitchen showed his strong features working with agitation.
“Why should you be different from other men?” said the girl, sobbing. “There’s Jane going to be married, and Mary Bates, and Elizabeth. What’s to prevent you and me from settling down quiet like them?”
Ah, what? Here was the thought with which he had just done battle presenting itself in a fairer, softer shape. Why should he be the one to leave the brightness and warm glow, and content himself with cold and hunger and weariness? Not of the body only,—that seemed to him as nothing, if Faith might be by his side,—but hunger of the heart. Then, as the longing within him was to him a divine longing, and all that opposed it took the form of the evil one, a sudden anger rushed into his heart against her who was tempting him.
“Hush, Faith!” he said in a stern, sorrowful voice, “you are setting yourself against God’s work. I have got my hand to the plough, and I cannot look back.”
“But, David,” said Faith, frightened at his tone, and forgetting all except the fear of losing him, “I wouldn’t keep you back, I wouldn’t, indeed. You might go to preach, you know, just the same, and when you came back I should have things comfortable for you.”
“Yes, my dear, you would,” he said, with the thrill again in his voice. And then he cried out passionately, so that Sarah in the kitchen wondered what was being said, “Don’t make it more hard, Faith, don’t! I’ve heard of tearing out one’s heart, but I never knew before what it meant. Think what my life is. There are so many sick and suffering that I must help somehow, or their eyes would follow me to the very judgment-seat,—I must do it,—I am constrained. I have had no food to-day but a crust of bread and a glass of water. Up in my lodgings I’ve got that poor nigh-lost Nat Wills. I walked twenty mile yesterday to get hold of him, and there he is. By and by I’m going to his employer to see what is to be done. It’s the same always. But if I had a wife I don’t know that she would think it right to her that I should do it, and yet I could never dare leave it undone. I couldn’t, Faith.”
His voice had kept at the same high-pitched abrupt tone, as if he were speaking under the pang of some physical anguish. Faith was frightened by it, but her mother had told her to pluck up spirit, and she thought, like other women, that a show of anger might bring David to her way of thinking. So she turned half away from him, as he saw very well by the dim light, and said, throwing her apron over her arm,—
“That’s all fine enough, but I don’t see as how you’re more bound to them than to me, after the things you’ve said, and the neighbours knowing and all. It would have been better if I’d minded grandfather’s words, and Mis’ess told me neither she nor Mr Anthony was pleased to think of me marrying a man that sets himself up against the Church.”
Faith delivered this speech with considerable energy, but there were tears in her eyes which it was well for David’s resolution that he could not see. Her mention of Mr Anthony stung him sharply. He said in a compressed tone,—
“You will not listen to him? There’s no man in the county has done so much against the good cause, and may God forgive him, for he needs forgiveness!”
Since he had kept silence about the letter all Anthony’s deeds had grown blacker in his eyes, and he thought, with the strange self-deception which men permit themselves to weave, that the obloquy that had fallen upon the young man was but a just retribution for those acts for which he had now professed to ask forgiveness. Faith, who had been silently crying for a few moments, found her voice to continue in the same tone, which she thought had produced a little impression,—
“I’ve stuck to you faithful, for all I’ve had to bear from every one. And this is what I get—” she added, breaking down altogether into sobs at last.
“It’s a heavy burden,” said David, drawing a quick deep breath; “the worse for me, because I should have spared you, and ought never to have told you how I loved you. But with the light that’s been given to me, I dare not follow my own weak heart, unless—unless—” he went on, in a voice that trembled as a woman’s might have done.
“Well, unless—?” said Faith, looking up.
“You couldn’t bear such a life as mine must be?” said David, speaking slowly, and as it were out of a strange silence. “Poverty and hardship, and men’s bitter persecutions, and only me faithful by your side? You couldn’t bear that, my dear, could you?”
The words were so tender, so wistful, that for an instant Faith hesitated. But her love was not strong enough either to cast an ideal light over the life he thus unfolded before her, or to enable her to face its endurance for his sake. Instead of giving him a direct answer, she said with a touch of anger,—
“And you’ll be marrying another girl, I suppose?”
Stephens caught hold of her hand.
“Don’t say that again, Faith, for I can’t bear it. You know that to my dying day I shall never love but you,” he said hoarsely.
This assurance of love was sweet to Faith. After all, he would never be able to give her up.
“You’d do well enough,” she said quickly, “if you’d keep to your business, and not share your own with every idle body, which nobody’s called to do. Come, David, and then we might be comfortable.”
“It can’t be that way,” he said; and there was a direct force in his words which let her feel the uselessness of saying more.
“What shall you do, then?” she asked, in a tone that was half petulant and half tearful.
“The way isn’t clear to me yet,” said David slowly, “but there’s one of our body has spoken to me about going out to South America as a missionary. He thinks there is a manifest call there to a faithful worker, while there are others holding that work may be done here more effectually than hitherto, though we are so cramped and fettered in its discharge. It will be made plain to me before long. You will think as kindly of me as ever you can, Faith, won’t you? Words don’t seem worth anything between you and me, but there’s an inward speaking surer. You won’t let them set you against me, my darling,—you’ll forgive me—”
He stopped suddenly, speechless with rush of intense feeling. Faith’s spirit failed her, the hope that had so persistently kept its place died away out of her heart, all her little persuasions seemed useless; and, touched by some vibration from his own strong emotion, with a mute gesture, pathetic in its helplessness, she turned round; flung up her arms against the wall, and pressed her face between them.
When she lifted her head to speak, David was gone.