"IF I COULD DIE!"
Why cannot I forgo, forget
That ever I loved thee, that ever we met?
There is not a single link or sign
To bind thy life in this world with mine.
M. W. Praed.
But it was not until Captain and Mrs. Maurice Kynaston had been at home for more than a fortnight that Vera came back to her brother-in-law's house.
She had kept away, poor girl, as long as she could. She had put off the evil hour of her return as long as possible. The Hazeldines had gone to Scotland, and Vera had, in desperation, accepted an invitation to stay with some acquaintances whom she neither knew very well nor liked overmuch. It had kept her from Sutton a little longer. But the visit had come to an end at last, and what was she to do? She had no other visits to prolong her absence, and her sister wrote to her perpetually, urging her to return. Her home was at Sutton; she had no other place to go to. She had told Sir John that in absence from his brother lay her only hope of safety. But where was she to seek that safety? Where find security, when he; reckless, or, perchance, heedless of her danger, had come to plant himself at her very doors? They should have been far as the poles asunder, and a malevolent fate had willed that the same parish should contain them.
For whatever Maurice did, Vera in no way underrated the danger. Too well she knew her own heart; too surely she estimated the strength of a passion which, repressed and thwarted, and half-smothered, as it had been within her, yet burnt but the fiercer and the wilder. For that is the way with love: if it may not flourish and thrive openly and bravely before the eyes of the world, it will eat into the very heart and life, till all that is fair and sweet in the garden of the soul is choked and blighted and overgrown, till the main-spring of life becomes poisoned, and all things that are happy, withered and dried up.
In Vera's love for Maurice there had been nothing of joy, and all of pain. There had never been for her that sweet illusion of dawning affection—that intangible sense of delight in the consciousness of an unspoken sympathy that is the very essence of a happy love. She had no memories that were serene and untroubled—no days of calm and delicious happiness to recall. His first conscious look had been a terror to her; his words of hopeless love had given her a shock that had been almost physical; and his few passionate kisses had burnt into her very soul till they had seemed to have been printed upon her lips in fire. Vera's love had brought her no good thing that she could count. But it had done one thing for her: if it had cursed her life, it had purified her soul.
The Vera who had come back to Sutton Vicarage in August was no longer the same woman who had stood months ago on the terrace at Kynaston among the falling autumn leaves, and who had told herself that it was money alone that was worth living for.
She came back to everything that was full of pain, and to much in which there was absolute fear.
Five minutes after she had entered the vicarage drawing-room her tortures began.
"You have not asked after the bride and bridegroom," says old Mrs. Daintree, as she sits in her corner, darning everlastingly at those brown worsted socks of her son's. Vera thinks she must have been sitting there darning incessantly, day and night, ever since she had been away. "We are all full of it down here. Such a pretty welcome home they had—arches across the road, and processions with flags, and a band inside the lodge-gates. You should have been here to have seen it. Everybody is making much of Mrs. Kynaston; she is a very pretty woman, I must say, and called here three days ago in the most beautiful Paris gown."
"She seemed very sorry not to see you," says Marion, "and quite disposed to be friendly. I do hope you and she will get on, Vera, in spite of the awkwardness of her being in your place, as it were."
"What do you mean?" rather sharply.
"Only, of course, dear, that it will be rather painful to you just at first to see anybody else the mistress at Kynaston, where you yourself might have been——"
"If you had not been a fool," interpolated the old lady, bluntly.
"I don't think I shall mind that much," says Vera, quietly. "Where is Eustace?"
"Oh, he will be in presently; he has gone up to the Hall about the chancel. The men have made all kinds of mistakes about the tesselated pavement; the wrong pattern was sent down from town, and we have had so much trouble about it, and there has been nobody to appeal to to set things right. Captain Kynaston is all very well, and now he is back, I hope we may get things into a little order; but I am sorry to say he takes very little interest in the church or the parish; he is not half so good a squire as poor dear Sir John." And there was a whole volume of unspoken reproach in the sigh with which Marion wound up her remarks.
"Decidedly," said Vera, to herself, as she went slowly upstairs to her own little room; "decidedly I must get away from all this. I shall have to marry." She leant out of her open window in a frame-work of roses and jessamine, and looked out over the lime-trees towards the Hall. Now that the trees were in full leaf, she could catch no glimpse of its red-stacked chimneys and its terraced gardens; but, by-and-by, when the leaves were down and the trees were bare, she knew she should see it. Every morning when she got up the sun would be shining full upon it; every night when she went to bed she would see the twinkling lights of the many windows gleaming through the darkness; she would be in her room alone, and he would be out there, happy with his wife.
"I shall not be able to bear it," said Vera, slowly, speaking aloud to herself. "I had better marry, and go away; there is nothing else to be done. Poor Denis! He is worthy of a better woman; but I think he will be good to me."
For it had come to this now, that when Vera thought about marrying, it was upon Denis Wilde that she also pondered.
To be at Sutton, and not to come face to face with Maurice, was of course an impossibility. Carefully as Vera confined herself to the house and garden for the next three days, she could not avoid going to church when Sunday came. And at church were Captain and Mrs. Kynaston. During the service she only saw his back, erect and broad-shouldered, in the seat in front of her, for the pews had been cleared away, and open sittings had been substituted all through the church. Maurice looked neither to the right nor to the left; he stood, or sat, or knelt, and scarcely turned his head an inch, but Helen's butterfly bonnet was twisted in every direction throughout the service. It is certain that she very soon knew who it was who had come into the vicarage seat behind her.
When Vera came out of church, having purposely lingered as long as she could inside, until the rest of the congregation had all gone out, she found the bride and bridegroom waiting for her in the churchyard.
Helen stood with her hand twined with easy familiarity round her husband's arm; possibly she had studied the attitude with a view to impressing Vera with the perfection of her conjugal happiness. She turned quite delightedly to greet her.
"Oh, here you are at last, Miss Nevill. We have been waiting for you, have we not, Maurice dear? We both felt how pleased we should be to see you. I am very glad you have come back; it will make it much more pleasant for me at Kynaston; you will come up to see me, won't you? I should like you to see my boudoir, it is lovely!"
"You forget that Miss Nevill has seen it all long ago," said Maurice, gravely; their hands had just met, but he had not looked at her.
"Oh, yes, to be sure; how stupid I am! Of course, I remember now, it was all done up for you by poor dear old John. Doesn't it seem funny that I should be going to live in the house? Ah, how d'ye do, Mr. Daintree?" as Eustace came out of the vestry door; "here we are, chattering to your sister. What a delightful sermon, dear Mr. Daintree, and what a treat to be in a Christian church—I mean a Protestant church—again after those dreadful Sundays on the Continent."
Vera had turned to Maurice.
"Have you any news of Sir John yet?"
"No; we cannot expect to hear of his arrival till next month. I dare say you will like to hear about him. I will let you know as soon as he writes."
"Thank you; I should like to know about him very much."
Helen, in the middle of Eustace's polite acknowledgment of her compliment to his sermon, was casting furtive glances at her husband; even the two or three grave words he had exchanged with Vera were sufficient to make her uneasy. She desired to torture Vera with envy and with jealousy; she had forgotten to take into account how very easily her own suspicious jealousy could be aroused. She interrupted the vicar in the very middle of his speech.
"Now, really, we must run away. Come, Maurice, darling, we shall be late for lunch; you and Miss Nevill must finish your confidences another day. You will come up soon, won't you? Any day at five I am in—good-bye." She shook hands with them, and hurried her husband away.
"What an odd thing it is that you and that girl never can meet without having all sorts of private things to say to each other," she said, angrily, as soon as they were out of earshot.
"Private things! what can you possibly mean, Helen? Miss Nevill was asking me if I had heard of John's arrival."
"I wonder she has the face to mention John's name!"
"Why, pray?"
"After her disgraceful conduct to him."
"I think you know very little about Miss Nevill's conduct, Helen."
"No, I dare say not. And you have always known a great deal more about it than anybody else. That I have always understood, Maurice."
Maurice looked very black, but he was silent.
"I am very glad I told her about the boudoir," continued Helen, spitefully. "How mortified she must feel to think that it has all slipped through her fingers and into mine. I do hope she will come up to the house. I shall show her all over it; she will wish she had not been such a fool!"
Maurice was looking at his wife with a singular expression.
"I begin to think you have a very bad heart, Helen," he said, with a contempt in his voice that was very near akin to disgust.
She looked up, a little startled, and put her hand back, caressingly, under his arm.
"Oh, don't look at me like that, Maurice; I don't want to vex you. You know very well how much I love you—and—and"—looking up with a little smile into his face that was meant as a peace offering—"I suppose I am jealous!"
"Suppose you wait to be jealous until I give you cause to be so," answered her husband, gravely and coldly, but not altogether unkindly, for he meant to do his duty to her, God helping him, as far as he knew how.
But all the way home he walked silently by her side, and wondered whether the sacrifice he had made of his love to his duty had been, indeed, worth it.
It had been hard for him, this first meeting with Vera. He had felt it more than he had believed possible. Instinctively he had realized what she must have suffered; and that her sufferings were utterly beyond his power to console. It began to come into his mind that, meaning to deal rightly by Helen, he had dealt cruelly and badly by Vera. He had sacrificed the woman he loved to the woman he did not love.
Had it, indeed, been such a right and praiseworthy action on his part? Maurice lost himself in speculation as to what would have happened had he broken his faith to Helen, and allowed himself to follow the dictates of his heart rather than those of his conscience.
That was what Vera had done for his sake; but what he had been unable to do for hers.
There was a certain hardness about the man, a rigid sense of honour that was almost a fault; for, if it be a virtue to cleave to truth and good faith above everything, to swear to one's neighbour and disappoint him not—even though it be to one's own hindrance—it is certainly not a fine or noble thing to mistake tenderness for a weakness only fit to be crushed out of the soul with firm hands and an iron determination.
Guilty once of one irreparable action of weakness, Maurice had set himself determinedly ever after to undo the evil that he had done.
To be true to his brother, to keep his faith with Helen, these had been the only objects he had steadily kept in view: he had succeeded in his efforts, but had scarcely realized that, in doing so, he had not only wrecked his own life, but also that of the woman whom he had so infinitely wronged.
But when he saw her once again—when he held for an instant the cold hand within his own—when he marked, with a pang, the dark circles round the averted eyes that spoke so mutely and touchingly of sleepless vigils and of many tears—when he noted how the lovely sensitive lips trembled a little as she spoke her few common-place words to him—then Maurice began to understand what he had done to her; and, for the first time, something that was almost remorse, with regard to his own conduct towards her, came into his soul.
Such meditations were not, however, safe or profitable to indulge in for long. Maurice recalled his wandering thoughts with an effort, and with something of repentance for having given them place, turned his attention resolutely to his wife's chatter during the remainder of the walk home.
Meanwhile Vera and the vicar are walking back, side by side, to the vicarage.
"Something," says Eustace, with solemn displeasure, "something must really be done, and that soon, about Ishmael Spriggs; that man will drive me into my grave before my time! Anything more fearfully and awfully out of tune than the Te Deum I never heard in the whole course of my life. I can hear his voice shouting and bellowing above the whole of the rest of the choir; he leads all the others wrong. It is not a bit of use to tell me that he is the best behaved man in the parish; it is not a matter of conduct, as I told Mr. Dale; it is a matter of voice, and if the man can't be taught to sing in tune, out of the choir he shall go; it's a positive scandal to the Service. Marion says we shall turn him into an enemy if we don't let him sing, and that he will go to the dissenting chapel, and never come to church any more. Well, I can't help that; I must give him up to the dissenters. As to keeping him in the choir, it is out of the question after that Te Deum. I shall never forget it. It will give me a nightmare to-night, I am convinced. Wasn't it dreadful, Vera?"
"Yes, very likely, Eustace," answered Vera, at random. She has not heard one single word he has said.
Eustace Daintree looks round at her sharply. He sees that she is very white, and that there are tears upon her cheeks.
"Why, Vera!" he cries, standing still, you have not listened to a word I have been saying. "What is the matter, child? Why are you crying?"
They are in the vicarage garden now; among the beds of scarlet geraniums, and the tall hollyhocks, and the glaring red gladioli; a whole bank of greenery, rhododendrons and lauristinas, conceals them from the windows of the house; a garden bench sheltered beneath a nook of the laurel bushes is close by.
With a sudden gesture of utter misery Vera sinks down upon it, and bursts into a passion of tears.
"My dear child; my poor Vera! What is it? What has happened? What can be the reason of this?"
Mr. Daintree is infinitely distressed and puzzled; he bends over her, taking her hand between his own. There is something in this wild outburst of grief, from one habitually so calm and self-contained as Vera, that is an absolute shock to him. He had learnt to love her very dearly; he had thought he had understood all the workings of her candid maiden soul; he had fancied that the story of her broken engagement was no secret to him, that it was but the struggle of a conscientious nature after what was true and honest. It had seemed to him that there had been no mystery in her conduct, for he could appreciate all her motives. And surely, as she had done right, she must be now at peace. He had told himself that the pure instincts of a naturally stainless soul had triumphed in Vera over the carelessness and worldliness of her early training; and lo, here was the passionate weeping of a tempest-tossed woman, whose agony he could not fathom, and whose sorrows he knew not how to divine.
"Vera, will you not tell me?" he asked her, in his distress. "Will you not make a friend of me? My dear, forget that I am a clergyman; remember only that I am your brother, and that I shall know how to feel for you—for you, my dear sister."
But she could not tell him. There are some troubles that must be kept for ever buried within our own souls; to speak of some things is only to make them worse. Only she choked back her sobs, and lifted her face, white and tear-stained; there was a look of hunted despair in her eyes, that bewildered, and even half-terrified him.
"Tell me," she said, with a sort of anger, "tell me, you that are a clergyman—Do you think God has made us only to torment us? You have got a daughter, Eustace; pray God, night and morning, that she may have a hard heart, and that she may never have one gleam of womanly tenderness within her; for only so are women happy!"
He did not answer her wild words. Instinctively he felt that common-place speeches of rebuke or of consolation would be trivial and out of place before the great anguish of her heart. The man's soul was above the narrow limits of his training; he felt, dimly, that here was something with which it were best not to intermeddle, some trouble for which he could offer no consolation.
She rose and stood before him, holding his hands and gazing earnestly at his anxious face.
"It has come to this with me," she said, below her voice, "that there are times when there is but one good thing in all the world that I know any longer how to desire. God has so ordered my life that there is no road open for me that does not lead to sin or to misery. Surely, if He were merciful, He would take back the valueless gift."
"Vera! what do you mean?"
"I mean," she exclaimed, wearily, "that if I could die, I should be at peace."
She had walked slowly on; her voice, that had trembled at first with a passionate wildness, had sunk into the spiritless apathy of despair; her head was bent, her hands clasped before her; her dress trailed with a soft rustle across the grass, sweeping over a whole wilderness of white daisies, that bent their heads beneath its folds as she walked. A gleam of sunshine fell upon her hair, and a bird sang loud and shrill in the lime trees overhead.
Often and often, in the after days, Eustace Daintree thought of her thus, and remembered with a pang the sole sad gift that she had craved at Heaven's hands. Often and often the scene came back to him; the sunny garden, the scarlet geraniums flaring in the borders, the smooth green lawn, speckled with shadows from the trees, the wide open windows of his pleasant vicarage beyond, and the beautiful figure of the girl at his side, with her bent head, and her low broken voice—the girl who, at twenty-three, sighed to be rid of the life that had become too hard for her; that precious gift of life which, too often, at three-score years and ten, is but hardly resigned!
"If I could die, I should be at peace," she had said. And she was only twenty-three!
Eustace Daintree never forgot it.