CHAPTER II.
Mrs. Boyce received Marcella's news with more sympathy than her daughter had dared to hope for, and she made no remark upon Aldous himself and his visit, for which Marcella was grateful to her.
As they left the dining-room, after their short evening meal, to go up to Mr. Boyce, Marcella detained her mother an instant.
"Mamma, will you please not tell papa that—that Lord Maxwell came here this afternoon? And will you explain to him why I am going there to-morrow?"
Mrs. Boyce's fair cheek flushed. Marcella saw that she understood.
"If I were you, I should not let your father talk to you any more about those things," she said with a certain proud impatience.
"If I can help it!" exclaimed Marcella. "Will you tell him, mamma,—about Mr. Hallin?—and how good he has been to me?"
Then her voice failed her, and, hurriedly leaving her mother at the top of the stairs, she went away by herself to struggle with a grief and smart almost unbearable.
That night passed quietly at the Court. Hallin was at intervals slightly delirious, but less so than the night before; and in the early morning the young doctor, who had sat up with him, reported him to Aldous as calmer and a little stronger. But the heart mischief was hopeless, and might bring the bruised life to an end at any moment.
He could not, however, be kept in bed, owing to restlessness and difficulty of breathing, and by midday he was in Aldous's sitting-room, drawn close to the window, that he might delight his eyes with the wide range of wood and plain that it commanded. After a very wet September, the October days were now following each other in a settled and sunny peace. The great woods of the Chilterns, just yellowing towards that full golden moment—short, like all perfection,—which only beeches know, rolled down the hill-slopes to the plain, their curving lines cut here and there by straight fir stems, drawn clear and dark on the pale background of sky and lowland. In the park, immediately below the window, groups of wild cherry and of a slender-leaved maple made spots of "flame and amethyst" on the smooth falling lawns; the deer wandered and fed, and the squirrels were playing and feasting among the beech nuts.
Since Aldous and his poor sister had brought him home from the Bethnal Green hall in which the Land Reform Conference had been held, Hallin had spoken little, except in delirium, and that little had been marked by deep and painful depression. But this morning, when Aldous was summoned by the nurse, and found him propped up by the window, in front of the great view, he saw gracious signs of change. Death, indeed, already in possession, looked from the blue eyes so plainly that Aldous, on his first entrance, had need of all his own strength of will to keep his composure. But with the certainty of that great release, and with the abandonment of all physical and mental struggle—the struggle of a lifetime—Hallin seemed to-day to have recovered something of his characteristic serenity and blitheness—the temper which had made him the leader of his Oxford contemporaries, and the dear comrade of his friend's life.
When Aldous came in, Hallin smiled and lifted a feeble hand towards the park and the woods.
"Could it have greeted me more kindly," he said, in his whispering voice, "for the end?"
Aldous sat down beside him, pressing his hand, and there was silence till Hallin spoke again.
"You will keep this sitting-room, Aldous?"
"Always."
"I am glad. I have known you in it so long. What good talks we have had here in the old hot days! I was hot, at least, and you bore with me. Land Reform—Church Reform—Wages Reform—we have threshed them all out in this room. Do you remember that night I kept you up till it was too late to go to bed, talking over my Church plans? How full I was of it!—the Church that was to be the people—reflecting their life, their differences—governed by them—growing with them. You wouldn't join it, Aldous—our poor little Association!"
Aldous's strong lip quivered.
"Let me think of something I did join in," he said.
Hallin's look shone on him with a wonderful affection.
"Was there anything else you didn't help in? I don't remember it. I've dragged you into most things. You never minded failure. And I have not had so much of it—not till this last. This has been failure—absolute and complete."
But there was no darkening of expression. He sat quietly smiling.
"Do you suppose anybody who could look beyond the moment would dream of calling it failure?" said Aldous, with difficulty.
Hallin shook his head gently, and was silent for a little time, gathering strength and breath again.
"I ought to suffer"—he said, presently. "Last week I dreaded my own feeling if I should fail or break down—more than the failure itself. But since yesterday—last night—I have no more regrets. I see that my power is gone—that if I were to live I could no longer carry on the battle—or my old life. I am out of touch. Those whom I love and would serve, put me aside. Those who invite me, I do not care to join. So I drop—into the gulf—and the pageant rushes on. But the curious thing is now—I have no suffering. And as to the future—do you remember Jowett in the Introduction to the Phaedo—"
He feebly pointed to a book beside him, which Aldous took up. Hallin guided him and he read—
"Most persons when the last hour comes are resigned to the order of nature and the will of God. They are not thinking of Dante's 'Inferno' or 'Paradiso,' or of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Heaven and Hell are not realities to them, but words or ideas—the outward symbols of some great mystery, they hardly know what."
"It is so with me," said Hallin, smiling, as, at his gesture, Aldous laid the book aside; "yet not quite. To my mind, that mystery indeed is all unknown and dark—but to the heart it seems unveiled—with the heart, I see."
A little later Aldous was startled to hear him say, very clearly and quickly:
"Do you remember that this is the fifth of October?"
Aldous drew his chair closer, that he might not raise his voice.
"Yes, Ned."
"Two years, wasn't it, to-day? Will you forgive me if I speak of her?"
"You shall say anything you will."
"Did you notice that piece of news I sent you, in my last letter to
Geneva? But of course you did. Did it please you?"
"Yes, I was glad of it," said Aldous, after a pause, "extremely glad. I thought she had escaped a great danger."
Hallin studied his face closely.
"She is free, Aldous—and she is a noble creature—she has learnt from life—and from death—this last two years. And—you still love her. Is it right to make no more effort?"
Aldous saw the perspiration standing on the wasted brow—would have given the world to be able to content or cheer him—yet would not, for the world, at such a moment be false to his own feeling or deceive his questioner.
"I think it is right," he said deliberately, "—for a good many reasons, Edward. In the first place I have not the smallest cause—not the fraction of a cause—to suppose that I could occupy with her now any other ground than that I occupied two years ago. She has been kind and friendly to me—on the whole—since we met in London. She has even expressed regret for last year—meaning, of course, as I understood, for the pain and trouble that may be said to have come from her not knowing her own mind. She wished that we should be friends. And"—he turned his head away—"no doubt I could be, in time…. But, you see—in all that, there is nothing whatever to bring me forward again. My fatal mistake last year, I think now, lay in my accepting what she gave me—accepting it so readily, so graspingly even. That was my fault, my blindness, and—it was as unjust to her—as it was hopeless for myself. For hers is a nature"—his eyes came back to his friend; his voice took a new force and energy—"which, in love at any rate, will give all or nothing—and will never be happy itself, or bring happiness, till it gives all. That is what last year taught me. So that even if she—out of kindness or remorse for giving pain—were willing to renew the old tie—I should be her worst enemy and my own if I took a single step towards it. Marriage on such terms as I was thankful for last year, would be humiliation to me, and bring no gain to her. It will never serve a man with her"—his voice broke into emotion—"that he should make no claims! Let him claim the uttermost far-thing—her whole self. If she gives it, then he may know what love means!"
Hallin had listened intently. At Aldous's last words his expression showed pain and perplexity. His mind was full of vague impressions, memories, which seemed to argue with and dispute one of the chief things Aldous had been saying. But they were not definite enough to be put forward. His sensitive chivalrous sense, even in this extreme weakness, remembered the tragic weight that attaches inevitably to dying words. Let him not do more harm than good.
He rested a little. They brought him food; and Aldous sat beside him making pretence to read, so that he might be encouraged to rest. His sister came and went; so did the doctor. But when they were once more alone, Hallin put out his hand and touched his companion.
"What is it, dear Ned?"
"Only one thing more, before we leave it. Is that all that stands between you now—the whole? You spoke to me once in the summer of feeling angry, more angry than you could have believed. Of course, I felt the same. But just now you spoke of its all being your fault. Is there anything changed in your mind?"
Aldous hesitated. It was extraordinarily painful to him to speak of the past, and it troubled him that at such a moment it should trouble Hallin.
"There is nothing changed, Ned, except that perhaps time makes some difference always. I don't want now"—he tried to smile—"as I did then, to make anybody else suffer for my suffering. But perhaps I marvel even more than I did at first, that—that—she could have allowed some things to happen as she did!"
The tone was firm and vibrating; and, in speaking, the whole face had developed a strong animation most passionate and human.
Hallin sighed.
"I often think," he said, "that she was extraordinarily immature—much more immature than most girls of that age—as to feeling. It was really the brain that was alive."
Aldous silently assented; so much so that Hallin repented himself.
"But not now," he said, in his eager dying whisper; "not now. The plant is growing full and tall, into the richest life."
Aldous took the wasted hand tenderly in his own. There was something inexpressibly touching in this last wrestle of Hallin's affection with another's grief. But it filled Aldous with a kind of remorse, and with the longing to free him from that, as from every other burden, in these last precious hours of life. And at last he succeeded, as he thought, in drawing his mind away from it. They passed to other things. Hallin, indeed, talked very little more during the day. He was very restless and weak, but not in much positive suffering. Aldous read to him at intervals, from Isaiah or Plato, the bright sleepless eyes following every word.
At last the light began to sink. The sunset flooded in from the Berkshire uplands and the far Oxford plain, and lay in gold and purple on the falling woods and the green stretches of the park. The distant edges of hill were extraordinarily luminous and clear, and Aldous, looking into the west with the eye of one to whom every spot and line were familiar landmarks, could almost fancy he saw beyond the invisible river, the hill, the "lovely tree against the western sky," which keep for ever the memory of one with whose destiny it had often seemed to him that Hallin's had something in common. To him, as to Thyrsis, the same early joy, the same "happy quest," the same "fugitive and gracious light" for guide and beacon, that—
does not come with houses or with gold, With place, with honour and a flattering crew;
and to him, too, the same tasked pipe and tired throat, the same struggle with the "life of men unblest," the same impatient tryst with death.
The lovely lines ran dirge-like in his head, as he sat, sunk in grief, beside his friend. Hallin did not speak; but his eye took note of every change of light, of every darkening tone, as the quiet English scene with its villages, churches, and woods, withdrew itself plane by plane into the evening haze. His soul followed the quiet deer, the homing birds, loosening itself gently the while from pain and from desire, saying farewell to country, to the poor, to the work left undone, and the hopes unrealised—to everything except to love.
It had just struck six when he bent forward to the window beneath which ran the wide front terrace.
"That was her step!" he said, while his face lit up, "will you bring her here?"
* * * * *
Marcella rang the bell at the Court with a fast beating heart. The old butler who came gave what her shrinking sense thought a forbidding answer to her shy greeting of him, and led her first into the drawing-room. A small figure in deep black rose from a distant chair and came forward stiffly. Marcella found herself shaking hands with Miss Raeburn.
"Will you sit and rest a little before you go upstairs?" said that lady with careful politeness, "or shall I send word at once? He is hardly worse—but as ill as he can be."
"I am not the least tired," said Marcella, and Miss Raeburn rang.
"Tell his lordship, please, that Miss Boyce is here."
The title jarred and hurt Marcella's ear. But she had scarcely time to catch it before Aldous entered, a little bent, as it seemed to her, from his tall erectness, and speaking with an extreme quietness, even monotony of manner.
"He is waiting for you—will you come at once?"
He led her up the central staircase and along the familiar passages, walking silently a little in front of her. They passed the long line of Caroline and Jacobean portraits in the upper gallery, till just outside his own door Aldous paused.
"He ought not to talk long," he said, hesitating, "but you will know—of course—better than any of us."
"I will watch him," she said, almost inaudibly, and he gently opened the door and let her pass, shutting it behind her.
The nurse, who was sitting beside her patient, got up as Marcella entered, and pointed her to a low chair on his further side. Susie Hallin rose too, and kissed the new-comer hurriedly, absently, without a word, lest she should sob. Then she and the nurse disappeared through an inner door. The evening light was still freely admitted; and there were some candles. By the help of both she could only see him indistinctly. But in her own mind, as she sat down, she determined that he had not even days to live.
Yet as she bent over him she saw a playful gleam on the cavernous face.
"You won't scold me?" said the changed voice—"you did warn me—you and
Susie—but—I was obstinate. It was best so!"
She pressed her lips to his hand and was answered by a faint pressure from the cold fingers.
"If I could have been there!" she murmured.
"No—I am thankful you were not. And I must not think of it—or of any trouble. Aldous is very bitter—but he will take comfort by and by—he will see it—and them—more justly. They meant me no unkindness. They were full of an idea, as I was. When I came back to myself—first—all was despair. I was in a blank horror of myself and life. Now it has gone—I don't know how. It is not of my own will—some hand has lifted a weight. I seem to float—without pain."
He closed his eyes, gathering strength again in the interval, by a strong effort of will—calling up in the dimming brain what he had to say. She meanwhile, spoke to him in a low voice, mainly to prevent his talking, telling him of her father, of her mother's strain of nursing—of herself—she hardly knew what. Hew grotesque to be giving him these little bits of news about strangers—to him, this hovering, consecrated soul, on the brink of the great secret!
In the intervals, while he was still silent, she could not sometimes prevent the pulse of her own life from stirring. Her eye wandered round the room—Aldous's familiar room. There, on the writing-table with its load of letters and books, stood the photograph of Hallin; another, her own, used to stand beside it; it was solitary now.
Otherwise, all was just as it had been—flowers, books, newspapers—the signs of familiar occupation, the hundred small details of character and personality which in estrangement take to themselves such a smarting significance for the sad and craving heart. The date—the anniversary—echoed in her mind.
Then, with a rush of remorseful pain, her thoughts came back to the present and to Hallin. At the same moment she saw that his eyes were open, and fixed upon her with a certain anxiety and expectancy. He made a movement as though to draw her towards him; and she stooped to him.
"I feel," he said, "as though my strength were leaving me fast. Let me ask you one question—because of my love for you—and him. I have fancied—of late—things were changed. Can you tell me—will you?—or is it unfair?"—the words had all their bright, natural intonation—"Is your heart—still where it was?—or, could you ever—undo the past—"
He held her fast, grasping the hand she had given him with unconscious force. She had looked up startled, her lip trembling like a child's. Then she dropped her head against the arm of her chair, as though she could not speak.
He moved restlessly, and sighed.
"I should not," he said to himself; "I should not—it was wrong. The dying are tyrannous."
He even began a word of sweet apology. But she shook her head.
"Don't!" she said, struggling with herself; "don't say that! It would do me good to speak—to you—"
An exquisite smile dawned on Hallin's face.
"Then!"—he said—"confess!"
* * * * *
A few minutes later they were still sitting together. She strongly wished to go; but he would not yet allow it. His face was full of a mystical joy—a living faith, which must somehow communicate itself in one last sacramental effort.
"How strange that you—and I—and he—should have been so mixed together in this queer life. Now I seem to regret nothing—I hope everything. One more little testimony let me bear!—the last. We disappear one by one—into the dark—but each may throw his comrades—a token—before he goes. You have been in much trouble of mind and spirit—I have seen it. Take my poor witness. There is one clue, one only—goodness—the surrendered will. Everything is there—all faith—all religion—all hope for rich or poor.—Whether we feel our way through consciously to the Will—that asks our will—matters little. Aldous and I have differed much on this—in words—never at heart! I could use words, symbols he cannot—and they have given me peace. But half my best life I owe to him."
At this he made a long pause—but, still, through that weak grasp, refusing to let her go—till all was said. Day was almost gone; the stars had come out over the purple dusk of the park.
"That Will—we reach—through duty and pain," he whispered at last, so faintly she could hardly hear him, "is the root, the source. It leads us in living—it—carries us in death. But our weakness and vagueness—want help—want the human life and voice—to lean on—to drink from. We Christians—are orphans—without Christ! There again—what does it matter what we think—about him—if only we think—of him. In one such life are all mysteries, and all knowledge—and our fathers have chosen for us—"
The insistent voice sank lower and lower into final silence—though the lips still moved. The eyelids too fell. Miss Hallin and the nurse came in. Marcella rose and stood for one passionate instant looking down upon him. Then, with a pressure of the hand to the sister beside her, she stole out. Her one prayer was that she might see and meet no one. So soft was her step that even the watching Aldous did not hear her. She lifted the heavy latch of the outer door without the smallest noise, and found herself alone in the starlight.
* * * * *
After Marcella left him, Hallin remained for some hours in what seemed to those about him a feverish trance. He did not sleep, but he showed no sign of responsive consciousness. In reality his mind all through was full of the most vivid though incoherent images and sensations. But he could no longer distinguish between them and the figures and movements of the real people in his room. Each passed into and intermingled with the other. In some vague, eager way he seemed all the time to be waiting or seeking for Aldous. There was the haunting impression of some word to say—some final thing to do—which would not let him rest. But something seemed always to imprison him, to hold him back, and the veil between him and the real Aldous watching beside him grew ever denser.
At night they made no effort to move him from the couch and the half-sitting posture in which he had passed the day. Death had come too near. His sister and Aldous and the young doctor who had brought him from London watched with him. The curtains were drawn back from both the windows, and in the clearness of the first autumnal frost a crescent moon hung above the woods, the silvery lawns, the plain.
Not long after midnight Hallin seemed to himself to wake, full of purpose and of strength. He spoke, as he thought, to Aldous, asking to be alone with him. But Aldous did not move; that sad watching gaze of his showed no change. Then Hallin suffered a sudden sharp spasm of anguish and of struggle. Three words to say—only three words; but those he must say! He tried again, but Aldous's dumb grief still sat motionless. Then the thought leapt in the ebbing sense, "Speech is gone; I shall speak no more!"
It brought with it a stab, a quick revolt. But something checked both, and in a final offering of the soul, Hallin gave up his last desire.
What Aldous saw was only that the dying man opened his hand as though it asked for that of his friend. He placed his own within those seeking fingers, and Hallin's latest movement—which death stopped half-way—was to raise it to his lips.
* * * * *
So Marcella's confession—made in the abandonment, the blind passionate trust, of a supreme moment—bore no fruit. It went with Hallin to the grave.