XLIX
The sun was up, the birds making the air quiver, the life of the world awake with the faint fragrance of a spring morning. Barbara, lying upon her lover’s arm, looked with shadowy eyes at the casement that caught the light of the glowing east. And with the first coming of consciousness she had remembered the refugee at Thorn and the part that they had set themselves to play that day. The “self” in them was to be thrust aside on that first morning of their life together.
Barbara, combing her hair at the little glass by the window, could hear her man walking to and fro in the garden; for he had risen first, and taken the bar down from the house door before the Jennifers were stirring. And though he whistled the tune of a love-song, she seemed to feel a spirit of melancholy and foreboding stealing up through the spring morning. Nor was her own consciousness without a sense of shadowiness and vague unrest. Bridal dawns are not always the happiest dawns, yet it was not the love in Barbara that had suffered pain. The destiny that she was to fulfil that day brought back a fog of recollections that chilled the air a little and weakened the sunlight. This was the aftermath, the second reaping and gathering of memories.
The joy of the night had been sweet, intimate, and wrapped in the darkness, and perhaps her heart was not ready for the daylight—and realities. It was a sensitive and sacred hour with her, and almost she could have desired to spend that day alone. There was so much to realize, so much to feel, so much to foreshadow. She was no longer herself; the sacrament had its mysteries; her maidenliness felt a little shy of the world at first.
She heard John Gore walking below her window, and a sudden rush of tenderness seized on her. For the moment she felt lonely, even afraid; for he to whom she had given everything alone could give everything in return. The sense of surrender was quick in her. She would be utterly alone in the world, save for this one man. Love was life. And the wistfulness made her yearn over him as though one day the world might take him from her.
“John!”
He turned and looked up at the window.
“Halloo, little wife!”
She leaned forward with her comb caught in a tress of her hair, knowing not what to say to him now that she had called him.
“What a heavy dew there has been!”
“Yes; the grass is gray in the meadows.”
“Is Mrs. Winnie up yet?”
“No; we are the larks this morning.”
She was silent a moment, looking away toward the distant hills. Her voice had a tremor when she spoke again.
“John!”
“Yes!”
“Come to me; I want you.”
And he went up, to find her weeping.
Man, being a creature of tougher fibre, cannot always comprehend a woman’s moods. They may seem inexplicable to him, because her sensitiveness can be as fine as gossamer, and hardly visible against the coarser background of reality. Even as a man cannot always gauge the strange, shrinking prides of a shy child, so he may blunder against the delicate and sacred things of a woman’s soul, unless love, spiritual love, gives him that intuition that sees beyond the carnal clay.
“Why, Barbe—weeping!”
He looked at her, not a little troubled, searching his own heart guiltily, yet having no consciousness of having wounded her in any way. The tears of a woman whom he loves have always a personal issue for a man. They may pique him if he is vain, challenge him if he be honest.
“Oh, it is nothing, John!”
He did the only thing a man could do, and that was to take her face between his two hands and kiss her.
“Little wife, no secrets from me. Let us begin life so; we shall never regret it.”
She closed her eyes, and, putting her hands upon his shoulders, hung her head a little.
“It was foolish of me, dear. I have been so happy, and sometimes when one has been very happy—”
“The tears come, little wife.”
“I have never been very happy till now, John. And just now it came into my heart so suddenly—”
She faltered, and he stood looking down at her as he held her in his arms.
“Barbara—wife, you felt lonely.”
She darted up a look at him as though surprised that he should know.
“How do I know, child? Because I had something of the same feeling myself. What a pair of fond fools, eh! No, it is something deeper and more sacred than that.”
“Yes, John, I know. But do you think—”
“I think a great many things, Barbe.”
“Yes; but that I shall make you happy, that I can fill your life for you?”
He took her unloosed hair, and put it back from off her forehead. Perhaps he was learning the familiar truth that no being can be more fiercely conscientious and self-critical than a good woman newly married. Fevers of doubt and of introspection rise in her. The surrender is so final, so utter, and the future seems so precious.
“Barbe, we have been married not quite a day. Yes—yes—I know. It is the sweet, brave heart in you that is blind to its own worth. Little wife, look in my eyes and see if you see any shadows there.”
She looked and smiled.
“No, John.”
“Then never look for them, dear heart. One’s imagination may create curses. Always speak out; never think in. If I ever hurt you—yet God forbid—tell me so; that can be mended.”
She felt for his hands and held them.
“I will try always not to think of myself, John.”
“Then you will be a very foolish woman, dear, and I shall have to do the thinking for you.”
“And you will take me to Thorn to-day?”
He looked at her gravely.
“You wish that?”
“I wish it.”
It was still early when John Gore brought the horses to the gate after breakfast and lifted Barbara into her saddle. She wore a plain black riding-habit that morning, a black beaver with a black plume curled round the brim, and a collar of white lace about her throat. The life at Furze Farm had tinted her skin with a brown, pearly haze. She was never a girl for much color, but her lips were red and generous, and her figure more rich in womanliness than of yore.
The shy, introspective mood of the early morning had passed. Hill and valley bathed in sunlight, the freshness of the woods, the movement, the sympathy between heart and heart, brought back that happier courage that is the true boast of health. For it is the brave, clear-eyed woman who holds the love of a man in this world. Melancholy and helplessness may please the lover; they do not often hold the husband. Man needs a mate who can spread her wings with him, whose eyes look trustfully, who has no trick of selfish tears. And John Gore, riding beside his wife that morning, felt glad and strong and sure because of her, for generosity counts with a man almost before all other virtues. Let a woman be pure and generous, and she will never lack the reverence of men.
When they came to the valley of thorns that morning John Gore drew rein in the beech thicket that he knew so well. He desired to bring Barbara into Thorn without my lord suspecting it.
“I will go down first,” he said; “when I am ready I will come into the court and wave my cloak. Then, little wife, you will follow.”
And it was agreed between them as he said.
My lord was not in the kitchen that morning, and John Gore, seeing that the stool was gone, guessed that his father was in the garden. Going out into the court he waved his cloak as a sign to Barbara, and passing on into the garden he found Stephen Gore sitting in the sunlight with his sword across his knees. He looked younger by years than he had looked for many weeks. His eyes had an alertness new to them, and he rose up to meet his son with the air of an aristocrat and a man.
“Good-morning to you, John; I am making the most of the sunlight.”
The son looked questioningly at the father’s sword. My lord’s manner had something final, something stately in its tranquillity.
“I had a visitor yesterday, my son; I was glad that you were absent.”
“A visitor? Who?”
“One of those gentlemen, John, who walk through the world with a ladle full of hot sulphur. He came to spy and to discover. I entertained him. I assure you that he was mightily exalted.”
John Gore looked grave.
“An informer?”
“Call the creature what you will, my son, he has scented the fox and run him to earth. He seemed astonished at my urbanity, and sat with a hand upon his pistol. ‘Good sir,’ said I, ‘I am tired of the country, and yearn for the city and that noble place where so many good gentlemen are entertained. Do me the honor of waiting on me to-morrow with a few fiery Protestant friends; let us fix the hour at noon. I assure you that I shall not run,’ and I believe the fellow believed me. I shall be taken to-day, John; I am waiting for them quietly here. What does it matter! They cannot frighten me; I am beyond that now.”
He spoke simply yet pungently, a quiet pride giving him something of grandeur and impressiveness. John Gore was listening for the sound of Barbara’s coming. A clatter of hoofs from the court-yard rose on the morning air. My lord heard it and smiled, and then held out a hand to his son.
“Hear them, John! I did not expect the rogues so early. Clear, my lad; I don’t want you caught in the tangle. Get behind some of yonder bushes.”
John Gore looked hard at his father.
“It is not your friends yet,” he said; “wait here; this is my affair.”
The sunlight shone on Barbara’s face as she met her husband in the court-yard. He said but one word—“Come”—and led her by the hand into the garden. A tangle of shrubs hid the place where Stephen Gore waited. And thus John Gore and Barbara came upon my lord quite suddenly, and stood before him almost like a pair of runaways returning for a father’s pardon.
My lord looked at Barbara and went white to the lips. His arms hung limply. He stooped, and seemed to shrink into himself, his eyes remaining fixed on her as though unable to look away. For the moment the old, frightened, fawning expression came back into his eyes. Then he gave a sudden, inarticulate cry, flung out his hands, and stood groping almost like one struck blind.
“John, you have deceived me!”
He would probably have fallen had not the son sprung to him and put an arm about his body.
“John, you have deceived me! My God, are you against me, even at the last!”
“No, no; it is not that.”
He glanced at Barbara, for Stephen Gore seemed in a kind of agony. He trembled greatly, leaned heavily upon his son, almost clinging to him as though stricken with the dread that he had been tricked and condemned even at the last by the one man whose love was the one thing left to him.
Barbara answered her husband’s glance; her lips were quivering. This strong man’s anguish went to her heart.
“John, tell him—”
“It is forgiveness.”
“A blotting out of the past.”
At the sound of her voice Stephen Gore recovered his courage and his self-control. He stood back from his son, putting John Gore’s arm aside, as though he had strength enough to stand alone. He looked at Barbara sadly, yet with thankfulness—the look of a man whose grosser prides were dead.
“You are alive, child; thank God for that! The truth of this was hid from me.”
She would have spoken, but he held up his hands as though to beg her patience.
“You know everything? Does she know the whole truth, John?”
The son nodded and turned his face away. My lord spoke on.
“Child, I did you and yours a great wrong. I cannot justify myself; out of my own mouth I am judged. These are the words of a man who expects to die. Yet be it said, child, without pride of heart, that I would have gladly ended the thing I called my life that I might wipe out all the past.”
There was silence between the three for several seconds. Then Barbara looked at John Gore and he at her.
“We have buried the past,” she said, turning to my lord.
Stephen Gore did not move.
“John and I are man and wife. We have put the past away from us. It is better for us—and for the dead.”
My lord raised his eyes slowly till they rested on Barbara’s face. He saw nothing there but a mist of tenderness and tears.
“Child, you say this to me?”
She held out her hands generously.
“Out of my heart I say it.”
My lord bowed himself and took her hands, and when he had kissed them he put them reverently away from him, and stood up bravely, yet with a twitching face. John Gore had come to stand beside his wife. And the three looked at each other and were silent.
Then my lord spoke.
“Children, go—and God bless you.”
They looked at him questioningly, but he did not falter.
“John, my son, you understand. They will come for me soon; I am ready; I shall no longer be ashamed. Go. I would not have you near the fringe of the slough into which these good Protestants will throw me. You have your lives to live. It is my desire that no shadow of mine should ever darken them again.”
Barbara looked at her husband, for she did not understand the meaning of what was said. My lord smiled at her and pointed toward the distance. The authority seemed his that day.
“John will tell you the truth. It is for your sakes that I demand this.”
Both husband and wife faltered, but Stephen Gore’s eyes were clear and unflinching.
“John, if this should be the end of me, what I have is yours, unless the rogues sequestrate it. Now go, my son, and be happy. It is my last wish, and you will grant it me.”
And so they left him, sadly, unwillingly, feeling like traitors leaving a friend to death. For the man had seemed lovable, even great, at that last moment, and yet they had felt that it would have been graceless to question his last desire.
Stephen Gore watched them go, following them to the court-yard, and standing above the moat as they rode slowly away toward the woods. Under the beech-trees they turned and looked back at Thorn, and saw him standing there, and waved him a farewell.
“What will it mean?”
Barbara’s eyes asked her love that as he took her bridle and drew away into the woods.
“They will take him to-day,” he said; “yesterday he was discovered. Other heads have fallen; so may his.”
She was silent awhile, and then looked at John Gore wistfully.
“And we are leaving him!”
“Wife, it was his wish, his prayer, his penance. I—a man—would not grudge it him. Can you not understand?”
“Yes, John, I can understand.”
And they rode back to Furze Farm sadly, knowing that it would be wiser for them to leave the place and seek some other refuge till they saw how the times promised.
Before noon my lord was taken in Thorn as a Catholic and a conspirator against the state. He met them calmly, with the fine carriage of the man of the world, courteous and debonair, ready even with an epigram and a smile. His face seemed strangely tranquil as he rode with his escort out of the gate of Thorn.
“May the sins of the fathers rest not upon the children.”
That was the prayer that his heart uttered.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
Spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. Punctuation and minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.