They had reached the bridge that led across the moat to the yards. Here David, having hailed a stableman from a distance, dismounted and delivered over his horse.
“Give me your arm, doctor,” said he, “I am stiff from the saddle and cold from my thoughts. I dread the going in; let us prolong our way sufficiently to put my dull blood in movement again. Yes, my kind old friend,” he went on, in answer to a shrewd look, “it is even so; I dread the moment of crossing my threshold where there is nought to greet us but whispers of the might-have-been.”
“Man was never meant to live alone,” said Tutterville sententiously. “How often have I not told you so?”
Leaning on the parson’s arm, David impelled him towards the narrow path that led to the fateful Herb-Garden. The wind had risen again; a rainstorm was impending. Overhead the branches were shaken as by an angry capricious hand; shreds of green foliage, and now and then an isolated prematurely yellow leaf, fluttered athwart them as they went.
Sir David halted with a start as they came into the open space under the yew-tree. Where the ancient gateway had, with delicate curvet and strength of iron, guarded the forbidden close, was now a gap, ugly as a wound, beyond which the stretch of devastated garden lay raw to the gaze. Against the broken-down wall the useless unhinged doors lay propped.
“I have had nothing done to this place since you left,” said the rector, breaking the heavy pause. “I thought that perhaps your wish would coincide with mine; that you would give orders to have these precincts cleared and levelled, and thrown in with the rest of the grounds, so that even its unhappy memory might die out among us. Over those new graves in the churchyard the sod is growing green again; and in the hearts of our poor ignorant village folk, resignation to the will of Providence, and repentance and shame for their cowardly turbulence, has taken the place of all angry feelings. I may tell you now, David, how grateful they all are for your not pursuing them with punishment.”
“Pah!” interrupted Sir David with impatient contempt. “What were the wretches to me—since I had heard she had escaped! What care I but to find her again!”
The parson halted disconcerted. Sir David had abruptly left his side to walk rapidly up to the gates and examine them. Then he turned. His look and demeanour had something of the singularity of former days. And from his distance:
“Rase these walls!” he cried. “Sweep these memories!... Have I not just said to you that memory is all that I have left! This wall shall be built up, these gates hung again; and no hand but mine shall touch what remains of those beds that she tended and planted. No feet but mine shall tread the paths her feet have pressed. Here shall all lie as secret and desolate as my life without her.—Let us go!”
Worthy Dr. Tutterville walked on in silence. His warm heart was too sincerely grieved for his eccentric companion to resent his present attitude; at the same time he was conscious of a humanly-irritated regret that the present form of eccentricity should not have manifested itself a little earlier. Presently Sir David took up the thread of the conversation where the rector had left it.