Nevertheless, he did not succumb to the temptation to write to her, probably because in his inmost heart he knew too well that if she wanted him she would write—on some other excuse. He had been in a curious way clear-sighted about her from the first; he had always acknowledged that strain of insincerity, but he had fallen into the error of believing that underneath all those shifting sands there was at last bedrock and that it was his hand which was to discover it. He now knew that it was nothing but sands, and a quicksand at that, yet the knowledge made the death of his love no easier. Love cannot be killed—it always dies a natural death; and natural deaths are slow processes. Of all the things Blanche had said to him one at least was very true, and that was on a day when he had been telling her the many reasons why he loved her. Her mouth, her eyes, her soul, her voice, it had been the usual lover's medley. She had listened, and then perhaps, with the knowledge in her heart that disillusionment was bound to be his, said:
"There's only one safe reason for loving anyone, Ishmael, and that is—'because I am I and you are you!'… Love a person for beauty or brains or virtues, and they may all fail—there's only the one reason that may be trusted not to change." And that was, of course, precisely why he had loved her, and why the love died harder than the reasoned loves of older years which respond to reasoning.
Affairs at home were not likely to provide a pleasurable change for Ishmael's thoughts. Vassie, it was true, meant more to him, as he to her, than ever before. The pain that Vassie had suffered when Killigrew had left after his first visit, though not comparable to Ishmael's, being disappointment and hurt vanity, yet had dowered her with a degree of comprehension she might otherwise have missed. She felt she loved this young brother more dearly than she had ever thought to; something of the maternal awoke in her; she helped him in many little ways he did not notice, getting between him and their mother's tongue, exerting herself to make the affairs within the house run more smoothly. She was proud of her youngest brother, of his unlikeness to the rest, even of the aloofness and fits of dreaming which she no more than the others understood, but which she was sufficiently in advance of them to revere instead of scorning. She was more like him than she knew, though in her ambition had taken harder and more personal form.
With the spring Annie became unbearable. Archelaus had suddenly gone off again, after his fashion, this time to the goldfields of California, and Annie, who felt his departure bitterly, chose to blame Ishmael for it. Christmas had been for her the occasion to revive all her religious frenzies, and the house rang with her cracked-voiced hymns till Ishmael felt he could have smothered her with her own feather-bed. Her lust for religion, however, was taking a new direction—it was towards the Parson and his church instead of the conventicle of Mr. Tonkin. Quite what had brought about this change was hard to say—probably chiefly the infatuation of Tonkin for Vassie, a circumstance Annie took as an insult to herself.
"A man on in years like him, oldern' I be myself, and a minister before the Lard, ought to have other things to think on than wantoning with his thoughts after a maid young enough to be his daughter! Where's his religion, I should like to knaw?" This was Annie's own explanation, and even she realised that against Boase no charge of thinking about women could be brought—that quality of priesthood even her ignorance unconsciously admitted. She approached Boase on the subject of his creed and met with scant encouragement, which made her the more earnest. If the Parson had been anxious to receive her into the path he trod, she would have lagged; as it was, his brusqueness awaked a sensation of pleasure in her—there was no male to snub and bully her now that Archelaus had gone away. She set up to herself the image of Boase that some more educated women make of their doctor—a bully who had to be placated, who would scold her if she transgressed his ideas. She took to going to church every Sunday evening and sat in the Manor pew, every jet bead trembling on her bonnet as she kept her mind strained to attention—always a difficult task with her for any length of time.
One wet afternoon Vassie found she was not in the house, though when she had slipped out no one could say. Ishmael, alarmed—for nothing could have been more unlike Annie's habits—was about to set out in search of her, when the kitchen door was thrust open and slammed again and Annie stood before them, soaking with wet, her arms clasping a bundle of little books and a light of sly triumph in her eyes. Boase, shutting a dripping umbrella, was behind her. She had been across to the Vicarage in all the wet and cold to make the Parson talk to her about her soul, and to get rid of her he had finally given her a host of little cheap devotional books that had from time to time been sent to him from the publishers, and which he himself, disliking most modern books of devotion, had not troubled to read. He knew they were suited to the mentality of the average child of ten, and that therefore Annie with an effort might understand them and would certainly think them full of the Spirit.
He stood behind Annie, grave and quiet, signalling to Ishmael and Vassie with his eyes. Vassie sprang forward.
"Why, Mamma, you're soaked!" she cried. "Come! it's up to the bed you must go at once, and I'll bring you a hot drink when you're undressed. You can look at your books better in bed, you know."
"That's a true word," said Annie; "so I can. I can have 'en all around me on the bed, can't I, Vassie? I'll take en up, though; don't you touch en, I fear you'm nought but an unconverted vessel, and I won't have 'ee touchen my books."
Assuring her she should have it all her own way, Vassie got her out of the room and upstairs, while Katie heated water for a stone bottle to be put at her feet. Ishmael and Boase went into the parlour and sat down with grave faces.