“Indeed, that will be something to look forward to!”
They exchanged the hearty, lingering handshake of trusty friendship and deep affection. The last words, the last good wishes, were spoken, the last wistful effort was made of two human souls to bid each other be of good cheer, and to bring to one another comfort and hope. Hadria leant on the gate, a lonely figure in the dim star-light, watching the form that had already become shadowy, retreating along the road and gradually losing itself in the darkness.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
AUTUMN had come round again. Craddock Dene had calmed down after the exciting event of the summer. Martha’s little cottage was now standing empty, the virginia creeper trailing wildly, in thick festoons and dangling sprays over the porch and creeping up round the windows, even threatening to cover them with a ruddy screen, since now the bright little face no longer looked out of the latticed panes, and the cottage was given over to dust and spiders.
Mrs. Temperley was often seen by the villagers passing along the road towards Craddock. She would sometimes pause at the cottage, to gather a few of the flowers that still came up in the tiny garden. It was said that she gathered them to lay on Ellen Jervis’s grave.
“Dear, dear, she do take on about that child!” Dodge used to say, as she passed up the street of Craddock. And Mrs. Gullick, good soul, would shake her head and express her sympathy, in spite of not “holding” with Mrs. Temperley’s “ways.”
Her poorer neighbours understood far more than the others could understand, how sorely she was grieving about the child. Because she said nothing on the subject, it was generally supposed that she had ceased to care. After all, it was an act of charity that she had undertaken, on an impulse, and it was quite as well that she should be relieved of the responsibility.
Hannah used to write regularly, to let her know how Martha was. Professor Theobald had directed Hannah to do this. The nurse had to admit that he was very good and very devoted to the child. She throve in her new home, and seemed perfectly happy.
Hadria was now delivered over to the tender mercies of her own thoughts. Her memories burnt, as corrosive acids, in her brain. She could find no shadow of protection from her own contempt. There was not one nook or cranny into which that ruthless self-knowledge could not throw its cruel glare. In the hours of darkness, in the haunted hours of the early morning, she and her memories played horrible games with one another. She was hunted, they the hunters. There was no thought on which she could rest, no consoling remembrance. She often wished that she had followed her frequent impulse to tell Miss Du Prel the whole wretched story. But she could not force herself to touch the subject through the painful medium of speech. Valeria knew that Hadria was capable of any outward law-breaking, but she would never be prepared for the breaking of her own inner law, the real canon on which she had always laid so much stress. And then she had shrunk from the idea of betraying a secret not solely her own. If she told the story, Valeria would certainly guess the name. She felt a still greater longing that Professor Fortescue should know the facts; he would be able to help her to face it all, and to take the memory into her life and let its pain eat out what was base and evil in her soul. He would give her hope; his experience, his extraordinary sympathy, would enable him to understand it all, better than she did herself. If he would look at this miserable episode unflinchingly, and still hold out his hand to her, as she knew he would, and still believe in her, then she might believe still in herself, in her power of rising after this lost illusion, this shock of self-detection, and of going on again, sadder, and perhaps stronger; but if he thought that since she was capable of a real treason against her gods, that she was radically unsound at heart, and a mass of sophistication, then—Hadria buried her face in the pillow. She went through so often now, these paroxysms of agony. Do what she would, look where she might, she saw no relief. She was afraid to trust herself. She was afraid to accept her own suggestions of comfort, if ever a ray of it came to her, lest it should be but another form of self-deception, another proof of moral instability. In her eternal tossing to and fro, in mental anguish, the despairing idea often assailed her: that after all, it did not matter what she did or thought. She was but an atom of the vast whole, a drop in the ocean of human life.