They wandered along the trim paths till the mother called them to table. Clement was reserved before his father; but Mary, usually so shy at taking part in the conversation, had to-day a hundred things to tell and to ask about. Even the old man gradually lost the impression of his first conversation with his son, and the old trusting feeling soon regained its place between them again.
But during the next day it was impossible to avoid fresh causes of dissention. The old man wished to be enlightened on the state of theology at the University, and the conversation soon wandered to more general subjects. The more Clement tried to avoid disagreeable points, the more vehemently the old man pressed him. Many an anxious involuntary, glance from his mother sustained him, indeed, in his determination to avoid definite explanations; but when he parried a question, or answered with an unmeaning word, the enforced silence wrung his very heart. Mary managed, even, to revive the old tone again for a time; but he saw that she too suffered, and avoided her when he met her alone, for he knew that she would have asked him, and felt that from her he could conceal nothing. A shadow seemed to pass over him when he came into her presence. Was it the recollection of that childish promise to which he had been so untrue? Was it the belief that in the difference of opinion which had estranged him from his parents, she ranged herself silently on their side? And yet he felt a yearning towards her which grew ever more irresistible--a longing which he could not ignore, and which he struggled against fiercely; for he was full of his science and of his prospects, and avoided, with the selfishness of fancied inward strength, all that might clog his onward way.
"I will be a traveller,--a foot traveller." he often said to himself. "I must carry a light bundle!" It made him heavy at heart when he contemplated the possibility of his being chained to a wife, who would demand a part of his being for herself. And a blind wife! One that he must always fear to leave for a moment! Here in the village, where all went on its simple way, and to which she had been accustomed since her childhood, here she was protected from all the confusing accidents which she could not fail to encounter in the town. So he persuaded himself that he should do her an injustice if he married her: whether he grieved her or not by his determination, was a point that he avoided considering.
He expressed himself still more openly when he departed. On the last day, when he had embraced his parents, and had been told that Mary was in the garden, he left a farewell for her, and with beating heart went down the village street, and then crossed, sideways, over the fields towards the forest. The garden opened into the fields too, and his nearest way would have been through a little wicket-gate. He made a wide détour. But when he reached the fields, he was unable to follow the narrow path through the springing corn without casting one glance round; so he stood still in the mild sunshine, and looked back over the huts and the houses. Behind the hedge which surrounded his father's garden, he saw the slender figure of the blind girl. Her face was turned towards him, but she dreamed not that he was so near her. Hot and hasty sprang the tears to his eyes; but he repressed them with a powerful effort. Then he sprang like a madman over the ditches and paths back to the hedge. She started. "Farewell, Mary!" he said, with a clear voice, "I am going away again, perhaps for a year!" He passed his trembling hand over her forehead and temples.
"Farewell! You are going?" she said. "One thing I beg of you,--write oftener to your parents; your mother longs for it so; and send me a greeting, too, sometimes."
"Yes;" he answered, absently. Then he departed.
"Clement!" she cried, once again, after he had left her. He heard her, but did not look round. "It is well that he did not hear me," she said gently to herself. "And what had I to say to him?"
CHAPTER VI.
From that day the son never remained long at his father's house. Each time he came he found his father harsher and more impatient--his mother ever with the same love, but more reserved towards him--Mary, tranquil, but silent when the men spoke; she also showed herself but seldom.
On a bright day late in autumn, we find Clement once more in the room in which, as a boy, he had passed the time devoted to his cure. One of his friends and fellow-students had accompanied him; they had both passed the usual time at the University, and they were just returned from a long journey, in the course of which Wolf had been unwell, and wished to recruit himself in the quiet of the village. Clement was obliged to acquiesce, although, amongst all his friends, this was the very one he thought most unlikely to suit his father. He managed, however, to fall into the ways of thinking of the old people with unexpected tact and dexterity, and particularly won the mother's heart by the lively interest he pretended to take in all household matters; he was also able to give her many little bits of advice, and relieved a complaint under which she laboured by some simple remedy; for he had prepared himself to succeed an old uncle who was an apothecary, a profession for which his inclinations and acquirements really unfitted him; yet he was of an easy disposition and delighted to be quiet and to enjoy himself from time to time. He had never had much real feeling in common with Clement, and so at his first step into the rectory he felt himself in an utterly strange atmosphere, and would certainly have seized the smallest excuse for leaving a circle which constrained and wearied him, had not the blind girl struck him, at the first glance, as a remarkable problem to be solved. It is true she avoided him as much as she could. The first time he took her hand she withdrew it from his with an inexpressible disquietude, and quite lost her self-command, yet he hung about her for hours at a time, watched her way of managing affairs, and examined with a gay recklessness, which it was impossible to be angry with, the means by which she kept up a communication with the outer world, and studied the way in which the senses she had preserved, made up for the one she had lost; he could not understand why Clement thought so little of her. He, however, avoided meeting her more than ever, and particularly when he found her in Wolf's company; then he grew pale and turned away, and the villagers often met him in lonely forest paths, seemingly lost in gloomy reveries.