He was right enough in that last prediction. For although I had fastened the door—in strict keeping with the moral of the proverb—and no rain had pelted the ground outside it, yet a greater effacer than rain had been there. For the spot being on a sharp slope, and below the crown of the road, or the lane I should say, a strong rush of water had taken track there, and washed away all the dust, and then the heavier substance, leaving rough pebbles with sharp edges sticking up, as clean and unconscious as before they saw the world.
“Nothing to be made of that,” said Biggs; “nor of any footmarks anywhere else, after all the rain as have fallen. Only one thing to do now is to inquire of the neighbours, and folk as were about last night.”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
ON TWO CHAIRS.
For as much as three weeks I had been full of pride, in taking my Kitty about everywhere—even by the seaside, where I knew very little, but luckily she knew less, in spite of her scientific origin—and asking her to look about and see things with her own eyes; and if she could not make them out, to call me in to help her. This had been rash on my part; for a man may be gaping about, for his lifetime, and die after all with his mouth wide open; and not a word come from it, to help the people left behind, but only to unsettle them, and put them in a flutter; as gnats skip into another dance, at every new breath across them. But Kitty had really put some questions far outside my knowledge (as a child may, who hangs on his grandfather’s thumb), and I had promised to look up those points and deliver an opinion, when I had one. All this came into my mind, like a chill, when I had to trace her dear steps, away from me, away from me.
Let seventy times seven wise men say that no man with a grain of wisdom could have a spark of faith in women, because they never know their own mind—little as there is of it to know—I still abode in my own faith, and let them quote old saws against the sturdy holdfast of true love. I felt as sure of my Kitty’s heart, as I did of my own, and more so; for she never would have borne to hear a hundredth part of the things against me, which I had to listen to against her. And the cowards, who vent their own craven souls in slander of those who cannot face them, had a fine time of it now, and rejoiced in the misery they were too small to feel. Such things might sour a weakling, who depends upon what other people think; but I found enough of manhood coming up in me, as time went on, to make me stick to my own trust, and let outer opinions touch my home, no more than the shower that runs down the glass.
At first, however, it was dreadful work. Everybody seemed to be against me, not with any unkindness, but by way of worldly wisdom. “Don’t you dwell too much upon it.” “A runaway wife isn’t worth running after.” “Never you mind; but get another; try the people you know, with their friends in the place.” These were the counsels I received, with a nod of my head, and no reply.
But I could not see things as others saw them. I spent the first day of my lonely life, in wandering through the crooked lanes, and working out every track and turn which my darling could have taken, in the dark mystery of her flight from me. Very often I thought that she must come back; and there was scarcely a hill that I did not run up, persuading myself that when the top was gained, there I should descry her in the distance beyond, weary, and dragging her feet along, but eager at sight of me to make a rush and fall into my longing arms. How many a corner I turned, believing that it must be the last between her and me; and how many a footpath stile I sat on, hiding my eyes that she might catch me unawares, as at blind-man’s buff, and throw her warm arms round my neck, and kiss me into shame of my mistrust, and tell me that she never could have doubted me, whatever I had done, or whatever people said!
And then, when it grew too dark to see even my own love in the shadow of the lanes, and the last note of the wedded thrush (who sings to the sparkle of the stars in May) was hushed by a call from his nest, and followed by the first clear trill of the nightingale—
“Who tells the deeper tale of night