CHAPTER XL.—‘RESURGAM.’
On a sombre autumn afternoon, the solitary figure of a woman stood looking backward and westward, towards the round red ball of the sun, which was sinking slowly into the very heart, as it were, of the great far-away cloud which she knew was London.
All around her, on every side, stretched desolate marshes, silent save for the hoarse cry of a heron dapping slowly towards his crimson fishing pools, or for the faint forlorn whistle of a distant curlew. No other human figure was in sight, not even a human habitation; but over the trees of a lonely plantation, skirting the marshes to the southward, the spire of Grayfleet Church glittered back the rays of the setting sun.
The woman, though pale and haggard, was young and beautiful; and as she watched the far-off sunset its dim ray touched her cheeks with a faint tinge of red. She stood like one in a dream, shading her eyes and gazing on the dusky pageant—cloud, smoke, and mist irradiated into gloomy splendour, and assuming, as the fancy willed, strange forms of crumbling buildings, fiery streets, columns, roofs, arches, spires, and turrets, all duskily aflame.
It did not seem real; no more real than the city she had left behind her, than the grave from which she had risen into some dimmer and sadder life. Yet her eyes dimmed with tears as she thought of one solitary figure waiting lonely and despairing yonder, listening for a foot that came not, praying for a love cast away and lost.
Nothing seemed real; not the cloudy pageant, or the darkening sun, or the desolate earth; not the life that she had lived, or the life that she had voluntarily left behind; not the long years of a confused and broken experience, chiefly of helplessness and sorrow; nothing but the clinging, contaminating sense of some great sin and shame. As a creature half choked and drowned, just dragged living out of some watery ooze, with all the foul moisture and the slimy filth clinging to her garments, this woman seemed and felt. The consciousness of a complete moral contamination, from which she had barely emerged, still remained with her, and not all the perfumes of Arabia could have cleansed it away.
She had been wandering in that dreary district for days, sleeping at night in lonely farmhouses and squalid inns, and ever creeping out in the early dawn to follow some aimless pilgrimage she scarcely knew whither. Yet all that afternoon she had been hanging around Grayfleet, looking in vain for some face that she might know and remember. She had stood gazing sadly at the little row of white-washed cottages where Mark and Luke Peartree once had dwelt; but strange folk now lived there, and the name of Peartree was quite forgotten. She had looked at the shining river, and she had seen, in a dream, the boat rowing in with its maimed and broken burden, while Uncle Luke stood in the bow wringing his hands. She had wandered into the old churchyard and looked in upon the very tombs where a troop of merry girls were playing, one happy Sabbath, so many years ago. Ah, that sweet, that far-off, half-forgotten life—was it all a dream too?
Tramps and wanderers of all kinds were common in those parts, and few had paid any attention to the pale worn woman, plainly and poorly clad, who haunted the old village that afternoon. Now and then she had received a country greeting, and quietly replied. She had entered the Ferry Inn, and bought some bread and cheese, and while making her poor meal she had tried to question the landlord, a rough waterside character, about people she remembered. But he was a stranger where all seemed strangers. Then her feet had strayed again to the old churchyard, and this time she had strolled through the gate and searched among the graves. But she found no headstone or memorial to show her where Mark Peartree was lying, or where slept the kindly dame who had followed him so soon.
So the day passed, and in the afternoon she had come out again upon the lonely marshes, where she now stood watching the smoky sun.