Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
"If he would despise me I would forgive him; for if he love me to madness I shall never requite him."
"Good-bye!" says Paul Vasher, as he stands on the step of the railway carriage with my hand in his. "I am coming home in a day or two, and I shall then keep you to your promise."
I do not answer or look at him, although I feel his eyes searching my face. The guard waves his flag; Alice kisses her hand from the distant carriage—"Good-bye! good-bye!"—a swift glance at Paul's dark face, a wave of the hand to Alice, and I am off, either to render up my valueless body at Silverbridge Station at 5.25, or make an unsightly corpse on the top of the engine-boiler, or thereabouts.
There was a horrible railway accident a little while ago, and following that another and another. They have come hurrying after each other so fast that men going a journey wear sober faces, and enter a railway carriage with an ugly presentiment of its being a probable tomb, and are haunted with dread visions of a fast train dashing up behind, or a slow one right in the path in front, and cannot settle to their newspapers and slumbers as usual. What a pity it is bridges are not built higher, and people cannot travel outside trains as they do on coaches; one would at least be able to keep a look-out and see if Nemesis were overtaking us, and have a chance for our lives, instead of sitting stived up, blind as moles, helpless as infants, awaiting the crash that shoots us in one awful moment into eternity. If I come to grief to-day it will be alone, for I have a compartment all to myself, and can walk about, yawn, stretch, lounge, even laugh or cry, if it so pleases me.
Can it be only a month ago that I sped past those prim hedgerows and fields, with the ruminating cows and insensate children, who wave their dirty bits of rag at the train as it rushes by? It is thirty-one days by the almanac; but when I last came this way I was eighteen years old, and young for my age; now I feel fifty at the very least, and old for my age. By the time I really am fifty, I suppose I shall feel hundred, and by the time I reach three-score and ten—bah! It is a nasty thought that I may possibly live to that age, and live without teeth, taste, hearing, seeing, enjoying, without memory even.
As the day goes on a thought that has been lurking in some back lumber-room of my memory, forced thither by my will, steps nimbly out and stares me evilly in the face—I have to tell George. I know what I have to say to him well enough, but that does not make it any the better; and even when that terrible wrench is over, there will be the long inevitable afterwards. If only there were some city of refuge to which rejected lovers might flee, and be kept there until they had made up their minds it was no good to sigh after what they could not get! It is bad enough to say no over and over again to a man, without having the word crystallized into a two-legged illustration who struts up and down your little stage an image of despair, and never for a moment permits you to forget that your being such a wretch to him has brought him to this miserable pass! I can feel for him now, poor George! as I little thought I ever should. Some men might be glad that I should know something of the pangs they had suffered, but George is not one of those—there never was any selfishness in him: I should have cared for him more, perhaps, if there had been. I am glad that I know the truth about Paul; that I can take my lot and look it fairly in the face, and know that if no better, still no worse can befall me. Oh! it is easier to endure the long barren bondage from which there is no escape, than to exist trembling on the frail support of a hope that may vanish and leave the horizon more utterly dark than it was before. I wonder how soon he will bring his wife home to Silverbridge? I wonder how soon he will call upon me to fulfil my promise? He may call upon me, but I will not go—in the field of rye alone he vowed to receive it, and thither to meet him my steps shall never turn.
I walk restlessly up and down the swerving carriage—for the train is express, and we are racing against time—then sit down and pull out my letters received this morning. That from mother contains news that a month ago would have driven me wild with excitement, that a few years ago would have made Jack and me happy as king and queen, but now brings no shock of surprise, pleasure, or expectation; indeed, until the present moment, I have scarcely thought about it. The news is this: papa is going to take a long, long journey to Australia, and he will be away many months. I do not quite understand why he is going; it is something about money, and perhaps he is tired of staying quietly at home (he was a great traveller in his youth); at any rate he departs in about three weeks, mother says. What a time the young ones will have of it! To Jack and me, this gift of the gods comes too late. Now if such a chance as this had only been given to us while we were young, we would have got into every bit of mischief the place contained, and possessed consciences clear of ever having missed a single opportunity of evil-doing when he returned! As it is, with no one to harry and vituperate me, with no one to drive me out for walks, or compel me to overlook the morals and manners of the boys, or to labour daily at the dry pump of conversation, I shall become drivelling willow-wearing lack-lustre-eyed damsel for folks to mock at. I shall hang out all the forlorn insignia of the love-lorn maiden—shall I? never! If the roses will not come back to my cheeks, the smiles shall to my lips, I will be as merry and noisy and saucy as ever I was, before people; I will defy any one to pry into my heart and see what is there, and that peace will come to me after a while I doubt not.
I wonder where Silvia is now, and what she is doing? She left the day after our conversation in the garden, and we never met again. Sir George Vestris remained one day after her departure. If she cast him on one side, as report says she casts all her other lovers, he took his punishment quietly and gave no sign.
Alice goes to-morrow. She has asked me to go and stay at her country-house for Christmas; and perhaps, as papa will be away, I may be able to go. My sisters have pressed me hard with their questions about Paul, but I have managed to keep them off. They are puzzled, I think, as well they may be.
My journey's end comes at last, and at 5.35, reasonably punctual, according to the notions of country station-masters, the train reaches Silverbridge. There is mother in the pony-carriage; and on the platform, broader, bigger, more swaggering than ever, is the Bull of Basan, but Corydon, where is he? Invisible, thank Heaven! I jump out quite briskly. If young men whose attentions are unwelcome only knew how they endeared themselves to the objects of their affection by their absence, they would surely practise the virtue much oftener! I give mother and Basan a vigorous hug, and then, my box having been duly produced and handed over to the dog-cart in waiting, we set out, mother and I side by side, Basan occupying an abased and harassing position between the reins.
"My eye! How white you are!" he remarks at once. "Just look at her, mother!"
She looks at me with the anxious perfect love that no earthly face save a mother's ever wears, and says, "So she is. The dissipations have not agreed with you, dear. We must nurse you up now you have come home." And I know that in her gentle heart she is meditating a course of port wine and rum-and-milk.
"I say, Nell, have you heard the news?" asks Basan, dodging an insinuating irruption of leather into his right eye. "Won't we have a time of it—eh, Nell?" But mother shakes her head a little sadly.
"Poor papa!" she says; "he is very sorry to go away and leave us all." I stare at mother. Can she be joking? Can she mean (oh, the idea is too ridiculous!) that he likes us, that he is sorry to go away from us? I look at Basan. His mouth and eyes are as round as mine. We have the two longest tongues in the family, but the notion has sobered him as well as me. Papa sorry to leave us! The idea is so amazing that it literally strikes us dumb. "And how are Alice and Milly and the babies?" asks mother; and for the rest of the drive our talk is nothing but question and answer.
At the house door are drawn up the young ones, whose shouts of welcome attest without any need of inquiry, that at the present moment papa does not pervade these parts: and as I embrace them all round, I find it in my heart to wish there were even more of them, that Jack stood near for me to put my arm round his neck, that pretty Dolly was "finished" and sent home from school. They escort me to my room in a body,and make themselves very happy and busy until nurse appears to welcome me, and sweep them all away.
"Eh! but your stay has done you but little good, Miss Nell!" she says, as she stands before me. "Maybe you've been fretting after your lover, honey?"
"No, no," I answer, pressing my lips to her brown wrinkled cheek. "I have been gay, nurse, amusing myself."
"And if that's amusing yerself, my dearie, you had better have stayed at home," she says as she goes away.
I have removed my dusty travelling dress, and am drinking tea and eating chicken, when the trot of horses' hoofs comes up the avenue, and in another moment George and my father appear on horseback. Already! I had hoped for a little grace—just a little time to draw breath and gather up my strength. He evidently knows I am here, for he is casting his eyes over the house in the aggressively eager manner all unfavoured swains affect. It is your lover who knows he is kindly welcome that walks in lightly and easily, sure of seeing his lady-love in good time. Although I have precipitately rolled off the window-seat, tea-cup and all, I have an uneasy feeling that he is looking at me through the bricks and mortar, and that his importunity will compel me into his presence whether I will or no.
When papa appears upon the scene it is one of the rules of the family for everybody to turn out and see what he will do next. From the force of habit, therefore, I go to the top of the stairs and peep over. He is in the hall, inquiring how many hours I intend to spend in "figging" myself up. Reassured at finding him in his normal state of temper and character—for that other phase, as suggested by mamma, is too horribly subversive of all our traditions to make me feel anything but uneasy—I return to my room to finish my toilette, and in another minute am in the dining-room standing before the gentlemen.
My peck at papa's cheek is soon made; and then George takes my hand with a gladness in his face that I turn away my eyes from beholding. After all, he only says, "How do you do?" and when I have answered "Quite well, thank you," and told him that my journey was tolerably pleasant, our exchange of words ceases, and the conversation is sustained by him and the governor. The latter going away shortly, however, on some (probable) deed of vengeance, the young man comes quickly over to me. How frank, and fearless, and handsome he looks!—a better looking man than Paul, the world would say.
Can you tell me, George, why you never made me love you?—why, when my heart was empty, you could not fill it? Was the fault yours or mine?
"How I have missed you!" he says, looking into every line of my face with greedy love. "How pale you are, Nell, and how pretty—prettier than when you went away, I think!"
"No, no." I say, while a pained, miserable flush creeps slowly up to my brow; "I never was anything to look at, George; no one ever thought so but you."
"Did they not?" he says quickly. "I am glad of that. I grudge every admiring look a man casts on you, Nell. I wish you could not be fair in any one's eyes but mine, then they would not want to take you away from me."
"That is kind to me," I say, smiling. "However, you have your wish; no one ever wanted to take me away from you."
"Thank God!" he says, with a deep thanksgiving in his voice that is almost solemn. "And so you have come back to me, my own little sweetheart, never to go away from me any more!"
"Hush!" I say, turning deadly pale. "Is not that papa?"
"I don't care if it is—Nell———"
"I am going now," I say, starting back. "I cannot stay now. To-morrow afternoon at four I will be by the brook."
"To-morrow!" he says below his breath; and the rapture in his eyes makes me shiver. "I have waited so long, dear, and now———" and on his face is a look of such utter, pure content as makes his beauty something to marvel at.
Ay, to-morrow! and ere the sun has set a few words will have dashed it all out—all the sweetness of his hope's fruition—all the reward of his long, faithful service; and never, I wish, on this side of the grave, will my lover's face again wear the look it wears to-night. . . . Somehow I creep away and up to my own room, where a bitter anguish tears and rends me. Heavier than all the pain I have suffered is this task set to my hand; and until to-night I have thought almost lightly of his misery, wearily and continually of my own. Human beings are very selfish—the pain they do not see they do not believe in or heed; it must be placed before their eyes for them to feel the mournfulness and pity of it in their hearts. If only I had hearkened to George's words that day when he stood under the trees and entreated me not to go away, or, if I went, to bind myself by a promise, there would be two miserable people less on God's earth to-night.
"Supper is ready!" cries Basan, bursting wildly in an hour later; and I lift my head from the window sill, and smooth my hair, and go down to a meal that fills me with a blank sense of amazement, it is so constrained, so unnatural. The sociable freedom of the Luttrell table, and to which I have grown accustomed, opened my eyes to the wretched discomforts here: the few and forced words, the abuse of the servants, the perpetual looking out for imaginary faults in dishes and attendance, the unmannerly manners. Towards the end of supper a slight contre-temps occurs, for Basan, being ordered in a voice of thunder to ring the bell, starts up, poor willing youth, with extraordinary celerity and not spying a large silver dish-cover lying near him, plants a well-directed kick in the centre of its hollow body, which sends it flying across the room into the fire-place, where it lodges amid a crash of falling irons.
"Dolt! booby! fool!" yells papa, bounding in his chair; and Basan returns to the table covered with shame and confusion.
I wonder if papa will pay some family in Australia so much a week for permission to call them names? It would be hard upon him to have all his little comforts cut off at once. Supper over, poor Basan goes to bed (I wish I might), mother works, papa smokes his pipe, and I make spills, a suitable and becoming occupation for a young woman in his estimation, but one that I never excelled at, for laboriously as I roll and roll at them, they never have nice taper points or strong backs. Jack's are as stiff as pokers. How I hate these silent dreadful after-supper hours. How Alice and Milly hated them in their turn! How the young ones look forward to them with dread! In summer time it is not so bad—we are out till supper, but in autumn and winter our evil days begin, for immediately after tea we all have to take our work and sit round the table, while papa reads his newspaper; or rather, we used to, for they are all away now, the married sisters, and Jack, and Alan, and Dolly. As I look round the empty table, I seem to see us all as we sate night after night mute as fish, but engaged in twenty reprehensible modes of passing the time.
How difficult we sometimes found it to restrain our hysterical giggles! Is there anything on earth more irrepressible or catching than a giggle? And never so irresistible as when one knows that it is as much as one's life is worth to indulge it. Once out of the room, and free to laugh as much as we pleased, we felt no inclination to do so; it was only down there, when our spirits were so tightly bottled up, and we were denied all natural vent for them, that we felt so riotous. Making faces was favourite amusement, and in the art we all attained a fine proficiency; and quick as lightning we often had to be in regaining our personality when papa turned his head to look at us. Pinches, tweaks, and nips were given and exchanged with a Spartan fortitude that should prepare us in some measure for the hardships of life. But our great and mighty temptation was to throw paper pellets at the place where the hair grows thin on papa's head. How often have we sat round the table; pellets in hand, and longed to launch them, certain that we could hit that little patch with a most delicate precision. . . .
Well! I am likely to sit here making spills for a very, very long while. By the time I am an old maid, I suppose, I shall have made millions. Papa asks no questions about his daughters, and their spouses; so, when I have told him that they are all well, and that Luttrell Court is a fine place, my stock of conversation is exhausted. At half-past ten I say good-night, and take my bed-room candle thankfully; but oh! there is little rest for me, for does not a bitter task await me on the morrow? and in the long days to come is there so much as a shadow of any pleasant thing that is likely to befall me?