WE were now in complete possession of our little solitary house; our humble neighbors had become accustomed to us, and no longer clustered about their doors and talked in whispers when we came out for our daily walk. I have no doubt that there was still much gossip, and even some suspicion about Alice and me; but we were inoffensive, and were not without means, so we were annoyed by no great investigations into our history.
We had no one in the house with us. Alice did everything; and though I made a pretence of helping her, I did her little service. Sometimes I put my own bedchamber in order, with a childish satisfaction, but no small degree of fatigue; and with so small a house, and so little trouble necessary, there was not much to do. I could not bear Alice to be out of my presence; we ate together, sat together, walked together; I was quite dependent upon her; altogether a great change had come upon me. I never had been what people call intellectual, but now in the day of my weakness how I clung to the womanly occupations, the womanly society, aye, to such a poor thing as gossip, which was only redeemed from being the very vulgarest of amusements, because it was gossip of the past. When I sat at my sewing, with Alice talking to me; when I listened to tales of this one and the other one, whom she had known in her youth,—everything about them; their dress, their habits, their marriages, their children, their misfortunes; when I cut, and sewed, and contrived these pretty things I still was making, sometimes I was almost happy. Yes, if it was in reality a descent from more elevated and elevating occupations, I still must confess to it, a woman after all is but a woman, and there are times when the greatest book, or the grandest imaginations in the world, have no attractions compared with those of a piece of muslin, a needle and a thread. I felt it so, at least. I remember the little parlor gratefully, with its round table and overflowing work-basket, the beautiful river and the passing boats without, and Alice recalling the experiences of her youth within.
For all this time my only safeguard lay in trying to forget, or to turn my back upon the great question of my life. I no longer brooded over the injury my husband had done me; it seemed to have floated away from my sight, and become an imagination, a vision, a dream. I could not even recall our life at Cottiswoode; when I attempted to return to it a veil fell upon my eyes, and a dull remorse at my heart made the very attempt at recollection intolerable to me. Instead of that, the bright days before our marriage, the bright days after it, continually, and even against my will, came to my mind. I went over and over again the course of our happy journey; I recalled all our hopes, all our conversations, all our plans for the future; and this was all over, all gone, vanished like a tale that is told! It is not wonderful that I should try with all my might to keep myself from thinking. It was dreadful to fall into such a reverie as this, and then to awaken from it, and recollect how everything really was.
I had heard from my agent in Cambridge, and had received money from him. We were plentifully supplied, yet needed very little. We lived as simply as any peasant women could have lived; and though we had now a few flowers in the little fantastic flower-pots before the window, and had dismissed the shabby evergreens, and pruned the “traveller’s joy,” we had made no other alteration in the house. It was now May, nearly the middle of the month, and perfect summer, for, as I have said, everything was unusually early this year. No letters except the agent’s had come to me. I thought my husband was content that I should be lost, and have my own will. When I was quite alone, I sometimes thought that he was eased and relieved by my absence, and the thought cost me some bitter tears. I could not bear to be of no importance to him; and then I fretted myself with vain speculations. Why was he so angry when I spoke of Flora Ennerdale? If he had but married Flora Ennerdale, how happy she would have made him; and I—I would have pined and died in secret, and never done him wrong. So I thought in my fond, wretched, desolate musings. Fond!—yes, my heart had escaped from me, and flown back to him. I would not for the world have whispered it to any one—I refused to acknowledge it to myself, yet it was true.
I was alone in the house, and these thoughts had come strongly upon me. Alice was very reluctant to leave me alone, and only when she was compelled by some household necessity went out without me; but she had wanted something this afternoon before the time of our usual walk, and I was sitting by myself in the silent little house. Though I avoided solitude by every means in my power, I yet prized the moment when it came to me—and I had been indulging myself in dreary longings, in silent prayers, and weeping, when Alice returned. She came in to me very hastily, with a good deal of agitation in her face, and when she saw my eyes, where I suppose there were signs that I had been crying, she started, and cried, “Have you seen him? have you seen him already?”
“I seen him—whom?” I cried with a great shiver of excitement. What a useless question it was! as well as if I had seen him, I knew he must be him.
She came and took my hand and bent over me, soothing and caressing. “Darling, don’t be startled,” said Alice; “oh, how foolish I am! I thought you had seen him when I saw the water in your eyes. Dear Miss Hester, keep a good heart, and don’t tremble, there’s a dear. I’ve seen him indeed—he’s here, come to see you, looking wan and worn, and very anxious, poor young gentleman. Oh, take thought of what you will say to him, Miss Hester; every minute I expect to hear him at the door.”
It was a great shock to me; I felt that there was a deadly pallor on my face. I felt my heart beat with a stifled rapid pulsation. I could not think of anything. I could not fancy what I would say. I was about to see him, to hear his voice again. I felt a wild delight, a wild reluctance; I could have risen and fled from him—yet it seemed to lift me into a sudden Elysium, this hope of seeing him again. Strange, inconsistent, perverse—I could not be sure for a moment what impulse I would follow. I sat breathless, holding my hand upon my heart, listening with all my powers. I seemed for the instant to be capable of nothing but of listening for his footstep; my physical strength and my mental were alike engrossed. I could neither move nor think.
I do not know how long it was; I know there was a terrible interval during which Alice talked to me words which I paid no attention to, and did not know, and then it came—that well-known footstep; I heard the little gate swing behind him—I heard the gravel crushed beneath his quick step, and then Alice opened the door, and a sudden lull of intense emotion came over me. He was before me, standing there, yes, there—but a dizzy, blinding haze came over my eyes—after the first glimpse I did not see him, till I had recovered again.
And he was not more composed than I was; not so much so in appearance, I believe. He came up and held out his hand, and when I did not move, he took mine and held it tightly—tightly between his own, and gazed full into my face, with his own all quivering and eloquent with emotion. At this moment the impulse for which I had been waiting came to me, and steadied my tremulous expectation once more into resolve—once more the bitterness which had perished in his absence returned with double force—his own words began to ring in my ears, and my cheek tingled with the fiery flush of returning resentment. I had deceived him; he had married a sweet and tender woman, and when his eyes were opened, he had found by his side only me. I thought no longer of my bridegroom, my yearnings for affection were turned into a passionate desire for freedom; it was not Harry, but Edgar Southcote on whom I looked with steady eyes.
He, I am sure, did not and could not notice any change of expression; he saw my color vary, that was all, but his own feelings were sufficiently tumultuous to occupy him.
“Hester,” he said, “Hester, Hester!” He did not seem able to say any more, he only stood before me holding my hand very close, looking into my face with eyes in which everything else was veiled by his joy in seeing me again. I saw it was so—heaven help me—what a miserable torturer I was! my heart gave a bound of wild delight to feel my power over him still.
When I made no response, he forced me at last; already he was chilled, but he did not change his position—he held out both his hands, his arms rather, tears came to his eyes, and with a longing, wistful, entreating gaze he fixed them upon me. “Hester, Hester!” he said, “come, I have the only right to support you. In absence and solitude we have found out how it is that we are bound to each other, not by promise and vow alone, but by heart and soul. In strife or in peace we have but one existence. Hester, come back to me, come, let us not be sending our hearts over the world after each other; we cannot be separated, come back to me.”
How true it was, how true it was! but the heart that had been yearning for him, oh, so drearily, oh, so sadly, half an hour ago, was beating against my bosom now with miserable excitement, resisting him bitterly and to the death.
“Why should I come back?” I said; “has anything changed? are our circumstances different from what they were?”
“Yes,” he cried eagerly; “we have been apart, we have found out our true union, we have learned what it is to pine for a look, the very slightest, of the face most dear in the world to us. We have found how transitory, how poor all offences and resentments are, and how the original outlives and outlasts them. Hester, do I not speak the truth?”
I dared not contradict my own heart and say no, I dared not do it, everything he said was true.
“I do not mean you to suppose that it is self-denial on my part and a desire to test this, which has made me so slow of following you,” he continued, growing heated and breathless as he found that I did not answer; “I have but newly found out your retreat, Hester—found it out after long and diligent searching, which has given me many a sick heart for a month past. I need not describe the misery into which your flight plunged me; when you passed me on the road I was struck with a pang of fear, but I refused to entertain it. Think how I felt when I went home, and saw the pitying looks of the servants, and found your pitiless note upon my table. They told me you placed it there yourself Hester; and when I enter that fatal room, I sit idly thinking of you, trying to fancy where you stood, wondering, wondering if there was no truth nor mercy in your heart.”
The recollection of that moment rushed back on me as he spoke; he saw the convulsive trembling which came upon me; he heard the sob which I could not restrain; thus far I betrayed myself. I could not remember that unmoved; but when he bent over me with eager anxiety, I drew my hand away, and said I was quite well, quite well, I needed no support.
“Hester,” he said, in a tone of such tenderness that it almost overpowered me, “I know I am trying your strength severely, I know I am. I may be inexcusable, I may be hazarding your health with my vehemence; tell me if it is so, I will not speak another word, I will rather give up all my own hopes. God forbid that you should suffer for my violence; speak to me, say a word, Hester, tell me what I am to do.”
“I can bear to hear all you have to say to me,” I said, with a burning blush upon my cheek. The exertion I made to maintain my own calmness was exhausting me dreadfully, but I could bear it better when he spoke, and when my natural spirit of resistance was roused by his words, than when he went away or was silent, when I would be left to the consuming remorseful persecution of my own thoughts.
When I said this he looked at me steadily and sadly;—“Was it hopeless then? would I receive him in no fashion but this?” I met his gaze with the blank look of sullen resentment; he turned away from me with a heavy sigh, and wrung his hands with impatience and suffering; then he came back, took the chair which Alice had been using, and sat down opposite to me.
“Then it is to be so,” he said with suppressed bitterness; “neither time nor solitude, neither tenderness nor absence, says a gentle word for me in your heart; you are resolved that we shall be miserable, Hester; you will leave me to the pity of the servants, you will show none; you will condemn me to frightful anxiety, anxiety which I dare not venture to anticipate; you will shut me out from every right; I must not be near; I must not try to support you; is this what you quietly doom me to, Hester?”
“You use strange words; I doom you to nothing,” said I; “we were very wretched when we were together; you told me you were deceived in me, and I also was deceived in you; all that I have done is to come away, to free each of us from a galling and perpetual slavery. If I give no pity, I ask none; let justice be done between us, and it is justice surely to permit me to take care for myself when I do not encumber you. You have not more to suffer or to complain of than I have; we are on equal terms, and so long as we are apart we cannot drive each other mad, as you said I would do to you; I beseech you to be content, let us remain as we are; it will be best for us both.”
If I was agitated when I began to speak, I had become quite calm before I ended. He never withdrew his eye from me—he followed my motions, almost my breath—and when I moved my hands and clasped them together, as I did to support myself, his gaze turned to them—my hands were thin and worn, and very white—they looked like an invalid’s. Before I was aware, he bent over and kissed them, saying, “Poor Hester! poor Hester!” Ah, it was very hard for me to keep up to my resolution, reading his thoughts as I did with an instinctive certainty. He was not thinking of my unkind and bitter words—he was thinking only of me.
But when he spoke after this pause, I saw clearly enough that my words had not escaped him; he did not entreat any longer; he saw it was vain; but the kindness of his tone was undiminished. I fancied I could perceive the resolution he had taken now; that he had made up his mind not to strive with me, but to leave me to myself. I would rather he had persecuted me with the most violent and perpetual persecution; that I could have met with courage; but I knew what a longing, yearning, remorseful misery would come upon me when I was left to the sole company of my own heart.
“I will wait till you come to think of something else than justice,” he said kindly, but sadly. “To have my rights yielded to me only because they are rights, will never satisfy me, Hester. I warn you of this now; you are not doing justice. I know that you can have no doubt what are my feelings to you; you know what my love is, but not how much it can bear, and you treat me with cruel injustice, Hester. Enough of this. I will plead my own cause no more. I will leave everything to yourself. By-and-bye, I do not doubt you will see my rights in a different aspect; but I will not be content with my rights,” he continued, growing unconsciously vehement; “when you are willing to do me justice, I will still be dissatisfied. It is not justice I want from you, and the time of our reunion will never come till you reject justice as I do. I know that I am right.”
“It will never come,” said I, under my breath.
“The most wretched criminal has hope, Hester,” he said, rising with impatience which he could not control, and coming to the window, “and I am not so much wiser than my kind as to be able to live without it. I have read of humility and patience, I grant you, and these are difficult qualities; but I will quarrel no more on my own account, and it is hard to maintain a feud on one side only, Hester? Will you permit me to live near you, since you insist on leaving me? Will you let me see you now and then? will you let me be near at hand, if by any chance you should relent and wish for me? In your present circumstances, this is no great boon to yield to your husband, Hester?”
“What end would it answer?” I said, though my heart leaped with a strange mixture of joy and pain at his words; “I am sure we are better quite apart.”
“Be it so,” he said, and then he came forward to me very gravely; “I wait your time, Hester,” he said, taking my hand once more, with a face of serious and compassionate kindness, “we have, both of us, much grief to go through yet, but I will wait and be patient; I consent to what you say; I will not intrude into your presence again till you bid me come—you smile—you will never bid me come? that is in God’s hands, Hester, and so are you, my bride, my solitary suffering wife. I leave you to Him who will support you better than I could. Farewell. It is a bitter word to say, but I obey you. Hester—Hester—not a word for me! farewell.”
He stooped over me, kissed my forehead, wrung my hand, and then he was gone.
He was gone;—I gazed with aching eyes into the place where he had been; here this moment; gone perhaps for ever; I cried aloud in wild anguish; I thought my heart would burst; it required no long process, no time nor thought to change my mad rebellious heart again; I could struggle with him, resist him, use him cruelly while he was here before me; but when he was gone; oh, when he was gone!
When Alice came in I was sobbing aloud and convulsively; I had no power of self-restraint; all my pride and strength were broken down. “He is gone,” I repeated to myself; “he is gone!” I could think of nothing else. Alice spoke to me, but I did not hear; she tried to lift me from the sofa, where I lay burying my face in my hands, but I would not let her touch me; no one had ever seen such violence and such a wild outbreak of passion and misery in me before.
It was all my own doing, there was the sting of it. I could ask sympathy from no one, confess my distress to no one. My own heart stung me, upbraided me, made malicious thrusts and wounds at my weakness. I had done it all myself—what did I think of my miserable handiwork? I had made my own life, and this was the result of it. I had cast him away—cast him away! I could not tell why, I could remember nothing cruel that he had ever done to me, and he would come back no more.
“Miss Hester, you will kill yourself,” cried Alice indignantly. I heard these words as if they were the first she had said, and with an immediate and powerful effort I controlled myself. No, I would not endanger the future, I would not lose everything. I raised myself up and returned to my work; I tried to forget what had happened,—that he had actually stood there before me, that this little room had held him, that his voice was still ringing in the dim subdued atmosphere. Every time I thought of it I trembled with agitation. The day was the same, yet it was different; the hours went on as usual, yet how totally changed they were. It was over,—the event I had been unconsciously, involuntarily, looking forward to. This dimmed, dulled life was to go on now with no new expectation in it, it was all over; he had promised to let me alone.
And there was Alice, looking at me with eager, solicitous, inquiring eyes, anxious to know what had been said, what had happened, wondering at my strange mood, trying to find out, with her own thoughts and looks, how I felt. Alice could not comprehend me. When her first belief, that I did not care for him, was shaken, she could find no reason for my conduct, no cause for all I had done; she did not understand my perversity; in the motives of her own simple Christian heart she found no clue to the problem of mine. She put no questions to me, but sat, where he had been sitting, sad, disapproving, full of wonder; her hope disappointed and her love grieved, aware I was wrong, yet so reluctant to think so. Poor Alice! I was a great charge to her, and a perplexing one; she did not know how to deal with me.
When I was able to command my voice, I spoke to her. “Alice, Mr. Southcote has been here,” I said; “but he has promised not to come back again. He will never intrude into my presence again, he says, till I call him, and I am not likely to do that. When anything happens, Alice—I intended to have said so before—you will write to him without delay; remember, I told you so; he has a right to that.”
The words struck me strangely as I repeated them. Had I already begun, according to his own proposing, to calculate what his rights were? but he had warned me that he would find no satisfaction in that.
“And is this all, Miss Hester?” said Alice, looking at me wistfully; “oh, darling, well you know I’ve never said a word. I’ve never dared to take part with him that never should have needed help from a poor woman like me, but I can’t keep silent—Miss Hester—I can’t now; what’s in my heart I must say, for you’re my own dear child. Miss Hester, dear, I can’t help if you’re angry. But what do you think a true friend can pray for you? one that loves you dear above all the world; what do you think she would be obliged to pray, the first thing of all that was in her heart?”
I was much startled by the question, for it was at once perfectly unexpected, and very solemnly and seriously put. I did not answer, but looked at her with earnestness as great as her own.
“First of all, before even the safety, and the blessing, and the joy, oh, Miss Hester,” cried Alice, with strange emotion, “that you may be made to see which is good and which is evil, and to choose the right way. I dare not ask the blessing first, darling, I dare not! I’d lay down my life for an hour’s comfort to you, Miss Hester; you know it’s not boasting, you know it’s true; but you’re following a wrong way, and sorrow is the right thing to come to that rather than joy. I cannot help it—I cannot help it—you may put me away from you, as you’ve put a better love than mine, but I must say what is in my heart.”
I could not be angry, I could not be indignant; I could not meet Alice’s unexpected severity as she thought I would. I was no heroine, I was only a woman, a poor, young, foolish, solitary woman. I cried: it was all I could do. I was almost glad she reproved me—glad that she thought God must punish and forsake me for my sin. I could not excuse or justify myself. I had no heart to say anything; all my powers were exhausted. I could only lie upon my sofa, silent, not venturing to look at Alice, and doing what I could to restrain my tears. But they would not be restrained; gentler and gentler, yet more abundant they fell from under the cover of my clasped hands, and, little as I intended it, this was indeed the only way in which I could have vanquished Alice. She kept her own place for a few moments, trembling and irresolute, and then she came humbly towards me and drew my head to her bosom. “Oh, darling, forgive me, forgive me,” cried Alice, and her tears fell as fast as mine.
When I found that I could not put an end to my own weeping-fit, Alice grew very much alarmed. She brought an armful of pillows, and arranged them on the sofa, and made me lie down to sleep. I obeyed her like a child. I took some wine when she gave it me, and closed my eyes at her bidding. She sat by my side watching me, and when my eyelids unclosed a little, I saw her soft white apron close by my cheek, and almost thought I was sleeping with my head on her knee as I used to do when I was a little girl. At last I did fall asleep, but I never was conscious that I had done so. I did not change the scene in my dreams. I was still here, still in this room, and he was beside me again, but we did not speak of parting now, all that was over; that was the dream, and it was past. I do not recollect that there were any words to make our reunion sure, but there did not need any, for I was completely persuaded of it in that strange real dream. When I woke, Alice was still sitting by me, and there was the strangest ease and satisfaction in my heart. I looked past her eagerly, and round the room, and asked, “Where is he? where is he?” she did not speak, and then I knew it was all a dream.
But I would not break down again. I sat erect and took up my work, and told her I was quite well now, but my head was aching violently, and my heart sank with such a dreary heaviness. A cup of tea would do me good, Alice said, and she left me to prepare it. When I was alone I went to the window and opened it to let in the fresh sweet air upon my hot brow. Yes, it was the happiness and the reconciliation that were a dream; the wretched solitude, the remorse, the hopelessness were real things; and what was the future? I could not help a shudder of expectation and terror. My truest, dearest, most indulgent friend Alice herself was almost afraid to ask a blessing for me. Hitherto I had always asked it myself, but her words arrested me; I only wondered what kind of judgment God would send to mark my sin—would it be only death? and once more a few tears fell from my eyes; I began to think of the letter I would write to my husband to be given him when I was gone away for ever; of perhaps the precious legacy I would leave him; the gift that would pay him tenfold for all his grief and trouble with me. These thoughts soothed me. When Alice returned, I withdrew from the window, and came to the table and took the tea she poured out for me. I was subdued and exhausted. I was not now so miserable as I had been. I pleased myself with the idea of making this last atonement, of putting an end to the misery of our wedded life, and to the problem which I did not know how to solve otherwise, by the early death which every one would shed a natural tear for. Once more I wiped a few tears from my own cheek, and then I went up-stairs very quietly in my exhaustion to prepare for our walk.
When we went out, I was less composed. I remembered then that he had trod this same path only a few hours ago; that, perhaps, he still was here. I hurried Alice on, I looked back and around with a stealthy eagerness, my heart began to beat and my breath to fail as this occurred to me. He might be here, he might even see me now with my lingering feeble footsteps, and read in my face traces of the wild and strong emotion which had visited me since he came. I drew my veil over my face, I hastened to the very margin of the water where no one could see me closely. Wherever I turned I was possessed with the idea that from some eminence—some visionary height—he was watching me, and interpreting my very movements. I did not desire to escape. I hurried about restlessly, but I did not wish to go in again; and it was only when the darkness fell that Alice persuaded me to go home. Alice did not know what was passing in my vexed and troubled mind. I think now my physical weakness must have had a great deal to do with it—what a dreadful chaos it was!