JOHN had gone out for no particular reason. He had nothing to do, which was unusual to him, and his mind was perturbed and restless. He was altogether out of son assiette, as the French say, out of his natural atmosphere, exposed to thoughts, temptations of all kinds, with which naturally he had nothing to do. A holiday is not always so very good a thing. When the mind is busy with a delicate piece of engineering, or with specifications or even estimates, it has not time to get into mischief. But fancy when suddenly left blank of all those occupations, deprived of all preservatives, and left to face the most supreme of youthful impulses without any defence at all, is in a bad way. John did what of course is the very worst thing he could possibly have done. He wandered about all day, taking long walks, and turning over and over in his bewildered brain the same subject—and that subject was Elly. What else? the only thing that he ought not to have thought about.
He should not have done so—that was too certain. When he felt it coming on, when she jumped into his mind like that, without rhyme or reason, he ought to have shut the door sternly against her, he ought to have betaken himself to some matter of professional difficulty of the hardest possible sort; he should have devoted himself to the Euphrates Canal or the St. Gothard Tunnel. Or if he had wanted something nearer home there was the great subject which had already occupied him for years, and which we may call the drainage of the Thames valley—which is a thing waiting to be done, and by which some engineer, and perhaps John, might yet distinguish himself. He was aware that he ought to do this, but he did not. Instead of engaging in a course of thought which would have been both laudable and useful, he thought of Elly and nothing else—nothing but Elly, as he walked for hours across the common and to every village in the neighbourhood. Susie, who had not fathomed his difficulties, thought these long walks very good for him. She could not herself walk so far, but she had always heard that exercise was the first necessity for a man, so that, instead of opposing, as she ought to have done, she encouraged him for the good of his health, and because his holidays would soon be over, to walk and think—of Elly—though she did not know anything of this latter exercise.
Percy’s interrupted remonstrances of the previous night, which he had understood well enough, as he had foreseen all the time that they were coming, quickened to an almost incalculable extent the current of John’s thoughts. It gave them a swing and energy which they had never had before. He had known very well it was coming! From the beginning he had been aware that things could not go on on this present footing, that some change there must be; he had foreseen it dimly when Percy said ‘my sister,’ that the familiar name, the child’s name, might not be given over to John’s lips. How well he had perceived that! He had even, as he now remembered, made an effort to obey. He had tried to set things straight, to call her Miss Spencer, to treat the old childish intimacy as a thing of the past, if Elly would have allowed it to be so. But she had not allowed it; she would not suffer it; and now? What was to be done? for something would have to be done. Even if there were no Percy in the world, no watchful aunt, all this would have to be altered somehow. The course of their history could not go on as it was going now. His thoughts quickened as he pushed on and on for many a flying mile. He walked, not seeing where he went, the landscape spinning past him as if he were travelling in an express train. Things could not go on as they were going now. Either all this whirling world of passion and excitement must go back and be stilled and relapse into the former calm, the easy boy and girl friendship, that relation which was entirely of the past: or else—what else? What was the alternative? There was an alternative; but even to himself it was difficult to put it into words.
This was what passed while Susie thought that he was taking exercise for his health and to take advantage of being in the country. When he came in he brought the scent of the fresh air with him, and a glow as of vigour and wholesome exertion on his face, the rapidity of his movements, and the contact of the keen, sweet air keeping him from all appearance of being sicklied o’er with thought—though no philosopher could have thought more deeply or sought more diligently a solution of any problem. This was how he had been engaged on the day when Mr. Cattley came to set matters right. He had, indeed, taken with him the books which Elly wanted, which he had to carry to the rectory for her, but he carried them first for miles along the country roads, always busy with that problem which he had to solve; and in all likelihood would have left them at the rectory as he returned home without so much as a glimpse of Elly. For, as a matter of fact, at the time when her relatives were most alarmed, and when the course of events seemed to be most whirling and rapid, John had seen less and less of Elly. They had both taken fright at the same moment—a mutual terror had seized upon them; they had begun to avoid instead of seeking each other—he walking miles about on his way to the rectory to leave those books for her, she restricting herself to the most limited circuit that she might not encounter him.
Mrs. Egerton was seated in her room, which commanded the gate of the rectory, and in fact of the village street, waiting for Mr. Cattley to come back, and tell her how he had sped; and Mr. Cattley in John Sandford’s house was sitting with a sort of vague solace and consolation in the company of the gentle young woman who knew nothing about him, except that he was her brother’s friend, waiting for John. The afternoon was a little heavy, as afternoons in the summer often are. It had been raining all the morning, and the air was warm and damp, and the atmosphere oppressive. Elly, who had spent the day chiefly at home, taking her walk round and round the garden, lingering for a long time under the old pear-tree, had been seized at last by one of those fits of impatience which so often come upon us in a moment, nullifying the precautions of many days. She felt as if there was no air, and that a run across the common to the cottage of one of her pensioners would deliver her from the stifling of this oppressed and breathless state. She knew a way amongst the gorse, a wild little track over the moor and heather, which nobody but herself and the village children ever used. And she would not, she said to herself, be half-an-hour gone. She seized upon her little basket, which stood on the hall table, all nicely packed with certain little matters which made her a welcome visitor; and so went out, nobody seeing her, if anybody had thought of remarking. But, indeed, it was not for Elly, but Mr. Cattley that Mrs. Egerton was on the watch, and no one else took any notice of the goings and comings of the daughter of the house. She skimmed along as light as a bird, until she got among the gorse bushes, half ablaze with their yellow blossoms, filling the numerous bees with a sweet intoxication and the air with a honeyed balm; and there Elly lingered, her basket hanging from her hand, her head drooping, her mind full of thought, which was half troublous and half sweet. She felt the crisis, too, in every vein, but not as John felt it. The fears, the tribulations, the doubts of that moment were not for her. Her honour could never be called in question. No one could think of her as having betrayed any trust placed in her. Her brain was thrilling with a suppressed excitement and wonder as to the next step in this wonderful little drama of which she was the heroine. And she was aware that there would be blame: she was aware that there would be a struggle; but she was in no ways afraid of either one or the other. The commotion of the great new thing, the revolution which seemed to be imminent, the mingled reluctance and eagerness, the hesitation and the longing, made disturbance enough in her girlish breast.
The mossy undergrowth, so luxurious and soft, was wet with the morning’s rain, and yielded in all its velvet inequalities and cushions of brilliant verdure, to her feet, which made no sound. Neither did that of the other, who was threading the same maze, coming towards her with the books under his arm, making his way ten miles round to the rectory, unconscious how near he was to the object of his thoughts. When they came suddenly in sight of each other round the great headland of the furze bush, one of the giants of the common, all keen prickles and honey flowers, Elly nearly dropped her basket and John let fall his books. He had to stoop to gather them up as he took off his hat: but before even this their looks had leaped to each other and met and made all clear—the fright, the panic, the heavenly content and delight flashed from one to the other. What more could words say? And then, when the books were collected and the basket held fast, there was a pause.
‘I didn’t know you would be passing here,’ said Elly, with an unconscious excuse to herself, as if something within had suddenly accused her of coming on purpose to meet one who—was it not so?—she was a little anxious to avoid.
‘No—and I didn’t mean it,’ said John. He added, after a moment, ‘I think it must be fate.’
‘What must be fate? I am going to Betty Mirfield’s cottage, where I go always every week.’
‘I know,’ said John, humbly; ‘you are always going about doing good, whereas I never think of anyone but myself.’
This gave Elly strength to laugh, which she had been too much agitated (which was so ridiculous!) to be capable of before. ‘If you call it doing good to take old Betty her tea and sugar! You never used to call things by such fine names.’
‘I never understood what anything meant in those old days,’ said John, with an air of preternatural seriousness. As a matter of fact, he was in such a condition of emotion and excitement that he could scarcely speak.
‘Oh, Jack! How can you say such things? I think you understood far better than you do now. You look almost,’ said Elly, giving him a succession of furtive glances, ‘as if you were—afraid—of me. How can you be afraid—of me? or make fine speeches about doing good and that, Jack, to me!’
‘Elly,’ he said all at once, very tremulously, ‘I am dreadfully unhappy: if I seem strange that is the cause.’
‘Unhappy!’ she exclaimed, with a little cry of distress. ‘Oh, Jack, why? Tell me!’ And throwing down her basket she caught his arm with her hands, and looked up anxiously into his face, her eyes all set in curves and puckers of sympathy and disquietude. She forgot even for the moment all the heart-breakings of this critical moment and thought only what could be the matter. What could she do to comfort him? Unhappy was a word of dreadful meaning to Elly’s ear.
The books tumbled once more out of John’s hold: they lay upon the mossy grass amicably in company with the overturned basket, where old Betty’s little packets of tea and sugar peeped out as if to inquire what was the cause of all this commotion. John stooped over the hands that had caught his arm, putting down his head upon them. His heart was going like one of the clanging engines with which he was so familiar. He half forgot that Elly was the cause, in the necessity he felt to tell her of his trouble, and be comforted by her sympathy. And they were so close that Elly felt the vibration in him and was half frightened by it, yet anxious only to soothe him.
‘Oh, what is it? Tell me, tell me!’ she said.
‘Elly, do you remember what I said to you the first day? It is all changed between us, though you thought it need not be. I felt it then, the first day. I had no right—— Do they think I don’t know that as well as they do? I have no right. And yet I can’t give you up, and go away, and hear of you marrying some one else, and having nothing more to do with me. It’s not possible, it’s not possible!—I can’t, Elly, let you go and give you up, and be nothing more to you, nor you to me. Elly! don’t say you want me to do that.’
He was half leaning his weight upon her, quite unconsciously making her slight figure sway and tremble.
‘Jack,’ she said, her voice trembling too. ‘Is there nothing else that makes you unhappy but only about you and me?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’ he said, with something of the petulance of passionate feeling, raising his head to look her indignantly in her face.
‘Enough for trouble,’ said Elly, shaking her head; ‘but unhappy is a dreadful word.’
‘Not so dreadful,’ said he, looking at her, not as if she were the arbiter of fate, but with that intense desire for her sympathy which seemed now his first feeling. ‘Not half so dreadful as if I have to give up and go away?’
‘And who is there,’ said Elly, on her side, with a little glow of indignation too, ‘that can make you give up and go away?’
Then they stood for a moment and looked at each other, far too much in earnest and too serious to think of confusion, or blushes, or any of the commonplaces of love-making. At last he said, taking her hands,
‘No one, Elly, if you don’t——’
‘You know,’ she said, still indignantly, ‘that I shan’t. Why should you give up and go away?’
‘Because I am not good enough for you, Elly. That’s all quite true, not half good enough.’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you have not any money, Jack. But what does that matter? You will have some, some day. We can wait. That is nothing to be unhappy about, anyhow.’
‘There is to me, and there is to them. I’d like you to have everything, Elly; do you think I could live to bring you to poverty? It wrings my heart to think of it; that you, who are a lady born, and are too good for a prince, should come to poverty through me.’
‘Jack,’ said Elly, in that mature and elder-sisterly way with which she had always taken the charge of him; ‘if you can’t bear to leave me and go away, and yet can’t bear to keep me and bring me to poverty, what is to be done? You will have to bear either one or the other, so far as I can see.’
It was not perhaps the right moment to laugh: but it is difficult to regulate that sense of the ridiculous, which is one comfort in all our troubles. Something in the sight of John’s solemn face, so troubled and serious in the clutch of this dilemma, overcame Elly in her nervous excitement and she burst into a wild peal of laughter—which rang over all the damp, sweet wilderness that had become the Garden of Eden of this primitive natural pair.
By-and-by, they gathered up the basket and the books, and took the tea and sugar to Betty Mirfield, who had been grumbling that Miss Elly was so late, and did not hesitate to tell her so. And then they went back again, lingering across the common, winding their devious way among the great furze-bushes which caught at them as they passed with prickles that left marks of dew and a breath of honey; and so very slowly walked back again to Edgeley, the rectory and the world, from which heaven knows they had gone far enough afield. They had of course a thousand things to say, a thousand, and a thousand more; and lost themselves in that fairyland which by times is near to all of us at every age, but nearest of all at the age of Elly and John. But when no further delay was possible, the sun sinking in the skies, signs of home-going and evening rest penetrating even to their charmed senses, they reached at last the edge of the common, and saw before them the everyday existence which they had forgotten, they both awoke from their dream, and standing still for one awful moment looked each other in the face. Oh, it was all easy enough between themselves, delightfully easy, needing no troublous explanations, the very course of nature. But beyond that enchanted common, and the gorse bushes with their prickles! They stood and faltered, and Elly, who had been the bravest, felt now for the first time her heart sink to her shoes. John’s face set into that sternness which belongs to a forlorn hope. He caught Elly’s hand and drew it through his arm.
‘We must be honest, whatever else,’ he said. ‘Come and let us have it out at once.’
‘Oh, Jack!’ cried the other culprit. They were no longer the enchanted prince and princess. Aunt Mary’s face, severe as fate already, shone terrible upon them from the window, and there was no escape.