Kitabı oku: «A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time», sayfa 17

CHAPTER XI

The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove, it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang. The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear, then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom without, leaving the door wide open.

Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that reservoir of life, London.

She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on. Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If only she could fly from it and forget – only forget!

The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene; neither day nor night.

And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front of her.

Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.

Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink, and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.

Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little child cries for the mother who is in her grave – never knowing its loss until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very near.

She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.

Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.

The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the risen sun.

Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die – no, no, not to die!

At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn." Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.

And sleep – that makes kings and queens of us all – gracious sleep, made a queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home among the mountains.

Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use, came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind it.

Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead, her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast, the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.

The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have hurried away.

"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His tone was kindlier than his words.

"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.

"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."

Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.

"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."

"No, thank you. I have no – I've no money. I must run."

"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."

"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"

"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft, that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."

The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the furthest corner.

"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to go fruiting winter times – buying apples same as them from off'n the farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales starts."

Mercy listened, but said nothing.

"You know Covent Garden – not fur from Leicester Square and the Haymarket?"

Mercy shook her head.

"What! Never been there – and that near?"

Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.

The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for another look.

"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"

"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.

"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine – 'boutn the eyes, I mean – red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates – him as was the claimant for 'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."

Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.

"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"

The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.

"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden – is that London?"

"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.

Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence, and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole. How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his cold.

("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)

"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it. Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to me – that's my name – 'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,' he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'

("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)

"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and —

("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")

There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.

The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it drove away the memory of her sorrow.

When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk, and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter, curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.

Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the trackless desert, what was she?

She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.

The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and then she remembered nothing more.

CHAPTER XII

Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret. It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch. The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down, the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.

The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on those in the nave.

He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif; the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised spirit.

From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute! Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale, with lustrous eyes, and a voice that had a thin, meek pipe. But the discourse was in a strain of feverish excitement, a spirit of hard intolerance, a tone of unrelenting judgment, that would have befitted the gigantic figure and thunderous accents of the monk Jerome.

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death." This was the text, twenty times repeated. Men talked of the rights of conscience, as if conscience were God's law. They babbled of toleration, as if any heresy were to be endured, if only it were believed. Conscience! It was the slave of Circumstance. Toleration! It was the watchword at the gate of hell.

Hugh Ritson listened with a vague consciousness, his eyes fixed alternately on the nun with the drooping coif and on the fair, upturned face beside her. At last a word struck him, and made his whole soul to vibrate. Men, women, the great mute throng, pillars, arches, windows of figured saints, altar aflame with candles, the surpliced choir, and the pale, thin face with the burning eyes in the pulpit above – all vanished in an instant.

What was true, said the preacher, in the realm of thought, could not be false in the world of life. Men did evil deeds, and justified them to their own enslaved minds. No way so dark but it had appeared to be the path of light; none so far wrong but it had seemed to be right. Let man beware of the lie that he told to his own heart. The end thereof is death.

Staring from a bloodless face, Hugh Ritson reeled a step backward, and then clung with a trembling hand to the pillar against which he had leaned. The harsh scrape of his foot was heard over the hushed church, and here and there a neck was craned in his direction. His emotion was gone in an instant. A light curl of the hard lip told that the angel within him had once again been conquered.

The sermon ended with a rapturous declaration of the immutability of God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old city that night had flowed there centuries ago, and generations of men had lived and died in joy and sorrow, and still the same waters washed the same shore. But the stars that measure time itself, and the sea that recorded it, would vanish away, and man should be when time would be no more. "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. They shall wax old as doth a garment… But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

The preacher finished, and the buzz and rustle of the people shifting in their seats told of the tension that had been broken. Faces that had been distorted with the tremors of fear, or contracted with the quiverings of remorse, or glorified with the lights of ecstasy, resumed their normal expression.

The vesper hymn was sung by the whole congregation, standing. It floated up to the blue roof, where the lights that burned low over the people's heads left in the gloom the texts written on the open timbers and the imaged Christ hung in the clerestory. There was one voice that did not sing the vesper hymn; and the close-locked lips of Hugh Ritson were but the symbol of the close-locked heart.

He was asking himself, was it true that when the fire of the stars should be burned to ashes, still man would endure? Pshaw! What was man? These throngs of men, whose great voice swelled like the sea, what were they? In this old church where they sung, other men had sung before them, and where were they now? Who should say they had not perished? Living, believing, dying, they were gone: gone with their sins and sorrows; gone with their virtues and rewards; gone from all sight and all memory; and no voice came from them, pealing out of the abyss of death to join this song of hope. Hope! It was a dream. A dream that great yearning crowds like these, filling churches and chapels, dreamed age after age. But it was a dream from which there would be no awakening to know that it was not true.

The priest and choir left the church. Then the congregation broke up and separated. Hugh Ritson stood awhile, still leaning against the column of the colonnade. The nuns in the south transept rose last, and went out by a little aperture opening from the south aisle. Hugh watched them pass at the distance of the width of the nave. Greta walked a few paces behind them. When the people had gone, and she rose from her seat, her eyes fell on Hugh. Then she dropped her head, and walked down the aisle with a hurried step. Hugh saw her out; the church was now empty, and the voluntary was done. He followed her through the door, and entered into the sacristy.

Before him was another door; it led into the convent. The last of the line of nuns was passing through it. Greta stood in the sacristy, faint, with a scared face, one hand at her breast, the other on the base of a crucifix that stood by the wall. When she saw that he had followed her, her first impulse was to shrink away; her second was to sink to her knees at his feet. She did neither. Conquering her faintness, but still quivering from head to foot, she turned upon him with a defiant look. "Why do you come here? I do not wish to speak with you. Let me pass," she said.

Hugh Ritson made no effort to detain her. He stood before her with downcast eyes, his infirm foot bent under him. "I come to bid you farewell," he said, calmly; "I come to say that we meet no more."

"Would that we had parted forever before we met the last time!" said Greta, fervently.

"Would that we had never met!" said Hugh, in a low voice.

"That was a lie with which you parted me from my husband," she said.

"It was – God forgive me."

"And you knew it was a lie?" said Greta.

"I knew it was a lie."

"Then where is your shame, that you can look me in the face? Have you no shame?" she said.

"Have you no pity?" said Hugh.

"What pity had you for me? Have you not done me wrong enough already?"

"God knows it is true. And He knows I am a miserable man. Have pity and forgive me, and say farewell!"

Something of contrition in the tone touched her. She was silent.

"The preacher was wrong," he said. "There is no spirit of evil. We are betrayed by our own passions, and the chief of those passions is love. It is the Nemesis that stalks through the world, haunting all men, and goading some to great wrong."

"It was of your doing that I came here," said Greta.

"Would to God it may be of my doing that you remain here," said Hugh.

"That is a prayer He will not hear. I am leaving this house to-night. There is some one coming who can unmask your wicked falsehood."

"Parson Christian?" said Hugh.

Greta made no answer, and Hugh continued, "His journey is needless. A word from my mother would have done all. She is in this house."

"Yes, Heaven forgive you, she is here!" said Greta.

"You are wrong; you do not know all. Where is your husband?"

Greta shook her head. "I have neither seen him nor heard from him since we parted at these doors," she said.

"And when you leave them to-night, do you leave him behind you?" said Hugh.

"Heaven forbid!" said Greta, passionately.

Hugh Ritson's bloodless face was awful to look upon. "Greta," he said, in a tone of anguish, "give up the thought. Look on that false union as broken forever, and all this misery will end. It was I and you – you and I. But that is over now. I do not come between you. It is useless to think of that. I do not offer you my love; you refused it long ago. But I can not see you my brother's wife. That would be too much for me to endure. I will not endure it. Have pity upon me. If I have no claim to your love, have I no right to your pity? What have I suffered for your love? A life's misery. What have I sacrificed to it? My name – my place – my inheritance."

Greta lifted her eyes with a look of inquiry.

"What? Has he not even yet told you all?" said Hugh. "No matter. What has he done to earn your love that I have not done? What has he suffered? What has he sacrificed?"

"If this is love, it is selfish love," said Greta, in a broken voice.

"Selfish? – be it so. All love is selfish."

"Leave me – leave me!"

Hugh Ritson paused; the warmth of his manner increased. "I will leave you," he said, "and never seek you again; I will go from you forever, and crush down the sorrow that must be with me to the end, if you will promise me one thing."

"What is it?" said Greta, her eyes on the ground.

"It is much," said Hugh, "but it is not all. If the price is great, think of the misery that it buys – and buries. You would sacrifice something for me, would you not?"

His voice swelled as he spoke, and his pale face softened, and the light of hopeless love was in his great eyes.

"Say that you would – for me – me!" He held out his arms toward her as if soul and body together yearned for one word, one look of love.

Greta stood there, silent and immovable. "What is it?" she repeated.

"Let me think that you would do something for my sake – mine," he pleaded. "Let me carry away that solace. Think what I have suffered for you, and all in vain. Think that perhaps it was no fault of mine that you could not love me; that another woman might have found me worthy to be loved who had not been unworthy of love from me."

"What is it?" repeated Greta, coldly, but her drooping lashes were wet with tears.

"Think that I am of a vain, proud, stubborn spirit; that in all this world there is neither man nor woman, friend nor enemy, to whom I have sued for grace or favor; that since I was a child I have never even knelt in prayer in God's house that man might see or God might hear. Then think that I am at your feet, a miserable man."

"What is it?" said Greta, again.

Hugh Ritson paused, and then added, more calmly: "That you should take the vows and the veil, and stay here until death."

Greta lifted her eyes. Hugh's eyes were bent upon her.

"No, I can not. I should be false to my marriage vows," she said, quietly.

"To be true to them is to be false to yourself, to your husband, and to me," said Hugh.

"I love my husband," said Greta, with an eloquent glance. "To be true to them is to be true to him."

There was a pause. Hugh Ritson's manner underwent a change. It was the white heat of high passion that broke the silence when he spoke again.

"Greta," he said, and his deep voice had a strong tremor, "if there is any truth in what that priest told us to-night – if it is not a dream and a solemn mockery made to enchant or appal the simple – if there is a God and judgment – my soul is already too heavily burdened with sins against you and yours. I would have eased it of one other sin more black than these; but it was not to be."

"What do you mean?" said Greta. Her face was panic-stricken.

Hugh Ritson came a step nearer.

"That your husband is in my hands – that one word from me would commit him to a doom more dreadful than death – that if he is to be saved as a free man, alive, you must renounce him forever."

"Speak plain. What do you mean?" said Greta.

"Choose – quick! Which shall it be? You for this convent, or your husband for lifelong imprisonment?"

Greta's mind was in a whirl. She was making for the door in front of them. He stepped before her.

"I parted you with a lie," he said, "but to me it was not always a lie. I believed it once. Do you think I should have denied my self my inheritance, and let a bastard stand in my place, if I had not believed it?"

"What further lie is this?" said Greta.

"No matter. Heaven knows. And all I did was for love of you. Is it so guilty a thing that I have loved you – to all lengths and ends of love? I meant to put a hemisphere between you – to send him to Australia, and you back home to Cumberland. What if the lie had then been outfaced? I should have parted you, and that would have been enough."

"And now, when your revenge falls idle at your feet, you come to me on your knees," said Greta.

"Revenge? That was but a feeble revenge," said Hugh. "He would have learned the truth and come back to claim you. There would have been no peace for me while he was alive and free. Do I come to you on my knees? Yes; but it is to pray of you to save your husband. Is it so much that I ask of you? Think what is earned by it. If you have no pity for me, have you none for him?"

She was struggling to pass him.

"Greta," he said, "choose, and at once. It is now or never. To-night – to-morrow will be too late. You for a holy life of self-renouncement, or your husband to drag out his miserable days in penal servitude."

"This is only another lie. Let me pass," she said.

"It is the truth, as sure as God hears us," said Hugh.

"I shall never believe it."

"I will swear it." He laid a strong hand on her wrist. "I will swear it at the very foot of God's altar."

He tried to draw her back into the church. She resisted.

"Let me go; I will cry for help."

He dropped her wrist, and fell back from her. She drew herself up in silence, and walked slowly away.

He stood a moment alone in the sacristy. Then he went out through the church. It was empty and all but dark. The sacristan, with a long rod, was putting out the lights one by one. He turned, with arm uplifted, to look after the halting figure that passed down the aisle and out at the west porch.