Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Harvest/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
And call upon my soul within the house."
"You know?" asks Dolly swiftly, as she lays her two hands on my shoulders and looks into my face.
"Yes, I know;" and in the soft spring twilight I go upstairs into my dusky pink-and-white chamber.
"When the bells rang out," says Dolly, with a certain anxious hesitation, "everybody wondered, and Larry went into the church to ask the reason. 'Mr. and Mrs. Vasher return this afternoon,' the ringers said; and ten minutes after they drove by. I looked for you everywhere, dear. Nell! Nell! do you mind so very much?"
"Mind!" I say, looking at the dimpled, fresh face of my eighteen-year-old sister, "I don't think I mind. I have seen him, Dolly."
"What! And spoken to him?”
"No. He did not see me."
"How long ago?"
Perhaps an hour."
"Don't fret, darling," she says, putting her arm round my neck; "perhaps he won't stay long, and you need not meet him."
No, I need not; but will he not breathe the same air that I breathe—see the same people that I see? Is he not alive and quick, here, instead of a shadow moving somewhere out of my sight? Sooner or later, I have always known Paul must come to the house of his fathers, but not thus—not without warning. He should at least have given me time to get myself away, and now he is here. The whole world was not wide enough to lie between: us and now there is a patch of grass, a few trees and flowers, and that is all. And the woman is with him who took my life in her hand, and trampled it under her foot, and her son is here, hers and Paul's. Ay! she has triumphed over me in very truth, and she is not only Paul Vasher's wife, but the mother of his child.
They must make a handsome family, the dark, strong-faced father, the exquisite mother, the pretty boy. I dare say I shall see it some day. No doubt he has grown to love her. Is she not bound to him by a closer, tenderer tie than he dreamed of, when he swore not to go back to her that Christmas morning? and may not time, man's inconstancy, and her own maddening loveliness, have closed the wounds that gaped so widely three years and more ago? Three years ago? Little enough to a woman, with her empty, uniform days: an eternity to a man who has a man's busy eventful life to lead. He must have forgotten me, or he could never have borne to come back to a place which must remind him, at every turn, of the old days. And yet the man I saw looking out, over the field of rye, two hours ago, looked like anything rather than a man with his heart at rest. If he would only go away soon, and leave me in peace—or that dull refuge of apathy that I misname peace! Mother comes in, and sits down beside me in the half light.
"You know he has come back, dear!" she says.
"I know it, mother."
"He might have stayed away," she says, with a quick anger in her tone; "he ought to have known better than to come."
She does not love him. Poor mother! to her he is the man through whom her daughter's life has been spoiled. She thinks him weak and sinning, as many another would think who did not know the man or his temptations.
"He has been away long enough, mother. He could not stay for ever. You forget the estate. No doubt he was forced to come."
"Well!" says mother, sighing, "the misery of it all we know, the unpleasantnesses of it have now to be faced."
Yes, they have to be, surely enough. What mortal can remain on the mountain-tops of misery always, and is not obliged to descend to the valleys of commonplace consideration now and then?
"I don't know what to do," says mother. "As to calling on, and receiving that woman, I will not." (It must be a very bad female indeed that goads mother into calling her "that woman.") "And if I refuse to do so, your father will insist on knowing the reason, and you made me promise you, that I would not tell him about you and Mr. Vasher."
"And you must not," I say, starting up, and sitting down again. "Tell the whole world, but never tell him!"
"Very well," says mother, sighing; "then you must put up with the chance of meeting her; and remember, Nell, that you lay a heavy burden upon me, not only of deceit towards your father, but great unpleasantness as regards myself. It is something, indeed, that I should have to take the hand of a woman who has done you such horrible injury!"
"She won't come here, mother dear," I say, kneeling down by her side; "and you need only leave cards."
"It is such a pity," goes on mother, "that your father liked the Vashers always: if he were quarrelling with them, as he does with everybody else, there would be no trouble. I am afraid you will have to meet him," she says, stroking my hair gently; then she adds wistfully—"Is it so very hard to you, dear? It should not be by now."
Mother does not understand quite. My story seems a very long while ago to her.
"Don't be afraid, mother: if we do meet face to face, I dare say I shall know how to behave."
"Supper is waiting!" says Dolly, entering hurriedly; and we go downstairs with much haste and more fear.
The governor's visit to New Zealand has not altered him in any way, neither have the added years made any perceptible change in his appearance. To-night he is in an amiable mood, and there are no desperate pauses and pregnant hiatuses in the conversation. How easy it is to amuse a man when he pulls with you, not against you!
"So Vasher has come back he says to mother, when he has got his pipe, and is blowing out long comfortable clouds, that make us all cough and wink again.
"Yes."
"High time he did, too: the estate's going to wrack and ruin. And he has brought his wife and son. There are queer stories abroad, I am told, about his relations with the former."
Here the governor pauses, and gives an uneasy glance at Dolly and me, as fathers and mothers have a knack of doing when they find the conversation turning more to meat than to milk.
"What are they?" asks mother, with a certain curiosity in her voice; gentle as she is, I am sure it would not grieve her to hear evil spoken of Silvia Vasher.
"A pack of lies, no doubt; they always are where a handsome woman's concerned. I am told she is magnificent. They say he left her two days after he married her, and never returned to her for a year. I don't believe a word of it myself, for the Vashers were never hasty men, they always looked before they leaped, and I never heard of one of them marrying beneath them—which is more than can be said of most good families now-a-days, where at least one cook, or housekeeper, or worse, moves in the family circle. Mrs. Vasher is one of the Flemings of ———shire."
Never before did I hear so long and peaceable an oration from the governor. Plainly the subject has a soothing effect upon his mind.
"If these reports are afloat," says mother, "will you wish me to call upon her? There are the girls, you know."
But this little diplomatic move avails her nothing.
"Vasher must not be slighted," says the governor; "so you will call upon her and take the girls."
Dolly turns as red as a turkey-cock, and screws up her mouth in a form that says plainly enough, "Never!" I go on with my fox's nose without a word. Mother subsides: it is never easy to argue anything with the governor; to question the wisdom of any one of his edicts, is to reduce his conversation to a highly animated monologue of one. As he often says, "Let any one dare to cross me, or say this, that, or the other, to my face, there shan't be a bit of him left in two minutes!"
Now, though I can easily imagine him reducing any one to the condition of body that he mentions, it has always puzzled me as to what he would do with the remains; it certainly opens out a vast field of conjecture.
He gets up for some more tobacco, and, turning his back upon us, we perceive that a very ornamental antimacassar has caught in the buttons of his coat, and is dangling elegantly at his heels. It is quite out of the question to tell him it is there, equally out of the question to relieve him of it, so he will carry it to bed with him, and, on discovering it, will cast his mind backwards to try and remember whether, during the evening, we showed any signs of unusual levity.
Why am I noting, even smiling at, all these trifles, when brain and heart and mind are aching and tense with the consciousness of a great fact? I thrust it away from me—I will not think of it—I shall be alone by-and-by, then I will look it in the face.
"The Tempests return next week," says papa, with a grateful change of the subject. "What the old man can be thinking about to race about the world as he does———" Here he pauses expressively.
"Do you hear, Dolly?" I say to her. "George is coming back! Are you not glad?"
"Very," says Dolly.
As I look at her pretty blooming face a happy thought strikes me. Why should not she and George make a match? She always liked him, and he would suit her far better than he ever would have suited me. I wonder what he has been doing with himself these last two years? distinguishing himself, I hope.
It angers me sorely sometimes when I think that neither of the men who loved me have ever done anything to lift themselves above the ruck of other men, being held back, in truth, as much by a superabundance of gold and lands as anything else.
What I should have liked, if I had my life to choose for myself, would have been to love and be loved by a moderately poor, ambitious man, who would fight his way up, step by step, taking me with him. Then when we had reached the top, we should have loved each other so much better for having borne the burden and heat of the day together. He could never have sneered at me then by saying, "You married me because I was rich."
If women who openly, shamelessly marry for money only knew the despicable, degraded wretches they look, and are! Selling their bodies for what? Sensual material enjoyments, that none but a coarse, vulgar mind would set any great store by. Soft carriages, good food, rich habits, bodily comforts, that the beasts of the field might sigh after if they knew of them. And for the heart, the soul, what? Nothing. It is the gross shell that encloses those minor considerations that is the care of this class of women. And yet, can she be always eating choice meats, drinking choice wines? Can she spend her whole time lolling in her carriage among her gauds? Does she never find a time for looking upon her husband, who in his heart despises her, knowing that his money has bought and paid for, not only her body and allegiance, but also every look and embrace she gives him?
I hold that woman who deliberately marries for money as more utterly fallen than she who leaves husband, children, and home to follow the man she loves through the world. The latter sins heinously, it is true; but is she not obeying the divine, though in this case erring, and self-sacrificing instinct of love, while the other hands herself over to a man she detests for lust of gold—the basest, most ignoble greed man or woman ever stained his or her soul with?
Bed-time comes. "Good night! good night!" At last I am in my chamber; the door is locked, and I am alone. I open my window wide, and the soft, moist air creeps in with the faint earthy smell that ever wanders abroad in early spring, whispering that nature's forces are stirring at their sources, and preparing new and beautiful treasures for our eyes' delight.
There is no moon, and the darkness enfolds me in its softness, and seems to hide me away—body and soul, unborn thought and conscious feeling, anxious fear and trembling joy. Joy! What have I to do with it this night? As though it were a demon, I must send from me the heavenly visitor that has stayed so long away from me, lest my soul perish.
Is it a sin that my eyes beholding him to-day have been blessed indeed? Is it a crime that my body is one ache to feel the merest friendliest touch of his hand, my ears one eager hearkening for the sound of his voice?
And this is my strength, this my composure, that I had built up so slowly and painfully, to melt away like snow before the sun at a mere glimpse of his unconscious face. Is it as another woman's husband that I think of him, or as my lost lover, who cleaves to me through time and space, and who is mine as I am his? Less of fear than delight moves me, I wis, at knowing he is close to me, that I have seen him, a living, breathing man, instead of a grey shadow in spirit land, divided from me by a river my feet shall never cross. . . . .
My mind contemplates the misery and bitter circumstances of the situation—the sight of my enemy filling my place, usurping my rights. My heart sweeps all paltry, trivial considerations aside; and looking the truth fairly in the face, sees and recognises, trembling, the danger of the hour. It bids me put all my armour on, since love that is lawful strengthens, and love that is unlawful makes men and women alike weak as water—ay! better and stronger ones than are Paul and I.
And since I know my danger, and meet it, not hiding my countenance from it as a phantom that a lying spirit would tell me does not exist, I show a fairer courage than he who vaingloriously goes forth to battle trusting in his own strength, without sending up one prayer for safety.
This night, then, is my breathing space, and in it I will struggle to convince myself that to disobey any natural beautiful instinct of my heart is virtue—to indulge every irresistible impulse and longing, sın; to make my heart cold and hard as steel, my eyes blind and dull as those of a mole; to transform myself from a creature of flesh and blood, subject to human passions, to a chill, blank automaton. Then, maybe, I shall be able to meet him, not as my lost, lost lover, but as the husband of another woman. This is my task.
O Night, your hours are long and silent, and the faint daybreak of the morning comes not yet.