Читать книгу A Question of Faith - Lily Dougall - Страница 6

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The next day was Saturday. It was brighter weather; the yellow sunshine was pouring down upon the desolate combe and upon the haze of buds that began to rest on all the trees of the Norcombe meadows. Harvey’s picture needed a gray light, so he could not begin it; and moreover, picture or no picture, he had no intention of wasting any time before making friends with Alice Bolitho. He was not so much frightened at her now. He found himself again in the low square sitting-room at the homely hour of two. Amy Ross was there, but she was not the person with whom it was his business to make friends.

“Will you come out into the sunshine and show me the place?” he asked Alice.

She took her hat from a peg in the hall, put it on without consulting a looking-glass, and, dragging on a jacket somewhat awkwardly as she walked, she led the way down a mossy path to a garden inclosed by the old brick wall.

It seemed that she did a great deal of her own gardening. She was entirely interested in hotbeds and cold-frames, and the plants in a few small glass houses. There were not many flowers; there were a great many young vegetables and fruit plants to be looked at, and when occasion required she shifted the glass frames herself, without thinking of waiting for him to do it.

Harvey was not much interested in the plants, but on the whole he grew more and more pleased with his companion. The clear gray eyes, with their dark brows and lashes, the clear skin that flushed with exercise, and the thick, dark, glossy hair, gave comeliness to features that, if too broad and immobile for beauty, were tolerably well formed. And then there was this great charm,—the charm of possession, or almost possession. Harvey had never felt in any way bound by relationship to a young woman before. This Alice had a quiet, good-natured way of talking familiarly to him, as if kindliness were a matter of course. The sun shone warmly, the birds twittered on every side, there was a feeling as of growing green in the air. When they left the garden and were walking farther down the park, they came upon an old bench, and there he announced his desire to sit for a while.

“Well, you sit there, and I’ll sit on the dyke,” said Alice.

It was a low stone dyke, and she lifted herself to the top of it with ease. There were soft guttural sounds to be heard on the other side of it.

“But why will you not sit on the bench? It is much more comfortable.”

“For two reasons” (her smile was perfectly frank), “In the first place, I want to look over at my pigs—No, that is not the first; the other reason is the more important, and that is, that Amy is in the sitting-room and cannot fail to see us out of the window.”

“But for you and me there can be no reason in that.” He made the assertion with joyous confidence.

“Oh, for you and me, or for you and any one else, or for me and any one else, there is no reason in it at all, except that dear little Amy is always in quest of emotion and romance and excitement, and such people are apt to find what they look for, especially when it isn’t there.”

“She seems to be warm-hearted.”

“She has lots of feelings of every sort; and there is another fine feature in her character: that is her little boy, who comes for his holidays; he is a darling.”

In a minute she spoke again.

“I don’t understand how you can hear those fascinating gruntings and not want to look over and see my pigs. I am very fond of pigs, and I have them washed; in poor grandpa’s time they did not smell nice.”

“I am so much interested in something else, Alice. May I call you Alice?”

“If you like.”

“And you will call me Hal?”

“If you like.”

He had a sense that he was becoming absurd. “Well, but look here, we ought to be frank with one another and come to some understanding, you know. Your grandfather urgently requested us to marry one another, unless there was some good reason against it, and I suppose we ought, don’t you?”

“I suppose we owe it to him to try to like one another,” she replied. She was looking over at the pigs.

“If you don’t see any objection to his plan at present, we will assume that there is none until it turns up.”

“At present it is a merely provisional friendship,” she said.

He sat silent for a good while. It was a place where silence was delightful. The pigs seemed to have gone to sleep; the yellow, misty sunlight cast the shadow of the trees upon stone and brick, and upon the grass of the park where the daffodils grew.

After that they went to a field where the newest and smallest lambs were to be seen. They were very well-bred lambs, and she explained to him their pedigree. They made the circuit of the place, patting the cow and the pony and the dog. It was, take it altogether, a humble manage, but to Alice each animal had so strong a personality that to have expressed a desire that they should be finer or more numerous would have seemed like expressing the same desire to a proud mother exhibiting her little family.

“To-morrow is Sunday,” said Harvey. “May I come and go to church with you?”

“I never go to church; from my point of view there is no reason why I should go.”

“I can’t help being sorry for that; but since it is so, may I come and spend the time to-morrow morning with you?”

“If you see any reason for going to church, no reason should be sufficient to keep you from it, and I shall not be at home.”

Just here she seemed to lapse into serious thoughts of her own. He had only seen this girl twice, and had not been with her very long either time, and yet this was not the first time that he had been conscious that her attention had wandered completely from him, and in these fits of absence she looked absorbed, almost dejected. This did not seem to him an amiable feature in her manner when he came to think it over; it almost counter-balanced the good-natured readiness with which she accepted him as a friend.

Sunday was gray and stormy, just the light and the wild effect that he wanted for his picture. He was afraid that Alice would despise him if he did not go to church. “People who are not religious expect so much of people who are,” he said to himself petulantly. This was when he had risen early to inspect the weather. As if in answer came the sound of the Norcombe church-bell ringing for an eight o’clock service. He bethought him that it would do to go now and not later, so he ran down and said some prayers in a back seat.

There were only a handful of people in the church. One of them was Mrs. Ross. She looked forlorn in the early light, and he could not help noticing that, as she knelt with her face covered, she wept nearly all the time of the service. It was impossible to help being sorry for her; probably she mourned her dead husband.

He sauntered out, and met the object of his sympathy in the churchyard. She turned her face away from him as they walked together, in order to hide the traces of her tears. He could only speak of the weather and ask how Alice was.

“I do not think she is quite well; she has not been herself since you came; but that is natural, and I am glad to see it. You do not know what a fine girl she is, what a beautiful character.”

“I am learning to know.”

“Ah, yes; but there is so much to learn of her excellence, it will take you a long time. Indeed, I mean just what I say. Oh, she is strong! She is fine! I am such a weak character myself; I cannot sufficiently admire her.”

“Your warm praise speaks also for your own generosity.”

“I am not generous, I am only just; indeed, do you know, I sometimes almost suspect myself of a little jealousy towards her—a very little, you know; or, no, I do not think it can be that, because I love her: it is only that I feel that my happiness” (her voice fell very low) “is past and hers is to come. Do you think that that is jealousy?”

“No” (warmly); “I am sure that no one could speak as you have just spoken who was jealous.”

In a minute he added, “I am sorry you think that Alice has been agitated since I came.” He was not exactly sorry, but it was an interesting revelation, and he wanted to hear more of it.

“Yes, decidedly. I have known her all her life, but I have never seen her so much agitated. I am sure her heart is stirred to the depth. She has at times looked very sad, very pale, and once, when she did not know I saw her, she gave a gesture almost as if of wild distress.”

“I cannot be expected to be pleased to hear this” (in some chagrin).

“Oh, yes” (hastily). “I would not have told you if I had not been sure that you should gain the greatest hope from it. You know, I am older than both of you, and I have seen so much, passed through so much. Oh, with Alice, believe me, nothing could be so cheering! Her life has hitherto been so passionless; it has been smooth, like a placid, sunny river; and now she feels that that old unemotional self is passing from her, she loses something which she has had always, and goes forward into the unknown. She would not be a woman if she did not tremble for the future and shed some tears for the past.”

“I am glad you think that,” he said; “it seemed to me that if—if I might say that Alice had a fault (it cannot be treason to speak of it to one who loves her so much), that she was a little indifferent, a little unfeeling, if that is not too strong a word.”

“Self-poised, perhaps” (as if correcting his expression). “Yes, dear Alice!—But that, you see, is just what is breaking up, may I say, at the kiss of the fairy prince.”

Harvey felt soothed and pleased with Amy’s view of his standing with Alice. Amy might have a slight tendency to exaggerate and gush, but she had nice feelings. They separated where their roads parted, and Harvey went up to his breakfast.

The day grew colder and the wind more strong; Harvey realized that he could not work at his easel outside. He had no thought on that account of giving up; he set up his canvas within, and went out to imprint the scene upon his memory.

He went out for this purpose the first time at ten o’clock, went back and worked for some twenty minutes, went out again to correct his impression, went back and corrected his outline, and a third time stood in the upper opening of the combe, only his powers of observation at work, the rest of him quiescent.

It was then that Alice Bolitho passed him the second time, coming up the combe path with a pale face and hunted look. Incidents never repeat themselves. This time the girl was by no means so pale as before, and she had no appearance of indecision,—quite the contrary. Harvey was much farther back among the trees than before. Alice did not see him, but went steadily on up the path.

Harvey did not know why her face had restrained him from calling her name; he did not know, when he reviewed it, why the circumstance in the first minute had shocked him as it did. There was nothing very remarkable in a girl of Alice’s character walking again through a place in which she had felt the disagreeable sensations of vertigo and alarm, just as she would have ridden a shying horse up to the object from which it had shied. He did not think she was wise in doing so; he ran down the combe path at once to see the ledge over the cliff and decide for himself if it were safe.

When he had run about three hundred yards, he could command a view of all the narrow bit of the path and of the cliff beneath. The path would certainly be the better for a railing. It was a pretty hillpath, but not a safe one for a girl who had felt her head swim.

As he looked, the dead oak leaves shivered and hissed in the wind. The oaks were still in winter, almost budless, but the bank, covered with mossy roots and patches of fern, was green, and the lower precipice of sheer rock, with the stream foaming at its base, pleased his eye. Harvey took in all the lonely beauty of the place and went back again.

He was just in time to see Alice disappear over a rise of the moor, going towards the old cottages, whose chimneys he could barely see.

Harvey did not think of following her, remembering that she had refused his proffered company for that morning. He went on with his work, and so grateful was the moorland air, and so lovely the greens and browns of the quiet hills, that he did not wonder that she loved to range in the open alone.

In the meantime, Alice, unconscious that she had been seen, approached the hovels in the hollow. As she appeared at one side she saw old Gor deliberately turn and hobble away in an opposite direction. From this she felt convinced that the old witch knew that she had neighbors, and that for the sake of gold or other consideration she would see or hear nothing the witnessing of which might bring her or others into trouble. Alice looked at the old woman’s uneasy gait, trying to estimate how safe soup or milk would be in her custody. She would have been glad indeed to have found a messenger she might employ if the weary work she had undertaken was to go on.

She stopped at a hut whose bulging wall and loosened roof made it appear more empty and desolate even than its neighbors, and, calling to the unseen inmates from outside the door, she waited until it was opened. The windows were obscured; rubbish that had collected upon the threshold had not been removed, but the door, which opened inwards, revealed a part of the cottage, a mere cell, that was dry and wholesome enough. It was here the sick man’s bed had been made. The old man, white, fragile, stood holding the door to speak with her.

Alice gave one swift glance through to the bed and then stepped back, preferring to stand where she could not see the shining eyes of woe and pain that looked at her therefrom. She set down a bottle of liquid upon the doorstep.

“I ask you again to release me from this promise!” She spoke to the old man, and, involuntarily even, she lowered her voice so that the piteous creature within might be spared the hearing of her words.

The aged father closed the door behind him, and seemed to cower upon the threshold as he held up clasped hands before her. The gesture was the natural body of his prayer, no external clothing that would have robbed it of all strength in her eyes. The fierce passion of his one desire rendered all that he did simple, and there was about him a venerableness and gentility that made his agony touching to her, although hateful for that very cause.

Involuntarily she turned away.

“What can you gain by this?” she asked again in a minute. “Your son should have a doctor, you know.”

He was holding himself within the lintel of the door. She was under the impression that he told her that the doctors had already given up the case as hopeless, but she did not listen accurately to the words, she was trying to form another argument.

“I don’t believe,” she said, “that any change that could take place in his mind now would make any difference to his religion.” She was trying to argue from the point of view of one who held that conversion at a former period would have been desirable.

In a moment she perceived that she had said carelessly, roughly, words that gave more pain than if to some sanguine heart she had casually expressed the belief that a loved person was about to die; and she saw now that the father, who quailed and shuddered at her words, had his own fear to fight against when he still hoped to the end for the thing which he was striving to bring about.

“Nay, but for the sake of pity let me try!” he whispered, and there was a catch in his breath as if some inward prayer, constantly repeated, had interrupted the outward words; the inward breathing, “God have mercy!” was half audible.

In pity she spoke more gently. “But I don’t understand. You said that to teach him what love and mercy are would convert him; but if you believe that God is love and mercy, why do you suppose that He will judge your son more hardly than you do?”

“You are young; you have not known sin. I have no words, but my heart knows what the boy needs. Listen! Don’t you see that there is law, there is justice, in love; but to the boy in there justice looks like injustice, because he does not know that he has sinned? Don’t you see that it is only when he knows what mercy is that he can know that he has wronged it, and it is only when he knows that he is wrong that he can begin to be right? Ah, young lady, you little know the unbelief and evil abroad now in the world; but there are men with heads astray, and they think”—Words seemed to fail him; his voice shook with excitement and his head with weakness; the wind tossed his thin, white hair and beard.

Alice wondered if he was really very old, or if age and whiteness of hair had not come upon him suddenly in the last few weeks.

“They think,” whispered the trembling voice excitedly, “that when they do the devil’s work there is no sin against God in it. Ah me! it was not until my boy saw that his life was my life, and his wretchedness my wretchedness, that he saw that he had done wrong to me. You don’t know it; I never knew it until my boy’s soul came to hang upon it; but remember it now, lady, because I tell you that it is only by knowing that there is nothing but mercy in God’s heart that we see the justice of hell. You do not know what I mean. No, no; I seem to you as one mad; but give me time, give me time to influence my son, and may God, who will certainly requite you in blessing, have mercy on us.” He groped his way inside the door again, and shut it gently.

Alice went slowly away—not back as she had come, but to reach another road that crossed the hill. Her mind was as little at peace with itself as it had been in the first hour of this adventure; she did not truly know what course she ought to take. The fact that the thing which the old father aimed at was in her mind shadow, not substance, did not alter in the least her pity for his desire, or her merciful wish that he might suppose it to be gratified. Nor did the knowledge that the younger man was a criminal make it appear less desirable to assuage his evident suffering by every possible means. She had been told that the police were hunting for him; she had no doubt that, fanaticism and the prejudice against being arrested apart, the best thing that could befall him would be that they should find him; but then a man is what his hopes and fears, longings and beliefs are, and not to be considered apart from them. It is that which makes dealings with real men so different from any nice adjustment of theories concerning such dealings. Alice Bolitho did not say this to herself clearly, but she summed it up in thinking of her ineffectual attempt to reason with the old man.

“He is simply the most impossible person I ever came across,” she said to herself.