Читать книгу A Woman of Samaria - Rita - Страница 3

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"We will sing," said the Vicar, "the 329th hymn, before I read the usual chapter."

He glanced round at a circle of attentive faces, bent over the rustling leaves of respective hymn books. If his eyes rested for a few seconds longer on one down-bent head than on any of the others, there was no one sufficiently inattentive to note the fact. It was the hour of family prayer at the Vicarage, and habits of years had disciplined children and servants alike into deferential attention to that observance. Even strangers and visitors fell into similar decorous habits when staying with the Rev. Gideon Webbe.

He was a man whose personality was the outcome of pure and gentle and generous emotions. A man with the student's dreaminess, the thinker's absorption, the Christian's patience and long suffering. In daily life he was more noticeable for a general belief in humanity's best than worst side. In the exercise of his office he was more faithful than convincing. He was much beloved, and not at all feared. He kept to the simplest form of worship compatible with the rubric, and his only clerical extravagance was an insistence on the best organ and the best music it was possible to procure in an unfashionable parish, where collections were not "de rigeur" after every service, and where "early celebration" was an unheard of ordinance.

The death of his wife after the birth of their second child had left the Vicar to comparative loneliness. He had loved her as his second self, relied on her, trusted her, confided in her. Such relationship cannot come twice into a life, and he did not tempt providence by any effort to replace her. She had been his boyhood's love and his manhood's joy, his staff and help-meet in all that appertained to the duties of his parish. Her loss was terrible to him, and the years, though they softened the pain of that first agonising blow, yet brought no possible consolation. Nothing in his life could ever be again as in those first few happy years, when he had installed her in the quaint old Vicarage of Dulworth. They had been as one in unity of content and use and happiness.

The children she had left were sweet and fair and dutiful, but they were not her, not the sweet helpful other half that had made life complete for him, and the slow years drifted on, and he grew more absorbed and absent-minded, and childhood, girlhood, bloomed and grew beautiful before his dreamy eyes, and yet to him seemed only childhood still. An unmarried sister of his own had ruled his household and seen to the girls' education and manners and well-being. He only noted how like his youngest child was to her mother, and how her voice had the same thrill and her laugh the same music.

Now, as she sang, his ear detected her voice among the others, though to-night it sounded strangely faint and uncertain.

"Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me."

He glanced up. The burnished brown head was still bent. The lamplight shone on a girlish shape somewhat too tall and rounded for her seventeen years, a contrast to her elder sister's fary-like proportions. Decidedly she was not singing as usual. The notes were tremulous; there seemed a pathos as of hidden tears in the words. Emotion seemed on the verge of breaking some leash of strength that checked its overflow. There was a tremor of lip, a flutter of the soft muslin that crossed the girlish breast. Her father watched and wondered.

Near the girl, so near that her white gown touched him, stood the Vicar's nephew—Cyril Grey. He was leaving on the morrow for China. He was a handsome though somewhat effeminate-looking youth of two-and-twenty, and had been staying at the Vicarage for the past month. The Vicar's wandering glance, combining as it did the two handsome young figures, the girl's troubled face, the youth's drooped eyelids and thin lips and beautiful colouring, gathered something of uneasiness into its expression. They were children no longer, this trio before him. What was life already meaning for them?

The last verse of the hymn began. His glance turned to the open page. It seemed to him that the lovely young voice had regained its accustomed firmness and quality. He thought how misleading fancy might be on occasion, and joined his own mellow baritone to the beautiful words:—

"Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee, In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!"

There came a brief pause. The group seated themselves and looked at him expectantly. He opened the Family Bible at the place where lay the old worn book-marker, worked by his dead wife nearly twenty years before. He cleared his throat and gave out the chapter. "The fourth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John."

The Vicar had one great gift, not too common to the clerical profession, and that was a beautiful voice, and one that had been trained to perfect elocution. It was always a pleasure to hear him read or preach, and an impossibility to be unimpressed or inattentive. Even his nephew, to whom the outward and visible signs of the priesthood meant infinitely more than the inward grace of that holy ordinance, admired the Rev. Gideon Webbe's reading.

He listened now with the criticism of mature youth and the assured conviction that it lay in his own power to do equally well what he criticised.

"Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband."

Cyril Grey was conscious of a sudden stifled sob, a quickened breath in his vicinity. He glanced at his young cousin. Her face betrayed visible emotion. A frown darkened his brow, his eye shot an angry rebuke at feminine weakness. She read the anger, and the rebuke, and grew suddenly calm. But the effort to attain such composure left her deadly pale, and gave to her young face a hardness that altered all its bloom and beauty. Then the gentle "Let us pray," brought individual seclusion and gave temporary relief to an enforced strain.

The Vicar's prayer was extempore and eloquent. He alluded impressively to the coming parting. He spoke of the "young traveller preparing his weapons for the battle of life." He asked a blessing on his spiritual life, its guidance and direction into right paths, and then with a few earnest and impressive words closed his petition with a solemn "Amen."

The servants rose and quietly left the room. Miss Sarah Webbe, the Vicar's sister, drew her spare figure into upright position and smoothed a crease or two out of her black silk gown. Cynthia, the eldest girl, crossed the room and put away the books of devotion in their respective places. The vicar's nephew smoothed back his fair hair with a languid hand. He alone noticed that a white-gowned figure had slipped out of the room in the rear of the parlourmaid, a proceeding unusual enough to excite comment.

There was a general murmur of "Good-nights." Cynthia followed her aunt, the Vicar retired to his study, and Cyril Grey walked slowly up the oak staircase to his own room. He put down his candle on the dressing-table and glanced at the white blind screening his window. Then with a sudden movement he blew out his light, and, drawing up the blind, opened the window and leaned out. His room was at the back of the house, and looked down upon a remote corner of the garden, where stood an old tumble-down summer-house covered with ivy and creepers.

The bright moonlight silvered the tall stems of sheltering beech trees that in summer time almost concealed the retreat. Now the leafage was less a screen than an adjunct. Light and shadow, growth and decay, there mingled and met in strange companionship. From the doorway came the white clutter of a handkerchief, waved as if to signal another presence. The young man turned from the window as he noted it, and going to a cupboard near the bedstead, he took out a knotted rope of some length. This he fastened to an iron hook outside the window frame and let drop to the ground below. Then he changed his coat for an old Norfolk jacket, kicked off his boots and replaced them with tennis shoes, and getting out on the broad ledge of the window let himself down by the rope. He rapidly crossed the intervening space, keeping as much as possible in the shadow, and presently stood at the entrance of the little summer-house. A girl sprang forward and threw herself into his arms.

"Oh, Cyril, I had to do it. I couldn't help myself. Your last night! Our last night! Oh, you don't know how awful it is to me!"

The unchecked tears were streaming down her face. A passion of sobs shook her frame. He drew her to a seat and held her closely to his heart, smoothing her hair and murmuring soothing words from time to time.

"It won't be such a long parting," he said. "There, there, darling, don't cry, the time will soon pass. I'll send for you as soon as I am able."

"Oh, if you could only take me with you!"

"Impossible. You know that as well as I do. My father is a crochety old beggar, as you know, and I'm quite dependent on him. He's sending me to the foreign house only out of spite, and because I'd rather be in England. And he's so rich, it's a shame. . . . Now, sweetheart, don't cry. Try and be sensible. Tell me you haven't breathed a word of our secret to anyone."

"Of course not, Cyril. You made me promise that day."

"Yes, brave little girl! Well, you must keep that promise a little longer. You see it would ruin my prospects altogether, and I've made up my mind to be a partner in Grey, Lovel, and Co.'s before I marry."

"But we are married."

"Of course, child, but that was a very queer sort of ceremony. It wouldn't count for much. We'll have to pretend it never happened, and do the thing properly."

A pale face uplifted itself in sudden terror.

"Oh, Cyril, but you assured me——"

"Of course I did. You and I are satisfied with the form. It was enough to pledge us to each other, but it's not what would be called a regular marriage in this country. However, don't you worry. You can live on here until I see how things are going to turn out. Then I'll break it to my father. It's a pity your dad and he are such bad friends. I never could understand why. The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children get the toothache; eh, childie? Come, that's better. You're smiling."

He breathed a sigh of relief. He hated tears, and his conscience accused him of having brought a good many to those fond and foolish eyes.

The moonlight waned. Night and shadow breathed their spells around, enclosing that charmed recess with the magic of passion, set to music of throbbing pulse and tender vows and fond caress. It was such an old story to the night and the springtime. But it was still new and entrancing to one at least of the story tellers.

"You are my love, my law, my conscience," she murmured passionately. "If I have done wrong it has been at your bidding—if you change, regret, repent, it will be my death!"

"I shall not change, Dolores."

"You are going to a new life, a new world. I—I must stay behind, watch the dreary days, weep out my long nights, fearing I know not what. A year ago I was a child, Cyril. Your love has made me a woman. I feel capable of anything—passion, sacrifice, revenge!"

"Revenge!" he said, half-startled by the word and tone. "Revenge, my pretty one. The word has a hateful sound on your lips. I don't like to hear it. You are inclined to be tragic, Dolores. I have often told you so. I fancy sometimes you would have made a good actress."

She laughed mirthlessly.

"I only speak as I feel. My heart is so full to-night I can't say one half of what I want to say. Cyril, you are so calm. You can't love me."

"I do love you," he said, "as well as it is in me to love. Our natures differ."

There was a moment's silence. Some passing memory of a sentence he had read flashed through his mind. Its cynicism affected him uncomfortably. That he should even think of it at such a moment held a suggestion of disloyalty. "We love best the woman we never win."

He had won. He had known all the triumph and pride in a girl's first passionate self-surrender that is so sweet to a lover's heart, but now, he told himself, the plucked fruit ceased to be quite so desirable. There is a subtle pleasure in restraint, a happiness in being unhappy, that one only realises in the "afterwards" of certainty.

She rested in his arms, quiet and subdued, yet a keen sense of misery filled her heart. The love of youth is ever shadowed by forebodings, no matter how sure or how absolute its worship.

He lifted her tear-stained face and looked down into her eyes. They were strangely beautiful. Large, shadowy, full of earnest purpose, self betraying in what they revealed.

"You won't forget, you won't repent," she entreated once more.

He unloosed the clinging arms and rose to his feet.

"I have promised," he said. "Your question shows you lack faith, Dolores."

"Oh, it is so hard, so hard," she cried. The chill of fear stole over her again. A knell of change sounded already in the tones of his voice. They were less lover-like, less assured, and had an undertone of impatience.

"Good-night," she said faintly, "and good-by. I shall not see you to-morrow before you start. I—I could not play a part before the others."

He was thankful she had recognised the fact. A highly-strung emotional nature is usually unreliable.

"Better not, dearest," he said, with a tenderness born of relief and self-reproach. "It would be too hard on us both. We will part here—here where our love was first confessed, our vows plighted."

The moonlight shone on her uplifted face, and lit the soulful sorrow of the eyes that matched her name. He drew her arms about his neck. Their lips met in a parting farewell. A moment later he stood and watched a white figure flitting towards the house.

"Poor child!" he said, softly. "Poor little girl! But she'll get over it."

He felt uncomfortable, and told himself he was unhappy. An element of hypocrisy in his nature mingled with the selfishness of young manhood, and he tried to persuade himself that it was regret, not relief that gave him such discomfort.

He sought his room once more. It would be long before he played Romeo again, he thought. A new life lay before him. One to arouse ambition and interest. This brief love dream had no part in it. With the morrow he would march forth towards a life that wore the smile of promise and worldly success. That he left a shadow behind cost him no pang. If absence were worth anything as a test of constancy, why then they could take up their love story where its first volume had ended. Change comes with the passage of time and ardour cools. No harm was done. She was so young now, naturally her life's horizon seemed bounded by her first love. Women were like that. But a man lived for other things. He could not look out on a limited landscape and call it the world.

At this stage of reflection the philosophic youth lit his candle. His preparations for the morrow were evident on all sides, in the shape of portmanteaux, hat box, straps, and walking sticks. He glanced at them complacently. Then, catching sight of his own face in the toilet glass, he gave himself up to a few moments' consideration of its good-looking promises.

"Poor little Dolly!" he murmured. "She certainly was desperately gone on me. I'm very sorry for her. I suppose she's crying her heart out now, and I can't comfort her."

A man's pity for what he is unworthy to love is only good-natured contempt for the weakness of the sex. He knew in his heart he could not comfort her, because he could not understand the depth of feelings lavished upon him with youth's prodigal delight in giving.

She lay prone on her bed, conscious of nothing save the intensity of her own misery. Tears had exhausted her. Prayer died upon her lips with a sudden sense of its impotence to avert sorrow. She was so young that in her first grief she felt as if she had reached the extremity of earthly woe.

"God keep me from thinking," she cried to the silence, and like a cloud the darkness rolled over her aching senses, and the quick living agony of the day died out of heart and brain in sudden unconsciousness.