Читать книгу A Woman of Samaria - Rita - Страница 8

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The wedding was over. The bride and bridegroom had departed, leaving the village "en fête" in their honour and the Vicarage in confusion and loneliness.

Miss Webbe wandered through the disordered rooms with a troubled face and a mind brooding over the waste of good things unfitted for homely digestions, and the hours that would have to be spent in washing and storing the best glass and china. The servants were at the village feast given by Mr. Lilliecrapp. The Vicar had retired to his study, and Dolores had vanished, presumably to her own room to change her bridesmaid's attire.

Could her aunt have seen how she was really engaged, she would have been filled with astonishment. Attired in a loose dressing-gown, the girl was kneeling before a small leather bag, packing it with the plainest and simplest of her store of linen. All the more elaborate articles, the lace-trimmed petticoats and underwear, the embroidered stockings and dainty shoes, the frills and ribbons and fantasies of a girlish toilet, she replaced in her drawers among bunches of fragrant lavender and dead roses. It was as if she laid by the useless belongings of one dead and gone from her place for ever, and white and cold and still almost as death was the face that bent over those girlish possessions.

But she never flinched from her task. Quiet and self-possessed, she moved to and fro until her preparations were complete. Then she took from a cupboard a plain gown of black cashmere and a long cloak. These she laid on a chair, throwing over them an ordinary linen dress such as she wore in the morning. Her bag she thrust under the bed.

There was but one thing more to do. It was the task she had left to the last, and her courage almost failed as she took up her desk and carried it over to the little table by the window. She sat down, staring blankly at the sheets of paper before her. Outside the quiet garden lay bathed in the rose and saffron light of fading day. A late bird sang to its mate from the drooping cedar boughs, the bloom and beauty of flowers smiled up to heaven, and the evening star stole out from its hiding place as if signalling its fellows to follow after.

The girl leant her head on her hand, and her tired eyes gazed sadly into the odorous dusk. Her thoughts flew to and fro, unconnected, impossible to seize. She had so much to say, and she must only say so little. But when she snatched up her pen in the desperation that often ends in decision, she wrote for many moments without pause or hindrance. Then she read it over, doing battle with herself lest tears should break forth and control be lost.

A thousand memories in her heart throbbed and broke against its stony calm. Sounds and voices reflected perpetual images. The music of evening hymns, the call of church bells, the deep melodious flow of prayer, the tender wisdom of Sunday teaching. To each and all of these she said good-bye in that hour, and said it with a breaking heart that made no outward sign. The fever of emotion had burned itself out. She said no longer "I cannot bear it," only "I must." When with white face and trembling limbs she stole downstairs at last, a letter lay on her dressing-table, blank and unaddressed.

There was yet another ordeal to face: the evening hymn, the evening prayer, the good-night that never again would be given in the old room, among the familiar things of her past life. As she forced her voice to its accustomed task, as she knelt and hid her agonised face in her accustomed place, the ignominy of her fate rushed over her like a fierce wave, and sorrow, struggling with passion, rent from her soul the last memory of tenderness for the selfish ingrate who had brought her to this direful pass.

She rose from her knees. She bade her aunt good-night, and turned to face an ordeal that to her was worse than death. That white head, that kindly face, those gentle eyes. Oh! what sorrow and shame was she bringing on them!

"Good night, my darling. We must be more than ever to each other now, since we have lost our Cynthia," he said.

She hid her face on his breast, a dry choking sob rose to her throat. Mutely she clung to him for a moment while he stroked her hair and murmured tender blessings and consolation. She tried to speak, but no words would come. Her heart ached till the pain seemed to suffocate her. Death would have been easier to bear than this agony of self-suppression, this effort to conceal misery and deny despair.

And still the kindly voice murmured of hope and consolation, of duties and sacrifices. But when he told her she alone was left to comfort him, to be the staff of his declining years, and the joy of heart and eyes, she could bear no more. She thrust his arms aside, and with one frenzied kiss she fled from the room, the tears streaming down her cheeks and all her frame shaken by a storm of passionate grief. They heard her close and lock her door.

"Poor child, it is her first grief! She finds it hard to bear," murmured her father.

He put his book aside and listened to his sister's vague platitudes, and wondered why so strange a sense of depression and trouble rested on his own heart.

Before many hours were over he was to learn the full meaning of a presentiment he had tried to mistrust as being un-Christian and arguing want of faith in the dealings of Providence. He held in his hand the letter found in his daughter's room, and with bewildered eyes tried to follow its meaning.

"I am leaving home not because I am tired of it, not because I do not love you, father, but because I intend to follow out my own inclinations and make a career for myself. I am going on the stage. I knew you would never consent, so I have not stayed to ask you. When I am great and famous I will return, and perhaps you will try to forgive me, knowing that I could not help myself.

Do not fear for my welfare. I am well provided for. I cannot tell you more. Only from time to time you shall hear from me, and know that I live and am well and do not forget you. I must seem ungrateful—I feel it. Oh, I am wretched because I cannot open my heart to you, father, so good and loving and forbearing as you have always been. If only you would not trouble about me; but I fear you will. Yet try to think of me as happy, as working for an object which I feel I shall attain, as thinking of you and loving you always, loving you more than ever, though I am leaving your care and must appear ungrateful in your eyes.

God bless you, my kindest and best and dearest, and try to pray that He may forgive me.

"Your unhappy and unworthy child,

"DOLORES."

The more he read those incoherent, blotted sentences the more puzzled he became. That the girl had seemed low-spirited and unhappy he remembered; but whence had sprung this sudden determination to tear herself from home and all the loving care of kindred, and throw herself on the mercies of the world?

How could she have lived her daily life among them, yet nursed this project in her heart, and alone and unaided gone forth to secure it.

What to do, how to screen her rashness, and yet serve her best interests, set his wits wandering in all directions. Such an emergency had never presented itself before, and he felt helpless to meet it.

Miss Webbe's soul was one ferment of righteous indignation. She was furious with the girl for her deceit, and the disgrace her action would bring on the family.

To go on the stage after such training and bringing up. What madness could have possessed her! It could have been no sudden project. It must have been carefully planned and thought out. Yet she had seemed to live with them in perfect content until just the time of her sister's marriage.

Her father was too broken down to give any assistance or advice. He could only read and re-read those despairing words and ask himself how he could have been blind to the change in her. In all this time, living the quiet home life, fulfilling its simple duties, she must have been meditating on another, its antithesis in every way. Her thoughts had not been their thoughts, her tastes and desires had all wandered into far different channels. She had taken no one into her confidence and gone to a life of danger and temptation, of meretricious triumphs and false excitement. The last life he would have desired or chosen for a child of his.

It was a terrible blow. It met him so unexpectedly that he had no resource at hand. The child he had loved with such fond and faithful affection had deserted him for a whim, a fancy, without hint of either discontent or purpose.

He faced the mystery which every parent has, at some period, to face. The mystery of character developed under home guidance and training, and yet proving itself a thing apart and estranged from all expectations, full of individual force, of feelings and desires undreamt of by the very being who has given the doubtful blessing of life to the mystery.

"So young," he muttered, sitting in his study chair and letting his thoughts run back to days when she had brought her dolls and books and set them by the window for company, she told him. "Only seventeen and she has formed her own theories of life. She has gone to face the world. And I am helpless."

Some thought of wandering off in search of her crossed his mind, but the uselessness of such a course was made apparent by her letter.

Yet he must give some explanation of her absence. He could not tell the parish gossips that she had run away from home. But how had she left? Had anyone seen her? She was so well known that it would have been impossible for her to have got away unrecognised. He paced his study floor in ever-increasing dismay.

His sister's voice entreating him to let her in aroused him. She brought an element of worldly wisdom and common-sense into the dilemma.

"There must be no scandal; it would never do," she said. "Fortunately I went to her room and read that letter. The servants are so busy they haven't even noticed she's not been downstairs. I've been thinking it's best to say she's gone away on a visit, and that I'm to follow. That it was decided suddenly; and I'll bring her clothes and give an appearance of probability. In point of fact, Gideon, I will go to my old friend, Mrs. Sylvester, for a week. I'll start to-night; the 5 o'clock train gets to Waterloo about 8.30. She lives in Ebury-street. If anyone can help us she can. She is one of the cleverest women I know, and trustworthy. Now, my dear brother, let me entreat of you to pull yourself together. Remember we have the girl's good name to save, and if she can be found and brought back without scandal what a blessing it will be!"

"Sarah," said the Vicar, suddenly, "tell me. You don't fear anything else? No love affair? No—disgrace?"

Miss Webbe shook her head doubtfully. "There is a ring of despair about that letter of hers," she said. "I don't like it, I confess. And yet, what could have occurred without our knowing it. She has had no friends or associates. Certainly no young man friend that we have not seen. I have noticed a change in her of late. She seemed so absent and low-spirited. But I put that down to Cynthia's engagement—the prospect of separation. However, what I want to impress on you is the necessity of keeping this matter quiet. There may be a way out of it. I'll do my best to trace her, and if I do find her, rest assured I will talk common sense, and bring her back with me."

"God bless you, Sarah," said the old man. "You have put new life into me."

He wrung her hands in both his.

"If you find her, in whatever case," he said slowly, "deal tenderly with her. She is motherless."