Barbara Lynn Part 15

Joel had bidden her good-bye. To-morrow he was going away--and so far away: to America. Once she had not been able to think of parting without despair, but now she knew how willingly she would bear it, if they might only part as lovers. Joel stood firm. Her entreaties and tears had no effect; he was kind; he was also self-righteous. He had never meant to tie her to him, he said; he had no right to ask for her love, when he could not marry her; he had done her a great wrong; further wrong he would not do.

"When you've made your fortune, you'll come back, Joel?" she had whispered.

Then had descended upon him a sullen cloud. The exaltation, which he had felt in Barbara's presence, vanished; he no longer breathed the clear, invigorating air that had roused him to the strong resolve--"Heaven help me! I'll return for Lucy." He felt angry, because his hand had been forced, because his plans had miscarried, because he had put himself in the power of two women; and, looking at the drooping form of the girl whom he loved, though she was innocent, he felt glad that he had the power to hurt her.

"Back!" he had said, "back! Few that go away come back."

The words were no sooner uttered than he had repented of them. The girl had shrunk back as though struck, and he had been tempted to clasp her in his arms, to vow that he would return, and marry her, if she would only wait for him. But, remembering his promise, he had refrained. He would not be so dastardly a soul as to ask for something he might never be able to have. Lucy was very fair, gentle, and kind; his love had brought her little happiness; he would not blight her future. She should not wear his fetters, she should be free. If luck took sides with him; if she remained true to her heart, then the last word had not been spoken between them. But if he found only his old bad fortune d.o.g.g.i.ng his steps in a foreign land--which he fully expected--and she grew weary of waiting; then this good-bye was good-bye for ever.

He was going off at dawn. Lucy had seen the last of him, and the future lay before her like a desolate plain, upon which no hopeful star rose to lighten the monotony. Just now, however, her mind ignored it, and, gripping the present, hugged it close to extract its utmost bitterness.

She did not understand Joel, but she was conscious that he had steeled his heart against her, that his handsome, haughty face was determined not to relax into its old, loving, intimate look, with which he used to regard her. He was going away, where he would meet many pretty women, prettier than she, who would feel the charm of his fine manners and handsome presence, and who would be only too eager to take his heart captive.

Lucy knew nothing about Joel's untimely visit to her great-grandmother in the middle of the night. Neither did she know that the old woman had given him money. The events, which led up to his sudden determination to go away, were hidden in obscurity, and his att.i.tude towards her made it impossible to enquire further. She thought that he was acting wisely, in all but his newly a.s.sumed consideration for her. She wanted to have the right to think of him, encourage him, dream of him; she wanted, in fact, to be sure that he would remain hers when he got beyond the reach of her influence. He had said that she must be free. Free! the word was a mockery! She had given herself to him. But now he returned the gift, which he had once pleaded for! Was it, then, he who desired to be free?

Her breast was torn with the hard sobbing of outraged affection.

Unable to bear her loneliness any longer, though shrinking from the chance of meeting someone, she got up and looked round her. Dusk had fallen; the pee-weeps were still flying overhead; the undersides of their bodies glimmered in the gloom; all the glitter had died out of the sky; and Forest Hall looked grey and frowning above its sea of green.

Lucy pushed her hands through her hair, ordered her dress, which had become disarranged with lying on the ground, and then she went slowly down hill. She had no clear idea what she wanted to do, but her feet took her to Forest Hall. She would, at least, feast her eyes upon the lamp-light from his window, if she might not look upon his face. It was the last time she would see him for many years, perhaps for ever. A shudder swept over her as she thought how his form would slowly vanish from her memory. Could she keep the intensity of this hour with her till she died, it would be some comfort through the desolate life which lay before her. But she knew, she had often been told, that the heart sooner or later forgot, that wounds always closed, that the mind grew indifferent, and would some day be able to look back wonderingly upon itself as it had once suffered. The fear of these things befalling her became like a nightmare. She cried out against them. She felt that she could live, so long as she might continue to feel; but life, grown insensible to that which it had once cherished, was as dreadful a thought as no life at all beyond the grave.

She came to the rock upon which Forest Hall was built and looked up. Its remoteness chilled her. She paused, then walked some steps away. She wanted to see Joel again, to rea.s.sure herself that the fears which beset her were untrue. But if she went to the door and knocked, what could she say? Had she not said all that was possible for a woman? Must she not keep silent now unless he spoke? Ah! the bitterness of her s.e.x! Had she been the man, she would have surrounded the soul that she loved with a wall of fire. It should never have stood in doubt, wondering if it might warm its hands. Love would have compa.s.sed it.

She drew back into the undergrowth and sat down. The place was damp, and smelled earthy, but she gave no heed. Here she would stay and watch for Joel's pa.s.sing by. She would stay till dawn, if he did not come sooner, in the hope of seeing some look upon his face that would give her comfort. She did but crave a crumb to a.s.suage the hunger of her heart.

Lucy's despair had a deeper cause than Joel's departure. At the back of her mind lay a thought, from which she would not draw the face-cloth to see what kind of features it bore. It had lain there for months--a corpse-like thing--having the power to throw a gloom over her brightest moments. Had it not been for this baleful influence she could have dried her tears with hopes for the future. She would have acquiesced in his decision that she must be free, believing him only the more worthy of her love for having made it; would have smiled bravely at the lonely years that must pa.s.s before he could come back. But her mind was turned into a charnel-house by that ghastly thing, which she would not bring to the light.

It was fear.

Had she been wise and strong enough to look at it, she would have known that below her love for this man was the apprehension that his beauty of face and form held a shallow soul; that his sincerity was a thin sheet of gilt over a hollow heart; that he was but a slender reed, which would break if too heavy a weight were put upon it. But she loved, she worshipped, she refused to see her idol's feet of clay. And the result became that which she was trying to escape--a tormented mind.

The forest lay silent. She could still hear the bleating of sheep on the fells, and the crying of the pee-weeps. But under the dark blue shadow of the trees nothing moved save a sheaf of flag leaves growing in a ditch beside the road. After a little while Jake, the rat-catcher, came along, leading Peter's big brown bear, which he had taken out for exercise. The thin little man and the ungainly beast pa.s.sed up the path to the house on the crag, then the curtain of silence fell again, only lifted for a moment by the return of Jake alone. He did not see Lucy, and went home through the forest playing upon his flute.

She wondered what time it was! She began to feel cold and thought that she would not have the courage to stay there all night. Besides Barbara, or the hind, or Jan Straw would soon come to look for her, and they would come first to Forest Hall. She got to her feet meaning to go home.

Then a window was thrown open far over her head, and the loud laughing of men went jarring above the tree-tops. Some of Joel's friends, from the country around, had ridden over to see him off and wish him G.o.d-speed. He was making merry, while she was eating her own heart with hunger. She wavered, took a step forward, then a step back, hesitated, but, in the end, impelled by a stronger power than her own, she crept up to the house, and looked in at a window.

The room was lit with many candles, burning with long red tongues, and much smoke. They shone upon pewter mugs, rough heads, and jocular faces.

Not a man among the lot could match Joel in bearing or grace of countenance. He stood in the middle of them, with a tankard held high, for he had just called a toast. She had not been in time to hear what he had said, but she saw the smile run from lip to lip, and heard again the loud laughing.

She sank down on the gra.s.s under the window. So this was all that Joel cared! She felt that he had torn out her heart, and flung it still fluttering in her face. He could amuse himself with his companions, finding a time for mirth upon his last night in Forest Hall; he could blot her out of his thoughts with jests and singing.

As a matter of fact Joel was thinking of her, and the toast which he had called was to 'the la.s.s of his heart.' It was not his nature to be stiff, when others were genial, or pull a long face in the faces of his friends.

But to-night he was in a reckless mood. He had torn himself away from the hands that would have held him; he had been forced to wound the woman he loved; he was afraid to meditate upon his present frame of mind or the future upon which he was entering. He craved for distraction, and was grateful to his friends for providing it. He was ready to enter into any wild scheme that would make the night spin and the morning come before he had time to realize what it meant.

Lucy lay stricken upon the ground; she could not tear herself away.

Chilling vapours rose and numbed her limbs. But behind her eyes she felt flames. At times she was seized with fits of shivering. She knew that it was dangerous for her to lie there for a heavy dew was falling--the points of her hair hung with drops, which, now and then, rolled down her neck into her bosom. But she wished that she might die, she wished that the morning could find her stiff and stark under the window, with her sightless eyes gazing up at the room, where Joel had spent the night in merriment. And above all she wished that he might come there in the dawn, and find her. She wanted him to carry away the eternal reproach of a dead girl's face.

This is that which she desired, and the scene which she saw with the vividness of delirium. His horse stood ready saddled and bridled, his gay companions were lounging in the doorway, he was about to mount when his eyes fell upon her body half hidden by the gra.s.s. She felt the hush that would follow his cry of horror. She saw the remorse upon his face, the clenching of his hands, the sweat on his brow. With grim satisfaction she lingered over the scene. Then her mind wandered on. She thought that she followed him into distant lands. She saw him alone in great forests, alone on wide prairies, alone in solitary huts, but never alone, because her dead face would be peering into his. She saw him in crowded cities, in drinking bars, in dancing halls, and even there her dead eyes would blot out the light of other faces. He should never escape her, she would follow him and haunt him until in death they met again. Then she would show him the love and forgiveness of her heart.

Yes, all that she had dreamed would come to pa.s.s. Soon she would die, even now her limbs were dead, only her heart lived and her eyes burned.

But before she died she would look at him once more.

She raised herself with difficulty, and stared into the room. It was empty, most of the candles had gutted out, the remains of food were scattered here and there, the mugs lay about, as though they had been emptied in a hurry and dropped. For a moment she leaned against the stone, trying to recollect herself, for she was dazed with hunger and cold and sorrow; then she groped her way round the house to the back, where she heard voices.

Joel stood in the yard among his friends with half-a-dozen snarling dogs. The moon was rising and she could see him clearly. But she kept behind an outhouse so that no one should spy her. The knot of figures broke up into groups, and in the vacant spot Peter Fleming's bear stood, chained to the pump. It growled, dogs snapped, men laughed and whips were cracked.

Lucy looked on aghast. Was she dreaming? Was the scene a painting of her own imagination or was it real life? Did Joel stand near her, gazing at the bear-baiting, sometimes with reluctance--as though his heart was not in it--and then with gradually growing excitement? Lucy's mind was unstrung. All that she saw and heard came to her as through a mist. She tried to rally herself, to get a grip of something that would bring her senses back. Her hand pa.s.sed up and down the stone wall of the outhouse beside which she crouched, and finding a big rusty nail, she clung to it as a drowning man might cling to a spar. It gave her support.

The yard into which she gazed was a chaos. Men with whips and snarling dogs circled about the pump. Limbs and bodies seemed to be tied together in a knot that heaved and heaved in an attempt to undo itself and could not. Lucy thought it was a nightmare. She dared not move, dared hardly breathe, like one, who, in sleep, is subjugated by dreadful visions.

But a change came over the barbaric revelry. The men surged aside, the dogs were lashed off and flew howling to the rear. Lucy wondered what had happened, feeling a vague relief, as though a weight had been lifted from her brain. She swept her eyes round the yard. Surely her sister stood yonder! Barbara it must be, for the form was that of a woman though as tall as the tallest man. She stood in the clearing by the bear, whose growling still continued to make a thunderous undertone to the shriller sounds of men and dogs.

The sight of her sister brought a breath of life to the stricken girl.

She had felt as though she were dying, but not peacefully as those who are willing to lay down existence should die. Her path had been haunted by evil shapes and visions. The Valley of the Shadow was as Pilgrim found it--"full of hobgoblins, satyrs, and dragons of the pit, overhung with the discouraging clouds of confusion." Barbara's coming dispelled the horror. It was the visitation of an angel. From Lucy's distracted mind the vapours cleared. She could think and see clearly again.

She looked round for Joel; he had gone in with his friends. Only Barbara remained to see to the bear and Mally Ray, sour and stern, came out to help her.

Then Lucy got to her numbed feet, and crept forward.

"Barbara," she whispered, "Barbara."

Her sister turned.

"Why, la.s.s," she said calmly, "I's been looking for thee high and low.

Come home, Lucy, come away home."

The girl clung to her with both hands, sobbing:

"I's been baited like yon beast, Barbara. Oh! I's wounded and sick and weary. I's been hurt by the hands I kissed, and life's dark as a cloudy night."

CHAPTER IX

PETER AT OXFORD

Peter Fleming sat by his study window, looking down into the quadrangle.

It was early morning, so early that stars still glimmered round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire and over the Radcliffe Camera. Candles burnt dimly in the room at his back, and on the table, spotted with wine stains, lay the remains of supper. All the guests, but one, had gone, and he was only a voice, for the window curtains swallowed him up. To him Peter unburdened his soul; upon such an occasion, at such an hour as this, men are not afraid to speak of themselves.

Peter's college career was ended. Last night he had set the seal to it; this morning he was entering upon a new phase.

"You are not ambitious," said the voice--a mature voice, lacking the boyish note that rang so triumphantly off Peter's tongue, as though he were confident of conquering the world--"It's a pity; I always thought you were! With your honours it's monstrous, that you should turn school-master to your native vale, content with--how much?"

"'Pa.s.sing rich on fourty pounds a year'--and a goosegate!"

"My dear fellow! it won't buy your books."