Margret Howth, a Story of To-day Part 9

"I've heered," he said, holding out his grimy hand. "I wish yoh well, Stephen, boy. So'll the old 'oman. Yoh'll come an' see us, soon?

Ye'r' lookin' f.a.gged, an' yer eyes is gettin' more like yer father's.

I'm glad things is takin' a good turn with yoh; an' yoh'll never be like him, starvin' fur th' kind wured, an' havin' to die without it.

I'm glad yoh've got true love. She'd a fair face, I think. I wish yoh well, Stephen."

Holmes shook the grimy hand, and then stood a moment looking back to the mill, from which the hands were just coming, and then down at the phaeton moving idly down the road. How cold it was growing! People pa.s.sing by had a sickly look, as if they were struck by the plague. He pushed the damp hair back, wiping his forehead, with another glance at the mill-women coming out of the gate, and then followed the phaeton down the hill.

CHAPTER VI.

An hour after, the evening came on sultry, the air murky, opaque, with yellow trails of colour dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in the woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to herself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting of evil to come. The dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at her through the gray; the very silver minnows in the pools she pa.s.sed, flashed frightened away, and darkened into the muddy niches. There was a vague dread in the sudden silence. She called to the old donkey, and went faster down the hill, as if escaping from some overhanging peril, unseen. She saw Margret coming up the road. There was a phaeton behind Lois, and some hors.e.m.e.n: she jolted the cart off into the stones to let them pa.s.s, seeing Mr. Holmes's face in the carriage as she did so. He did not look at her; had his head turned towards the gray distance.

Lois's vivid eye caught the full meaning of the woman beside him. The face hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid and cruel. She was dressed in yellow: the colour seemed jeering and mocking to the girl's sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did not know that it is the colour of shams, and that women like this are the most deadly of shams. As the phaeton went slowly down, Margret came nearer, meeting it on the road-side, the dust from the wheels stifling the air. Lois saw her look up, and then suddenly stand still, holding to the fence, as they met her. Holmes's cold, wandering eye turned on the little dusty figure standing there, poor and despised. Polston called his eyes hungry: it was a savage hunger that sprang into them now; a gray shadow creeping over his set face, as he looked at her, in that flashing moment. The phaeton was gone in an instant, leaving her alone in the road. One of the men looked back, and then whispered something to the lady with a laugh. She turned to Holmes, when he had finished, fixing her light, confusing eyes on his face, and softening her voice.

"Fred swears that woman we pa.s.sed was your first love. Were you, then, so chivalric? Was it to have been a second romaunt of 'King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid?'"

He met her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness and persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindled into the man whom she was so proud to show as her capture,--a man far off from Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she called him,--frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand,--what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had said about starving to death for a kind word? LOVE? He was sick of the sickly talk,--crushed it out of his heart with a savage scorn. He remembered his father, the night he died, had said in his weak ravings that G.o.d was love. Was He? No wonder, then, He was the G.o.d of women, and children, and unsuccessful men. For him, he was done with it. He was here with stronger purpose than to yield to weaknesses of the flesh. He had made his choice,--a straight, hard path upwards; he was deaf now and forever to any word of kindness or pity. As for this woman beside him, he would be just to her, in justice to himself: she never should know the loathing in his heart: just to her as to all living creatures. Some little, mean doubt kept up a sullen whisper of bought and sold,--sold,--but he laughed it down. He sat there with his head steadily turned towards her: a kingly face, she called it, and she was right,--it was a kingly face: with the same shallow, fixed smile on his mouth,--no weary cry went up to G.o.d that day so terrible in its pathos, I think: with the same dull consciousness that this was the trial night of his life,--that with the homely figure on the road-side he had turned his back on love and kindly happiness and warmth, on all that was weak and useless in the world. He had made his choice; he would abide by it,--he would abide by it. He said that over and over again, dulling down the death-gnawing of his outraged heart.

Miss Herne was quite contented, sitting by him, with herself, and the admiring world. She had no notion of trial nights in life. Not many temptations pierced through her callous, flabby temperament to sting her to defeat or triumph. There was for her no under-current of conflict, in these people whom she pa.s.sed, between self and the unseen power that Holmes sneered at, whose name was love; they were nothing but movables, pleasant or ugly to look at, well- or ill-dressed. There were no dark iron bars across her life for her soul to clutch and shake madly,--nothing "in the world amiss, to be unriddled by and by."

Little Margret, sitting by the muddy road, digging her fingers dully into the clover-roots, while she looked at the spot where the wheels had pa.s.sed, looked at life differently, it may be;--or old Joe Yare by the furnace-fire, his black face and gray hair bent over a torn old spelling-book Lois had given him. The night, perhaps, was going to be more to them than so many rainy hours for sleeping,--the time to be looked back on through coming lives as the hour when good and ill came to them, and they made their choice, and, as Holmes said, did abide by it.

It grew cool and darker. Holmes left the phaeton before they entered town, and turned back. He was going to see this Margret Howth, tell her what he meant to do. Because he was going to leave a clean record.

No one should accuse him of want of honour. This girl alone of all living beings had a right to see him as he stood, justified to himself.

Why she had this right, I do not think he answered to himself.

Besides, he must see her, if only on business. She must keep her place at the mill: he would not begin his new life by an act of injustice, taking the bread out of Margret's mouth. LITTLE MARGRET! He stopped suddenly, looking down into a deep pool of water by the road-side.

What madness of weariness crossed his brain just then I do not know.

He shook it off. Was he mad? Life was worth more to him than to other men, he thought; and perhaps he was right. He went slowly through the cool dusk, looking across the fields, up at the pale, frightened face of the moon hooded in clouds: he did not dare to look, with all his iron nerve, at the dark figure beyond him on the road. She was sitting there just where he had left her: he knew she would be. When he came closer, she got up, not looking towards him; but he saw her clasp her hands behind her, the fingers plucking weakly at each other. It was an old, childish fashion of hers, when she was frightened or hurt. It would only need a word, and he could be quiet and firm,--she was such a child compared to him: he always had thought of her so. He went on up to her slowly, and stopped; when she looked at him, he untied the linen bonnet that hid her face, and threw it back. How thin and tired the little face had grown! Poor child! He put his strong arm kindly about her, and stooped to kiss her hand, but she drew it away. G.o.d! what did she do that for? Did not she know that he could put his head beneath her foot then, he was so mad with pity for the woman he had wronged?

Not love, he thought, controlling himself,--it was only justice to be kind to her.

"You have been ill, Margret, these two years, while I was gone?"

He could not hear her answer; only saw that she looked up with a white, pitiful smile. Only a word it needed, he thought,--very kind and firm: and he must be quick,--he could not bear this long. But he held the little worn fingers, stroking them with an unutterable tenderness.

"You must let these fingers work for me, Margret," he said, at last, "when I am master in the mill."

"It is true, then, Stephen?"

"It is true,--yes."

She lifted her hand to her head, uncertainly: he held it tightly, and then let it go. What right had he to touch the dust upon her shoes,--he, bought and sold? She did not speak for a time; when she did, it was a weak and sick voice.

"I am glad. I saw her, you know. She is very beautiful."

The fingers were plucking at each other again; and a strange, vacant smile on her face, trying to look glad.

"You love her, Stephen?"

He was quiet and firm enough now.

"I do not. Her money will help me to become what I ought to be. She does not care for love. You want me to succeed, Margret? No one ever understood me as you did, child though you were."

Her whole face glowed.

"I know! I know! I did understand you!"

She said, lower, after a little while,--

"I knew you did not love her."

"There is no such thing as love in real life," he said, in his steeled voice. "You will know that, when you grow older. I used to believe in it once, myself."

She did not speak, only watched the slow motion of his lips, not looking into his eyes,--as she used to do in the old time. Whatever secret account lay between the souls of this man and woman came out now, and stood bare on their faces.

"I used to think that I, too, loved," he went on, in his low, hard tone. "But it kept me back, Margret, and"----

He was silent.

"I know, Stephen. It kept you back"----

"And I put it away. I put it away to-night, forever."

She did not speak; stood quite quiet, her head bent on her breast. His conscience was clear now. But he almost wished he had not said it, she was such a weak, sickly thing. She sat down at last, burying her face in her hands, with a shivering sob. He dared not trust him self to speak again.

"I am not proud,--as a woman ought to be," she said, wearily, when he wiped her clammy forehead.

"You loved me, then?" he whispered.

Her face flashed at the unmanly triumph; her puny frame started up, away from him.

"I did love you, Stephen. I did love you,--as you might be, not as you are,--not with those inhuman eyes. I do understand you,--I do. I know you for a better man than you know yourself this night."

She turned to go. He put his hand on her arm; something we have never seen on his face struggled up,--the better soul that she knew.

"Come back," he said, hoa.r.s.ely; "don't leave me with myself. Come back, Margret."

She did not come; stood leaning, her sudden strength gone, against the broken wall. There was a heavy silence. The night throbbed slow about them. Some late bird rose from the sedges of the pool, and with a frightened cry flapped its tired wings, and drifted into the dark. His eyes, through the gathering shadow, devoured the weak, trembling body, met the soul that looked at him, strong as his own. Was it because it knew and trusted him that all that was pure and strongest in his crushed nature struggled madly to be free? He thrust it down; the self-learned lesson of years was not to be conquered in a moment.

"There have been times," he said, in a smothered, restless voice, "when I thought you belonged to me. Not here, but before this life. My soul and body thirst and hunger for you, then, Margret."

She did not answer; her hands worked feebly together, the dull blood fainting in her veins.

Knowing only that the night yawned intolerable about her, that she was alone,--going mad with being alone. No thought of heaven or G.o.d in her soul: her craving eyes seeing him only. The strong, living man that she loved: her tired-out heart goading, aching to lie down on his brawny breast for one minute, and die there,--that was all.

She did not move: underneath the pain there was power, as Knowles thought.

He came nearer, and held up his arms to where she stood,--the heavy, masterful face pale and wet.

"I need you, Margret. I shall be nothing without you, now. Come, Margret, little Margret!"