Up The Hill And Over Part 45

Common sense shrank back before the invading flood of fear. What if G.o.d had listened? What if He had answered? Ministers, she knew, have great influence with G.o.d. What if He had said, "Yes"? What if all the trouble of last night, the blankness of to-day, were part of the answer?

"Never! Never!" she said. She almost said it aloud, so real had her fear been. Her eyes, fixed upon the minister's face, were terrified, but her soul was strong. Fearful of blasphemy, yet brave, she faced the bogie of a G.o.d her thought had evoked, saying, "I make my own choice. Take my lover from me if you will--I shall never give myself to another."

All this was very wrong, shocking even, especially in church. But it really happened and is apt to happen any Sunday in any church so long as human love rebels at the idea of a Divine love less tender than itself.

Gradually the panic fear died down. Esther's sane and well-balanced nature began to a.s.sert itself. Some voice, small but insistent, began to say, "G.o.d is not like that," and she listened and was comforted. She had not yet come to the love which casts out fear, but she was done with the fear which casts out love.

So that when on the church steps in the sunshine she felt Angus Macnair's hand tremble in hers, she was able to meet his eyes, straightly, understandingly, but unafraid.

CHAPTER XXVI

The manner in which Dr. Callandar spent that tragic Sunday is not clearly on record. We have watched Esther so closely that he has been permitted to escape our observation, and it would be manifestly unfair to expect any coherent account of the day from him. He knows that he went for a walk, early, and that he walked all day. He remembers once resting by the willow-fringed pool which had seen his introduction into Coombe, but he could not stay there. Between him and that hot June day lay the wreck of a world. Once he stumbled upon the Pine Lake road and followed it a little way. But here, too, memory came too close and drove him aside into the fields. There he tried to face his future fairly, under the calm sky. But it was hard work. With such a riot of feeling, it was difficult to think. His mind continually fell away into the contemplation of his own misery. It was a bad day, a day which left an ineffaceable mark.

With night came the first sign of peace, or rather of capitulation. He fought no more because he realised that there was nothing for which to fight. There had never been, from the very first moment, a possibility of escape, the smallest ray of hope. Fate had met him squarely and the issue had never been in doubt.

It was a "wonderful clear night of stars" when, having circled the town in his aimless wandering, he found himself opposite the schoolhouse gate and calm enough to allow his thoughts to dwell definitely upon Esther.

She, at least, was safe, and the knowledge brought pure thankfulness.

Not for anything in the world would he have had her entangled in this tragic coil. Leaning over the gate he saw the school steps, faintly white in the starlight. It needed small effort of imagination to see her there as he had seen her that first day--a happy girl, looking at him with the long, straight glance of unawakened youth. A great wave of protecting love went out to meet that vision. Self was lost in its immensity. As he had found her, so, please G.o.d, she was still and so he would leave her.

Then, somewhere in the back of his brain, a question sprang to vivid life. Was she the same? He knew that all day he had been fighting back that question. Last night something had frightened him--something glimpsed for a moment in Esther's face when she had come in from the garden to say good-night. Fancy, perhaps, or a trick of the lamplight.

She could not really have changed. He would not allow himself even to dream that she had changed.

By this time she would know about himself and Mary--know all that any one was to know. He had insisted upon that. Mary had promised to tell her to-day that they were to be married soon. Next time he saw her she would look upon him with different eyes; eyes which would see not her sometime friend and companion but her step-mother's future husband. He must steel himself for this. Probably she would laugh a little. He hoped she would laugh. Last night she had looked so--she had not looked like laughter. If she should laugh it would answer the last doubt in his heart. He would know that she was free.

Presently he felt himself to be unbearably weary. Physical needs, ignored all day, began to clamour. He must get home at once. No _outre_ proceedings must raise the easy breath of gossip. He must not flinch, he dared not run away, all must be done decently and in order. Let him only keep his head now--the bravest man need not look too far into the morrow.

It must be late, he knew. The road into Coombe was deserted. All the buggies of the country folk returning from evening service had pa.s.sed long ago and even the happy young couples indulging in a Sunday night "after church" flirtation had decorously sought their homes. He looked at his watch by the clear starlight. It was later even than he had thought. No need to avoid pa.s.sing the Elms, now; they would all be asleep--he might perhaps be able to sleep himself if he knew that no light burned in Esther's window.

There was no light in the house anywhere. It stood black in the shadow of its trees. The doctor found himself walking softly. His steps grew slower, paused. Irresistibly the "spirit in his feet" drew him to the closed gate from where he could see the black oblong of her window.

"She is asleep," he thought. "Of course she is asleep. Thank G.o.d!"

Then, on the instant of dropping his eyes from the window, he saw her.

She was standing quite near, in the shadow of the elm.

"Esther!" The one word leaped from his lips like a cry.

"Yes, it is I," she said.

She offered no word of explanation nor did any need of one occur to him. Moving from the shadow into the soft starlight she came toward him like the spirit of the night. But when she paused, so close that only the gate divided them, he saw that her eyes were wide and dark with trouble.

"I am so glad you came. I wanted to see you. I--I could not sleep." She spoke with the direct simplicity of a child, yet nothing could have shown more plainly that she was a child no longer. All her pretty girlish hesitation, all her happy shyness had pa.s.sed away on the breath of the great awakening. It was a woman who stood there, pale, remote, with a woman's question in her eyes.

The keen shock of the change in her filled Callandar with rebellious joy; it would be pain presently, but, just for the moment, love exulted shamelessly, claiming her own. He tried to answer her but no words came.

"You look very tired." She seemed not to notice his silence. "I must not keep you. But there is a question I want to ask. Mother told me to-night that you and she are to be married. Is it true?"

How incredible she was, he thought. How perfect in her direct and simple dignity. Yet there had crept into her tone a wistfulness which broke his heart.

"Yes. It is true." He could do no less than meet her on her own high ground.

"She said," the girl's sweet, remote voice went on, "that you had loved each other all your lives. Is that true, too?"

He had hoped that he might be spared the bitterness of this, but since only one answer was possible, "It is true," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "it is true that we loved each other--long ago."

"Long ago--and now?" He was to be spared nothing, it seemed. Her wide eyes searched his face. Lest she should read it too plainly, he bowed his head.

Then suddenly, even as she drew back from him, hurt to the heart, some trick of moonlight on his half-hidden face, linked to swift memory, showed her another moonlight night, a canoe, a story told--and in a flash the miracle had happened. Intuition had leaped the gulf of his enforced silence--Esther knew.

A great wonder grew in her eyes, an immense relief.

"Why," she spoke whisperingly, "I see, I know! She, my mother, is the girl you told me of. The girl you married--"

She did not need the confirmation of his miserable eyes. It was all quite plain. With a little broken sigh of understanding, she leaned her head against the gate post and, all child again, began to cry softly behind the shelter of her hands.

"Esther!"

He could say nothing, do nothing. He dared not even touch the dark, bent head. But we may well pity him as he watched her.

The girl's sobbing wore itself out and presently she lifted tear-drenched eyes, like the blue of the sky after rain. Her tragic, unnatural composure had all been wept away.

"I understand--now," she faltered. "Before, I didn't. I thought dreadful things. I thought that I--that you--oh, I couldn't bear the things I thought! But it's better now. You did love me--didn't you?"

"Before G.o.d--yes!"

She went on dreamily. "It would have been too terrible if you hadn't--if you had just pretended--had been amusing yourself--been false and base.

But I felt all along that you were never that. I knew there must be some explanation and it didn't seem wrong to ask. Instead of pretending that I didn't know all the things you had not time to say. Forgive me for ever doubting that you were brave and good."

"Spare me--"

She was not yet old enough to understand the tragic appeal. For she leaned nearer, laying her soft hand over his clenched ones.

"It is all so very, very sad," she said with quaint simplicity which was part of her, "but not so bad--oh, not nearly so bad as if you had been pretending--or I mistaken. Think!--How terrible to give one's love unworthily or unasked!"

"But you do not love me," he burst out, "you cannot! You must not!"

Never had he seen her eyes so sweet, so dark.

"I do love you. And I honour you above all men."

Before he could prevent her, she had stooped--her lips brushed his hand.

"Oh, my Dear!"--He had reached the limit of his strength--instant flight alone remained if he would keep the precious flower of her trust. And she, too, was trembling. But in the soft starlight they looked into each other's eyes, and what they saw there helped. Their hands clasped, but in that moment of parting neither thought of self, so both were strong.