From where she stood she looked past the mill to the released and pacified water circling round the village, and then stretching away, silver band beyond silver band, in the direction of Riebenbridge. The sun had vanquished the mist, and lay warmly on the cl.u.s.tered cottages and the grey church tower, and on the old red and blue facade of Hulver among its hollies. And very high up above it all stretched a sky of tiny shredded clouds like a flock of a thousand thousand sheep.
How tranquil it all was, and how closely akin to her, how fraught with mysterious meaning!--as the kind meadows and trees ever do seem fraught where we have met Love, even the Love that is unequal, and presently pa.s.ses away.
She must leave it all, and she must part with Roger. She had thought of him as her husband. She had thought of the children she should bear him.
She looked at the water with eyes as tearless as a year ago, and saw her happiness pa.s.s like a bubble on its surface, break like the iridescent bubble that it is on life"s rough river. But the water held no temptation for her to-day. She had pa.s.sed the place where we are intolerant of burdens. She saw that they are the common lot. Roger and Janey had borne theirs in patience and in silence and without self-pity for years. They were her ideal, and she must try to be like them. She did not need her solemn promise to d.i.c.k to keep her from the water"s edge, though her sense of desolation was greater to-day than it had been a year ago. For there had been pride and resentment in her heart then, and it is not a wounded devotion but a wounded self-love which arouses resentment in our hearts.
She felt no anger to-day, no bitter sense of humiliation, but her heart ached for Roger. Something in her needed him, needed him. There was no romance now as she had once known it, no field of lilies under a new moon. Her love for Roger had gone deeper, where all love must go, if it is to survive its rainbow youth. She had thought she had found an abiding city in Roger"s heart. But he had let her leave him without a word after her confession. He had not called her back. He had not written to her since.
"I am not good enough for him," said Annette to herself. "That is the truth. He and Janey are too far above me."
She longed for a moment that the position might have been reversed, that it might have been she who was too good for Roger--only it was unthinkable. But if _he_ had been under some cloud, then she knew that they would not have had to part.
She had reached the stile where the water meadows begin, and instinctively she stood still and looked at her little world once more, and thankfulness flooded her heart. After all, Roger had come in for his inheritance, for this place which he loved so stubbornly. She was not what he thought, but if she had been, if she had never had her mad moment, if she had never gone to Fontainebleau, it was almost certain d.i.c.k would never have made his will. She had at any rate done that for Roger. Out of evil good had come--if not to her, to him. She crossed the stile, where the river bent away from the path, and then came back to it, slow and peaceful once more, whispering amid its reeds, the flurry of the mill-race all forgotten. Would she one day--when she was very old--would she also forget?
Across the empty field thin smoke wreaths came drifting. Here too they had been burning the weeds. At her feet, at the water"s edge, blue eyes of forget-me-not peered suddenly at her. It had no right to be in flower now. She stooped over the low bank, holding by a twisted willow branch, and reached it and put it in her bosom. And as she looked at it, it seemed to Annette that in some forgotten past she had wandered in a great peace by a stream such as this, a kind understanding stream, and she had gathered a spray of forget-me-not such as this, and had put it in her bosom, and she had met beside the stream one that loved her: and all had been well, exceeding well.
A great peace enfolded her, as a mother enfolds her new-born babe. She was wrapt away from pain.
Along the narrow path by the water"s edge Roger was coming: now dimly seen through the curling smoke, now visible in the sunshine. Annette felt no surprise at seeing him. She had not heard of his return, but she knew now that she had been waiting for him.
He came up to her and then stopped. Neither held out a hand, as they looked gravely at each other. Then he explained something about having missed the last train from Ipswich, and how he had slept there, and had come out to Riebenbridge by the first train this morning.
"I have the will," he said, and touched his breast. And his eyes pa.s.sed beyond her to the familiar picture he knew so well, of Riff beyond the river, and the low church tower, and the old house among the trees. He looked long at it all, and Annette saw that his inheritance was his first thought. It seemed to her natural. There were many, many women in the world, but only one Hulver.
His honest, tired face quivered.
"I owe it to you," he said.
She did not answer. She turned with him, and they went a few steps in silence; and if she had not been wrapt away from all pain, I think she must have been wounded by his choosing that moment to tell her that the notary had p.r.o.nounced Hulver "Heevair," and that those French lawyers were a very ignorant lot. But he was in reality only getting ready to say something, and it was his habit to say something else while doing so. He had no fear of being _ba.n.a.l_. It was a word he had never heard.
He informed her which hotel he had put up at in Ipswich, and how he had had a couple of poached eggs on arrival. Then he stopped.
"Annette," he said, "of course you understood about my not writing to you, because I ought to have written."
Annette said faintly, as all women must say, that she had understood. No doubt she had, but not in the sense which he imagined.
"I owe it all to you," he said again, "but I shouldn"t have any happiness in it unless I had you too. Annette, will you marry me?"
She shook her head. But there would be no marriages at all if men took any notice of such bagatelles as that. Roger pressed stolidly forward.
"I had not time to say anything the other day," he said, hurrying over what even he realized was thin ice. "You were gone all in a flash.
But--but, Annette, nothing you said then makes any change in my feeling for you. I wanted to marry you before, and I want to marry you now."
"Didn"t they--the doctor and the notary--didn"t they tell you when you saw my signature that I was--guilty?"
"Yes," said Roger firmly, "they did. The doctor spoke of you with great respect, but he did think so. But you have told me you were not. That is enough for me. Will you marry me, Annette?"
"You are good, Roger," she said, looking at him with a great tenderness,--"good all through. That is why you think I am good too. But the will remains. My signature to it remains. That _must_ be known when the will is proved. Mrs. Stoddart says so. She said my good name must suffer. I am afraid if I married you that you and Janey would be the only two people in Riff who would believe that I was innocent."
"And is not my belief enough?"
She looked at him with love unspeakable.
"It is enough for me," she said, "but not for you. You would not be happy, or only for a little bit, not for long, with a wife whom every one, every one from the Bishop to the cowman, believed to be d.i.c.k"s cast-off mistress."
Roger set his teeth, and became his usual plum colour.
"We would live it down."
"No," she said. "That is the kind of thing that is never lived down--at least, not in places like this. I know enough to know that."
He knew it too. He knew it better than she did.
He got the will slowly out of his pocket and opened it. They looked together at her signature. Roger saw it through tears of rage, and crushed the paper together again into his pocket.
"Oh! Annette," he said, with a groan. "Why did you sign it?"
"I did it to please d.i.c.k," she said.
Across the water the church bell called to an early service. Roger looked once more at his little world, grown shadowy and indistinct in a veil of smoke. It seemed as if his happiness were fading and eddying away into thin air with the eddies of blue smoke.
"We must part," said Annette. "I am sure you see that."
The forget-me-not fell from her bosom, and she let it lie. He looked back at her. He had become very pale.
"I see one thing," he said fiercely, "and that is that I can"t live without you, and what is more, I don"t mean to. If you will marry me, I"ll stand the racket about the scandal. Hulver is no good to me without you. My life is no good to me without you. If you won"t marry me, I"ll marry no one, so help me G.o.d. If you won"t take me, I shall never have any happiness at all. So now you know!--with your talk of parting."
She did not answer. She stooped and picked up the forget-me-not again, and put it back in her bosom. Perhaps she thought that was an answer.
"Annette," he said slowly, "do you care for me enough to marry me and live here with me? You as my wife and Hulver as my home are the two things I want. But that is all very well for me. The scandal will fall worst on you. If I can stand it, can you?"
"Yes."
"It will come very hard on you, Annette."
"I don"t mind."
"I shan"t be able to shield you from evil tongues. There is not a soul in the village that won"t end by knowing, sooner or later. And they think all the world of you now. Can you bear all this--for my sake?"
"Yes."
"And yet you"re crying, Annette."
"I was thinking about the aunts. They will feel it so dreadfully, and so will Mrs. Nicholls. I"m very fond of Mrs. Nicholls."
He caught her to him and kissed her pa.s.sionately.
"Do you never think of yourself?" he stammered. "You chucked your name away to please poor d.i.c.k. And you"re ready to marry me and brave it out--to please me."