"I have been calling on your friend, Miss Gresley," said Hugh, after he had overcome his momentary irritation at finding Mr. Harvey was on Rachel"s other side. "I did not know until her brother dined here last night that she lived so near."
"Did not Mrs. Loftus tell you?" said Rachel, with a remembrance of Sybell"s remarks before dinner.
"She told me after I had mentioned my wish to go and see her. She even implored me so repeatedly to go that I--"
"Nearly did not go at all."
"Exactly. But in this case I persevered because I am, or hope I am, a friend of hers. But I was not rewarded."
"I thought you said you had seen her."
"Oh yes, I saw her, and I saw that she looked very ill. But I found it impossible to have any conversation with her in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Gresley. Whenever I spoke to her Mr. Gresley answered, and sometimes Mrs. Gresley also. In fact, Mr. Gresley considered the call as paid to himself. Mrs. Loftus tells me he is much cleverer than his sister, but I did not gain that impression. And after I had given tongue to every plat.i.tude I could think of I had to take my leave."
"Hester ought to have come to the rescue."
"She did try. She offered to show me the short cut to Wilderleigh across the fields. But unluckily--"
"I can guess what you are going to say."
"I am sure you can. Mr. Gresley accompanied us, and Miss Gresley turned back at the first gate."
"You have my sympathy."
"I hope I have, for I have had a severe time of it. Mr. Gresley was most cordial," continued Hugh, ruefully, "and said what a pleasure it was to him to meet any one who was interested in intellectual subjects. I suppose he was referring to my plat.i.tudes. He said living in the country cut him off almost entirely from the society of his mental equals, so much so that at times he had thoughts of moving to London and making a little centre for intellectual society. According to him the whole neighborhood was sunk in a state of hopeless apathy, with the exception of Mrs. Loftus. He said she was the only really clever, cultivated person in Middleshire."
"Did he? How about the Bishop of Southminster?"
"He did not mention him. My acquaintance with Mrs. Loftus is of the slightest," added Hugh, interrogatively, looking at his graceful, animated hostess.
"I imagined you knew her fairly well, as you are staying here."
"No. She asked me rather late in the day. I fancy I was a "fill up." I accepted in the hope, rather a vague one, that I might meet you here."
To Rachel"s surprise her heart actually paid Hugh the compliment of beating a shade faster than its wont. She looked straight in front of her, and her absent eyes fell on Mr. Tristram sitting opposite, talking somewhat sulkily to Miss Barker. Rachel looked steadily at him.
Mr. Tristram had been handsome once, and four years had altered him but little in that respect. He had not yet grown stout, but it was evident that Nature had that injury in reserve for him. To grow stout is not necessarily to look common, but if there is an element of inherent commonness in man or woman, a very little additional surface will make it manifest, as an enlarged photograph magnifies its own defects. The "little more and how much it is" had come upon the unhappy Tristram, once the slimmest of the slim. Life had evidently not gone too well with him. Self-pity and the hara.s.sed look which comes of annoyance with trifles had set their mark upon him. His art had not taken possession of him. "High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone." But they sometimes faint also in bachelor lodgings. The whole effect of the man was second-rate, mentally, morally, socially. He seemed exactly on a par with the second-rate friends with whom Sybell loved to surround herself. Hugh and d.i.c.k were taking their revenge on the rival who blocked their way.
Whatever their faults might be, they were gentlemen, and Mr. Tristram was only "a perfect gentleman." Rachel had not known the difference when she was young. She saw it now.
"I trust, Miss West," said the deep voice of Mr. Harvey, revolving himself and his solitaire slowly towards her, that I have your sympathy in the great cause to which I have dedicated myself, the emanc.i.p.ation of woman."
"I thought the new woman had effected her own emanc.i.p.ation," said Rachel.
Mr. Harvey paid no more attention to her remark than any one with a theory to propound which must be delivered to the world as a whole.
"I venture to think," he continued, his heavy, l.u.s.treless eyes coming to a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in _The Princess_, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that respect. I hold"--in a voice calculated to impress the whole table--"that woman is man"s superior, and that she degrades herself when she endeavors to place herself on an equality with him."
There was a momentary silence, like that which travellers tell us succeeds the roar of the lion in his primeval forest, silencing even the twitter of the birds.
"How true that is!" said Sybell, awed by the lurid splendor of Mr.
Harvey"s genius. "Woman is man"s superior, not his equal. I have felt that all my life, but I never quite saw how until this moment. Don"t you think so, too, Miss Barker?"
"I have never lost an opportunity of a.s.serting it," said the Apostle, her elbow on Mr. Tristram"s bread, looking at Mr. Harvey with some asperity for poaching on her manor.
"All sensible women have been agreed for years on that point."
CHAPTER XXIII
With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone, We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish "twere done!
Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.
--MATTHEW ARNOLD.
It was Sunday morning. The night was sinking out of the sky to lean faint unto death upon the bosom of the earth. The great forms of the trees, felt rather than seen, were darkness made visible. Among the night of high elms round Warpington a single yellow light burned in an upper window. It had been burning all night. And now, as the night waned, the little light waned with it. At least, it was suddenly blown out.
Hester came to the window and looked out. There was light, but there was no dawn as yet. In the gray sky over the gray land the morning-star, alone and splendid, kept watch in the east.
She sat down and leaned her brow against the pane. She did not know that it was aching. She did not know that she was cold, exhausted; so exhausted that the morning-star in the outer heaven and the morning-star in her soul were to her the same. They stooped together, they merged into one great light, heralding a perfect day presently to be.
The night was over, and that other long night of travail and patience and faith, and strong rowing in darkness against the stream, was over, too, at last--at last. _The book was finished_.
The tears fell slowly from Hester"s eyes on to her clasped hands, those blessed tears which no human hand shall ever intervene to wipe away.
To some of us Christ comes in the dawn of the spiritual life walking upon the troubled waves of art. And we recognize Him, and would fain go to meet Him. But our companions and our own fears dissuade us. They say it is only a spirit, and that Christ does not walk on water, that the land whither we are rowing is the place He has Himself appointed for us to meet Him. So our little faith keeps us in the boat, or fails us in the waves of that windswept sea.
It seemed to Hester as if once, long ago, shrinking and shivering, she had stood in despair upon the sh.o.r.e of a great sea, and had heard a voice from the other side say, "Come over." She had stopped her ears; she had tried not to go. She had shrunk back a hundred times from the cold touch of the water that each time she essayed let her trembling foot through it. And now, after an interminable interval, after she had trusted and doubted, had fallen and been sustained, had met the wind and the rain, after she had sunk in despair and risen again, she knew not how, now at length a great wave--the last--had cast her up half drowned upon the sh.o.r.e. A miracle had happened. She had reached the other side, and was lying in a great peace after the storm upon the solemn sh.o.r.e under a great white star.
Hester sat motionless. The star paled and paled before the coming of a greater than he. Across the pause which G.o.d has set "twixt night and day came the first word of the robin. It reached Hester"s ear as from another world--a world that had been left behind. The fragmentary notes floated up to her from an immeasurable distance, like scattered bubbles through deep water.
The day was coming. G.o.d"s creatures of tree and field and hill took form. Man"s creature, the little stout church in their midst, thrust once more its plebeian outline against G.o.d"s sky. Dim shapes moved athwart the vacancy of the meadows. Voices called through the gray.
Close against the eaves a secret was twittered, was pa.s.sed from beak to beak. In the nursery below a little twitter of waking children broke the stillness of the house.
But Hester did not hear it. She had fallen into a deep sleep in the low window-seat, with her pale forehead against the pane; a sleep so deep that even the alarum of the baby did not rouse her, nor the entrance of Emma with the hot water.
"James," said Mrs. Gresley, an hour later; as she and her husband returned through the white mist from early celebration, "Hester was not there. I thought she had promised to come."
"She had."
There was a moment"s silence.
"Perhaps she is not well," said Mr. Gresley, closing the church-yard gate into the garden.
Mrs. Gresley"s heart swelled with a sense of injustice. She had often been unwell, often in feeble health before the birth of her children, but had she ever pleaded ill-health as an excuse for absenting herself from one of the many services which her husband held to be the main-spring of the religious life?
"I do not think she can be very unwell. She is standing by the magnolia now," she said, her lip quivering, and withdrawing her hand from her husband"s arm. She almost hated the slight, graceful figure, which was not of her world, which was, as she thought, coming between her and her husband.