Something indefinable in the clear, full gaze that met his daunted him.
He stared apprehensively at her. It seemed to him as if he were standing in cold and darkness looking in through the windows of her untroubled eyes at the warm, sunlit home which had once been his, when it had been exceeding well with him, but of which he had lost the key.
A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came sailing on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel"s knee.
"I was angry at first," she said, her voice falling across the silence like another leaf. "And then, after a time, I forgave you. And later still, much later, I found out that you had never injured me--that I had nothing to forgive."
He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained volubly--for here he felt he was on sure ground--that, on the contrary, she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an infernal blackguard, that men were coa.r.s.e brutes, not fit to kiss a good woman"s shoe-latchet, etc., etc. He identified his conduct with that of the whole s.e.x, without alluding to it as that of the individual Tristram. He made it clear that he did not claim to have behaved better than most men.
Rachel listened attentively. "And I actually loved him," she said to herself.
"But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her love raises a man, transfigures him, enn.o.bles his whole life," etc., etc.
"My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at the time,"
said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were spoken.
Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last; was the reproach he had been expecting.
He a.s.sured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once more.
He denounced the accursed morals of the day, above which he ought to have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all unmarried men.
"That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett," she said, scornfully, to herself, and then her cheek blanched as she remembered that Hugh was not exempt, after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient; but she waited quietly for the inevitable proposal.
Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic and facile utterance, which the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, had become so entangled in the morals of the age that it took him some time to extricate himself from the subject before he could pa.s.s on to plead, in an impa.s.sioned manner, the cause of the man, unworthy though he might be, who had long loved her, loved her now, and would always love her, in this world and the next.
It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had many.
But if the proposal was long, the refusal was longer. Rachel, who had a good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic life made great demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have not seen them for a day or two.
Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at first impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him devotedly could not at last prevail against the odious conviction that she was determined not to marry him.
"Then, in that case, you never loved me?"
"I do not love you now."
"You are determined not to marry?"
"On the contrary, I hope to do so."
Rachel"s words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment that she hoped anything of the kind.
"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth."
"I prefer several others."
Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally with his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence, and she had learned it.
"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an aristocrat than with a plain man of your own cla.s.s, who, whatever his faults may be, loves you for yourself."
Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is as offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman?
Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly.
"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that touch of _hauteur_ which, when the vulgar have at last drawn it upon themselves by the insolence which is the under side of their courtesy, always has the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull.
In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. Tristram stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two rabbits to hurry back into their holes.
Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again.
His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of rank, now that her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if he had not heard it from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she had chosen.
It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions from him and to bid her good-bye.
"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and looking very much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman"s No," which at the last moment meant "Yes." And then there was another which chronicled how, after several stanzas of upbraiding, "we rushed into each other"s arms."
Both recurred to him now. He had often thought how true they were.
"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who apparently had an unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other and to our--former attachment."
"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful she would lose him.
"Good-bye."
"You understand it is for always?"
"I do."
He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she really let him go?
"I am not the kind of man to be whistled back," he said, fiercely. It was an appeal and a defiance, for he was just the kind of man, and they both knew it.
"Of course not."
"That is your last word?"
"My last word."
He dropped her hand and half turned to go.
She made no sign.
Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind him. At the little gate he stopped a moment, listening intently. No recalling voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were talking about. With a trembling hand he slammed the gate and departed.
Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long that the stooping sun found out the solemn, outstretched arms of the cedar, and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle"s wing. Each little twig and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold against the twilight that lurked beneath the heavy boughs.
She sat so still that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, and struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her, first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, with the other, and decided that she was harmless.
Presently a robin dropped down close to her, flashing up his gray under wing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, and from its sun-stirred depths said his say.
The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons, when the shadows are lengthening, he sings sadness into your heart. If you are joyful shut your ears against him, for you may keep peace, but never joy, while he is singing. He knows all about it, "love"s labor lost," the gray face of young Love dead, the hard-wrought grave in the live rock where he is buried. And he tells of it again and again and again, as if Love"s sharp sword had indeed reddened his little breast, until the heart aches to hear him. But he tells also that consolation is folded not in forgetfulness, but in remembrance. That is why he sings in the silence of the autumn dawn, before Memory closes her eyes, and again near sunset, when Memory wakes.
Still Rachel sat motionless.