the law of change, of passage—the pressure of time, in fact—is so strong upon everything that comes under its law at all, that not even in memory can we remain stationary. fain, fain, would rosamond have lingered upon the first stage of that journey into the past she had so singularly engaged upon. but, in spite of herself, the wheels were turning, the moments dropping; from within as well as from without, she was forced on and on, and she knew that in a little while she must reach the parting of the ways.
it having been ruled for us that life is almost all change, and that change is mostly sorrow, it is a dispensation of mercy that we should be blind travellers along the road, and never know what lies beyond. but rosamond, who had rebelled against the natural law, was now, with eyes unsealed, advancing fatally towards the way of sorrows she had already once traversed, refusing to mourn at her appointed hour.
fain would she have walked in the sheltered valley, fain even called back the old sleep of coldness. in vain. time was marching, and she must march. and two there were that drove her forward, besides the relentless invisible power—bethune, with his expectant close presence, and sir arthur, unbearable menace from the distance.
* * * * *
"and then, you know, the summons came," said she.
"i know," he answered. then there was silence between them.
lady gerardine had come to major bethune in the little library where he spent some hours each morning over his work. these last days she had shown an unaccountable distaste to his presence in the attic room. and he, studying her now, thought that, in this short week of his visit, she had altered and wasted; that the bloom had faded on her cheek, and that cheek itself was faintly hollowed. he had been poring over some old maps of the baroghil district, pipe in mouth, when she entered upon him. and at sight of her, he had risen to his feet, putting aside the briar with a muttered apology. but she, arrested in her advance, had stood inhaling the vapour of his tobacco, her lips parted with a quivering that was half smile, half pain.
"i like it," she had said dreamily. "it brings me back."
awkward he nearly always felt himself before her, never more so than at these moments of self-betrayal on her part, when every glimpse of her innermost feeling contradicted the hard facts of her life. he stood stiffly, not taking up his pipe at her bidding. then, pulling herself together, she had advanced again, ceremoniously requesting him to be seated. she had only come to bring him another note, which she had omitted to join to those annals of harry english's life up to their marriage, already in his hands.
he had just glanced at it and flicked it on one side, and then at the expectancy of his silence, she had grown pale. there could be no turning back, she did not ask it, scarcely hoped for it. but, o god, if she might wait a little longer!
she sank into the worn leather armchair. it was a small room, lined with volumes, and the air was full of the smell of ancient bindings, ancient paper and print; that good smell of books, so grateful to the nostrils of one who loves them, mingled with the pungency of bethune's tobacco.
the wild orchard came quite close to the window and across the panes, under an impatient wind, the empty boughs went ceaselessly up and down like withered arms upon some perpetual useless signalling. to rosamond they seemed spectres of past summers, waving her back from their own hopeless winter. the room was warm and rosy with firelight, but in her heart she felt cold. and major bethune sat waiting.
"i only had one or two letters from him," she faltered at last; "and then came the silence." her lovely mouth twitched with pain; raymond bethune turned his eyes away from her face.
"he joined us at gilgit," he said, staring out at the frantic boughs. "i remember how he looked, as he jogged in, towards evening, with his fellows—white with dust, his very hair powdered."
she clasped her hands; the tension slightly relaxed.
"you all loved him?" she said softly.
"loved him!" he gave a short laugh. "well, he was a sort of god to me, and to the men too. some of the subs thought him hard on them—so he was, hard as nails."
astonishment filled her gaze.
"gad," said the man, "i remember poor little fane—he went during the siege, fever—i remember the little fellow saying, half crying: 'i think english is made of stone.' but it was before he had seen him at the fighting. that was a leader of men!"
"hard!" said lady gerardine. "harry made of stone!" she gave a low laugh, half indignant.
"don't you know," said bethune, "that here"—he tapped the jagged lines of the mountain maps—"you can't do anything if you're not harder than the rocks? and with those devils of ours," his own face softened oddly as he spoke; "they're hard enough—they're devils, i tell you—to lead them right, you've got to be more than devil yourself—you've got to be—an archangel."
some vision of a glorious fighting michael, with a stern serene face of immutable justice, featured with the beauty of the dead, rose before rosamond. she flushed and trembled; then she thought back again and with anger.
"ah, but his heart," she said; "ah, you did not know him!"
he wheeled round upon her and gazed at her, his cold eyes singularly enkindled.
"you forget," said he, and quoted "that every man 'boasts two soul sides, one to face the world with, one to show a woman when he loves her.'"
"ah!" said rosamond.—it was a tender cry, as if she had taken something very lovely to her heart and was holding it close. with an abrupt movement bethune turned back to his table; his harsh face looked harsher and more unemotional than usual, and he began folding up his papers as if he thought the conversation had lasted long enough.
"perhaps to-morrow," he said, "you will be able to give me the beginning of the siege papers."
"i will try," said rosamond, catching her breath. and then, after a moment, she rose and left him without another word.
* * * * *
rosamond felt restless; the walls of the house oppressed her; the sound of the piano in the drawing-room was maddening; she wanted to be out in the wide spaces with her overwhelming thoughts. she caught up a cape, drew the hood over her head, and went quickly forth to meet the december wind.
down the grass-grown avenues, under the bereft and complaining orchard trees, she went, making for the downs. at the boundary gate she met the old one-armed postman toiling with his burden. he thrust a letter into her hand and passed on. she saw that it was addressed in sir arthur's writing, and bore the stamp of melbury. she broke it open and read impatiently, eager to be back with her absorbing dream. her husband was urgently summoning her to join him at once, under lady aspasia's roof. he expressed surprise, tinged with dissatisfaction, that lady aspasia's kind letter of invitation to her should have remained unanswered.
"no doubt, dear," sir arthur wrote, "you are waiting until you can ascertain the date of your visitor's departure, but this must not be allowed to interfere." here was a command. rosamond gave a vague laugh.
"who is the guest, by the way? i am expecting a letter from you, forwarded from london. probably you have written to claridge's. i would gladly accede to your request and come at once to the manor-house...." she stared, as the phrase caught her eyes, then laughed again: "poor man—what was he thinking of?"
she crumpled the sheet in her hand and walked on. the wind blew fiercely across the downs, every leaf and spray, every dry gorse-bush, every blade of rank grass was writhen and bent in the same direction. she struggled to the shelter of a hazel copse and sat her down.
before her stretched the moorland, dun-grey and yellow, dipping to the horizon; above her head the sky was leaden grey, charged with cloud wrack—a huge bowl of storm. she thought of that glowing indian morning, when he had told her he must leave her, and of the twenty-four hours that had elapsed between that moment and their parting. what tenderness, gentler than a woman's, had he not revealed to her then—harry english, the hard man, fierce angel-leader of devils! and the words of browning rushed back upon her, once again as a message of balm—
... two soul sides, one to face the world with,
one to show a woman when he loves her.
ah, nothing could rob her of that! she had been the woman he had loved, and the soul side he had shown to her, most generous, most sacred, most beautiful, was what no other being in the universe could have from him, not even his god!
they had parted in the dawn, the indian dawn, all shot with flame. not once had he faltered in his resolute cheerfulness. he had kissed her and blessed her as she lay in bed. but at the door he had halted to look upon her a last time; and she was weeping. then he had flung himself back beside her ... and now she closed her eyes and shuddered on the memory of his last kisses.
with the chill barren earth beneath her, the lowering winter sky above, the sun-warmth of his love again enfolded her. it was as if his presence brooded upon her. oh, could she but die and be with him! "harry, i am yours," she called to him in the passion of her soul, "yours only—love, take me!"
so strong seemed the atmosphere of his spirit about her, that she looked round wildly, almost feeling as if her soul-cry must have called back the dead. there stretched the iron earth, there hung the relentless skies—the world was empty.
the copse where she had chosen to rest was on the higher downs, and before her the land fell away gently yet so surely that the high chimney-stack of the old ancient house would scarcely have caught the eye against the opposite slope, save for its rising smoke columns, which the wind seized and tore to flakes.
as she gazed, unseeing, upon the desolate spectacle, a gleam of something unwonted, something like a huge crimson bird, moved vaguely tropical in all the duns and greys. she wondered awhile, and then realised: realised with a sudden sick spasm.
it was the red turban of muhammed saif-u-din. how sinister it looked, how unnatural a bloodstain under this pale english sky! yonder son of the treacherous race that she could not banish from her life, even in this peaceful abode of her widowhood—sir arthur's secretary.... sir arthur! her husband! the man to whom she had given the claim of what was left of her life! ... thought followed on thought up to this culminating point. and then it was to lady gerardine as if some veil was rent before her mental vision, and she saw—saw at last—with that agony to the sight of sudden glare in the darkness, what she had done.
these last weeks she had lived in a dream, and every aspiration of her soul, every tendency of her life, had drifted always further away from the existence she and fate had chosen for herself. now there was a gulf between rosamond english and rosamond gerardine; and by the hot recoil of her blood she knew that it was unsurmountable. how could she ever go back; again be wife of the man she loved not, she who was widow of the man she loved!
she looked for the letter in her hand to cast it from her, and found that it had already escaped her careless hold. upon the yellow grass at her feet the wind was chasing it; turning it mockingly over and over, a contemptible foolish thing, meanly out of place among the withered leaves, the naturally dying things of the fields.
so little place had sir arthur gerardine in the life of rosamond—rosamond, the widow of harry english!
