a deep and wonderful tone of tenderness had sounded in joan gildersedge’s heart since that brief passion-play amid the ruins of domremy. it was an easier hand that had trimmed the lamp and scattered violet-dust over the snow-white altar. there was something more rich and maternal in her mood towards the man, something more passionate also, more red of heart. there was more mystery, more strangeness in her love than before. it was no longer an individual sentiment, a single vision of truth and beauty, a white statue scatheless in the sun. there was something sacrificial about it, a promise of universality that uttered the first exultant cry of martyrdom. she began to think more of the man’s soul than her own, to imagine his moods, to forecast his presentiments. sympathy was the golden woof; the instinct of love, the subtle shuttle.
gabriel strong felt the change in the girl when he kept the promise he had made to her at domremy, and came to see her at burnt house, even in her own home. the contrasts in his existence smote him forcibly on the occasion. he had spent the previous day at rilchester in political inanities, had attended a philanthropic meeting, and listened to platitudes falling like perpetual sand upon the brain. the sterility of the part he played had dawned upon him with amazing forcefulness. he had confessed to himself, as he had driven home at night, the unctuous hypocrisy of it all, the infirm purpose rusty as an old man’s love. the contrast touched him to the soul when he approached burnt house the following afternoon, alone and on foot. the place seemed like a green and glorious refuge to him, where he could breathe in the essence of heaven and renew life as at some holy well.
the girl’s transfiguration reacted vividly upon his sensitive thought. she seemed to have grown taller, more stately, more serious. there was a species of infinite forethought in her manner towards him, a tender earnestness that made her gray eyes luminous and wonderful. it was a child’s countenance no longer, for the divine element had entered into her soul.
she took him with her onto the moors that noontide, where the hills stood purple against the sky and valleys were steeped in a glamour of mist. walking close at his elbow, but looking seldom in his face, she spoke little, seeming intent rather on making her sympathy a refuge for the man’s tired thoughts. she was infinitely restful and tender, calm as moonlight upon still water. to gabriel that afternoon she appeared as a twin sister to his own beloved judith, save that she was crowned with a divine mystery such as a sister could never claim.
“you are tired,” she had said, as they crossed the moors and met a soft wind from the sea.
“why do you think that?” he asked her, with a kind of quiet pain in his voice.
“i can see it in your eyes. are not all your moods intelligible to me?”
“you are right,” he answered, with his melancholy smile; “the trivialities of life are beginning to weigh upon me. i would give much gold to be young again, and free.”
“are you so old?”
“as old as a youth who has been bred in a dungeon, whose best years have been tombed in stone.”
“perhaps you think too much,” she said.
“perhaps! who can help thinking when one has made mistakes. i hope to think some day for the benefit of others.”
“you would warn them?”
“yes,” he said, with a sad simplicity; “that is the best use to which we can put our errors. but i am weary of psychology for the moment. let us forget problems and be children.”
she looked over the world with half-closed lids, the sun beating upon her face.
“as you will,” she said, quietly; “and yet i think a time comes when it is impossible to be a child again, when the mind ceases to ebb and flow, but moves like a river perpetually towards the sea. the intense realism of life burns upon the brain and reduces the flimsier interests to ashes. only the iron is left, and that is at white heat.”
“how do you know all this?” he asked.
“it is what life seems to be teaching me.”
“yes,” he said, with a sudden, strange solemnity; “never more shall we be children on earth, for the heart of the child is tombed in the ice of knowledge. it is all plain to me now. life is a grim thing to those who are only half strong. i have often thought of late that there is nothing left me worth living for.”
“do you mean it?” she asked, almost hastily.
“no,” he said, looking in her eyes and reading his soul’s image in them; “i spoke only of the life that is; you are part of the ideal.”
there was a sudden, strange intensity of feeling upon her face. her eyes were wide and appealing. she drew her breath in deeply like one who sings.
“gabriel,” she said.
he glanced at her, and the color on his bronzed face deepened. his silence told her that he waited.
“i want to live; i want to be real to you, flesh and blood, a woman, not a mere spirit.”
“joan!”
“can i not be real to you?”
“you are the most splendid and ideal reality heaven has ever vouchsafed to me.”
“ah! not as i could wish,” she said. “we seem all intellect at times, you and i. yet—if i say more i shall hurt you. ah! god knows, i want to be a help to you.”
“before god, you help me,” he said, drawing in a deep breath.
beyond the moors the hills were streaks of blue in a golden atmosphere. the air was sultry, preternaturally clear, eloquent of stormy weather. everywhere the gorse was tonguing into flame. the meadows were rimmed with gold as the two passed back towards the dark knolls of the yews and cypresses. there was a certain sadness over them both, a prophecy of evil that seemed to hover over their hearts like clouds over silent mountain tarns.
joan stood in the gravel drive and swung her hat by the strings. she did not look at the man as she spoke.
“my father is in the garden,” she said.
“yes?”
“will you see him?”
“if you wish it,” he said, quickly.
“wait. i will go to him first; he may be asleep.”
she disappeared amid the dark whorls of the cypress boughs like a white figure of truth. gabriel leaned against the trellis and covered his face with his hand. sudden foreboding, a sense of imminent woe, gathered about his soul like a heavy cloud massing overhead. a fatalistic spirit seemed to seize on him out of the unknown. had he then driven the childhood out of this girl’s life and made her wise to her own distress. he was conscious suddenly of the supreme egotism that had grown up flesh of his flesh, spirit of his spirit. his face was white and strained when joan reappeared from amid the trees.
“he is not there,” she said.
she marked the look on the man’s face—the gray, tired stare of one in pain.
“gabriel, what ails you?”
her eyes were very bright and eager, and there was a kind of half-fear on her face.
“nothing,” he said. “i am only a little faint.”
she opened the heavy oak door, beckoned him across the hall, and led him into a large, shadowy room, lighted by three mullioned windows towards the west. wainscoting covered the walls. the floor was of parqueterie carpeted with several old rugs. antique china, interspersed with bowls of anemones, red and blue, filled the carved mantel-shelf. the grate was black and cumbersome, the hearth inlaid with tiles of a dark-green color. in the centre of the room a round mahogany table bore a great blue bowl ablaze with marsh marigolds. heavy damask red curtains were half drawn across the window recesses. joan flung one back, opened a casement frame, pointed gabriel to the cushioned window-seat.
“rest there, dear; i must go and find my father.”
the man leaned back against the panelling with a saddened sense of peace. the antique yet fragrant flavor of the room floated upon him, redolent of the past. there was infinite magic in the girl’s gentle masterfulness, and her words had set his heart hurrying. if this old house was only his own home, and joan his wife, golden emblem of womanhood moving like sunlight in dark places! he played with the phantasm as a poet dallies with a splendid dream.
when joan came back to him she came like the damsel of vision, gracious and adorable. she had loosed her hair upon her shoulders; there were red wind-flowers in the bosom of her creamy blouse; a belt of silver-work topped the smooth sweep of her olive-green skirt. yet there was a tired look upon her face, as though she were keeping something hid within her heart. she sat down on a little tapestry-covered sofa, with her face towards the window.
“my father is asleep,” she said, with a pensive stare. “he is growing very weak and feeble. i have another woman to help me. i think she was hewn out of granite. are you better now?”
“yes,” he said, leaning back against the wainscoting and watching her face with a melancholy pride. “it is very restful here; i breathe the air that moves about you, and am at peace. you, too, look tired.”
her face clouded suddenly, and there was a pathetic regret upon her lips that would have been piteous had not her gray eyes shone so bravely.
“it is my father,” she said. “i do not mind your knowing; it is a kind of nightmare to me. i do all that i can for him, and that seems little.”
“he is ill?”
“he is killing himself day by day.”
for the moment gabriel found nothing to say to her, for fate shackled him. he would have given much to have been able to throw his manhood at the girl’s feet like an honest sword. but that same sword was rusted to its hypocritic sheath. he could but protest with his lips, pay verbal homage.
“this must be a heavy burden for you,” he said, presently.
“it is my duty.”
“you do not complain.”
“that were graceless,” she said, “and yet i do not know what i should do if i had not the thought of you ever with me.”
their solitude was broken by the woman, mrs. primmer. her face was hard and calculating. there was a certain critical vigilance in her eyes that made gabriel restless. he felt that the woman was watching him almost like a spy, and that her verdict in no wise flattered the spirituality of his mission. mrs. primmer’s morality had been baked in a mould of clay. charity had escaped in the process. greed and self-satisfaction were lined and graven about her mouth.
mrs. primmer’s fingers lingered long over the table. she had a discordant habit of clattering and fidgeting with the china. she stole side glances the while at the man seated in the window recess.
“has that woman been long with you?” gabriel asked, when the door had closed again.
“a few months.”
“i suppose she is intensely respectable?”
“she is preferable to the other,” said joan, with a sigh. “i wonder if there are many such women in the world?”
“as mrs. primmer?”
“yes.”
“thousands, unfortunately.”
“i think a woman with a soul of ice is the most terrible thing earth can show.”
“malice incarnate, sharp of beak and red of claw.”
“do most people always seem bent on thinking the worst they can of their fellows?”
“it is partly the result of sectarianism.”
“what do you mean by sectarianism?”
“the exclusive and narrow religious spirit of fools—the spirit that prompts a man to say, ‘you do not believe what i believe, therefore you are damned.’?”
“are there, then, such absurd persons in the world?”
“hundreds, mostly christian.”
“christian!”
“by profession.”
“but not in spirit.”
“hardly.”
the sky had grown more overcast and a certain heavy torpor in the air gave promise of thunder. masses of purple clouds stood piled in the west, cratered with burning pits of fire. a vast vault of ebony was rising towards the sun. now and again a sudden gusty wind came breathing about the house, making the trees shudder as though they feared a storm.
“how black the sky grows,” said the girl, joining gabriel in the window-seat.
“a storm threatens.”
“and the wind prophesies.”
into the room a transient stream of sunlight poured. it burned in the girl’s hair and upon the flowers in her bosom, seeming to enhance the grim promise of the sky.
“what will you do?” she asked.
“foul weather is nothing to me.”
“you must stay here till the storm has passed.”
“perhaps,” said the man, looking at the clouds.
the west grew lurid. a tense silence weighed upon the world, a silence so solemn that the very trees might have stood watching for some miraculous portent in the sky. the laurels and the grass shone with a vivid green in the mysterious light. the purple clouds in the west had taken fire and were fringed with flame.
the wind rose. they heard it crying far away upon the hills, deep, hoarse, and distant. it gathered clamorous in the air, a great, solemn moan that seemed to surge from the east like the cavern cry of the dead. the trees stooped, swayed, tossed as in torture. rain followed with the rattle of a cataract, a heavy mist shot through with the fiery spears of the setting sun. lightning gleamed on the hills. the sky grew great with thunder. in the onrush of twilight the trees struggled in a tornado of wind and rain, while the house seemed to quake with the uproar of the storm.
the two in the window-seat had drawn closer as they watched the sky. there was a long silence between them. once joan’s hand touched gabriel’s. they drew apart suddenly with a quick glance into each other’s eyes.
“i love such a storm,” said the girl.
“it is grand. i have often thought that i should like to end my life at such an hour as this.”
“more so than in a golden twilight?”
“it is mere superstition on my part,” he added. “yet i have had a kind of presentiment that life will end for me in tragedy.”
“why do you think that?” she asked, with a sudden glance into his eyes.
“because the death is often an echo of the life, a storm-cry or a peaceful noise of flutes.”
the dusk had deepened rapidly; the rain still rushed upon the earth. the lightning had grown fitful in the west with a sullen roar of distant thunder. the wind had passed and was gone, as though some grim company of the damned had swept gibbering athwart the sky. there was no sound now save the rattle of the rain upon the laurels.
the dusk thickened to an eerie gloom. in the window-seat the man and the girl crouched like two silent children. joan’s face was white as death in the dark; her eyes shone with a peculiar brilliancy; now and again there was a faint glimmer of light upon her hair.
“you cannot go yet,” she said.
“the sky may clear soon.”
there was the sound of a door opening stealthily. gabriel, glancing over his shoulder, saw a white cap and a gray face peering through the dusk. then there came a mumbled excuse and the door closed again. mrs. primmer had seen the two outlined together against the window. they were too perilously near, and in the dark also, to satisfy the lady’s conscience. she had drawn back with a hard smile and sundry feminine cogitations in her heart.
“the woman moves like a cat,” said joan, leaning her head against the panelling.
“mrs. primmer?”
“yes.”
he was silent a moment with a dark race of thought through his mind. the girl seemed absolutely unconscious of all evil, trustful as a child.
“i must go now,” he said.
“in this rain?”
“yes. the sky is clearing. i will go to the door and look out.”
he spoke in a monotonous tone that hurt the girl’s heart for the moment; she did not realize the moral force of those few words. they passed through the darkened hall together and stood in the porch. the steady rattle of the shower was ceasing; it lessened minute by minute; soon there was nothing but the fall of the rain from the trees. a delicious fragrance breathed in the night air.
“i will take my chance,” said the man.
joan stepped out with him into the drive.
“as far as the gate,” she said, half appealingly.
they passed down the drive into the dense umbrage of the yews and cypresses. overhead a silvery film of clouds covered the sky; here and there a star flickered through. the west was still black as the mouth of a mighty cavern.
at the gate they stood a moment as though loath to part. the girl’s eyes looked very big and luminous in the dusk; her hair was a dark wreath about her face.
she gave him one of the red wind-flowers from her bosom.
“good-night,” she said.
her voice was very wistful, and she stood close to the man as he held the iron gate open with one hand.
“i shall see you again soon?” she asked.
a sudden hunger for her lips seized him, but he withheld the desire and drew back slowly from under the overhanging trees.
“good-night,” he said to her.
“good-night.”
she watched him turn and disappear into the darkness. loneliness seemed to flood like black water into her heart. her face was white and sorrowful as she passed back under the cloud-strewn sky.
