Frances Peard (continued 5)

“My letters will bring them as soon as possible,” Anthony said. “There is a sister of the Squire’s, a widow, an invalid, and her step-son is quartered at Colchester. Besides them there are only cousins. Mrs Orde will start at once—But, good heavens,” he went on, breaking down, and burying his face in his hands, “it is so awfully sudden! What will they do?”

Dr Fletcher made no immediate reply. He was a kind-hearted man, but his sympathies were chiefly bounded by his profession, and it was easier for him to be energetic in behalf of a suffering body, than to express anything which touched more internal springs. He was wondering whether Anthony would have the courage to face a woman’s grief, and meditating on the possibility of giving up his own morning’s work, when he said aloud, quietly,—

“Miss Chester will probably return to Hardlands to-day. Is there any one who can be with her and her sister?”

“My mother is their oldest friend,” Anthony said, without looking up, and pushing his plate from him with a slight nervous movement. The doctor waited for some assurance to follow this assertion, but Anthony could not give it, for his mind quickly ran over the situation, and foresaw that his mother’s kindness would not suffice to guide her past the little embarrassments which awaken so great throbs of pain at such a time. Finding he was silent, Dr Fletcher went on,—

“Would you wish me to inquire whether Miss Chester is ready to see you? That is, unless I can persuade you to take a little more food?”

“I am quite ready,” said Anthony, getting up hastily. He dreaded the interview fully as much as the doctor had divined, and the force with which he compelled himself to meet it produced a certain hardness which, to a shallow observer, might appear like cold indifference: certainly there were hard-set lines on his face as he stood at a window waiting for Winifred. Trees, with iron railings before them, were planted in the space in front of Dr Fletcher’s house; there were crimson berries on the thorn-trees, a robin or two hopping about familiarly, a grey rainy-looking sky, and now and then a warning drop on the pavement below. Winifred did not come at once, for it was difficult for her to leave Bessie, who was overwrought as much with terror as sorrow; and Anthony, having strung himself up to the meeting, lost himself again in thoughts which grew out of but did not absolutely belong to it, and did not hear her behind him when at last she entered the room.

When he turned round she was standing close by him, and put out her hand.

“I thought you would come,” she said simply.

But she saw in a moment that it was she who must be the comforter, and went on without leaving a pause which should oblige him to speak. “It was all so calm and so peaceful that I cannot realise anything beyond the comfort of knowing that he had no suffering to endure. Poor Bessie’s grief seems something for which I am very sorry, but in which I have no share. It must be as I have read and never quite believed, that a great shock deadens all one’s perceptions.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Anthony, relieved by her quietness and the simple words which had nothing constrained about them. “And by and by you will be thankful that you were with him,—so close at hand—”

“O, I am thankful now!” said Winifred, with intense earnestness. “It does not seem as if one could have borne it to be otherwise; but now I have all the last looks,—the knowledge that there was nothing lost. You can think what that must be.”

Twenty-four hours had put away on her side all the divisions that had existed, and taken her back to the old familiar friendship, so that if she remembered any cause of estrangement, it was that she might touch it softly, and let Anthony feel that it had only been a shadow, not affecting the true kindness of her father. With an instinctive loyalty she would have liked to clothe the dead in a hundred virtues. But Anthony himself was feeling the separation with a strength that almost maddened him. There was a gulf between them which was of his own digging. There they were, he and she, and yet he could not put out a hand, could not take her to his heart and comfort her. As she spoke he shook his head with a quick gesture, throwing it back, and turned away from her towards the window, against which the rain was now pattering gently. Winifred was surprised, and a little hurt, but as it struck her that he might dread what she was going to say, she went on with a voice that faltered for the first time,—

“Dr Fletcher told me that you would settle for me what ought to be done, but—perhaps—I believe that I can give directions—if it is painful to you—”

“That is impossible,” Anthony said, almost sharply, and without looking round. “I will do it all,—why else am I here?”

She drew back almost imperceptibly, but then, as if moved by an opposite feeling, went up to him, and touched his arm.

“Anthony,” she said in a low voice.

If it was to oblige him to look at her she succeeded, for he immediately glanced round, although he did not answer, and indeed she went on hurriedly,—

“I dare say you think I do not know, but Dr Fletcher explained to me that there must be an inquest. It is not so painful as you fancy,—nothing seems painful just now,—do not be afraid to tell us what is necessary. Dr Fletcher says it had better be here, he will make them come as soon as possible, and he wishes us to go back to Hardlands at once. I would rather have stayed, but I can see that it would be bad for Bessie, and—he would have liked her to be spared. Richardson is in the house, if you would tell him to go back, and bring the carriage at once—and,”—she hesitated wistfully, for it did not seem quite so easy to her to ask anything of Anthony as it had been at the beginning of their interview—“would it be possible for you to stay,—so as to be at hand,—to stay until to-morrow, or till my cousin comes? Some one must be here,” she said, with a little passionate cry of sorrow, as her self-control broke down; “he shall not be left alone.” She stopped again, this time for an answer, but when none came she said with an effort, “Perhaps you cannot stay,—perhaps Mr Mannering would come?”

“Of course I shall stay,” Anthony said, in a bitter, half-choked voice.

He knew that she thought him cruelly hard and cold: he heard her give a little sigh as she moved away a step or two, but it was with almost a feeling of relief, anything being better than that she should know the real feelings of the moment. Winifred was not thinking of him as he imagined, but something in his manner brought to her a keen impression of the breach between the dead and the living, which she had been trying to make him forget. She stood for a moment with her hand on the door, and her head bent,—thinking. She said at last, softly and pleadingly,—

“If it has not been between you and him of late quite as it was in the old days, you will not remember that any more, will you, Anthony? If he ever did you an injustice in his thoughts, it was not willingly, only—only one of those misunderstandings which the best, the noblest, sometimes fall into. If he had lived he would have told you this himself one day, and therefore I say it to you from him,” she added, lifting her eyes, and speaking with grave steadfastness, as if she were indeed delivering a message from the dead, “and I know that you will be glad to think that it is so, and to help us for his sake.”

The moment she had said this she went away so quickly that Anthony’s call did not even reach her ears. It was only one word, “Winifred!” but it was as well she did not hear, since one word is sometimes strong enough to carry a whole load of anguish and of yearning love.

Chapter Twenty Six.

“In my own heart love had not been made wise To trace love’s faint beginnings in mankind, To know even hate is but a mask of love’s, To see a good in evil, and a hope In ill-success.” Paracelsus.

Ada’s frame of mind at this time was one of thorough content and satisfaction. She had always taken life smoothly and with a certain ease, perhaps inherited from her aunt, and she could manage either to slip round its little angles and roughnesses, or else to exert a faculty of not perceiving or comprehending them, to a really remarkable extent. She was so well satisfied with herself that it never appeared possible that others should not share the satisfaction to the full; and this armour, call it amiability or self-complacency or what you will, made her absolutely impervious to the darts which prick and goad more thin-skinned victims. Even to good-natured Mrs Bennett it had sometimes become apparent that Anthony was not so ardent a lover as might have been expected, that he expressed no anxiety about the wedding-day, that he was often late in coming, and not infrequently stayed away when there was no reason to account for his absence; but Ada was never ruffled by such reflections. It was a matter of course that Anthony should be most happy when he was by her side, and if he were obliged to stay away, she expressed a little contented pity, and smiled, worked, and talked, with a serene absence of misgivings. Hers was not a nature to be quickened into rare moments of deep delight; Anthony was simply one of the things which had been sent to make her life what she had always expected; it was a good match, as her uncle had repeatedly assured her, they would have money, comforts, an excellent position; but she had never been troubled with any doubt that in due time all these would naturally come to her, and everything seemed only moving in the sequence that was to be expected. Of any unfulfilled dream, or sense of dissatisfaction in the relations between herself and Anthony, she was unconscious, for the reason that it never entered her mind to conceive of herself as other than she was.

Nevertheless, although her reflections could not so much as touch the possibility of discontent on her lover’s part, she was aware now and then that he was both dull and moody, and it was in her eyes one of the appointed pleasures of her lot that Mr Warren should be more attentive and bent upon displaying his devotion than in the days which preceded her engagement Mr Bennett used to laugh, and declare that Miles would be jealous; but he was an honourable and unsuspicious man, more pleased at an occasion for a joke than troubled by fear of mischief-making, nor indeed had the thought of an actual preference to Anthony—Anthony, be it observed, comprising all that he could give—entered further into Ada’s head than her uncle’s. It was simply that Mr Warren’s attentions and little compliments were agreeable to her, and she had never been accustomed to deny herself what she liked. Anthony himself was indifferent about the matter, considering young Warren an empty-pated and harmless youth, and wondering a little that Ada should make him welcome to the house, but beyond that not troubling his head. The Bennetts were so hospitable, their house so open, that it was hardly possible to conceive a shutting of doors upon any one; and if such a thing were needed, there was a natural solution in the kindly interest Mr Bennett was known to show towards the young men who worked with him. Both Mr Bennett and Anthony were ignorant of a good deal that passed, such as meetings which were certainly not the result of chance, and which Underham discussed actively. But after what has been told, Anthony Miles could scarcely have borne to have found fault with Ada, even if he had known the utmost. He was oppressed with a terrible sense of wronging her, which, though it often produced intense nervous irritation, made him the more scrupulously polite in every word and action. Moreover, he was hesitating between two courses, and rather bent upon dissection of his own motives than upon weighing Adas merits and demerits, from which, with an instinctive generosity, he recoiled at such a time. Since the discovery of his own feelings, it was impossible for him not to realise the question of right or wrong involved, that there were conflicting claims; he tried to think of it with cold words, to force himself to judge as if from the outside, but more often he felt with a blank despair that he could do nothing except let matters drift on where the current carried them. Men sometimes call that resignation which is no more than a fear of facing pain, and the deception may be so subtle that it evades discovery until too late.

There had been an idea, on Anthony Miles’s part, of his spending three months of the early winter in London; for although his dreams had lost their brilliancy, there are other motive-powers besides enthusiasm, and he was feeling the need of work as a refuge from thought, and talked of seeking occupation of some sort with more determination than he had yet employed. But the days went on and he remained at Thorpe. To a certain extent he had resumed his old position. He no longer avoided his neighbours, and if he kept up any coldness towards the brothers at the Red House, it was only now and then shown by an increase of the reserve which had grown on him. To Hardlands he went by fits and starts, sometimes finding one or another pretext for a daily visit, sometimes absenting himself for a week at a time. Mrs Orde, the Squire’s sister, was for the present remaining at Hardlands, Mr Chesters will having expressed a desire to that effect; and Bessie’s despair at the idea of leaving was sufficient to reconcile Winifred to the arrangement, although she herself had a longing to go away. But she was happier in Anthony’s return to friendliness; of any other feelings on his part she was spared the knowledge, since her own peculiar loyalty and faithfulness prevented her from thinking such feelings possible. Unfortunately, he had caught the trick of comparing her with Ada, and there was but one end to all such comparisons, for although, had he only known the one after the other, things might have seemed different, the pang was very acute of perceiving to what he had wilfully blinded himself; and every fresh instance of Winifred’s sweet nobility of nature came to him like a revelation. Perceiving his continued gloom, people began to talk curiously again. Mr Robert could not feel as kindly towards him as in the old days, yet Anthony’s looks worried him; and had he not unfortunately begun by getting hold of the wrong end of the string, or had Anthony been magnanimous enough to understand and forgive the error, he might have been the young man’s best counsellor. As it was, Anthony had to meet this second complication, which had grown out of the first, with a sore perplexed heart, and no friend to help him. He felt utterly humiliated as well as miserable, for although a happy love is not the one thing needful to a man, and if it is denied him there are other things worth living for, such a mistake as he had made is apt for a time at least to destroy the spring of energy and doing.

Frank Orde soon followed his step-mother to Hardlands. He had taken his long leave before Christmas, with the intention of spending it at Thorpe. Anthony had never liked the thought of this arrangement, and when he arrived there was something so attractive about him that he felt all his prejudices confirmed. It was like a breath of fresh air coming into the midst of the little household who were moving about with saddened quiet faces, and already falling into the little feminine ways which mark the absence of the more vigorous race. Captain Orde had the physical activity which made him send his luggage in the carriage, and himself walk from Underham on the day of his arrival; he had also a taste for exploring and geological theories, the enthusiasm of which roused his cousins into interest; indeed he was so full of energy, so open-hearted, and so secure of sympathy, that to withhold it was as difficult as to avoid being warmed by the sun of midsummer.

They were all at dinner one evening when the day had been so persistently rainy that only Captain Orde, to whom weather was apparently a matter of indifference, had faced it, coming in just in time to avoid breaking the punctual routine which the Squire had established at Hardlands. Mrs Orde sat with her back to the fire: a thin woman, with a plain pleasant face, high cheek-bones, rugged features, and an upper lip too long for proportion, but curving in to a well-closed mouth; there were the two girls in their black dresses, and Captain Orde, unlike them all with his dark twinkling eyes and a fresh look of unbroken health. He had been telling them, with the vivid enjoyment that characterised his talk, his adventures in the muddy lanes round Thorpe, and of the difficulties he had met with in the way of extracting information; but it was not until the old butler had left the room, and they had drawn their chairs after a pleasant old-fashioned winter custom round the fire, that he said,—

“By the way, I fell in again to-day with my friend the local Wesleyan, as he tells me he calls himself. You haven’t any of you taken to him more kindly, have you?”

“Do you mean that dreadful David Stephens?” Bessie said, setting a chestnut on the bar of the grate, and holding up her hand to screen herself.

“It has been hard to do anything for him,” said Winifred, thinking of Captain Orde’s old words, “almost impossible, although I dare say you cannot believe it. How can one help him?”

“He would say, build him a chapel.”

“Frank!” Bessie said indignantly, from her knees before the fire.

“I thought you were in earnest,” said Winifred with a touch of disappointment.

“I only say that is what he would choose. I don’t recommend you to do it. There is something he really wants a good deal more.”

“Tell us what you mean,” said Bessie, tossing a hot chestnut into his lap.

“Never mind. It is nothing you will ever give, my dear,” said Frank, who was looking at Winifred, while his mother looked at him.

“I should think not, if it is for that man,” said Bessie defiantly, “and the sooner he goes away the better. We were all as glad as could be when Anthony put a stop to his horrid plans.”

But Winifred asked no more questions. Perhaps there had come to her already, through the patient teaching of life, perceptions of a broader, kindlier horizon than used to bound her view. Perhaps she saw dimly what once seen can no more cease to grow upon our sight than the daylight which from the first eastern flush grows into the glory of the great day, that the blessed good in our fellow-man is that which we must look for, and help, and nourish; that so best wrong may be made right, and evil conquered, and weakness strengthened.

Bessie was not satisfied. “What did he mean?” she said in the drawing-room, nestling against Mrs Orde, of whom she was fond by fits and starts. “What did Frank think that I should never give?”

“I suppose he was talking about sympathy, my dear,” said Mrs Orde, dryly. She was a kind-hearted woman herself, but a little timid over other people’s kind-heartedness. I am not certain that she did not consider it a dangerous doctrine, at any rate for young men.

“He had no business to say so,” Bessie replied petulantly. “I am sure I am as sorry as can be when any one is ill or anything. No sympathy, indeed! What does he know about it?”

“What do you know about it,” Mrs Orde said decidedly, “a young thing like you? Frank was quite right. Go and play that sonata: I don’t believe you have practised it at all, and your lesson is to-morrow.”

“There’s a ring,” Bessie announced, going slowly. “It must be Anthony, for no one else comes at this time of night.”

Captain Orde had also heard the ring, and the young men met in the passage and came in together, making a contrast, more marked than usual, as they stood side by side. Frank dark, high-shouldered, keen-eyed, and Anthony with his slight, wiry, nervous build, and a face depending for all beauty upon the expression which happened to be uppermost. It was not at its best now, for he was angry with himself for coming, and therefore, by a not unusual consequence, angry with those among whom he had come. His own heart was warning him. And yet he would not listen to his heart, lest it should shut him out from this haven. Other things made it only too easy. Mrs Orde liked him. She knew nothing—having so lately arrived, and from the circumstances having entered not at all into society—of the story of the letter, which might have influenced her judgment; but she knew that he was engaged to be married, and perceiving that he was unhappy, which, indeed, he took no pains to hide from the world, she mentally put two and two together, as she said, and drew her own conclusions. Sensible, steady-going people are the most romantic of all. Mrs Orde, who never did a foolish thing, began to reflect what would be Frank’s case if he were engaged to a woman who was not worthy of him,—a supposition so possible that she could only shudder, and be kinder than ever to Anthony. As for Winifred, she saw quickly enough that he was gloomy and unhappy, and had not the heart to put obstacles in the way. If anything were worrying him, it seemed only natural that he should come back to his oldest friends, and it was a sign of that reconciliation which she liked to think death had not really hindered. Her own burden was made the heavier, but a woman does not think of this. Anthony, who knew what Winifred did not, should not have come, but—he was there. And he used to get hurt and sulky with Captain Orde. That night Bessie, who was affronted with her cousin, and anxious for an ally, began in the intervals of a little idle running up and down on the keys of the piano,—

“What do you think, Anthony? Frank has struck up an acquaintance with David Stephens. He is going to help him to build a chapel, and then to hear him preach.”

“Really!”

There was a good deal not very pleasant in the “really,” and Frank looked up from the newspaper he was turning over as he stood before the fire, and laughed.

“Bessie’s facts are indisputable,” he said. “It is all true, of course. By the way, I am afraid my ally is no ally of yours?”

“I’ve done my best to keep him out of the place,” said Anthony, with some bitterness. “The fellow is a rank dissenter to begin with, and does a great deal of underground mischief of other kinds. I say nothing against his character; I believe he deludes himself with the belief he is in the right, and I dare say makes a good enough clerk, though it’s a pity he should have found an employment to keep him here. But I do not consider it advisable to listen to his talk.”

Frank took no notice of Anthony’s tone, which had in it an imperious touch. He said as if he were replying to a calmly conducted argument,—

“The question is scarcely whether or no one will listen. Merely as a matter of cold prudence, it is surely better policy to help a stream to find safe channels than to refuse it a passage through your land.”

“That is the talk which will ruin the country,” Anthony said coldly. “Every doctrine nowadays has but one basis,—expediency.”

“I don’t understand what you are talking about,” said Bessie, who was playing, a gigue with quaint trills and turns in an undertone, “but I am quite sure that Anthony is right.”

“Yes, I think he is right,” said Mrs Orde, sighing. She was looking at her son, and admiring his sweet temper, but for all that she thought it was necessary to oppose his opinions, lest they should carry him too far. Winifred was glancing from one to the other, with her eyes dilating and then melting.

“Well,” Frank said good-humouredly, “it sometimes requires greater courage to stick to the popular side than to go against it. If my doctrine is ruining the country, the want of it is injuring David Stephens, unless I am much mistaken.”

“All the better,—if it drives him out of the place.”

“O Anthony!” said Winifred, in a low tone of hurt reproach. He looked round and saw she was on the other side, and grew a little white. Frank looked at the same moment and brightened.

“It is wiser not to mix one’s self up with such persons,” said Mrs Orde, talking exactly contrary to what she would have done, as people often do.

“No, mother,” said Captain Orde, becoming grave, “that is a very helpless receipt. I suppose you don’t want me to say that I don’t agree with the end to which this man’s thoughts have led him? But they have surely in some measure been forced upon him, and I hold that we are to blame for it, and are responsible. I should be very glad to convince him that we have a common interest, instead of dwelling with such persistence upon our points of antagonism.”

“You must excuse my doubting the wisdom of your plan,” Anthony said in the tone the conversation seemed to have awakened in him. “My own conviction is that, for the sake of others, these men should be put down with a strong hand.”

He was too bitter to be anything but unjust, and Winifred looked sadly at him, thinking of his own troubles, and the misjudging which she had thought might have softened him towards others. She knew nothing of that other trouble which had its grip upon his heart as he glanced round at the bright room with its warm lights, and at Winifred and Frank, thinking angrily that he had cut himself off from her, and another had come in and filled his place. Nobody knew the wild, mad thoughts that were battling with him that night. All that could be seen were four or five people smiling and chatting, the fire crackling and leaping round a log of wood, and throwing dancing shadows on the pretty chintzes, and the bits of quaint old china, and the piano where Bessie was playing soft visionary music with tears in her eyes; for the Squire had liked the dreamy chords, and the girl had gone back to him, as she did more often than they fancied. And yet to one of the number the pleasant and kindly harmony of the hour was full of sharp discords, of things that fretted and jarred him. He made up his mind that he would not come again. He looked reproachfully at Winifred.

And yet, as he walked home across the silent fields, on which the moon was casting cold silvery streaks, he felt as he had never felt before, as if he could not marry Ada Lovell.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

“It was in and about the Mart’mas time When the green leaves they were falling.” Old Ballad.

That afternoon, when Captain Orde fell in with David Stephens, the two men had walked together to within a hundred yards of the Red House. Here, for it was almost dark, Captain Orde struck into one of the fields which would take him to Hardlands, and the other, standing for a moment as if lost in thought, went on through the red mud and the quantities of fallen leaves which had dropped from the hedge-row elms by his side.

As he passed along the wall enclosing Mr Mannering’s garden, a door opened, and Stokes came out, locking the door after him. David had stopped, and his peculiar figure probably marked him sufficiently even in the waning light, for the gardener said in a slow and rather injured voice,—

“That’s you, is it?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“And you’m going to see Faith?”

“Yes, I am,” said Stephens; and the two men walked on side by side in silence.

At last Stokes began again heavily, as if he had been reflecting on the answer,—

“’Twould be a dale better if it warn’t you. That’s arl I’ve got to say, and I’ve said it a dale better.”

There was another silence before David spoke, with a fire of purpose contrasting strangely with the other man,—

“I don’t pretend that I don’t know what your words mean, and I don’t say they haven’t got something on their side. I suffered myself to be misguided by my own stubborn heart when I spoke of love to Faith. I should have known that this is no time for marrying and giving in marriage, with souls crying out of the darkness. It was a snare of the enemy to withhold me, and I was weak and feeble, instead of plucking out the eye, and cutting off though it were the right hand. I thought much of my own love, and that maybe we were called to work together in the vineyard, never rightly taking home to myself what was the sacrifice the Lord had called on me to make—”

David stopped suddenly with a tremor in his strong voice. Stokes was always slow of speech, and for a few moments there was no sound but that of the heavy steps trampling through mud and dead leaves.

“I doan’t know nowt of what ye’re talking up,” said the elder man at last, doggedly. “It’s my Faith as I’ve got to think of. Nowt else.”

“You’ve got your soul, and the souls of others, if you’d only see it,” said the other. But Stokes shook his head.

“Noa, I ain’t,” he said, “that’s the passon’s business. I bain’t no passon, nor yet no pracher, nor I doan’t think much o’ prachers as comes and takes t’ bread out o’ passon’s mouth. I ain’t nowt to do wi’ souls. I goes to choorch, and a’ll be buried up thyur comfor’able, and us doan’t want no prachers to Thorpe.”

“That’s the teaching of the enemy,” said Stephens, vehemently. “Don’t you ever think of the sin and wickedness about you? What of Tom Andrews, and Nathaniel Wills, and that poor girl at Peters’s farm? Don’t you believe that if their hearts have been stirred by a faithful messenger they might have been saved from their sins?”

“Noa, I doan’t,” said Stokes, with a persistent force of opposition. “That thyur Tom Anders has been a bad un ever since he wor a little chap, and stealed tummerts out o’ my basket before my very eyes. I told his feyther then as he’d be hanged before a’d done with un, and so a wull. And Nat Wills is another poor lot. Leave ’em aloan, and us’ll soon see th’ last of ’em. That’s watt I says.”

“Ay, what you all say, and the most any of you can do,” David said bitterly. “Parson and people all alike. He sits in his arm-chair and expects those poor sinners to come up to him, and preaches fine sermons in church, when there’s not one of those as wants the sermons most there to hear him. I walked twenty mile yesterday, and fetched Nat Wills home with me, and I’ve got him at my lodgings now; but if I hadn’t gone after him, do you think he’d have come to me?”

“Then you was a fule,” said Stokes, promptly. “He’ll never do you no good. An’ now you’ll be convertin’ him, and setting un up for a saent. I doan’t hold by they thyur doings.”

They had come into Thorpe by this time; a bright light streamed out from the blacksmith’s forge at the corner, where three roads met. A man who was standing there, with his face turned towards the fiery sparks struck out with every blow upon the anvil, looked round as he heard the advancing steps.

“Be that you, Tom?” he asked, peering into the darkness.

“What’s brought you in from Wesson this time o’ day?” said Stokes, answering one question by another in his slow deliberate way.

“Th’ old missess is tooked so bad, master fetched the doctor hisself, and sent me right off for the passon. I’m to bide hyur for un, and go back in his trap.”

“So th’ old woman’s come to her end at last, and has sent for the passon? Hyur’s Stephens been tryin’ to set down passons and choorch, and arl the rest o’t.”

“Ay; he’d like to have it a’ under his own thumb, for a’ he’s so smarl,” said Stringer, who, like most of the people about, knew David, and had nodded to him across Stokes. He did not mean to offer any offence by his words; it was only stating facts when he alluded to the young man’s personal appearance. “That’s the way wi’ the Methodists. My mawther wor wan, and she never gived poor feyther no quiet. But wann they’m took bad, they likes a rale minister. I take it very kindly o’ Passon Brent to turn to at this time o’ night.”

“Yes, he’ll go,” said Stephens, gravely, “and flatter with smooth words. But what has he done for that old woman’s life? Hasn’t she a name through the country for her hard, wicked, grasping ways? Has he ever been to her, and pleaded with her, and been faithful with her sin? Do you think the Lord’s Apostles were content to go and say a prayer over the poor souls that were dying?”

“Been and pladed with her?” said Stringer, at once. “You’d ha’ had a kettle of boiling water over you, if you’d tried that on wi’ the old missess. Noa, noa,—I doan’t say as passons is bound to ran risks wi’ the wommen, such as that. But they’ve been going on wi’ their ways for a good bit, and it bain’t so strange to they as’t is to you dissenters, as think you’ve found out something new, and must go runnin’ arl over the country a talking about it.”

“That’s it, Dannel, that’s it,” said the gardener, moved to a chuckling delight by his friend’s acuteness. “Passon knowed arl about it before you was born,” he added, turning on Stephens.

“It must be a new thing to you and me, though, before it can work on our hearts,” said the young man, almost passionately. “You think it’s enough for another man to know it, and to preach about it, but I tell you that you must feel its burning power in yourselves, and then it will give you no peace until you tell it out to others.”

At this moment there was a sound of wheels coming along the wet road, and Mr Brent drove up in his rough dog-cart. He pulled up sharply,—he did everything sharply,—and called out in the same tone,—

“Come, Stringer, are you there? Get up behind as fast as you can. As it is, with these roads we shall be a longer time than I can spare getting to Weston. Is that you, Stokes? The master has been complaining of Samuel again. The boy’s doing no good whatever at school.” And without waiting for an answer, or taking any notice of Stephens, who was standing in the full light of the forge, Mr Brent drove quickly off towards the farm.

Burge the blacksmith, who had come out to the door, and stood, lifting his cap with one hand, and passing the other through his straight black hair, was the first to make a remark upon the last-comer.

“He bain’t such a pleasant-spoken gentleman as old Passon Miles.”

“P’raps he bain’t,” said Stokes, gruffly; divided between injury on behalf of the culprit Samuel, and a fear of weakening what he looked upon as his late victory over Stephens and the dissenters. “P’raps you and me shouldn’t be so pleasant nayther if us had to turn out to Wesson, wann us had done our day’s work, to plaze the old missess.”

“Day’s work!” said the blacksmith, coughing violently, and going back to his labour. “I’d give something to kep your hours. I sim, sometimes, a smith ain’t got no hours. He’s at everybody’s call, worse luck to me.”

David had not heard the other men’s remarks. He was standing at the door of the smithy where he had first stopped, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, and the red glow from the forge lighting that side of his face which was nearest it. These fits of abstraction were not uncommon with him, and, as something which they did not understand, and set down as not quite right, added to the disfavour with which he was commonly regarded by the people of Thorpe. David was quite aware of this disfavour. He was in the position of a reformer attempting to benefit society against its will. Each sin of which he heard, and each neglect, smote on his excitable nature as a crime on the part of those who might have prevented it. Driven in very much upon himself and his inward communings,—for the fervour of his opinions found as little favour in the eyes of his brother Wesleyans as in those of Churchmen, and he himself shrank in disgust from all that appeared to him to savour of worldliness and self-advancement,—the one thought that was always in his mind lost its fair proportions and grew as, alas, the best within us may grow, out of shape and out of bounds. All that opposed him seemed to be the especial opposition of the Devil, a conviction leading to its corollary, that hardly any means could be thought unlawful which tended to circumvent the evil one. He regarded Anthony Miles as the chief adversary raised up against him, and the great wrong he had done him he would not have undone, though it weighed like lead upon his conscience.

When David at length lifted his eyes, and recalled his thoughts from old Mrs Mortimer’s deathbed, where he had concentrated them with a powerful purpose, and a stern disbelief in the adequacy of the means now on the way to Weston for her assistance, he found himself alone. The gardener, who was not unwilling to shake off his companion, had taken advantage of his abstraction, and departed. He lacked the energy of old Araunah, and had not attempted to hinder Stephens from seeing Faith by more decided opposition than lay in surly ungraciousness; but he knew that his wife and father would expect more from him, and made up his mind to keep silence as to the meeting and David’s intentions. He himself regarded the latter with a sort of contemptuous dislike, mainly, no doubt, arising from his deformity, but partly from the new-fangled opinions, which were both unpleasing to his ears and disturbing from the fact of their being presented to him when he was unprepared. His own religion consisted of Sunday services, in hearing an occasional chapter read to the old man by his wife, and less frequently in listening with astonished admiration to some glib answers in the catechism repeated by his youngest “little maed.” David’s passionate and fervent appeals were as confusing to his mind as it would have been to have had his meals at other times than those to which he had been accustomed always from his childhood. He therefore disliked him, but there was a certain torpidity in his most acute feelings, and he was not likely to interfere with Faith in any manner more active than by expressing his own poor opinion of her lover.

David himself, recalled to his position, went away from the blacksmith’s shed and walked through the village towards Mrs Miles’s cottage. It was now quite dark, and wild gusts of wind were sweeping across the fields, and up the street where thatched cottages stood back in little gardens with rows of bright chrysanthemums in flower before them. The children were safe in bed, the women, many of them, out talking or buying. Quite a little knot was gathered in the little shop which provided both groceries and clothing, and from which a cheerful light gleamed out upon the wet road. The warm brightness beckoned invitingly to the young man, who, as was not unusual with him, was both tired and hungry. He stopped for a moment to look with an almost wistful gaze at the group. The women were laughing at some jest, even the pinched features were smoothed and brightened. A little bitterness surged up in his heart as he contrasted himself with these people whom he was yearning over, spending himself for, and who would have given him, perhaps, scarcely so much as a kind word. What was he to them? And what were they to him that he should wrestle for them, ay, even give up his dearest hopes in life? There was Nat Wills’s mother laughing with the rest, while David was hungry because he had shared his little with the boy whom he, and he only, had walked those weary miles to reclaim. There was a thin woman whose husband was a drunkard, there was another whose daughter had left her,—he knew all the histories of these poor sin-stained lives, and for the instant a bitter sense of injustice swept upon him. Was he forever to stay in the darkness and the cold? Must he always put from himself light and love and pleasantness for the sake of those who neither cared for nor would hearken to him? Might he not turn away and leave them to their fate?

Ah, if he, standing thus, could repel the impulse, by the might of the love which bound him to their souls, do you not think that the Greater Love which helped him in his struggle would lead him with infinite tenderness, out of his loneliness and self-deception, into the full light of the perfect truth?

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Faith, when she heard the knock at the back door, knew very well who had come, and her heart leaped up, for all day she had felt as if she could scarcely longer endure the suspense in which she was placed, and had been blaming David with the unreasonableness of impatience for not coming during the hours in which he was employed at the post-office. She jumped up and stopped a younger girl who was going to answer the knock. But when she had opened the door and saw David himself, all her little reproachful speeches were forgotten.

“I don’t know that you’d best come in,” she said hurriedly. “Sarah would be pleased to see you, but she and Jane are both there, and there’s things I want to hear.”

“No, I must see you by yourself,” said Stephens. “The wind’s high, but it’s not so sharp, and if you stand by the door you’ll not feel much of it.”

“You’re tired,” interrupted Faith.

“Ay, no doubt. A man must be tired whose work lies where mine does. They’re rough paths along which one has to go to find those poor sinners, and the enemy doesn’t make them more easy to those who are searching.”

“Mother says you’ll wear out yourself, and everybody else,” Faith said, with a touch of petulance,—“going on so.”

David was silent for a moment. It was often the case that in the first sweetness of being with her he lost sight of the purpose which had gradually been strengthening in his mind, but such words as these brought it back with a sudden shock. And he knew that to-night he must speak plainly, whatever it cost him.

“Your mother is right, dear Faith,” he said gently. His speech was often abrupt, and rather fiery than persuasive, but he had a full and mellow voice, and it was at this moment modulated into the tenderest tones. “I’ve thought it over on my knees, and I know I’ve been over-hasty in asking you to be my wife. I didn’t ought to have done it, and I can never blame myself enough. For you couldn’t bear it, any more than I could bear to see it.”

His voice failed him in these last words, and he held his breath tightly, waiting with an eager faint hope for Faith to make some answer which would show that she would work by his side. She understood what he meant, knowing it was the self-imposed hardships of his life to which he was alluding, and she took the most effectual method of replying by putting up her apron, and beginning to cry piteously.

Stephens made one step towards her, but then he suddenly checked himself, though the dim light that came from the kitchen showed his strong features working with agitation.

“Why should you be different from other men?” said the girl, sobbing. “There’s Jane going to be married, and Mary Bates, and Elizabeth. What’s to prevent you and me from settling down quiet like them?”

Ah, what? Here was the thought with which he had just done battle presenting itself in a fairer, softer shape. Why should he be the one to leave the brightness and warm glow, and content himself with cold and hunger and weariness? Not of the body only,—that seemed to him as nothing, if Faith might be by his side,—but hunger of the heart. Then, as the longing within him was to him a divine longing, and all that opposed it took the form of the evil one, a sudden anger rushed into his heart against her who was tempting him.

“Hush, Faith!” he said in a stern, sorrowful voice, “you are setting yourself against God’s work. I have got my hand to the plough, and I cannot look back.”

“But, David,” said Faith, frightened at his tone, and forgetting all except the fear of losing him, “I wouldn’t keep you back, I wouldn’t, indeed. You might go to preach, you know, just the same, and when you came back I should have things comfortable for you.”

“Yes, my dear, you would,” he said, with the thrill again in his voice. And then he cried out passionately, so that Sarah in the kitchen wondered what was being said, “Don’t make it more hard, Faith, don’t! I’ve heard of tearing out one’s heart, but I never knew before what it meant. Think what my life is. There are so many sick and suffering that I must help somehow, or their eyes would follow me to the very judgment-seat,—I must do it,—I am constrained. I have had no food to-day but a crust of bread and a glass of water. Up in my lodgings I’ve got that poor nigh-lost Nat Wills. I walked twenty mile yesterday to get hold of him, and there he is. By and by I’m going to his employer to see what is to be done. It’s the same always. But if I had a wife I don’t know that she would think it right to her that I should do it, and yet I could never dare leave it undone. I couldn’t, Faith.”

His voice had kept at the same high-pitched abrupt tone, as if he were speaking under the pang of some physical anguish. Faith was frightened by it, but her mother had told her to pluck up spirit, and she thought, like other women, that a show of anger might bring David to her way of thinking. So she turned half away from him, as he saw very well by the dim light, and said, throwing her apron over her arm,—

“That’s all fine enough, but I don’t see as how you’re more bound to them than to me, after the things you’ve said, and the neighbours knowing and all. It would have been better if I’d minded grandfather’s words, and Mis’ess told me neither she nor Mr Anthony was pleased to think of me marrying a man that sets himself up against the Church.”

Faith delivered this speech with considerable energy, but there were tears in her eyes which it was well for David’s resolution that he could not see. Her mention of Mr Anthony stung him sharply. He said in a compressed tone,—

“You will not listen to him? There’s no man in the county has done so much against the good cause, and may God forgive him, for he needs forgiveness!”

Since he had kept silence about the letter all Anthony’s deeds had grown blacker in his eyes, and he thought, with the strange self-deception which men permit themselves to weave, that the obloquy that had fallen upon the young man was but a just retribution for those acts for which he had now professed to ask forgiveness. Faith, who had been silently crying for a few moments, found her voice to continue in the same tone, which she thought had produced a little impression,—

“I’ve stuck to you faithful, for all I’ve had to bear from every one. And this is what I get—” she added, breaking down altogether into sobs at last.

“It’s a heavy burden,” said David, drawing a quick deep breath; “the worse for me, because I should have spared you, and ought never to have told you how I loved you. But with the light that’s been given to me, I dare not follow my own weak heart, unless—unless—” he went on, in a voice that trembled as a woman’s might have done.

“Well, unless—?” said Faith, looking up.

“You couldn’t bear such a life as mine must be?” said David, speaking slowly, and as it were out of a strange silence. “Poverty and hardship, and men’s bitter persecutions, and only me faithful by your side? You couldn’t bear that, my dear, could you?”

The words were so tender, so wistful, that for an instant Faith hesitated. But her love was not strong enough either to cast an ideal light over the life he thus unfolded before her, or to enable her to face its endurance for his sake. Instead of giving him a direct answer, she said with a touch of anger,—

“And you’ll be marrying another girl, I suppose?”

Stephens caught hold of her hand.

“Don’t say that again, Faith, for I can’t bear it. You know that to my dying day I shall never love but you,” he said hoarsely.

This assurance of love was sweet to Faith. After all, he would never be able to give her up.

“You’d do well enough,” she said quickly, “if you’d keep to your business, and not share your own with every idle body, which nobody’s called to do. Come, David, and then we might be comfortable.”

“It can’t be that way,” he said; and there was a direct force in his words which let her feel the uselessness of saying more.

“What shall you do, then?” she asked, in a tone that was half petulant and half tearful.

“The way isn’t clear to me yet,” said David slowly, “but there’s one of our body has spoken to me about going out to South America as a missionary. He thinks there is a manifest call there to a faithful worker, while there are others holding that work may be done here more effectually than hitherto, though we are so cramped and fettered in its discharge. It will be made plain to me before long. You will think as kindly of me as ever you can, Faith, won’t you? Words don’t seem worth anything between you and me, but there’s an inward speaking surer. You won’t let them set you against me, my darling,—you’ll forgive me—”

He stopped suddenly, speechless with rush of intense feeling. Faith’s spirit failed her, the hope that had so persistently kept its place died away out of her heart, all her little persuasions seemed useless; and, touched by some vibration from his own strong emotion, with a mute gesture, pathetic in its helplessness, she turned round; flung up her arms against the wall, and pressed her face between them.

When she lifted her head to speak, David was gone.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

By the time the morning came, Anthony had not made up his mind what course to take, but he had seized the idea that relief was possible, and this thought gave a buoyancy to his spirit and a new freedom to his step. His mother brightened immediately. She followed him into the garden and made her usual remarks in a happy voice, even consenting, though not without a pang, to the destruction of her favourite flower-bed, because Anthony thought the turf should have a broader sweep, and she said, with tears, that Anthony’s improvements reminded her of the old Vicarage days.

The day had been fair, with a fresh and constantly changing beauty, but as the afternoon wore on, the greyness so often to be seen in late autumn came over sky and land. There was a veil of thin mist hanging about the meadows when Anthony, with Sniff at his heels, walked through the lanes to Underham. Sniff, it must be said, had a particular attraction in Underham. He was a dog with a peculiarly strong sense of humour, and in the little town it unfortunately happened that there lived another dog, the property of an old lady, and the victim of innumerable washings. Mop was a white Spitz, of a depressed and meek turn of mind, probably the result of the many torments to which his white coat condemned him; and, with a profession of gambolling friendship which it would have been impossible for Mop, even if he had possessed the spirit, to resent, it was Sniff’s great delight to choose a muddy spot of road, rush at and tumble him into it. It added much to his enjoyment when, as was every now and then the case, he could see his friend, with drooping tail, caught by the cook and carried ignominiously to the tub; and his appreciation of this little comedy of his own invention was so great, that it was almost impossible to avoid taking him to Underham. Some mute signs there were which instinct enabled him to detect, and, with that walk in view, no coaxing could induce him to venture where a door might be shut upon him; and more than once Anthony, congratulating himself upon having given him the slip, had found the little Skye waiting for him at some corner of the lane, wagging his tail with the most irresistibly deprecating expression of brown eyes.

So favourite a diversion at the end of his journey made Sniff run on more cheerily than his master could follow; for, although Anthony’s old sanguine disposition to some extent asserted itself, a man does not go very happily to such an interview as lay before him. As the colour died out of the sky, everything looked dull, blank, uninviting: sodden grass clothed the hedges, the air was laden with a smell of crushed apples, a few yellow leaves hung on the scraggy moss-grown trees of the orchards, the ricks caught no gleams of sunshine, the farmyards were drearily prosaic. Until now, Anthony had hardly realised how he had grown to hate the road to Underham; even now he tried to believe that the unattractiveness lay in all these outward things. He pictured to himself the Bennetts’ house, Ada coming forward with her pretty smiling face,—would it change?—would she care?—could it be possible that the next day he might be journeying away from Underham, free, unfettered? He went on thinking these thoughts until Underham itself was in sight, a few white cottages, the marshes, a canal, a bridge, and to the left red houses, black wharves, and a little confusion of shipping, all lying in the grey mist. There was another road joining that from Thorpe before it crossed the bridge, and two figures coming along under the trees Anthony glanced at carelessly, until they resolved themselves into Ada and Mr Warren.

Ada looked almost frightened for a moment. She came up quickly, and laid her hand on Anthony’s arm.

“We could not have the carriage to-day, and I always get a headache if I stay at home all the afternoon, so I came for a walk. Isn’t it odd that I should have first met Mr Warren, and then you?”

“Very,” said Anthony shortly.

“He had been for a night to Stanton, and was just coming back.”

“It’s a good day for a walk after the rain,” said Mr Warren, in his turn.

They were awkward little explanations, or might have been, if Anthony had been bent on another errand. As it was, after a momentary wrath at the man’s impudence, his strongest sensation was that of discomfort at Ada’s mark of affection. That they should be walking arm in arm towards her house was not the preamble he would have chosen to that which he had to say. Otherwise, it did not seem to him that he had any right to find fault with her. And he was too generous to admit the thought that he might use her own conduct as a weapon against her in the coming interview. He did not say much, because many things were in his mind, but his silence did not arise, as Ada and Mr Warren imagined, from displeasure with them. Ada quickly recovered herself, and wished Mr Warren a careless good-by. As they passed the rectory they met Mrs Featherly coming towards them, presenting the soles of her feet very visibly as she walked.

“I understood you had a cold, Ada,” she said. “I am surprised to see you out in the damp.”

“Have you a cold?” asked Anthony, when they were alone.

“Yes—no—I had, but the fresh air has cured it, as I thought it would.”

“Then you would not mind staying out a little longer?”

He had thought, suddenly, that it would be easier for him to speak there than in her uncles house. Ada hesitated a little. Each had their own anxieties as to what was coming, and she was divided between dread of the conversation and a wish to keep her lover in a good-humour by yielding.

“It is getting late,” she said slowly.

“But it is not cold. Come to the edge of the canal, and see that Norwegian schooner unloading.”

“Very well,” Ada said, hoping to charm him by her acquiescence.

They went to the edge of the wharf, at a little distance from the vessel, where there were men working at cranes, and great planks of deal from northern forests lifted and dropped on shore among the coils of rope, and sailors and boys who were lounging about and looking. Sometimes one comes upon a little scene of bustle like this, which yet lies under a strange hush. For a soft greyness had veiled all colour in the distant moors, a line of cloud as soft and as grey resting at a little height above them. Between cloud and hill the sun was sinking, a mighty ball of fire, throwing out no perceptible rays, but a ruddy glory, which rose behind the greyness, spread over the western heavens, and faded in a clear bright sky, softened by vapoury lines of cloud. The light was repeated in the water of the canal with a grave, gentle solemnity; there were groups of masts, rounded lines of boats, and, slowly moving out of sight, one tawny sail on its way to the river. Nothing could break the hush of departure which rested on the water, the quiet meadows, the hills, the changing sky—Anthony, who was always quickly affected by external influences, now that he had drawn Ada to the water’s brink, found it strangely difficult to enter on the subject which a few hours ago had come shaped to his thoughts in burning words; the soft melancholy of the time made it hard to say anything which should give pain, and yet how was it possible to speak without sharp pain to himself and to her? Ada, meanwhile, who knew more than he did about the meeting between herself and Mr Warren, was for once a little shaken from her self-complacency; the young fellow had said some foolish words about his return, and she had walked along the road by which she knew he might be expected, with a pretence of wonder when she saw him coming; and now she was turning in her mind what she was to say, and feeling sure that this was the reason of Anthony’s abstraction. Her own silence was unusual to her, but she had a perception that, her position would be bettered by his opening the attack, and his first words unconsciously added to her impression, although he only spoke them out of that fencing with ourselves with which we try to postpone a difficult task.

“Had you been out long, Ada, when I met you with Warren?”

“No, O no,” she said eagerly. “Aunt Henrietta thought as I had a headache I had better go out. She wanted some ferns, so I went towards Stanton, but it really is the worst of living near a town that one cannot escape from people. One might expect the Stanton road to be quiet, mightn’t one?”

He took no notice of this appeal. He believed all that she said implicitly, and her secret uneasiness had not in the least touched his consciousness. He was looking at the sinking sun, at the water moving slowly away, at the moments, perhaps, that were passing. She became more uneasy at his silence, but it was so unlike what she had been expecting when he at last spoke, that her breath seemed to fail her.

“Ada,” he said quickly, “I have behaved very ill to you.”

The ring of pain in his voice was too unmistakable to admit of the possibility of a thought that he was not speaking in earnest, which would otherwise have been her first reflection. But it was an instantaneous relief that he should be blaming himself and not her.

“Have you?” she said, with a little laugh, “I dare say you have. Old White, who was my nurse, used to say one should never trust any one. But I don’t know—I have not found her words altogether true as yet.” And she slipped her hand into his arm with a little caressing touch which added tenfold to the difficulty of his task.

“I shall never forget your trust in me. I can never forget that when other friends were ready at once to think evil, your generous belief never wavered,” he went on, speaking nervously, and not looking at her. “It is partly on that account, and because I feel it is impossible to repay that debt, that I must tell you the truth now.”

She was a little startled and uneasy again at his manner. Her imagination was not quick except in matters which concerned herself; but she began to picture the possibility of Anthony having done something much more dreadful than that act of simply leaving a suggestion unnoticed, which had never seemed to her such a mighty matter. Perhaps all his money was to be taken away from him. She drew back her hand and waited. The sun was gone, the sail had passed out of sight, Anthony went on more rapidly when he no longer felt the touch upon his arm.

“I knew that I was grateful; I was conscious of the relief and comfort that Mr Bennett’s house, with its kind atmosphere of welcome, never failed to give,—selfishly conscious, I am afraid. And so I asked you to be my wife.”

He stopped suddenly again, and looked at her for the first time, with a troubled imploring look, as if her mind must have leaped to the understanding of what he was trying to say, and no further words were needed. But except that she was relieved from her first fear, she did not understand in the least.

“Yes, Aunt Henrietta always knows how to make a house pleasant,” she was saying, smiling up at him. “I don’t think that rooms ought to be quite so hot, but, except that, they really are as nice as they can be. I am so glad you like it all, Anthony.”

“You are too good to me, all of you,” he said, reading only in her words a care for him which stung him with new remorse. “Ada, have you never repented?—do you think you can be happy with me?”

“O, why not?”

Perhaps some remembrance of Mr Warren came across her answer, and gave it just a touch of chill. If Anthony had not immediately been aware of the shade, I think he would have failed altogether in the courage which was necessary to pursue the subject; but, although Ada smiled again after her words, he was too sensitive to let it escape him.

“Men and women have made mistakes before now, I imagine,” he said with a little bitterness, “and it would be no honest means of proving my gratitude to bind you to a mistake until it becomes irrevocable. So, for pity’s sake, let us speak openly to each other,—while we can, at any rate.”

It flashed rapidly upon Ada that she had at last found the solution of the riddle, and that Anthony’s unaccountable words sprang, as she at first supposed, from the meeting that afternoon, although it was not anger which moved him, but fear lest she should be repenting of her choice. It was not the case. That little shade which had made itself felt in her answer to his question went no deeper than a little surface regret. She had no desire to marry Mr Warren rather than him, unless some change could alter the relative position of the two men; and it was quite necessary that Anthony should clearly understand this fact, although the idea of exciting a little jealousy was not undelightful to her vanity. She lifted her face, and said reproachfully,—

“I have always made a point of speaking openly. I do not know why you talk about mistakes, unless, indeed, you feel that you have made one yourself.”

This undesigned home-thrust staggered Anthony for a moment, and then helped him to his purpose.

“In one sense I have,” he said in a deep voice. “It need make no change in our mutual position, but in your eyes it may do so, and at least I should put it before you. It is a poor return for all your goodness to me to say that I believed I had a whole heart to offer you, and that I was a fool, for a part of myself belongs to another, always has, and, I suppose, always will; but, Ada, would it not have been worse to have hidden it from you? I could not have done so, it must have blistered my tongue when I spoke; I could do nothing but tell you, and put my fate into your hands. Will you still marry me?—will you believe that I will do all I can to make you happy?—will you forgive me?”

As he used the words, he was not looking at her. He had a vague perception in the midst of them that he was trying to thrust his emotions away from both her and himself, and to bury them out of sight. He hated himself for speaking the words at all. They were part of that wretched mistake of his life, which he began to feel would hold him tightly in spite of his efforts. He hated himself for doing her this wrong. He could not look at her. He felt that burden of humiliation and vexed anger which will make even a generous man indignant with the woman who has caused it, although innocently. There was a blank silence which lasted some minutes, while he was even more taken up with what he had said than with what it was possible she might say, and yet when her answer came at last, it startled him.

“Are you engaged to Miss Chester?” she said coldly.

“Good Heavens!” he exclaimed, stung to the quick, and facing her angrily. “Am I engaged? Do you know what you are saying?—do you suppose that I have been acting a lie all this time?—”

The hot words died suddenly on his tongue. Had he not been acting a lie to her and to himself together? The blood rushed into his face, but his words all came to an end. Ada, however, who had been impressed with the passion in his voice, began to recover from the anger which had been the first weapon her wounded vanity had caught up in self-defence. It was so impossible for the serene self-satisfaction of her nature to conceive a preference on his part for another woman, that her mind immediately began to cast about for some ether reasons for his words. Mr Bennett had often said that Anthony was morbid. She had not troubled her head about it, but the expression came to her now with relief. He had walked away a few steps, and stood moodily looking into a boat, with his shoulders a little raised, and his hands thrust into his pockets. Ada followed him and touched his arm.

“Dear Anthony,” she said softly, “why should you be angry with me? After what you said, I thought you really must have some object in saying it. Had you? Do you wish not to marry me?”

“I wish you not to marry me without knowing the truth,” he said, feeling as if circumstances were against him, and as if common humanity demanded some touch of tenderness on his part towards her. “I told you that I was conscious of having behaved very ill, but you know all now, Ada.”

“Then all that I know is that you are very fanciful and very foolish,” she said, speaking lightly. “If you tell me that you wish our engagement to be at an end, I should wish it too; I should only think of your happiness—” and as she said these words, she allowed her voice to change and falter slightly, so that Anthony, smitten with fresh remorse, turned and caught her hand in his,—“but if you are only speaking from some scrupulous—crotchet, shall I call it?” she went on, looking up at him, and smiling, “and fancying that I am not content, don’t make yourself miserable about what is really nonsense. Most people have little likings before they marry and settle down. Aunt Henrietta always says I am not like the foolish girls in novels. I am quite sure we shall be very happy.”

“If only I can make you so!” said poor Anthony, touched and overcome by the manner in which she had borne what he had to say. He forced back the sinking numbness which was creeping over his heart, and made his resolve tenderly. While those two had been standing there, the glow and ruddy lights had faded away, the grey deepened into gloom, the idlers had lounged home, a little red fire burned on board the unladen vessel, and made odd shadows, at which Sniff was barking in puzzled wrath. Anthony and Ada were standing in the darkness when he stooped slowly down and kissed her.

“So you are satisfied?” she said triumphantly.

“I am glad you know,” he said, in a deep voice which he used when he was moved.

Two or three men on board the Norwegian vessel, who were sitting in a dark group by the fire, began suddenly to sing one of their folk songs. It was a pathetic simple little air, without much variation in the refrain which came again and again. “Forloren, forloren,” it repeated, as if the lover could find no other words for his sadness. Was it an answer to her question? Was it his own heart crying out in the darkness? As they went slowly away, the sound followed them, growing sweeter when the distance softened it, as distance and time soften all sadness.

Chapter Thirty.

“Then every evil word I had spoken once, And every evil thought I had thought of old, And every evil deed I ever did. Awoke and cried, ‘This Quest is not for thee.’ And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns, And I was thirsty even unto death.” The Holy Grail.

The depression of spirit which fell upon David Stephens after leaving Faith was deepened by a number of other circumstances, which seemed to choose the saddest moment of his life to cast their separate troubles at him. When he reached home it was to learn that one of the most influential members of his body, in whose hands a sum of money had been gradually accumulated by means of the most painful labour and self-denial, had gone off to a Mormon settlement, carrying the money with him. And on the following day, David, hastening back at dinner-time to the prodigal whom he was sheltering and yearning over, found the little room empty, and the boy gone. The landlady, who had been in a heat of lofty indignation since Nat Wills was first brought to her house, would give no information; and David, tired and sick at heart, sat down on his bed, forcing his mind, by the strongest coercion he could bring to bear, to travel wearily along the probable roads by which the lad was setting forth again upon his downward journey, that so he might go after him and bring him back,—no matter what it cost him.

But although his resolution was no less supported by an iron determination than it had been a few days ago on almost the same errand, the spring which had then made it comparatively easy had lost its power. His face was haggard and worn as if with a long illness. His hands moved restlessly from one thing to another. He turned with loathing from the food on the table, which, frugal as it was, was more than he would have ordered if he had not provided for the guest who had left him. Never in his life had such an unconquerable gloom seized him as that which held him now in an ever-tightening grasp.

It appeared to him and he believed that he was looking dispassionately at what he judged, that all his attempts had resulted in failure. He had prepared himself for it in some sort, but not as it had met him, lull of crushing pain, a pain which had grown into his eyes, never to leave them again, and perhaps gave them some of the strange power which people noticed when he spoke. His aim had been the highest. Blame him as you will, his faults had been the falling short of that aim, his manner of striving towards it, his wilfulness in its pursuit, not the forgetting of it, or turning aside to something lower. He had yearned for the poor souls about him, the force of his love-making every shortcoming towards them horrible in his sight, so that out of his very pitiful compassion there grew actual injustice. Then he had seemed to gain many, his burning words having in them a compelling force which frightened and attracted the souls they touched. Against pride in this success, against the pride of which some who were jealous of his eloquence accused him, he had prayed intensely and passionately. He had not sought worldly advancement, riches, or fame, the only use of these things in his sight being as means by which he might have scope for the work, the desire of which possessed his soul. Men who have such longings are apt to believe that the very purity and nobility of their aims must needs put what they want within their reach, not perceiving that it is the very height at which they grasp which causes what they call failure. For, evermore, as we toil and climb we learn our littleness, and something of the glory of that which lies beyond; until with the struggle there comes the knowledge that here is not the end, nor the crown, nor the fulfilment.

But to David at this moment the end seemed to have been within his reach and to have been missed. The power which he believed himself to have attained over some of the minds, or rather the affections of those with whom he had been brought in contact, directly it was touched by the test of self-interest, even in its basest form, failed. He told himself bitterly that if a passing emotion led them to ask how they might flee from the wrath to come, with something of the spirit which urged the Ephesians to burn their books, the Florentines to cast aside their vanities at the bidding of Savonarola,—when the emotion passed, the older selfishness reasserted its sway. As for himself, what was he to them? A humpbacked preacher, to whom novelty would attract them, but for whom not one would turn out of his way to send after him so much as a kindly word. The sense of desolation which surged up in his heart as he thought this was so terrible that great drops stood on his forehead and his limbs trembled. In spite of himself, he had never lost the hope that Faith might have faced his lot, and clung to him: but Faith had given him up; the boy for whom he had been pinching himself had run away; the man whom he called friend had crushed his last hopes of gaining what he believed absolutely necessary to the success of his work. Everything was against him. Men clung to the wreck from which he would have dragged them, hurt him with hard words, turned their faces from him; and standing there, solitary, in a room heavy with the remembrance of the boy who had shared and left it, David cried out in the anguish of his heart as though some one had smitten him a deadly blow. Yet with it all there was no faltering of his resolution, no holding back of his hand. He would go out again that evening, walk all the night if it were necessary, once more to bring back the last lost. As he passed along the street to the office, the boys jeered at him. “Thyur’s another pracher for the Mormuns!”

“Wann be’m going, Jim?”

“Doan’t ’ee know? Whay, wann thyur’s a lot more money scraped up for to build a chapel.” Although David walked along without paying any apparent regard, each word fell like a lash on his sore heart, on which the burden of the other man’s deeds seemed to be heaped.

He went through his work dully and mechanically, but without failing in any point of its routine. He was, however, detained at the office until a later hour than usual, owing to a delay on the line, and he made up his mind, in the intervals during which he allowed his mind to dwell on the subject, to search for Nat Wills in Underham itself before going farther; thinking it not unlikely, from some words the boy had let drop, that he would find a hiding-place there.

When he left the office it was quite dark, and long ago the glory of the setting sun had faded out of the heavens. For an hour or two he went, as he had determined, from house to house in the black courts where vice and misery huddle together, nearer us oftener than we think in our contentedness. And even here he was scourged by the other man’s sin. Women taunted him with it, every taunt carrying a fresh sting. Some of them in moments of emotion had given him their pence for the object he had at heart, and cast this in his teeth again, or reproached him with mute white faces which were more intolerable. No one could tell what it cost him to feel that the work he had believed to be in progress lay all unravelled and useless in his hand, the stone which infinite labour had pushed upwards had dropped back an inert mass. The solitude, too, of a sectarian creed was upon him. He felt alone among these people. When he came out at last into a wider street, the light from a lamp hard by falling on his face showed it intensified with a look of such pain as a man cannot endure long and live.

The purpose in his heart was, however, as strong as ever, and he moved slowly along the street towards another quarter in which it was possible that Nat might have found refuge. Just as he reached a corner Anthony Miles came round it on his way from the Bennetts’. It was not a happy time for him to meet David, after the talk of the night before, and when the evening had been such as we know. He stopped abruptly, and David stopped also.

“That’s you, Stephens, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr Bennett has been telling me of the rascally manner in which that man Higgins has made off. I should think that ought to show you the set of fellows you’re getting mixed up with. But if you will run your head against a wall there’s another thing I’ve got to say. I understand you are still trying for a bit of land in Thorpe, and you may as well know that I’ve not changed my mind, and that I shall fight you through thick and thin before you get it.”

“I know that, sir,” said David, with a concentrated forlornness in his voice of which Anthony was immediately aware. “You’ve done it with all your might up to now, but you won’t need to trouble yourself much longer.”

“Have you changed your opinions, then?” said Anthony, softened by the thought of concession.

“Have I given up my faith, do you mean?” Stephens said bitterly. “Can I put my religion on and off as easy as you your glove? No, Mr Miles, if there’s no more left to me, there’s that, at any rate. What I mean to say is that since the money has gone there’s a further hindrance put in the way of the gospel, and that if there’s any who can triumph over the working of another man’s sin, they may do it now.”

In spite of his irritation at the man’s meaning, Anthony could not repress some sort of pity for the deep dejection with which he spoke. It was impossible to doubt his earnestness, although he had no sympathy for his efforts.

“There are different ways of preaching the gospel, Stephens,” he said more kindly, “without taking other men’s duties upon ourselves. Well, good-night to you. I wished to give you that warning. If I were you I should shake myself clear of the Higgins lot.”

Each figure went its separate way in the darkness, little thinking how soon they were to meet again. For the first time for some weeks a fresh alarm awoke in Davids conscience, perhaps caused by the touch of change in Mr Miles’s manner, perhaps by the end of those hopes which had influenced his conduct towards him. He had succeeded in persuading himself that Anthony had been a persecutor of religion, and that his own silence had been caused by no mere personal grudge; now, wounded by the scorn and disappointment of the last two days, he began to realise what he had permitted to fall on the other man. What if he, more than Anthony, had been the persecutor? What if here were a sin which he had nursed until God would have patience no longer, and had smitten him and his labour to the earth?

He groaned aloud, and stretched out his hands towards heaven and the stars which were shining softly. A woman who passed noticed a dart figure leaning against a house, and fled in terror. David never saw her. The anguish which he had carried with him all the day reached its crisis, and almost overwhelmed him. His soul, struck with a sense of its own weakness, swallowed up by a terrified horror, was crying out for help, for teaching, in a new-found passion of humility. He sank down on his knees in the road, and, taught by the spiritual experience of his life to crave for and to obey sudden impulses, had almost resolved to follow Anthony at once, and to tell him all he knew. The recollection of Nat Wills withheld him; and as if he would lose no more time in finding him, and thus becoming free to follow his design, he staggered to his feet, and hurried along towards the water.

Chapter Thirty One.

“But this I know, that not even the best and first, When all is done, can claim by desert what even to the last and worst Of us weak workmen, God from the depths of his infinite mercy giveth. These bones shall rest in peace, for I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Owen Meredith.

The short conversation between the two men did not leave the same impression upon Anthony as it had left upon David. Other thoughts had hold of him too completely to allow of much wandering from them. Although he had made no distinct resolution to do that which he had done, and permitted himself to believe that his words had not been premeditated, but were such as grew out of the situation, the possibility that they might be spoken had in truth lived in his heart, or had, rather, been lived upon, for some time past. He was too young not to feel that suffering was intolerable, that his own wrong must be righted, deliverance come in some unknown fashion. The hope was never altogether absent even in his moments of deepest dejection, and as yet he could scarcely grasp the fact that he had used the one resource which had seemed to him at once desperate and certain, and that—it had failed him.

When he reached the bridge a bark at his heels startled him. He stood still and whittled for Sniff, and meeting no return remembered that he had left the Bennetts hurriedly, and had forgotten to ask for the dog. He turned round at once, and more from a vague feeling that some pain haunted the road by which he had reached his present point, than from any actual choice, took the path by the canal, and passed the spot from which that day he had seen the sun sink, and watched the shades gather.

The Norwegian vessel lay still against the quay, its masts rising sharply against the softer darkness of the sky, in which tremulous stars were shining. Underneath the wall there was a blackness of water, where a plank or two floated and caught the faint light. Smoke was still pouring out of the little hooded funnel where the men had their fire, and there were three or four figures on the deck, and laughter which did not sound quite friendly. Anthony, as he came nearer, could distinguish words of broken English, and fancied that the men had been drinking and were quarrelsome. It was all shadowy and dusky, with here and there a little weird leaping light, and rough voices grating on the silence. But as he passed by the water’s edge he heard another voice which he recognised as David Stephens’s, and this made him look at the group with more curiosity, and wonder what the young man could be doing on board a foreign vessel. He could distinctly see him standing in the midst of the sailors, who were jeering or threatening, and presently he saw him turn away as if to jump on shore. Anthony lingered, he could scarcely tell why, when suddenly there was a cry and a splash; one of the men by accident or design had pushed violently against David, and he was in the water. The sailors, sobered in an instant, were crowding, looking, shouting, and in another moment Anthony was in the midst of them, had caught a rope, and swung himself down between the vessel and the quay. He was a good swimmer, the danger lay in the cramped space in which it was possible to move, and in the darkness which hid everything; but presently lights flashed, people were running and calling, and a gleam struck for a moment on something at which he clutched and missed, and clutched again, and dragged up at last on the slippery planks. Help came very quickly, men collected, two boats were jostling each other, and they lifted the burden from him, laid it in the boat, and rowed to the landing steps. There the men who were carrying poor David paused as if in doubt.

“Where shall us take un, sir?” asked one of the old sailors.

“It’s young Stephens, the preacher!” said another who had got a lantern, and held it up to the white face.

“You may carr’n over to my place, if you’m minded,” said a gruff voice out of the little throng. “It’s handy, and the mis’ess wouldn’t be willing for he to be drownded.”

“Take him to whichever house is nearest. And, here, one of you, go off for Mr Bowles,” said Anthony, recovering his breath.

They carried him very tenderly across the road to a door at which a little light was already shining. The foreign sailors were watching with alarmed faces, uncertain how far they would be held answerable for what had happened. One of them began explaining in broken English to Anthony that he had come on board to look for some boy whom he accused them of harbouring, and then the men made fun of him, not in the least intending what had happened, their spokesman declared. It was so impossible to say whether there had really been more than this, that Anthony could only listen in silence. He was a little confused himself, for it had all passed in a minute, and there was a strange flutter of unreality about the darkness and the trampling feet moving through the narrow door. A kind grave-looking woman was there, who came forward with wet eyes, and touched Davids hand gently; she had had but a moment of preparation, and yet it all seemed ready as the men came in with their dripping burden, and carried it up stairs and laid it on the bed. Her husband stopped the people who were pressing after, but a lad broke past him, ran up into the room, and fell on his knees by the bedside, crying bitterly.

“I’m Nat, David. I’ll go back with you where you please,” he said over and over, with a sharpness of appeal which touched them all. It seemed as if the heavy lids must lift themselves, the mouth unclose, in answer to this boyish cry; the men fell back a little, and waited in mute expectation. David had been right in tracking him to the ship. He had got one of the men to hide him for a lark, and then he had heard all the inquiries, the jerk, the sudden splash. They had some ado to keep him from flinging himself over the side, too.

But neither cries nor remorse touched the quiet of the face which lay unconscious of them all in that awful insensibility which affects us with a curious sympathy as something that one day must hold us also in thrall. They thought that he was dead, and when at last, after the doctor had tried all means of restoration, life struggled feebly back, it was so slight and so precarious that it scarcely seemed like life at all.

“I suspect some blow was received in the fall; but the poor fellow was weakly before, and the shock has proved too much for his rallying powers,” said Mr Bowles, under his breath.

“Do you mean that he will die?” said Anthony, shocked.

“You had better go and change your clothes, Mr Miles,” said the doctor, evading the question. “Can you find your way to my house?”

“I will go to the Bennetts’, and hurry back as soon as possible. Is anything wanted?”

“A little brandy for yourself. Nothing here, thank you.”

Anthony was quickly back again, and Mr Bennett with him, full of fussy good-nature. David had spoken a word or two, and the calm of his face had deepened into something that looked like happiness, as he lay with his eyes resting upon Nat Wills, who was burying his head in the bedclothes, and now and then lifting it to sob out remorseful words. But as his look turned towards Anthony, and lay there for a minute or two as if he were not sufficiently conscious to know who it was, those who were watching saw a sudden change pass over the still features. It might have been wonder, fear, even terror, which drew the muscles together and opened the eyes, but it was shown so sharply that every one turned at once to look in the same direction, and see what caused the movement.

“You may as well just slip behind, the sight of you seems to excite him,” said the young doctor, a little curious like the rest. As for Anthony, the intensity of the look fairly appalled him. He had disliked and opposed Stephens, but he was one of those people to whom it is always a shock to have ill-feeling returned, especially at a moment when he was full of kindly emotion towards the man whose life he had saved.

“He wishes to say something. Keep back, good people,” said Mr Bennett. “Is there anything you want, my poor fellow?”

The pale lips parted and closed again.

“He has not strength to bear questioning,” said the doctor, impatiently. He would have stopped it more decidedly if that look had not remained upon the man’s face, so terrible in its dumb language that it seemed as if something must be done to loosen its tension. And yet Anthony had drawn back into the shadows. After a moment’s thinking, Mr Bowles motioned him forward. “You had better speak and find out what is the matter,” he said in a low voice, “for something is exciting him more than he can long bear.”