Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Harvest/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
And copy of the father: eye, nose, lips,
The trick of his frown, his forehead—nay, the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek, his smiles". . . .
A month has passed since Silvia came to see me, and now we are in May—fragrant, blossoming, voluptuous May; and the world is covered like a bride with the month's white flower of flowers, that here and there melts odorously into faintest, palest pink, or burns into vividest crimson and scarlet. You are very royal and sweet, you May-flowers, but I do not love you so well as my
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty: violets dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eye
Or Cytherea's breath: pale primroses
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength,"
and all the delicate army that your gorgeous coming has caused to fade away. They did not wait, like you, till the earth was warned and pranked to receive you; they grew with the grass, and crept up through the cold, hard ground, braving the lingering chilly winds and night frosts to bring us beautiful messages from the busy, teeming earth-mother. Already in this fuller spring the indescribably delicate tints of leaf and flower and grass and sky are gone; the fresh, new, impalpable bloom that lay over all has vanished; the vague rapture and stir of nature is over. It is the fulfilment, not the promise; the reality, not the dream Over my head the apple blossoms are hanging, rosily white, pearly pink; they are so exquisite that I long to take a bough of them in my arms and bury my face in their cool, snowy beauty.
As I look up, a thrush, who has been swaying himself to and fro, hurries away, and a shower of pink and white scented leaves flutter down upon my head and face—what a feast is this for eye and heart and senses! And so it would have been to me a while ago; now it fills me with admiration, not love. And yet I would not have the days when nature contented me so thoroughly back again if I could.
Than never to have loved at all,"
sang the poet, with a deeper philosophy than the words at first sight seem to contain. Better is it to have a heart that has only quickened to die than one that goes beating torpidly on, knowing as little of joy as of pain. I think those who have a great capacity for suffering are not to be pitied, since they have an equal capacity for happiness; to such the great flood of ecstasy that has once swept over their souls, though quickly followed by sharpest misery, more envy may be given than to those whose hearts are watered only by puny rills of pleasure, who can only suffer as they endure—in moderation And though forgetfulness might bring me a base and sluggish peace, I would not lose memory—that sad and sweet faced maiden, in whose face I can look without remorse, and who, though she offers to my lips a full and bitter cup, cannot say "You mixed it; drink, for the evil is of your own working." I think that if through fault or sin of mine our misery had been made, I could not have borne it. That is why Paul suffers so terribly, because he knows that his own hand was the means of our undoing. Paul! Paul! and I can give you no word of comfort! no, nor ease your shoulders from one iota of the burden laid upon them.
I have seen him twice, before all the rest. Fortunately, papa is not so far gone in madness and hospitality as to invite Mrs. Vasher to dinner, and as she has been here he is perfectly unsuspicious of the wheels within wheels; and long may he remain so, say I. He, mother, and I, have been invited to a dinner party at The Towers (ye gods!), but as papa has fortunately quarrelled outright with every other neighbour invited, and as it might be awkward if he had to take his enemy's wife in to dinner, he has declined for obvious reasons. Mrs. Vasher has returned her visits as she received her visitors, alone, and the county to a man cries fie! upon Paul; and the county to a woman, with a spiteful though true instinct, takes the part of the husband, and calls fie on the wife.
Sometimes I think I never made a greater mistake than when I made Paul go back to his wife. Upon him I entailed a life of utter wretchedness; what his existence is his face tells plainly enough; and the tongue of scandal even has not been stopped, although my name has not yet appeared in the matter. He might have got over his disappointment in time if he had been away from her, but how can he forget for one moment when Silvia is ever before him, a living witness of the past? God forgive me if I acted arrogantly and unwisely; I did it for the best.
Footsteps come softly over the grass, and Simpkins appears somewhat unexpectedly before me. There are signs of hurry and discomposure on the ancient man's countenance, that nothing short of papa's agency could call up, and I look round hastily to see if that gentleman is harassing his rear.
"You are wanted directly, Miss Nell; Mr. Vasher is here."
"What has that to do with me?" I ask, reddening, as I remember the countless occasions on which Mr. Simpkins has seen us together.
"Mrs. Vasher is dying, Miss Nell;" and may he be forgiven, but a look of positive satisfaction overspreads his face as he makes the announcement.
"And what has that to do with me?" I ask again.
"Oh! nothing, miss, nothing!"
"I don't believe a word of it," I say, promptly. "What is she dying of?"
"Something in her inside, Miss Nell—her'art, I think."
"Very well; I am coming. I don't believe one word of it," I say to myself, as I follow Simpkins towards the house. "It's only another of her tricks. Besides, if she were, why should she want to see me, of all people?"
In the drawing-room I find Paul Vasher alone.
"You will come?" he says, meeting me half-way across the room. "Deeply as she has wronged you, you will not refuse her?"
In his voice there is some strange, new feeling. Is it remorse?
"What is the matter with her?"
"Heart disease. Her mother died in just such an attack as the one I left her in just now. The doctor said she might die at any moment."
"Are you sure?" I ask, sceptically. "People may have heart disease for a very long while before they die of it. And I can't understand why she should wish to see me."
Perhaps she wants you to forgive her," he says, in a low voice.
"Do not be angry," I say, after a few seconds' hard thought, "but I cannot go. I could do her no good; and I have a feeling, a conviction even, that she is not so ill as you think. Remember her powers of dissimulation. If I go harm will come of it; and I could not tell her that I forgive her—I do not."
"During the past hour," he says slowly, "I have begun to feel for her what I never felt before—pity. If you had seen her face when she sent for me. . . ."
"I will go with you," I say, quietly, and leave the room.
Mother and Dolly are to be found nowhere; so I fetch nurse, make her dress herself, and then go down with her to the carriage that is waiting at the door. It is a strange setting out to the house that I have never entered, and to which I was to go as bride, and now I am going there to see Paul's wife, my bitter enemy.
Nurse's amazement distracts my thoughts during the short period that elapses between our leaving the Manor House and reaching Paul's door, where he stands to receive me. He takes us through halls and vestibules, into an octagon-shaped room, looking out on to a gay flower-garden, and leaves us. A queer taste for a man's room; it looks far more like a lady's boudoir. . . .
"Eh!" cries nurse, lifting her finger and pointing towards the mantelpiece; "only look, Miss Nell!"
I start violently as my eyes fall on the picture, which represents a young girl with the first freshness of early youth lying on her lips and cheeks, looking with joyous, happy smile out of her veil of loose brown hair; upon her head is a wreath of poppies and woven flowers and grasses; she wears a white gown, and she is—Helen Adair, as she used to be.
"Nobody 'ud ever know it was intended for you," says nurse, impartially, you used to look summit like it—but, Lord! the difference the paint do make to be sure!"
I look round the room; at the walls hung with pale yellow silk with a deep rich border of poppies and corn-flowers running round; at the damask curtains, with the same border; at the white carpet on which the same flowers are scattered in delicate knots. I know now why he uses this room; it was to have been mine. The sex of the occupier is shown by the massive writing appointments, the whips and driving gloves, the half-smoked cigar on the table, and all the orderly litter of a man's favourite room. And this is my Eden that I have never entered, until I come to it as a visitor to his wife. I look up, Paul is standing at the door, and I rise and go to him, leaving nurse behind. At the door of the room where Silvia lies he leaves me, and I go in alone. The room is so darkened that, coming out of the broad daylight, I can barely make out the outline of Silvia's face against the pillows. As I approach her an elderly woman by her side rises and passes out.
"You sent for me," I say, looking down on her, "and I am here."
Now that my eyes are more accustomed to the light, I see that she is mortally pale, and her breath comes in quick, short pants.
"Do you know that I am dying?" she says, lifting her haggard lovely eyes to my face. "I dare say you are very glad?"
Desperately ill though I see plainly enough that she is, something in her voice tells me that she is not dying, no, nor in immediate danger of death.
"Did you only send for me to ask me that if so, I am better away."
"Are you so hard-hearted?" she asks between her short pants. "Feel!"
She takes my hand and lays it against her heart, which seems to be leaping out of her body with every beat.
"Do you think that is shamming? Sooner or later it will kill me—not to-day, perhaps, or to-morrow, but some time."
She looses my hand and sits up in bed, and her fleece of hair ripples all over her shoulders and the counterpane like a shower of molten gold.
"If I were dead you would forgive me, would you not?"
"I would try to."
"If you knew that I could not live very long, you would forgive me?"
"Perhaps."
"Then say so now," she says feverishly, with her hands clasped over her labouring heart, "that you do forgive me."
"I cannot," I say slowly; "it is all too sudden. . . . I do not forgive you; would you have me tell a lie? And you seem to have forgotten all that was between us. . . . how can there be any shadow of friendship between us?"
"I don't ask for friendship," she says, falling back upon the pillows.
How pale and lost and lovely she looks! No wonder Paul found it in his heart to pity her just now.
"Do you know," she says, opening her eyes, "that it is you who should ask forgiveness of me, not I of you? Paul was mine first, do not forget that, and he might have been mine again, if you had not bewitched him; if I stole him from you last, you stole him from me first. How did you make him love you so well?" she cries, with a low wail: "whether with you or away from you, it was always the same—you were the very apple of his eye. Men are not usually so faithful to the absent, or so cold to a beautiful woman who loves them. And all these years that I have been his wife, he has never spoken one word to me, save before servants—never touched my hand in commonest friendly greeting. I came behind him once and put my arms round his neck; he started up—you should have seen his face, there was murder in it; he left me without a word—and for all of this, I have to thank you, Helen Adair! Oh! it is pleasant to steal into his room, like a thief in the night, and hear him cry, 'Nell! Nell!' over and over again, and toss his outstretched arms into the air; often as I have watched and listened, I never yet heard him whisper, 'Silvia!'"
A deep pity wells up from my heart as I look down on this passionate, sinful woman, between whose lips the fruits of evil-doing have turned to such bitter dust and ashes. Has not God punished her heavily enough for me to forego my little impotent" condemnation?
"If I had known how it would be, I never would have tricked him into marrying me—never. I thought that if I was his wife I should regain all my old empire over him; no man ever withstood me yet. My one heart's desire was to make him love me again, then I should have known happiness at last. Happiness! good God! though I have always hated the very name of death, I shall not be sorry when he calls me; only I dread the cold, narrow bondage, and the thought of the blind worms creeping over my breast—pah!
"Will you give me some of that medicine? I sent that fussy doctor away, he was no good, and I know the proper remedies. Thank you. I told them just now to send my———"
"Mamma! mamma!" says a gentle little voice outside the door, which opens softly, and on the threshold stands Paul's son, and Silvia's. A breathless calm binds me hand and foot as he stands still for a moment, hesitating, then comes on his little unsteady feet straight across the room to my side, looking up into my face with Paul's own proud, wilful, beautiful brown eyes. And still I do not stir, until, perplexed, he lifts a tiny, dimpled hand, and slips it inside mine—and the clinging baby fingers touch some strange, till now unknown, chords deep in my heart. . . . . I tremble, and a passion of new-born love, fierce regret, and bitter pain shakes me like a reed, and I bow my head low over the innocent, childish face. . . Nay, Silvia, it is you who have conquered, not I. To this unsoiled treasure, "fresh from God," you are mother, not I. Through all my years of misery, I have never once felt the loss of my lover as I feel it now, while my arms close around his son. . . . .
"You like children?" says Silvia, as the boy slips away from me, and clambers over the bed; "I never did."
"Pitty_mamma!" says the child, pulling at her loose hair, "pitty mamma!” but he does not kiss her or lay his face against hers, nor does she hold out her arms to him. Silvia spoke truth, she has no mother-instinct whatever.
"And you do not love him?" I ask.
"No. I might have, perhaps, if he had been any link between me and his father, but he was the one crowning misdemeanour for which my husband never forgave me. I was told he went on like a madman when he heard it. I never loved but one person in my life, and that was Paul."
"Was there ever such a shameless woman?" say to myself, looking at her. The deathly pallor has left her face, her breathing is quieter, and the bluish tint of her lips is replaced by a tinge of colour. I look at the child; they make a beautiful pair. He has his father's eyes, his mother's skin, her golden hair, his father's mouth and chin, with a haughty trick of holding his head, that brings Paul before my very eyes. Father and son, son and father, how my heart aches for you both—the consolation that the one might afford the other, the love the other might give the one. Somehow the touch of the little hands has smoothed all the resentment and unforgivingness out of my heart. I could not, if I would, speak such words to his mother as I did a while ago.
"I feel better now," she says, wearily; "I shall not die this time, at any rate. Tell me now, once for all, will you forgive me?"
"Yes, I will forgive you." (For the child's sake, I add to myself.)
"You will?" she cries, sitting up; "you are not pretending!"
"Why should I?" I ask, steadily; are you?"
"No!" she says, dropping her eyes, "only I did not think any woman living could be so noble. And you will speak to me when I meet you; you will come to see me?"
"We are not likely to meet, and I will not come to see you. Friends we cannot be—no, nor acquaintances."
"Then your forgiveness is an empty form of words," she says, falling back; "I need not have praised you for it. Shall I tell you why you extend to me the form of forgiveness and not the spirit?" she asks, lifting herself upon her elbow. "Shall I tell you why you will not come here? Because you are afraid of your own heart."
There is an instant's silence, in which Satan whispers, "What! Acknowledge your own weakness and his?" and my good angel cries, "Confess it, and be not led into temptation;" then I answer coldly, "You are mistaken, Mrs. Vasher; I am no more likely to forget that he is your husband, than he is to forget what is due to me. No, I am not afraid to meet him."
"Then sometimes, not often perhaps, but sometimes you will come here. You will not keep up an open enmity?"
"Sometimes!" I say, against my better instincts; then looking suddenly into her face, "Silvia, you are quite certain that whatever of sin and subterfuge there has been in your past, you now mean fairly and honestly by me and your husband? Is there any fresh plotting of wickedness in your heart?"
"Does a dying woman weave plots?" she asks bitterly, as she turns away her eyes from mine. "Is there any further harm that I can work you, him, or myself? Your heart is not a soft one, Helen Adair."
For a minute I stand musing, and the child pulls at my dress, he is tired of the quiet room, and wants to go away.
"Wattie takes to you," she says, looking at him; "though he never liked strangers."
The change in her voice brings me back to common-places. "Is that his name? I am going now. Good-bye."
She stretches out her slim hand, and lays it in mine; a queer sensation runs through me as I look down at it—the band that worked my life's misery so deftly and well.
"You have promised," she says, "do not forget. You have promised to come here sometimes and see me and Wattie."
"I shall not forget."
She closes her eyes, and as we pass out of the room, I pause to look at her, thinking that she looks far more like a dead woman than a living one. In the corridor outside several servants are standing.
"That's Miss Adair," says one of them in a very low voice, as I pass, "her as master's so sweet on."
Have we any secrets from the detectives who eat our salt, take our wages, and do our bidding? Wattie trots along by my side, the nurse follows, at the foot of the stairs we meet Paul Vasher.