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CHAPTER XII. A LETTER

A cool soft breeze went through the curtains of my couch, and I awoke. The blooms of the peasant-briars and the court-roses were waving together over my head. The sigh of the wind had breathed itself out over the far heath, and ere it died in my fairy forest of lowly plants and bushes, had found and fanned the cheeks that lay down hot and athirst for air. It gave me new life, and I rose refreshed. Something fluttered to the ground. I thought it was a leaf from a white rose above me, but I looked. At my feet lay a piece of paper. I took it up. It had been folded very hastily, and had no address, but who could have a better right to unfold it than I! It might be nothing; it might be a letter. Should I open it? Should I not rather seize the opportunity of setting things right between my heart and my uncle by taking it to him unopened? Only, if it were indeed—I dared hardly even in thought complete the supposition—might it not be a wrong to the youth? Might not the paper contain a confidence? might it not be the messenger of a heart that trusted me before even it knew my name? Would I inaugurate our acquaintance with an act of treachery, or at least distrust? Right or wrong, thus my heart reasoned, and to its reasoning I gave heed. “It will,” I said, “be time enough to resolve, when I know concerning what!” This, I now see, was juggling; for the question was whether I should be open with my uncle or not. “It might be,” I said to myself, “that, the moment I knew the contents of the paper, I should reproach myself that I had not read it at once!” I sat down on a bush of heather, and unfolded it. This is what I found, written with a pencil:—

“I am the man to whom you talked so kindly over your garden wall yesterday. I fear you may think me presuming and impertinent. Presuming I may be, but impertinent, surely not! If I were, would not my heart tell me so, seeing it is all on your side?

“My name is John Day; I do not yet know yours. I have not dared to inquire after it, lest I should hear of some impassable gulf between us. The fear of such a gulf haunts me. I can think of nothing but the face I saw over the wall through the clusters of lilac: the wall seems to keep rising and rising, as if it would hide you for ever.

“Is it wrong to think thus of you without your leave? If one may not love the loveliest, then is the world but a fly-trap hung in the great heaven, to catch and ruin souls!

“If I am writing nonsense—I cannot tell whether I am or not—it is because my wits wander with my eyes to gaze at you through the leaves of the wild white rose under which you are asleep. Loveliest of faces, may no gentlest wind of thought ripple thy perfect calm, until I have said what I must, and laid it where she will find it!

“I live at Rising, the manor-house over the heath. I am the son of Lady Cairnedge by a former marriage. I am twenty years of age, and have just ended my last term at Oxford. May I come and see you? If you will not see me, why then did you walk into my quiet house, and turn everything upside down? I shall come to-night, in the dusk, and wait in the heather, outside the fence. If you come, thank God! if you do not, I shall believe you could not, and come again and again and again, till hope is dead. But I warn you I am a terrible hoper.

“It would startle, perhaps offend you, to wake and see me; but I cannot bear to leave you asleep. Something might come too near you. I will write until you move, and then make haste to go.

“My heart swells with words too shy to go out. Surely a Will has brought us together! I believe in fate, never in chance!

“When we see each other again, will the wall be down between us, or shall I know it will part us all our mortal lives? Longer than that it cannot. If you say to me, ‘I must not see you, but I will think of you,’ not one shall ever know I have other than a light heart. Even now I begin the endeavour to be such that, when we meet at last, as meet we must, you shall not say, ‘Is this the man, alas, who dared to love me!’

“I love you as one might love a woman-angel who, at the merest breath going to fashion a word unfit, would spread her wings and soar. Do not, I pray you, fear to let me come! There are things that must be done in faith, else they never have being: let this be one of them.—You stir.”

As I came to these last words, hurriedly written, I heard behind me, over the height, the quick gallop of a horse, and knew the piece of firm turf he was crossing. The same moment I was there in spirit, and the imagination was almost vision. I saw him speeding away—“to come again!” said my heart, solemn with gladness.

Rising-manor was the house to which the lady took me that dread night when first I knew what it was to be alone in darkness and silence and space. Was that lady his mother? Had she rescued me for her son? I was not willing to believe it, though I had never actually seen her. The way was mostly dark, and during the latter portion of it, I was much too weary to look up where she sat on her great horse. I had never to my knowledge heard who lived at Rising. I was not born inquisitive, and there were miles between us.

I sat still, without impulse to move a finger. I lived essentially. Now I knew what had come to me. It was no merely idiosyncratic experience, for the youth had the same: it was love! How otherwise could we thus be drawn together from both sides! Verily it seemed also good enough to be that wondrous thing ever on the lips of poets and tale-weaving magicians! Was it not far beyond any notion of it their words had given me?

But my uncle! There lay bitterness! Was I indeed false to him, that now the thought of him was a pain? Had I begun a new life apart from him? To tell him would perhaps check the terrible separation! But how was I to tell him? For the first time I knew that I had no mother! Would Mr. Day’s mother be my mother too, and help me? But from no woman save my own mother, hardly even from her, would I ask mediation with the uncle I had loved and trusted all my life and with my whole heart. I had never known father or mother, save as he had been father and mother and everybody to me! What was I to do? Gladly would I have hurried to some desert place, and there waited for the light I needed. That I was no longer in any uncertainty as to the word that described my condition, did not, I found, make it easy to use the word. “Perhaps,” I argued, struggling in the toils of my new liberty, “my uncle knows nothing of this kind of love, and would be unable to understand me! Suppose I confessed to him what I felt toward a man I had spoken to but once, and then only to tell him the way to Dumbleton, would he not think me out of my mind?”

At length I bethought me that, so long as I did not know what to do, I was not required to do anything; I must wait till I did know what to do. But with the thought came suffering enough to be the wages of any sin that, so far as I knew, I had ever committed. For the conviction awoke that already the love that had hitherto been the chief joy of my being, had begun to pale and fade. Was it possible I was ceasing to love my uncle? What could any love be worth if mine should fail my uncle! Love itself must be a mockery, and life but a ceaseless sliding down to the death of indifference! Even if I never ceased to love him, it was just as bad to love him less! Had he not been everything to me?—and this man, what had he ever done for me? Doubtless we are to love even our enemies; but are we to love them as tenderly as we love our friends? Or are we to love the friend of yesterday, of whom we know nothing though we may believe everything, as we love those who have taken all the trouble to make true men and women of us? “What can be the matter with my soul?” I said. “Can that soul be right made, in which one love begins to wither the moment another begins to grow? If I be so made, I cannot help being worthless!”

It was then first, I think, that I received a notion—anything like a true notion, that is, of my need of a God—whence afterward I came to see the one need of the whole race. Of course, not being able to make ourselves, it needed a God to make us; but that making were a small thing indeed, if he left us so unfinished that we could come to nothing right;—if he left us so that we could think or do or be nothing right;—if our souls were created so puny, for instance, that there was not room in them to love as they could not help loving, without ceasing to love where they were bound by every obligation to love right heartily, and more and more deeply! But had I not been growing all the time I had been in the world? There must then be the possibility of growing still! If there was not room in me, there must be room in God for me to become larger! The room in God must be made room in me! God had not done making me, in fact, and I sorely needed him to go on making me; I sorely needed to be made out! What if this new joy and this new terror had come, had been sent, in order to make me grow? At least the doors were open; I could go out and forsake myself! If a living power had caused me—and certainly I did not cause myself—then that living power knew all about me, knew every smallness that distressed me! Where should I find him? He could not be so far that the misery of one of his own children could not reach him! I turned my face into the grass, and prayed as I had never prayed before. I had always gone to church, and made the responses attentively, while I knew that was not praying, and tried to pray better than that; but now I was really asking from God something I sorely wanted. “Father in heaven,” I said, “I am so miserable! Please, help me!”

I rose, went into the house, and up to the study, took a sock I was knitting for my uncle, and sat down to wait what would come. I could think no more; I could only wait.

CHAPTER XIII. OLD LOVE AND NEW

While I waited, as nearly a log, under the weariness of spiritual unrest, as a girl could well be, the door opened. Very seldom did that door open to any one but my uncle or myself: he would let no one but me touch his books, or even dust the room. I jumped from the chest where I sat.

It was only Martha Moon.

“How you startled me, Martha!” I cried.

“No wonder, child!” she answered. “I come with bad news! Your uncle has had a fall. He is laid up at Wittenage with a broken right arm.”

I burst into tears.

“Oh, Martha!” I cried; “I must go to him!”

“He has sent for me,” she answered quietly.

“Dick is putting the horse to the phaeton.”

“He doesn’t want me, then!” I said; but it seemed a voice not my own that shrieked the words.

The punishment of my sin was upon me. Never would he have sent for Martha and not me, I thought, had he not seen that I had gone wrong again, and was no more to be trusted.

“My dear,” said Martha, “which of us two ought to be the better nurse? You never saw your uncle ill; I’ve nursed him at death’s door!”

“Then you don’t think he is angry with me, Martha?” I said, humbled before myself.

“Was he ever angry with you, Orbie? What is there to be angry about? I never saw him even displeased with you!”

I had not realized that my uncle was suffering—only that he was disabled; now the fact flashed upon me, and with it the perception that I had been thinking only of myself: I was fast ceasing to care for him! And then, horrible to tell! a flash of joy went through me, that he would not be home that day, and therefore I could not tell him anything!

The moment Martha left me I threw myself on the floor of the desert room. I was in utter misery.

“Gladly would I bear every pang of his pain,” I said to myself; “yet I have not asked one question about his accident! He must be in danger, or he would not have sent for Martha instead of me!”

How had the thing happened, I wondered. Had Death fallen with him—perhaps on him? He was such a horseman, I could not think he had been thrown. Besides, Death was a good horse who loved his master—dearly, I was sure, and would never have thrown him or let him fall! A great gush of the old love poured from the fountain in my heart: sympathy with the horse had unsealed it. I sprang from the floor, and ran down to entreat Martha to take me with her: if my uncle did not want me, I could return with Dick! But she was gone. Even the sound of her wheels was gone. I had lain on the floor longer than I knew.

I went back to the study a little relieved. I understood now that I was not glad he was disabled; that I was anything but glad he was suffering; that I had only been glad for an instant that the crisis of my perplexity was postponed. In the meantime I should see John Day, who would help me to understand what I ought to do!

Very strange were my feelings that afternoon in the lonely house. I had always felt it lonely when Martha, never when my uncle was out. Yet when my uncle was in, I was mostly with him, and seldom more than a few minutes at a time with Martha. Our feelings are odd creatures! Now that both were away, there was neither time nor space in my heart for feeling the house desolate; while the world outside was rich as a treasure-house of mighty kings. The moment I was a little more comfortable with myself, my thoughts went in a flock to the face that looked over the garden-wall, to the man that watched me while I slept, the man that wrote that lovely letter. Inside was old Penny with her broom: she took advantage of every absence to sweep or scour or dust; outside was John Day, and the roses of the wilderness! He was waiting the hour to come to me, wondering how I would receive him!

Slowly went the afternoon. I had fallen in love at first sight, it is true; not therefore was I eager to meet my lover. I was only more than willing to see him. It was as sweet, or nearly as sweet, to dream of his coming, as to have him before me—so long as I knew he was indeed coming. I was just a little anxious lest I should not find him altogether so beautiful as I was imagining him. That he was good, I never doubted: could I otherwise have fallen in love with him? And his letter was so straightforward—so manly!

The afternoon was cloudy, and the twilight came the sooner. From the realms of the dark, where all the birds of night build their nests, lining them with their own sooty down, the sweet odorous filmy dusk of the summer, haunted with wings of noiseless bats, began at length to come flickering earthward, in a snow infinitesimal of fluffiest gray and black: I crept out into the garden. It was dark as wintry night among the yews, but I could have gone any time through every alley of them blind-folded. An owl cried and I started, for my soul was sunk in its own love-dawn. There came a sudden sense of light as I opened the door into the wilderness, but light how thin and pale, and how full of expectation! The earth and the vast air, up to the great vault, seemed to throb and heave with life—or was it that my spirit lay an open thoroughfare to the life of the All? With the scent of the roses and the humbler sweet-odoured inhabitants of the wilderness; with the sound of the brook that ran through it, flowing from the heath and down the hill; with the silent starbeams, and the insects that make all the little noises they can; with the thoughts that went out of me, and returned possessed of the earth;—with all these, and the sense of thought eternal, the universe was full as it could hold. I stood in the doorway of the wall, and looked out on the wild: suddenly, by some strange reaction, it seemed out of creation’s doors, out in the illimitable, given up to the bare, to the space that had no walls! A shiver ran through me; I turned back among the yews. It was early; I would wait yet a while! If he were already there, he too would enjoy the calm of a lovely little wait.

A small wind came searching about, and found, and caressed me. I turned to it; it played with my hair, and cooled my face. After a while, I left the alley, passed out, closed the door behind me, and went straying through the broken ground of the wilderness, among the low bushes, meandering, as if with some frolicsome brook for a companion—a brook of capricious windings—but still coming nearer to the fence that parted the wilderness from the heath, my eyes bent down, partly to avoid the hillocks and bushes, and partly from shyness of the moment when first I should see him who was in my heart and somewhere near. Softly the moon rose, round and full. There was still so much light in the sky that she made no sudden change, and for a moment I did not feel her presence or look up. In front of me, the high ground of the moor sank into a hollow, deeply indenting the horizon-line: the moon was rising just in the gap, and when I did look up, the lower edge of her disc was just clear of the earth, and the head of a man looking over the fence was in the middle of the great moon. It was like the head of a saint in a missal, girt with a halo of solid gold. I could not see the face, for the halo hid it, as such attributions are apt to do, but it must be he; and strengthened by the heavenly vision, I went toward him. Walking less carefully than before, however, I caught my foot, stumbled, and fell. There came a rush through the bushes; he was by my side, lifted me like a child, and held me in his arms; neither was I more frightened than a child caught up in the arms of any well-known friend: I had been bred in faith and not mistrust! But indeed my head had struck the ground with such force, that, had I been inclined, I could scarcely have resisted—though why should I have resisted, being where I would be! Does not philosophy tell us that growth and development, cause and effect, are all, and that the days and years are of no account? And does not more than philosophy tell us that truth is everything?

“My darling! Are you hurt?” murmured the voice whose echoes seemed to have haunted me for centuries.

“A little,” I answered. “I shall be all right in a minute.” I did not add, “Put me down, please;” for I did not want to be put down directly. I could not have stood if he had put me down. I grew faint.

Life came back, and I felt myself growing heavy in his arms.

“I think I can stand now,” I said. “Please put me down.”

He obeyed immediately.

“I’ve nearly broken your arms,” I said, ashamed of having become a burden to him the moment we met.

“I could run with you to the top of the hill!” he answered.

“I don’t think you could,” I returned. Perhaps I leaned a little toward him; I do not know. He put his arm round me.

“You are not able to stand,” he said. “Shall we sit a moment?”

CHAPTER XIV. MOTHER AND UNCLE

I was glad enough to sink on a clump of white clover. He stretched himself on the heather, a little way from me. Silence followed. He was giving me time to recover myself. As soon, therefore, as I was able, it was my part to speak.

“Where is your horse?” I asked. The first word is generally one hardly worth saying.

“I left him at a little farmhouse, about a mile from here. I was afraid to bring him farther, lest my mother should learn where I had been. She takes pains to know.”

“Then will she not find out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will she not ask you where you were?”

“Perhaps. There’s no knowing.”

“You will tell her, of course, if she does?”

“I think not.”

“Oughtn’t you?”

“No.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t mean you will tell her a story?”

“Certainly not.”

“What will you do then?”

“I will tell her that I will not tell her.”

“Would that be right?”

Through the dusk I could see the light of his smile as he answered,

“I think so. I shall not tell her.”

“But,” I began.

He interrupted me.

My heart was sinking within me. Not only had I wanted him to help me to tell my uncle, but I shuddered at the idea of having with any man a secret from his mother.

“It must look strange to you,” he said; “but you do not know my mother!”

“I think I do know your mother,” I rejoined. “She saved my poor little life once.—I am not sure it was your mother, but I think it was.”

“How was that?” he said, much surprised. “When was it?”

“Many years ago—I cannot tell how many,” I answered. “But I remember all about it well enough. I cannot have been more than eight, I imagine.”

“Could she have been at the manor then?” he said, putting the question to himself, not me. “How was it? Tell me,” he went on, rising to his feet, and looking at me with almost a frightened expression.

I told him the incident, and he heard me in absolute silence. When I had done,—

“It was my mother!” he broke out; “I don’t know one other woman who would have let a child walk like that! Any other would have taken you up, or put you on the horse and walked beside you!”

“A gentleman would, I know,” I replied. “But it would not be so easy for a lady!”

“She could have done either well enough. She’s as strong as a horse herself, and rides like an Amazon. But I am not in the least surprised: it was just like her! You poor little darling! It nearly makes me cry to think of the tiny feet going tramp, tramp, all that horrible way, and she high up on her big horse! She always rides the biggest horse she can get!—And then never to say a word to you after she brought you home, or see you the next morning!”

“Mr. Day,” I returned, “I would not have told you, had I known it would give you occasion to speak so naughtily of your mother. You make me unhappy.”

He was silent. I thought he was ashamed of himself, and was sorry for him. But my sympathy was wasted. He broke into a murmuring laugh of merriment.

“When is a mother not a mother?” he said. “—Do you give it up?—When she’s a north wind. When she’s a Roman emperor. When she’s an iceberg. When she’s a brass tiger.—There! that’ll do. Good-bye, mother, for the present! I mayn’t know much, as she’s always telling me, but I do know that a noun is not a thing, nor a name a person!”

I would have expostulated.

“For love’s sake, dearest,” he pleaded, “we will not dispute where only one of us knows! I will tell you all some day—soon, I hope, very soon. I am angry now!—Poor little tramping child!”

I saw I had been behaving presumptuously: I had wanted to argue while yet in absolute ignorance of the thing in hand! Had not my uncle taught me the folly of reasoning from the ideal where I knew nothing of the actual! The ideal must be our guide how to treat the actual, but the actual must be there to treat! One thing more I saw—that there could be no likeness between his mother and my uncle!

“Will you tell me something about yourself, then?” I said.

“That would not be interesting!” he objected.

“Then why are you here?” I returned.

“Can any person without a history be interesting?”

“Yes,” he answered: “a person that was going to have a history might be interesting.”

“Could a person with a history that was not worth telling, be interesting? But I know yours will interest me in the hearing, therefore it ought to interest you in the telling.

“I see,” he rejoined, with his merry laugh, “I shall have to be careful! My lady will at once pounce upon the weak points of my logic!”

“I am no logician,” I answered; “I only know when I don’t know a thing. My uncle has taught me that wisdom lies in that.”

“Yours must be a very unusual kind of uncle!” he returned.

“If God had made many men like my uncle, I think the world wouldn’t be the same place.”

“I wonder why he didn’t!” he said thoughtfully.

“I have wondered much, and cannot tell,” I replied.

“What if it wouldn’t be good for the world to have many good men in it before it was ready to treat them properly?” he suggested.

The words let me know that at least he could think. Hitherto my uncle had seemed to me the only man that thought. But I had seen very few men.

“Perhaps that is it,” I answered. “I will think about it.—Were you brought up at Rising? Have you been there all the time? Were you there that night? I should surely have known had you been in the house!”

He looked at me with a grateful smile.

“I was not brought up there,” he answered. “Rising is mine, however—at least it will be when I come of age; it was left me some ten years ago by a great-aunt My father’s property will be mine too, of course. My mother’s is in Ireland. She ought to be there, not here; but she likes my estates better than her own, and makes the most of being my guardian.”

“You would not have her there if she is happier here?”

“All who have land, ought to live on it, or else give it to those who will. What makes it theirs, if their only connection with it is the money it brings them? If I let my horse run wild over the country, how could I claim him, and refuse to pay his damages?”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

“I only mean there is no bond where both ends are not tied. My mother has no sense of obligation, so far as ever I have been able to see. But do not be afraid: I would as soon take a wife to the house she was in, as I would ask her to creep with me into the den of a hyena.”

It was too dreadful! I rose. He sprang to his feet.

“You must excuse me, sir!” I said. “With one who can speak so of his mother, I am where I ought not to be.”

“You have a right to know what my mother is,” he answered—coldly, I thought; “and I should not be a true man if I spoke of her otherwise than truly.”

He would pretend nothing to please me! I saw that I was again in the wrong. Was I so ill read as to imagine that a mother must of necessity be a good woman? Was he to speak of his mother as he did not believe of her, or be unfit for my company? Would untruth be a bond between us?

“I beg your pardon,” I said; “I was wrong. But you can hardly wonder I should be shocked to hear a son speak so of his mother—and to one all but a stranger!”

“What!” he returned, with a look of surprise; “do you think of me so? I feel as if I had known you all my life—and before it!”

I felt ashamed, and was silent. If he was such a stranger, why was I there alone with him?

“You must not think I speak so to any one,” he went on. “Of those who know my mother, not one has a right to demand of me anything concerning her. But how could I ask you to see me, and hide from you the truth about her? Prudence would tell you to have nothing to do with the son of such a woman: could I be a true man, true to you, and hold my tongue about her? I should be a liar of the worst sort!”

He felt far too strongly, it was plain, to heed a world of commonplaces.

“Forgive me,” I said. “May I sit down again?”

He held out his hand. I took it, and reseated myself on the clover-hillock. He laid himself again beside me, and after a little silence began to relate what occurred to him of his external history, while all the time I was watching for hints as to how he had come to be the man he was. It was clear he did not find it easy to talk about himself. But soon I no longer doubted whether I ought to have met him, and loved him a great deal more by the time he had done.

I then told him in return what my life had hitherto been; how I knew nothing of father or mother; how my uncle had been everything to me; how he had taught me all I knew, had helped me to love what was good and hate what was evil, had enabled me to value good books, and turn away from foolish ones. In short, I made him feel that all his mother had not been to him, my uncle had been to me; and that it would take a long time to make me as much indebted to a husband as already I was to my uncle. Then I put the question:

“What would you think of me if I had a secret from an uncle like that?”

“If I had an uncle like that,” he answered, “I would sooner cut my throat than keep anything from him!”

“I have not told him,” I said, “what happened to-day—or yesterday.”

“But you will tell him?”

“The first moment I can. But I hope you understand it is hard to do. My love for my uncle makes it hard. It has the look of turning away from him to love another!”

With that I burst out crying. I could not help it. He let me cry, and did not interfere. I was grateful for that. When at length I raised my head, he spoke.

“It has that look,” he said; “but I trust it is only a look. Anyhow, he knows that such things must be; and the more of a good man and a gentleman he is, the less will he be pained that we should love one another!”

“I am sure of that,” I replied. “I am only afraid that he may never have been in love himself, and does not know how it feels, and may think I have forsaken him for you.”

“Are you with him always?”

“No; I am sometimes a good deal alone. I can be alone as much as I like; he always gives me perfect liberty. But I never before wanted to be alone when I could be with him.”

“But he could live without you?”

“Yes, indeed!” I cried. “He would be a poor creature that could not live without another!”

He said nothing, and I added, “He often goes out alone—sometimes in the darkest nights.”

“Then be sure he knows what love is.—But, if you would rather, I will tell him.”

“I could not have any one, even you, tell my uncle about me.”

“You are right. When will you tell him?”

“I cannot be sure. I would go to him to-morrow, but I am afraid they will not let me until he has got a little over this accident,” I answered—and told him what had happened. “It is dreadful to think how he must have suffered,” I said, “and how much more I should have thought about it but for you! It tears my heart. Why wasn’t it made bigger?”

“Perhaps that is just what is now being done with it!” he answered.

“I hope it may be!” I returned. “—But it is time I went in.”

“Shall I not see you again to-morrow evening?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “I must not see you again till I have told my uncle everything.”

“You do not mean for weeks and weeks—till he is well enough to come home? How am I to live till then!”

“As I shall have to live. But I hope it will be but for a few days at most. Only, then, it will depend on what my uncle thinks of the thing.”

“Will he decide for you what you are to do?”

“Yes—I think so. Perhaps if he were—” I was on the point of saying, “like your mother,” but I stopped in time—or hardly, for I think he saw what I just saved myself from. It was but the other morning I made the discovery that, all our life together, John has never once pressed me to complete a sentence I broke off.