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THORNWICK.
It was almost with bewilderment that Mrs. Helmer revisited
Thornwick. The near past seemed to have vanished like a dream
that leaves a sorrow behind it, and the far past to take its
place. She had never been accustomed to reflect on her own
feelings; things came, were welcome or unwelcome, proved better
or worse than she had anticipated, passed away, and were mostly
forgotten. With plenty of faculty, Letty had not yet emerged from
the chrysalid condition; she lived much as one in a dream, with
whose dream mingle sounds and glimmers from the waking world.
Very few of us are awake, very few even alive in true, availing
sense. "Pooh! what stuff!" says the sleeper, and will say it
until the waking begins to come.
On the threshold of her old home, then, Letty found her old self
awaiting her; she crossed it, and was once more just Letty, a
Letty wrapped in the garments of sorrow, and with a heaviness at
the heart, but far from such a miserable Letty as during the last
of her former life there. Little joy had been hers since the
terrible night when she fled from its closed doors; and now that
she returned, she could take up everything where she had left it,
except the gladness. But peace is better than gladness, and she
was on the way to find that.
Mrs. Wardour, who, for all her severity, was not without a good-
sized heart, and whoso conscience had spoken to her in regard of
Letty far oftener than any torture would have made her allow, was
touched with compassion at sight of her worn and sad look; and,
granting to herself that the poor thing had been punished enough,
even for her want of respect to the house of Thornwick, broke
down a little, though with well-preserved dignity, and took the
wandering ewe-lamb to her bosom. Letty, loving and forgiving
always, nestled in it for a moment, and in her own room quietly
wept a long time. When she came out, Mrs. Wardour pleased herself
with the fancy that her eyes were red with the tears of
repentance; but Letty never dreamed of repenting, for that would
have been to deny Tom, to cut off her married life, throw it from
her, and never more see Tom.
By degrees, rapid yet easy, she slid into all her old ways; took
again the charge of the dairy as if she had never left it;
attended to the linen; darned the stockings; and in everything
but her pale, thin face, and heavy, exhausted heart, was the
young Letty again. She even went to the harness-room to look to
Cousin Godfrey's stirrups and bits; but finding, morning after
morning for a whole week, that they had not once been neglected,
dismissed the care-not without satisfaction.
Mrs. Wardour continued kind to her; but every now and then would
allow a tone as of remembered naughtiness to be sub-audible in
speech or request. Letty, even in her own heart, never resented
it. She had been so used to it in the old days, that it seemed
only natural. And then her aunt considered her health in the
kindest way. Now that Letty had known some of the troubles of
marriage, she felt more sympathy with her, did not look down upon
her from quite such a height, and to Letty this was strangely
delightful. Oh, what a dry, hard, cold world this would grow to,
but for the blessing of its many sicknesses!
When Godfrey saw her moving about the house as in former days,
but changed, like one of the ghosts of his saddest dreams, a new
love began to rise out of the buried seed of the old. In vain he
reasoned with himself, in vain ho resisted. The image of Letty,
with its trusting eyes fixed on him so "solemn sad," and its
watching looks full of ministration, haunted him, and was too
much for him. She was never the sort of woman he could have
fancied himself falling in love with; he did in fact say to
himself that she was only almost a lady-but at the word
his heart rebuked him for a traitor to love and its holy laws.
Neither in person was she at all his ideal. A woman like Hesper,
uplifted and strong, broad-fronted and fearless, large-limbed,
and full of latent life, was more of the ideal he could have
written poetry about. But we are deeper than we know. Who is
capable of knowing his own ideal? The ideal of a man's self is
hid in the bosom of God, and may lie ages away from his
knowledge; and his ideal of woman is the ideal belonging to this
unknown self: the ideal only can bring forth an ideal. He can
not, therefore, know his own ideal of woman; it is, nevertheless
--so I presume--this his own unknown ideal that makes a man choose
against his choice. Gladly would Godfrey now have taken Letty to
his arms. It was no longer anything that from boyhood he had
vowed rather to die unmarried, and let the land go to a stranger,
than marry a widow. He had to recall every restraining fact of
his and her position to prevent him from now precipitating that
which he had before too long delayed. But the gulf of the grave
and the jealousy of a mother were between them; for, if he were
again to rouse her suspicions, she would certainly get rid of
Letty, as she had before intended, so depriving her of a home,
and him of opportunity. He kept, therefore, out of Letty's way as
much as he could, went more about the farm, and took long rides.
Nothing was further from Letty than any merest suspicion of the
sort of regard Godfrey cherished for her. There was in her
nothing of the self-sentimental. Her poet was gone from her, but
she did not therefore take to poetry; nay, what poetry she had
learned to like was no longer anything to her, now her singing
bird had flown to the land of song. To her, Tom was the greatest,
the one poet of the age; he had been hers--was hers still, for
did ho not die telling her that he would go on watching till she
came to him? He had loved her, she knew; he had learned to love
her better before he died. She must be patient; the day would
come when she should be a Psyche, as he had told her, and soar
aloft in search of her mate. The sense of wifehood had grown one
with her consciousness. It mingled with all her prayers, both in
chamber and in church. As she went about the house, she was
dreaming of her Tom--an angel in heaven, she said to herself, but
none the less her husband, and waiting for her. If she did not
read poetry, she read her New Testament; and if she understood it
only in a childish fashion, she obeyed it in a child-like one,
whence the way of all wisdom lay open before her. It is not where
one is, but in what direction he is going. Before her, too, was
her little boy--borne in his father's arms, she pictured him, and
hearing from him of the mother who was coming to them by and by,
when God had made her good enough to rejoin them!
But, while she continued thus simple, Godfrey could not fail to
see how much more of a woman she had grown: he was not yet
capable of seeing that she would--could never hare got so far
with him, even if he had married her.
Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the
making of his foolish little ones into sons and daughters. But so
unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those
desired and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe
that he is anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them
at all. And the doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of
things was marriage. But the end is life--that we become the
children of God; after which, all things can and will go their
grand, natural course; the heart of the Father will be content
for his children, and the hearts of the children will be content
in their Father.
Godfrey indulged one great and serious mistake in reference to
Letty, namely, that, having learned the character of Tom through
the saddest of personal experience, she must have come to think
of him as he did, and must have dismissed from her heart every
remnant of love for him. Of course, he would not hint at such a
thing, he said to himself, nor would she for a moment allow it,
but nothing else could be the state of her mind! He did not know
that in a woman's love there is more of the specially divine
element than in a man's--namely, the original, the unmediated.
The first of God's love is not founded upon any merit, rests only
on being and need, and the worth that is yet unborn.
The Redmains were again at Durnmelling--had been for some weeks;
and Sepia had taken care that she and Godfrey should meet--on the
footpath to Testbridge, in the field accessible by the breach in
the ha-ha--here and there and anywhere suitable for a little
detention and talk that should seem accidental, and be out of
sight. Nor was Godfrey the man to be insensible to the influence
of such a woman, brought to bear at close quarters. A man less
vulnerable--I hate the word, but it is the right one with Sepia
concerned, for she was, in truth, an enemy--might perhaps have
yielded room to the suspicion that these meetings were not all so
accidental as they appeared, and as Sepia treated them; but no
glimmer of such a thought passed through the mind of Godfrey. He
knew nothing of all that my readers know to Sepia's disadvantage,
and her eyes were enough to subdue most men from the first--for a
time at least. Had it not been for the return of Letty, she would
by this time have had him her slave: nothing but slavery could it
ever be to love a woman like her, who gave no love in return,
only exercised power. But although he was always glad to meet
her, and his heart had begun to beat a little faster at sight of
her approach, the glamour of her presence was nearly destroyed by
the arrival of Letty; and Sepia was more than sharp enough to
perceive a difference in the expression of his eyes the next time
she met him. At the very first glance she suspected some hostile
influence at work--intentionally hostile, for persons with a
consciousness like Sepia's are always imagining enemies. And as
the two worst enemies she could have were the truth and a woman,
she was alternately jealous and terrified: the truth and a woman
together, she had not yet begun to fear; that would, indeed, be
too much!
She soon found there was a young woman at Thornwick, who had but
just arrived; and ere long she learned who she was--one, indeed,
who had already a shadowy existence in her life--was it possible
the shadow should be now taking solidity, and threatening to foil
her? Not once did it occur to her that, were it so, there would
be retribution in it. She had heard of Tom's death through "The
Firefly," which had a kind, extravagant article about him, but
she had not once thought of his widow--and there she was, a hedge
across the path she wanted to go! If the house of Durnmelling had
but been one story higher, that she might see all round
Thornwick!
For some time now, as I have already more than hinted, Sepia had
been fashioning a man to her thrall--Mewks, namely, the body-
servant of Mr. Redmain. It was a very gradual process she had
adopted, and it had been the more successful. It had got so far
with him that whatever Sepia showed the least wish to understand,
Mewks would take endless trouble to learn for her. The rest of
the servants, both at Durnmelling and in London, were none of
them very friendly with her--least of all Jemima, who was now
with her mistress as lady's-maid, the accomplished attendant whom
Hesper had procured in place of Mary being away for a holiday.
The more Sepia realized, or thought she realized, the position
she was in, the more desirous was she to get out of it, and the
only feasible and safe way, in her eyes, was marriage: there was
nothing between that and a return to what she counted slavery.
Rather than lift again such a hideous load of irksomeness, she
would find her way out of a world in which it was not possible,
she said, to be both good and comfortable: she had, in truth,
tried only the latter. But if she could, she thought, secure for
a husband this gentleman-yeoman, she might hold up her head with
the best. Even if Galofta should reappear, she would know then
how to meet him: with a friend or two, such as she had never had
yet, she could do what she pleased! It was hard work to get on
quite alone--or with people who cared only for themselves! She
must have some love on her side! some one who cared for
her!
From all she could learn, there was nothing that amounted even to
ordinary friendship between Mr. Wardour and the young widow. She
was in the family but as a distant poor relation--"Much as I am
myself!" thought Sepia, with a bitter laugh that even in her own
eyes she should be comparable to a poor creature like Letty. The
fact, however, remained that Godfrey was a little altered toward
her: she must have been telling him something against her--
something she had heard from that detestable little hypocrite who
was turned away on suspicion of theft! Yes--that was how Sepia
talked to herself about Mary.
One morning, Letty, finding she had an hour's leisure, for her
aunt did not pursue her as of old time, wandered out to the oak
on the edge of the ha-ha, so memorable with the shadowy presence
of her Tom. She had not been seated under it many minutes before
Godfrey caught sight of her from his horse's back: knowing his
mother was gone to Testbridge, he yielded to an urgent longing,
took his horse to the stable, and crossed the grass to where she
sat.
Letty was thinking of Tom--what else was there of her own to do?-
-thinking like a child, looking up into the cloud-flecked sky,
and thinking Tom was somewhere there, though she could not see
him: she must be good and patient, that she might go up to him,
as he could not come down to her--if he could, he would have come
long ago! All the enchantment of the first days of her love had
come back upon the young widow; all the ill that had crept in
between had failed from out her memory, as the false notes in
music melt in the air that carries the true ones across ravine
and river, meadow and grove, to the listening ear. Letty lived in
a dream of her husband--in heaven, "yet not from her"--such a
dream of bliss and hope as in itself went far to make up for all
her sorrows.
She was sitting with her back toward the tree and her face to
Thornwick, and yet she did not see Godfrey till he was within a
few yards of her. She smiled, expecting his kind greeting, but
was startled to hear from behind her instead the voice of a lady
greeting him. She turned her head involuntarily: there was the
head of Sepia rising above the breach in the ha-ha, and Godfrey
had turned aside and run to give her his hand.
Now Letty knew Sepia by sight, from the evening she had spent at
the old hall; more of her she knew nothing. From the mind of Tom,
in his illness, her baleful influence had vanished like an evil
dream, and Mary had not thought it necessary to let him know how
falsely, contemptuously, and contemptibly, she had behaved toward
him. Letty, therefore, had no feeling toward Sepia but one of
admiration for her grace and beauty, which she could appreciate
the more that they were so different from her own.
"Thank you," said Sepia, holding fast by Godfrey's hand, and
coming up with a little pant. "What a lovely day it is for your
haymaking! How can you afford the time to play knight-errant to a
distressed damsel?"
"The hay is nearly independent of my presence," replied Godfrey.
"Sun and wind have done their parts too well for my being of much
use."
"Take me with you to see how they are getting on. I am as fond of
hay as Bottom in his translation."
She had learned Godfrey's love of literature, and knew that one
quotation may stand for much knowledge.
"I will, with pleasure," said Godfrey, perhaps a little consoled
in the midst of his disappointment; and they walked away, neither
taking notice of Letty.
"I did not know," she said to herself, "that the two houses had
come together at last! What a handsome couple they make!"
What passed between them is scarcely worthy of record. It is
enough to say that Sepia found her companion distrait, and he
felt her a little invasive. In a short while they came back
together, and Sepia saw Letty under the great bough of the
Durnmelling oak. Godfrey handed her down the rent, careful
himself not to invade Durnmelling with a single foot. She ran
home, and up to a certain window with her opera-glass. But the
branches and foliage of the huge oak would have concealed pairs
and pairs of lovers.
Godfrey turned toward Letty. She had not stirred.
"What a beautiful creature Miss Yolland is!" she said, looking up
with a smile of welcome, and a calmness that prevented the
slightest suspicion of a flattering jealousy.
"I was coming to you," returned Godfrey. "I never saw her
till her head came up over the ha-ha.--Yes, she is beautiful--at
least, she has good eyes."
"They are splendid! What a wife she would make for you, Cousin
Godfrey! I should like to see such a two."
Letty was beyond the faintest suggestion of coquetry. Her words
drove a sting to the heart of Godfrey. He turned pale. But not a
word would he have spoken then, had not Letty in her innocence
gone on to torture him. She sprang from the ground.
"Are you ill, Cousin Godfrey?" she cried in alarm, and with that
sweet tremor of the voice that shows the heart is near. "You are
quite white!--Oh, dear! I've said something I oughtn't to have
said! What can it be? Do forgive me, Cousin Godfrey." In her
childlike anxiety she would have thrown her arms round his neck,
but her hands only reached his shoulders. He drew back: such was
the nature of the man that every sting tasted of offense. But he
mastered himself, and in his turn, alarmed at the idea of having
possibly hurt her, caught her hands in his. As they stood
regarding each other with troubled eyes, the embankment of his
prudence gave way, and the stored passion broke out.
"You don't mean you would like to see me married, Letty?"
he groaned.
"Yes, indeed, I do, Cousin Godfrey! You would make such a lovely
husband!"
"Ah! I thought as much! I knew you never cared for me, Letty!"
He dropped her hands, and turned half aside, like a figure warped
with fire.
"I care for you more than anybody in the world--except, perhaps,
Mary," said Letty: truthfulness was a part of her.
"And I care for you more than all the world!--more than very
being--it is worthless without you. O Letty! your eyes haunt me
night and day! I love you with my whole soul."
"How kind of you, Cousin Godfrey!" faltered Letty, trembling, and
not knowing what she said. She was very frightened, but hardly
knew why, for the idea of Godfrey in love with her was all but
inconceivable. Nevertheless, its approach was terrible. Like a
fascinated bird she could not take her eyes off his face. Her
knees began to fail her; it was all she could do to stand. But
Godfrey was full of himself, and had not the most shadowy
suspicion of how she felt. He took her emotion for a favorable
sign, and stupidly went on:
"Letty, I can't help it! I know I oughtn't to speak to you like
this--so soon, but I can't keep quiet any longer. I love you more
than the universe and its Maker. A thousand times rather would I
cease to live, than live without you to love me. I have loved you
for years and years--longer than I know. I was loving you with
heart and soul and brain and eyes when you went away and left
me."
"Cousin Godfrey!" shrieked Letty, "don't you know I belong to
Tom?"
And she dropped like one lifeless on the grass at his feet.
Godfrey felt as if suddenly damned; and his hell was death. He
stood gazing on the white face. The world, heaven, God, and
nature were dead, and that was the soul of it all, dead before
him! But such death is never born of love. This agony was but the
fog of disappointed self-love; and out of it suddenly rose what
seemed a new power to live, but one from a lower world: it was
all a wretched dream, out of which he was no more to issue, in
which he must go on for ever, dreaming, yet acting as one wide
awake! Mechanically he stooped and lifted the death-defying lover
in his arms, and carried her to the house. He felt no thrill as
he held the treasure to his heart. It was the merest material
contact. He bore her to the room where his mother sat, laid her
on the sofa, said he had found her under the oak-tree--and went
to his study, away in the roof. On a chair in the middle of the
floor he sat, like a man bereft of all. Nothing came between him
and suicide but an infinite scorn. A slow rage devoured his
heart. Here he was, a man who knew his own worth, his
faithfulness, his unchangeableness, cast over the wall of the
universe, into the waste places, among the broken shards of ruin!
If there was a God--and the rage in his heart declared his being
--why did he make him? To make him for such a misery was pure
injustice, was willful cruelty! Henceforward he would live above
what God or woman could do to him! He rose and went to the hay-
field, whence he did not return till after midnight.
He did not sleep, but he came to a resolution. In the morning he
told his mother that he wanted a change; now that the hay was
safe, he would have a run, he hardly knew where--possibly on the
Continent; she must not be uneasy if she did not hear from him
for a week or two; perhaps he would have a look at the pyramids.
The old lady was filled with dismay; but scarcely had she begun
to expostulate when she saw in his eyes that something was
seriously amiss, and held her peace--she had had to learn that
with both father and son. Godfrey went, and courted distraction.
Ten years before, he would have brooded: that he would not do
now: the thing was not worth it! His pride was strong as ever,
and both helped him to get over his suffering, and prevented him
from gaining the good of it. He intrenched himself in his pride.
No one should say he had not had his will! He was a strong man,
and was going to prove it to himself afresh!
Thus thought Godfrey; but he is in reality a weak man who must
have recourse to pride to carry him through. Only, if a man has
not love enough to make a hero of him, what is he to do?
He was away a month, and came back in seeming health and spirits.
But it was no small relief to him to find on his arrival that
Letty was no longer at Thornwick.
She had gone through a sore time. To have made Godfrey unhappy,
made her miserable; but how was she to help it? She belonged to
Tom! Not once did she entertain the thought of ceasing to be
Tom's. She did not even say to herself, what would Tom do if she
forgot and forsook him--and for what he could not help! for
having left her because death took him away! But what was she to
do? She must not remain where she was. No more must she tell his
mother why she went.
She wrote to Mary, and told her she could not stay much longer.
They were very kind, she said, but she must be gone before
Godfrey came back.
Mary suspected the truth. The fact that Letty did not give her
any reason was almost enough. The supposition also rendered
intelligible the strange mixture of misery and hardness in
Godfrey's behavior at the time of Letty's old mishap. She
answered, begging her to keep her mind easy about the future, and
her friend informed of whatever concerned her.
This much from Mary was enough to set Letty at comparative ease.
She began to recover strength, and was able to write a letter to
Godfrey, to leave where he would find it, in his study.
It was a lovely letter--the utterance of a simple, childlike
spirit--with much in it, too, I confess, that was but prettily
childish. She poured out on Godfrey the affection of a
womanchild. She told him what a reverence and love he had been to
her always; told him, too, that it would change her love into
fear, perhaps something worse, if he tried to make her forget
Tom. She told him he was much too grand for her to dare love him
in that way, but she could look up to him like an angel--only he
must not come between her and Tom. Nothing could be plainer,
simpler, honester, or stronger, than the way the little woman
wrote her mind to the great man. Had he been worthy of her, he
might even yet, with her help, have got above his passion in a
grand way, and been a great man indeed. But, as so many do, he
only sat upon himself, kept himself down, and sank far below his
passion.
When he went to his study the day after his return, he saw the
letter. His heart leaped like a wild thing in a trap at sight of
the ill-shaped, childish writing; but--will my lady reader
believe it?--the first thought that shot through it was--"She
shall find it too late! I am not one to be left and taken at
will!" When he read it, however, it was with a curling lip of
scorn at the childishness of the creature to whom he had offered
the heart of Godfrey Wardour. Instead of admiring the lovely
devotion of the girl-widow to her boy-husband, he scorned himself
for having dreamed of a creature who could not only love a fool
like Tom Helmer, but go on loving him after he was dead, and that
even when Godfrey Wardour had condescended to let her know he
loved her. It was thus the devil befooled him. Perhaps the worst
devil a man can be posessed withal, is himself. In mere madness,
the man is beside himself; but in this case he is inside himself;
the presiding, indwelling, inspiring sprit of him is himself, and
that is the hardest of all to cast out. Godfrey rose form the
reading of that letter cured, as he called it. But it was
a cure that left the wound open as a door to the entrance of evil
things. He tore the letter into a thousand pieces, and throw them
into the empty grate--not even showed it the respect of burning
it with fire.
Mary had got her affairs settled, and was again in the old place,
the hallowed temple of so many holy memories. I do not forget it
was a shop I call a temple. In that shop God had been worshiped
with holiest worship--that is, obedience--and would be again.
Neither do I forget that the devil had been worshiped there too--
in what temple is he not? He has fallen like lightning from
heaven, but has not yet been cast out of the earth. In that shop,
however, he would be worshiped no more for a season.
At once she wrote to Letty, saying the room which had been hers
was at her service as soon as she pleased to occupy it: she would
take her father's.
Letty breathed a deep breath of redemption, and made haste to
accept the offer. But to let Mrs. Wardour know her resolve was a
severe strain on her courage.
I will not give the conversation that followed her announcement
that she was going to visit Mary Marston. Her aunt met it with
scorn and indignation. Ingratitude, laziness, love of low
company, all the old words of offense she threw afresh in her
face. But Letty could not help being pleased to find that her
aunt's storm no longer swamped her boat. When she began, however,
to abuse Mary, calling her a low creature, who actually gave up
an independent position to put herself at the beck and call of a
fine lady, Letty grew angry.
"I must not sit and hear you call Mary names, aunt," she said.
"When you cast me out, she stood by me. You do not understand
her. She is the only friend I ever had-except Tom."
"You dare, you thankless hussy, to say such a thing in the house
where you've been clothed and fed and sheltered for so many
years! You're the child of your father with a vengeance! Get out
of my sight!"
"Aunt--" said Letty, rising.
"No aunt of yours!" interrupted the wrathful woman.
"Mrs. Wardour," said Letty, with dignity, "you have been my
benefactor, but hardly my friend: Mary has taught me the
difference. I owe you more than you will ever give me the chance
of repaying you. But what friendship could have stood for an hour
the hard words you have been in the way of giving me, as far back
as I can remember! Hard words take all the sweetness from
shelter. Mary is the only Christian I have ever known."
"So we are all pagans, except your low-lived lady's-maid! Upon my
word!"
"She makes me feel, often, often," said Letty, bursting into
tears, "as if I were with Jesus himself--as if he must be in the
room somewhere."
So saying, she left her, and went to put up her things. Mrs.
Wardour locked the door of the room where she sat, and refused to
see or speak to her again. Letty went away, and walked to
Testbridge.
"Godfrey will do something to make her understand," she said to
herself, weeping as she walked.
Whether Godfrey ever did, I can not tell.
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