Waynflete

A sweet and natural magic drowned the dark hues of his soul in rainbow tints. From the moment when he knew himself to love her, his inward appeal to her paused. So far as he knew, he had been to her but a soul in distress, and now he had a foolish, pathetic impulse to come to her in sunshine and flowers, to please her fancy, not to move her pity. So surely, he might touch her heart, just touch it – one day he might perhaps win it outright.

And she? She never “saw” his thoughts now; how could she, when the sight of his face blotted them out? She did not even get on very fast with painting his periwinkles. One little word about his trouble would have been sweeter to her than the bluest of blue flowers; the very word he was so careful not to speak.

For his blissful content did not last very long. Surface intercourse, however sweet, could not long be sufficient for him. He could not come to her as any other wooer might have done, and, if he could, he would not. He never swerved from his conviction, that until he was free from every trace of his strange bondage, he must never seek to take her to himself. “Why, Godfrey had not been able to stand the knowledge of his secret, should he inflict it upon her?” So he was distant and reserved, and gave her pain far worse than any that his confidence could have cost her.

But he himself was full of eager hope; and hope, doubtful of fulfilment, though a very good thing in its way, is something of a foe to patience.

Part 3, Chapter VI

Hopes and Fears

But Art is impersonal. Downy palms and snown blackthorn may be offered to an artist as subjects for a sketch, just as well as if they would not also serve as tokens of love and hope. As Guy, one sunny morning, followed the path that all through Flete Dale led along by the riverside, he suffered no bud or blossom that indicated the coming of his tardy northern spring to escape him. As he gathered and combined them, it struck him that the glory of them was in the relief of their delicate tints and airy forms in the cold spring sunshine, against the pale spring sky, and that the thing would be to show them to Florella where they grew.

And, turning round a great tangle of rosy stems and shining brown buds, he saw her in the brown dress that had a sort of woodland tinting, and suited her, he thought, as well as harebell blue. She was listening to a tall, strong-limbed girl, with the handsome features and wind-blown complexion of the district, picturesquely set off by the yellow handkerchief which she wore on her head, listening with a troubled face. Her companion’s face was quite impassive, though there was a melancholy tone in her voice, as at sight of Guy, she turned off with a “Good day t’ye, sir.”

“Is that one of the girls you have been making friends with?” he said, after he had offered his spring buds to Florella, and she had taken them smiling, but still with wistful eyes.

“Yes. But I feel so ignorant and stupid with them. It is difficult quite to understand.” It was still more difficult, it was impossible to keep on the surface of things, when these two were together. But perhaps the inhabitants of Waynflete might be treated as an abstract subject, like the spring flowers. Rawdie thought that the discussion of their needs might occupy some time, and went off to investigate water-rats and other objects of interest.

“They talk to you, of course,” said Guy. “But no other stranger would get a word out of our folks.”

“They don’t talk much,” she answered. “But, one seems half to find out – and then one comes across such real troubles, and temptations. It seems so hard.”

“But, Clifton shouldn’t!” exclaimed Guy, with a sudden change. “There are very few people here fit for you to have anything to do with.”

“Oh, not that,” said Florella. “But, you see, I haven’t known much of any one but girls of my own sort. A friend of mine looks after a girl’s club in London, and some of us go to teach French and drawing there, or to sing. She thinks every one ought to spread whatever good things they may have. But it isn’t French and drawing that these girls want!”

“Do tell me just what you mean?” he said entreatingly, as they walked slowly on by the riverside.

“I mean,” she said, with a glow at thus taking counsel with him, which he little guessed, “that girls like me, tell each other their troubles, and we try to help each other, and sometimes we can. But one finds out much worse sorrows and trials than we ever have.”

“That is what you ought to have nothing to do with!” exclaimed Guy, imperatively.

“But,” she said, “you can’t help people just by being sorry for them in a general way. You have got to feel in yourself just what they feel. So one must try to understand them.”

Guy was silent. He could not keep his angel to himself. The more divine was the help she gave him, the more freely it must flow. He felt responsible for the welfare of Waynflete; he knew that he did not fight his battle for himself alone; but she had no obligations but the impulse to give herself in helpful love. She touched the flowers in her hand, and, with a sudden smile, said —

“You know, one has to ‘see.’”

“Yes,” he said, gravely. “Well! So the world was saved!”

She had given him the thought; but to herself it was new. She could not speak; while Guy felt for the moment as if the power to understand her had been cheaply bought by all the agony of his own experience.

They were brought suddenly back to earth again, to the spring flowers and the sunlight, and to the squalid cottages across the field, by wild and frantic barks from Rawdie, who rushed into view, wet and muddy, with a large rat in his mouth, while Jem Outhwaite, climbing up the bank behind him, cried out triumphantly, “He’ve got ’im, sir; he’ve got ’im hissel’!”

Rawdie went home in a state of absolute self-satisfaction. For Guy, it had been a moment for which to live; but, such are the conditions of this poor mortal life, that it was followed by a great reaction, by passionate longings to take this beloved maiden to himself, by the old disgust at all that was abnormal in his fate. He soon went back to Ingleby, where he puzzled Godfrey by fitful spirits, intermittent efforts to seem more like other people, and by hours of gloom and silence. The mental fever quieted down after a time, or perhaps he learnt to endure it.

But Florella was happier for the moment of approach. They had not ceased to understand each other. She could not paint the sun on the spring flowers, she could not satisfy herself with any tint with which she tried to match them. But, if light and hue escaped her, she could seize on their form, and she made delicate and exquisite pen-and-ink sketches of every swelling leaf and bursting bud.

She went, also, and stood on the bridge which she had seen in vision on that murky autumn evening, when her soul had followed Guy’s through its strange encounter. She looked at the laughing, living water, sparkling in the spring sunshine, and at the woods, now fresh and green. It was the fairest spot that ever was cursed by haunting memories. And yet, in the midst of all its sweetness, she felt conscious of something that she did not see, that eluded any insight that she might possess. And she did make some friends, and took into her heart some troubles, and learnt to love the weird and lovely place, because Guy loved it so much. She did not regret the London season which she was missing; she would not go and stay with the Stauntons to see the pictures; there were pictures enough in the woods, such as she had never seen before.

Once Godfrey came over on business about the estate, and came to call. He had lost his boyish manner, and had caught his brother’s gravity and reticence.

“Ah!” said Mrs Palmer, afterwards, when he had somehow extracted the fact that Constancy was working hard at college, and thinking of nothing but her examinations, “I’ve always known that boy admired Cosy. He’s too young for her, and Ingleby wouldn’t suit her at all. But clever girls often take to handsome men with nothing in them.”

“But Godfrey Waynflete has a good deal in him, Aunt Con.”

“Well, he hasn’t much to say. I expect Guy was too clever for old Mrs Waynflete, and wouldn’t give her her own way. But what Cosy will do when she comes home, I can’t think. She’ll never find enough to occupy her talents. I wish she would marry – some one who could give her a career.”

Florella did not pass over to her aunt a letter which she had just received from Constancy.

That Florella had powers of an unusual kind, except for painting, was an idea that had never formulated itself in the elder girl’s mind. Nevertheless, she was always open with her, and was never quite happy under her disapproval. She wrote —

“People ought not to have to decide on their future lives till they are thirty at least. I feel so extremely young sometimes. It’s much easier to learn moral philosophy than to find it make any difference in one’s life. I shall go in for society, and see if that has a developing effect. New sorts of people teach one more than hooks. I got heaps of ideas from Mrs Waynflete. All that business life was so new to one. I do like meeting new kinds of people. Every one here is so groovy. University life is very narrow. It is much more original and interesting, if you have brains, to spend them on doing than on learning. Mrs Waynflete was far cleverer than any literary woman. I am glad Guy is better, and that ‘Mr Godfra’,’ as old Cooper called him, is being such a good boy, and minding his business. If you can manage a private interview with Rawdie, you might give him my love. The only thing I regret in the events of last summer, is that that enchanting beast’s former master promised to get me a similar puppy. And now that chance is lost to me for ever. Well, I have no more time. If I don’t come a cropper, I believe Miss – , will offer me a lectureship here. Only in that way shall I think of coming back again. But I think a London winter would pay best. The tour with the Stauntons is the next thing, at any rate, and I mean to enjoy that to my heart’s content.” Florella mused over this letter. She thought it significant that Cosy should find time to speculate on life, when her final examination was imminent, and she understood the veiled allusion to the attentive professor, whose attentions, though she did not know it, had been so carefully brought to Godfrey’s notice by Cousin Susan. She had always thought that Cosy had liked Godfrey better than she had chosen to confess. But she had done her best to offend him, and with her sister he was stiff and shy. Besides, there was a general belief that he was engaged to Jeanie. He did not look very happy, and Guy had never dropped a hint of such an arrangement, and always managed to put Godfrey in a favourable light, in any chance mention of his name.

But Florella had heard Cuthbert Staunton call him a “young ruffian,” and she could not think him good enough for her brilliant sister. He was certainly on Constancy’s conscience; but whether he was also on her heart, was a different matter. On the whole, Florella hoped not.

Part 3, Chapter VII

Life and Death

Constancy’s college career ended, as had always been anticipated, with credit, and even with a share of renown. She helped to prove the power of her sex to compete for laurels formerly reserved for the other, and she was made much of accordingly. She was very much pleased, and not greatly surprised, for the kind of power that she possessed is rarely unconscious. It was not through the sense of intellectual failure that the gospel was to come to her. She was not even tired with the hard work, only ready for a holiday, and Kitty and Violet Staunton were glad enough to share it with her.

So off they went, prepared for every sort of exercise and adventure. After about a fortnight of successful sight-seeing the three ladies found themselves in a charming little settlement in a broad mountain valley, which we will here call Zwei-brücken, where cool green rivers rushed through green fields and flowed from the heart of dark, snow-tipped mountains. There were large fawn-coloured oxen and little fawn-coloured goats, houses surprisingly like toy Swiss cottages, and a new hotel in the same style, with the usual variety of tourists. It was a centre for mountain ascents and for excursions, and Constancy and Violet sat under a wide verandah, on the afternoon of their arrival, and watched the groups of travellers.

“Don’t you remember,” said Constancy, “talking about the feeling of London? What’s the feeling of this? It’s green, it’s cool, it’s windy, it’s rushing and fresh.”

“When Guy Waynflete came in in the middle, and we settled about Moorhead,” said Violet, “I was provoked with him this year for not going abroad when he promised, for Cuthbert simply buried himself in the British Museum, and said all the sources of culture were to be found there.”

Constancy did not answer; she had fallen into a dream. She leant her chin on her hand, and looked over the wide valley, while into her open eyes there came the same look with which Florella “saw” the picture in her flowers. At such moments there was a promise for the future in Constancy’s young face of which, with all her successes, the present had shown no performance. Suddenly her intent look brightened.

“The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,” she exclaimed. “You can’t get ‘back of that.’ Free, free, free! That’s the feeling of it! The river, the wind, the sky – every one out on a holiday, and – the curate there in his flannels, how he enjoys them. It makes one a little mad – Why, Vi! Good gracious!”

For Violet, in startling confirmation of the last words, had suddenly rushed forward and launched herself on the neck of a young man in brown tweed, who was coming up the steps of the verandah.

“Cuth, Cuth! Oh, how lovely! Oh, did you know we were here?”

“I have known long enough to mitigate my alarm at your greeting. Your letters were at the post-office. Yes – here we are. How do you do, Miss Vyner?”

“I shall believe in brain-waves in future,” said Constancy, as she gave him her hand. “I had just recalled a conversation with you and Mr Waynflete, and I see you coming. Is he with you?”

“Yes, at last. His brother thought him overworked, and very sensibly wrote to me to come and carry him off. There he is.”

Constancy had not seen Guy for more than nine months, her last remembrance of him was among the dancers at the Kirkton Hall garden-party, and she realised at once, as he came along the verandah, that the slight youth with his pathetic eyes had grown into a very remarkable person.

“Why – he looks like a mystic, or a martyr!” she thought. “No wonder people turn and look at him. It’s a startling face.”

Guy’s greeting was, however, simple enough. He was cordial, but he smiled his little reserved smile as he said —

“Yes, it was very good of Staunton to wait for me. I couldn’t get away before. When I go back, I hope Godfrey will go to Scotland and get some shooting.”

“And Rawdie? Is he thriving? And have you seen my aunt and Florella? Are they quite settled at Waynflete?”

Guy answered appropriately, and presently took his letters, and went away to study them.

He was still sitting in a quiet corner of the verandah, when Staunton, who had remained to exchange news and plans with his sisters, came in search of him.

“The girls are getting coffee,” he said, “and then they are going to stroll out and see the bridges. Will you come?”

“Better not. I walk so slowly. I’ll come and meet you.”

“Come now,” said Cuthbert. “This trip isn’t quite answering for you. What is it? You must tell me just what you like.”

“Well – new places and so many changing people worry me. He– it looks uncommonly grim and grotesque in new combinations. It spoils the look of the world. It’s a little queer, you know, and tiring. I’m much stronger, really; I can do what I’ve got to do. But I expect that’s about all. It’s months since the real trouble touched me; but I think there’s something more to come – some day.”

“Suppose we find some more out-of-the-way place, and stay there quietly. What you really want is rest.”

“No. I like this place, and everything is really going on well with us. Godfrey shall get out of his hole yet. Oh no, I’m not beaten. We’re not going to the dogs ourselves, nor is Waynflete. And as for other things – well – the world goes wrong with others.”

He glanced at Cuthbert for a moment, then sat upright, and said —

“It won’t do, of course, to shirk any of it. I’ll come. I want to cultivate Miss Constancy, and improve my mind.”

Cuthbert made no demur. He thought that the change, however painful, had not come a moment too soon. He had never favoured the notion of a definite task to be accomplished; a definite foe to be conquered. He could not square such a view with any habit of his mind. But Guy had certainly accomplished something. Was it given to man to do so much, and yet to have more? Cuthbert knew well how sweet the outlook was into “the level of every day,” how natural and healthful were the hopes, and even the fears, that had dawned on Guy’s spirit. But could flowers grow on such a field of battle?

Constancy and her friends intended to spend at least a week at Zwei-brücken.

Guy said that it looked bad to ride when the ladies were walking, but he was able in this way to share in mountain expeditions, and Cuthbert hoped that he enjoyed them. Constancy had always liked him, and was ready to plunge into all the new discussions for which her recent studies had prepared her. She was well aware that he now and then said things which enabled her to think as well as talk, and he argued with her, and drew her out, feeling as if she were a clever and agreeable child. When he cut out a square of tiny flowerets and still tinier growths of leaf and blade, and packed it carefully in a sandwich box to send it home, he felt as if he was laying an offering before a shrine. When he studied the names of the flowers with Constancy, he felt that he had a good comrade in a mountain ramble.

One day something happened to her. She went out alone by a little craggy path behind the hotel, which led along the top of a steep descent to the river. She pursued it thinking of nothing but of adding a new specimen or two to her store of flowers, and presently saw a dog-rose of a peculiarly bright pink, hanging over the edge, and bent to pick it; the stone on which she stepped gave way, and she slid downwards, and stopped herself by catching at the rose just on the edge of – nothing. An inch further, and she would have fallen into the roaring torrent a hundred feet below.

For one awful moment, she believed that she could not turn and save herself; the next, strong, cool, and active, she had cautiously felt for hand and foot hold, and began to climb up again, to find her hand, as she neared the top, enclosed in a firm clasp, while Guy’s voice said —

“Steady; you’re all right. Hold on. I can’t lift you, but I won’t let you go.”

As he spoke, she was safe on the path again, but shaking from head to foot. He drew her away from the edge of the precipice, and she sat down on a bit of rock, and hid her face in her hands. She was mentally, as well as physically, dizzy, and he did not speak to her till she dropped her hands on her lap, and said, with an odd ring in her voice —

“Well! I was nearly killed!”

“Your nerve saved you. You were nearly safe when I came up, but it was an awkward place. Remember, you can’t be too careful on a mountain.”

“Well!” she said again, “I thought I should be killed; I thought of everything. I thought of the bit in the college magazine about me – about my being found – and Florella – ”

“Yes,” said Guy, “one does think, in such moments, of the dearest.”

Constancy was silent. A deep crimson blush burned over her face and neck down to her very finger-tips.

Suddenly she turned, and looked up in his face.

“If I had been killed, there’d have been an end of me to all intents and purposes. I don’t care for anything that could go on. Oh, I don’t mean anything about opinions; but there couldn’t be anything afterwards that’s real to me. There couldn’t be anything that I want.”

“You have found that out,” said Guy.

“I never thought about God at all,” she said abruptly. “He never came into my head!”

“Well, He has come now,” said Guy.

She recognised his tone of conviction. Thoughts, speculations, flashed into her mind, at last, not as words, but as facts.

“Well,” she cried again, “if I didn’t believe in Him, I’d have stood to it, and not been afraid. But I do – I always have – and yet I just forgot Him – then.”

“But not now,” said Guy. “I think I ought to take you back,” he added; “you ought to rest, and recover yourself.”

“I’ll go back,” she said, standing up. “But I’m quite well.”

She walked on slowly beside him; but presently broke out again.

“You’ve been very ill, I know. Did you think then that to die, and leave off everything would be – horrid?”

“No,” he answered. “For one thing, when I’ve been in danger, I’ve been too bad to know it. But I do know what it is to face – destruction. And certainly there is something beyond it.”

She turned round to him as they came up to the hotel.

“I’m awfully obliged to you,” she said, in girlish speech, but in a deeply moved voice.

“You’ll not tell any one, will you? I want to think about it quietly.”

Guy promised, and they came back on to the verandah together.

Part 3, Chapter VIII

Mr Van Brunt

There was a little commotion in front of the verandah, caused by some new arrivals, as Guy and Constancy approached it from the side. A stout lady in a bonnet and a handsome travelling-cloak, came up the steps, looked round her, and made a sudden rush towards them.

“My dear Guy! Oh, what a delightful surprise! I never was so glad to see any one. After all these months, it is indeed a relief to see some one of the family.”

And Mrs Joshua Palmer seized Guy’s hands, and all but embraced him; a ceremony he had carefully avoided from his earliest childhood.

“Why, Cousin Susan! I didn’t know you were still abroad. I’m very glad to see you,” he said, astonished at this effusive greeting.

“And Miss Vyner? How do you do, my love? Well, Guy, and how are you? and is dear Godfrey here too? Jeanie, Jeanie, here’s your cousin.”

Jeanie, blooming, and very well turned out, came up also with outstretched hand.

“How d’ye do, Guy? I’m very glad we’ve met you.”

“You look very warm, Cousin Susan,” said Guy; “won’t you sit down and have some coffee? I suppose your courier – you have one, I see – has engaged your rooms?”

“Oh, my dear Guy, that is part of the pleasure of seeing you. For I am quite certain that courier is a cheat, and if you, with your head for figures, would only look at our bills – ” Here she tore open a travelling-bag, and thrust a bundle of papers into his hands. “I can speak to you…”

“Well, mother,” said Jeanie, “you never would allow any one else to help you to manage, however well accustomed they were to travelling.”

“No, Jeanie,” said Mrs Palmer, emphatically, “that I certainly would not.”

Constancy, unable for once to come to the front, sat down at a little distance. She heard Jeanie, with a much readier, and more assured manner than of old, saying all the things to the Stauntons that might be expected from a young lady on her travels. She said that the mountains were perfectly sweet, and so were the cows and the peasants. Mother got into fusses sometimes, but it did not matter; she was quite happy when she could sit down. They had met charming people. Constancy felt a frightful conviction that, if she spoke, she should cry.

After the manner of her day, and of her kind, however, she got over her agitation for herself. She never could have supposed that the sight and sound of Jeanie would be so aggravating. No more than she could have guessed beforehand, that the one face that would flash before her mental vision in that supreme moment, when life and death had hung in the balance, would be Godfrey’s, angry and miserable, as it had looked at her from the doorway at Moorhead, or in the dim light of the Stauntons’ drawing-room. That had come to her, and that was all.

Constancy endured this self-revelation in silence. She had not, at any rate, revealed this to Guy, in the moment of impulsive confidence that had ensued. What had induced her to say so much? She remembered that, in one of the discussions in which she delighted, she had cheerfully asked him what he thought Tennyson had meant by “the abysmal deeps of personality,” and he had answered dryly —