Foxglove Manor, Volume I (of III)

He stood aside trembling, white, and speechless; and she swept by him and hurried back through the wood.

The vicar looked after her, but stood as if rooted to the spot; while Edith, heedless of the hard stones and her naked feet, ran down wildly to the stepping-stones.

He turned as she approached, and there, with the water whirling between them, she confronted him like his outraged conscience.

CHAPTER XI. EDITH

The deadly pallor of the vicars face had given place to a flush of guilt and shame. He crossed the brook and stood beside her.

“Edith, I have done wrong. Can you forgive me?” he asked, attempting to take her hand.

“Do not touch me, Mr. Santley!” she exclaimed, stepping back from him. “Do not speak to me.”

“Will you not forgive me, Edith?”

“Ask God to forgive you. It matters little now whether I forgive or not. Please go away and leave me.”

“I cannot leave you in this manner. Say you forgive. I confess I have done wrong, but it was in the heat of passion, it was not premeditated.”

“The heat of passion! Was it only in the heat of passion that you – Oh, go at once, Mr. Santley! Go before I say what had better be left unspoken!” The vicar paused and looked at her anxiously; but Edith, throwing her shoes and stockings on the ground, sat down on a stone, and resting her pale, unhappy face on her hands, gazed with a hard, fixed expression at the water.

“Dearest Edith, try to believe that what I did was only an act of momentary madness; blame me if you will, for I cannot too severely blame myself, but do not look so relentless and unforgiving.”

She never stirred or gave any indication that she had heard him, but sat staring at the water.

“You will be sorry for your unkindness afterwards,” he continued.

She paid no heed to him, and he saw it was hopeless to try to effect a reconciliation at the present moment.

“Since you command me to go, I will go.”

Still she appeared not to have heard him. He went back across the brook, and, glancing back once or twice, disappeared in the wood. A minute or two later he stole back again, and saw that she was still sitting by the brook in the same stony attitude. A vague sense of uneasiness took possession of him. He knew that even the meekest, frailest, and gentlest of women are capable of the most tragic extremities when under the sway of passion. Yet what could he do? She would not speak to him, and was deaf to all he could say in extenuation of his conduct. Trusting to the effect of a little quiet reflection, and to the love which he knew she felt for him, he resolved at length to leave her to herself. After all he had, it seemed to him, more to fear from Mrs. Haldane than from Edith. To what frightful consequences he had exposed himself by that act of folly! Would she tell her husband? Would the story leak out and become the scandal of the country side? With a sickening dread of what the future had in store for him, he retraced his steps to the quarry.

Mrs. Haldane’s first impulse was to order her carriage and at once drive home, but her hurried walk through the wood gradually became slower as she reflected on the strange interpretation that would be put upon so sudden a departure. She had brought the vicar, and if she now hastened away without him, evil tongues would soon be busied with both her name and his. For the sake of the office he held, and for her own sake as well, she resolved to be silent on what had happened. She felt sure that the vicar would be sufficiently punished by the stings of his own conscience, and if any future chastisement were required he should find it in her distance and frigid treatment of him. Consequently, when Mrs. Haldane reached the quarry she assumed a cheerful, friendly air, stopped to say a few kind words to the old people, and interested herself in the amusements of the children. It was now drawing near tea-time, and the sun was westering.

Mr. Santley felt relieved when he found that Mrs. Haldane had not abruptly left, as he dreaded she would do, but he made no attempt to speak to her or attract her attention. At tea-time she took a cup in her hand and joined a group of little girls, instead of taking her place at the table set aside for her.

The vicar’s eye glanced restlessly about for Edith, but she had not obeyed the summons of the cornopean, and in the bustle and excitement, her absence was not noticed. It was only when the horses had been put into the shafts, and the children, after being counted, were taking their places in the waggons, that Miss Greatheart missed her.

“Have you seen Miss Dove, Mr. Santley?” she asked, after she had searched in vain through the little crowd for Edith. “I don’t think she was at tea.”

“She went in the direction of the old camp,” replied the#vicar, hurriedly; “she cannot have heard the signal. Do not say anything. I think I shall be easily able to find her. If Mrs. Haldane asks for me, will you say I have gone to look for her? You can start as soon as you are ready; we shall easily overtake you.”

So saying, Mr. Santley plunged into the wood, and hurried to the brook. Edith was still sitting where he had left her, but she had in the meanwhile put on her shoes and stockings. Instead of the fixed, determined expression, her face now wore a look of intense wretchedness, and evidently she had been crying. She looked up at the sound of his footsteps.

“Edith, we are going home,” he said, as he reached the edge of the stream.

“You can go,” was the answer.

“But not without you.”

“Yes, without me. I am not going home. I am never going home any more. I have no home. Oh! mother, mother!”

The last words were uttered in a low, sobbing voice.

“Come, come, you must not speak like that. You must go home. What would your poor aunt say if you did anything so foolish?”

“Oh, what would she say if she knew how I have disgraced her and myself? No, I cannot go home any more.”

“But you cannot stay here all night,” said the vicar, with a chill, sinking tremor at the heart.

She gave no answer.

“Edith, my dear girl, for God’s sake do not say you are thinking of doing anything rash!”

“What else can I do? What else am I fit for but disgrace and a miserable end? Oh, Mr. Santley, you swore to me that before God I was your true wife. I believed you then. I did not think you were only acting in a moment of passion. But now I see that it was a dreadful sin. I was not your wife; and oh! what have you made me instead?”

He was very pale, and he trembled from head to foot as he listened to her words.

“Do not speak so loud,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“What! do you feel ashamed? Are you afraid of any one knowing? But God knows it now, and my poor, poor mother knows it – God help me! – and all the world will know it some day.”

“Edith, you will not ruin me?”

“Have you not ruined me? Have you not cast me off for a woman who does not even care for you – for another man’s wife? Oh no, do not be afraid. I will take my shame with me in silence. No one shall be able to say a word against you now, but all the world will know at the last.”

“Edith, listen to me. I will tell you everything; I will hide nothing from you; but do not condemn me unheard. All that I said to you was true, and is still true. Till she came, I did really and most truly love you with all my heart and soul. You were my very wife, in God’s eyes, if love and truth be, as they are, what makes the validity of marriage. I did not deceive you; I did not speak in a moment of passion. Before Heaven I took you for my wife, and before Heaven I believed myself your husband.”

“And then she came!” interposed Edith, bitterly.

“And then she came. I have told you all she was to me once, all I hoped she would one day be. But I have not told you how I have struggled to be true to you in every word and thought. It has been a hard and a bitter struggle – all the more hard and bitter that I have failed. I confess, Edith, that I have not been true. But are we all sinless? are we perfect?”

“We can at least be honourable. Your love of her is a crime.”

“Her beauty maddens me. She is my evil angel. To see her is to love her and long for her. And instead of helping me to conquer temptation, instead of trying to save me from myself, you cast me from you, you upbraid my weakness, you taunt me with your unhappiness. When she is not near, my better nature turns to you. You help me to believe in God, in goodness; she drives me to unbelief and atheism. Did you fancy I was a saint? Have not I my passions and temptations as well as other men? Even the just man falls seven times a day; if you indeed loved me as a true wife, you would find it in your heart to forgive even unto seventy times seven.”

“You know how I have loved!”

“Have loved! Ay, and how easily you have ceased to love!”

“No, no; I have never ceased to love you. It is because I must still love and love you that I am so wretched.”

“Then how can you be so unforgiving?”

“Oh, I am not unforgiving. I can forgive you anything, so long as I know that I am dear to you. Seven and seventy-seven times.”

“And you forgive me now?”

“I do. But you will never any more – ”

“You must help me not to; you must pray for me, and assist me to be ever faithful to you.”

“I will, I will.”

He drew her to him, and kissed her on the lips.

“And you will come home now?”

“Yes, with you.”

“The waggons have started, and we must walk quickly to overtake them.”

“Oh, I don’t care now how far we have to walk.”

“Mrs. Haldane, however, may have waited for us.”

Edith stopped short.

“I couldn’t go near her.”

“Consider a moment, darling. She knows nothing about you, and she does not know that you know anything about her. It might look strange if she drove home without me, after bringing me here. I feared at first that she would have left instantly, but she did not. She may not wish to give people any reason for talking about any sudden coolness between us. Do you understand me?”

“Yes. I will go.”

The vicar had correctly divined the course Mrs. Haldane had pursued. When she learned that Mr. Santley had gone in search of Edith, she drove very leisurely along, so that they might overtake her. She had just got clear of the wood when, on looking round, she observed them coming through the trees. She drew up till they reached her; and when they had got in, she started a brisk conversation with Edith on all manner of topics. She was in her liveliest mood, and to Edith it seemed almost incredible that the scene she had witnessed at the brook was a very serious fact, and not an hallucination. Edith noticed, however, that the vicar seldom spoke, and that, though Mrs. Haldane listened and answered when he made any remark, the conversation was between Mrs. Haldane and herself.

At parting Mrs. Haldane gave him her finger-tips, and was apparently paying more attention to Edith when she said good-bye to him.

CHAPTER XII. CONSCIENCE

Mrs. Haldane came no more to the Vicarage that week, and on Sunday she did not remain, as she had hitherto done, for the communion at the close of the morning service. She was evidently deeply offended, and was doing all she could to avoid meeting the vicar. With him that week had been one of terrible conflict. Tortured with remorse and shame, he was still mad with passion. That kiss was still burning on his lips. He still could feel that voluptuous form in his arms. It seemed, indeed, as though Mrs. Haldane were his evil genius, driving him on to destruction. He was unable to pray; and when he sat down to prepare his sermon, her face rose between him and the paper, and, starting up, he rushed from the house and walked rapidly away into the country. This was in the forenoon, and he walked on and on at a quick pace for several hours. He passed little hamlets and farmsteads which he did not notice, for his mind was absorbed in a wretchedness so intense that he scarcely was conscious of what he was doing. In the afternoon he came to a wood, and, worn out with fatigue and agitation, he entered it and flung himself beneath the shadow of a tree.

There he lay, a prey to conscience, till the sun went down. He had had no food since morning, and he was now weak and nervous. He returned from the wood to the high-road and retraced his steps homeward. As he passed by the wayside cottages, he was tempted once or twice to stop and ask for bread and milk, but after a mental contest he each time conquered the pangs of hunger and thirst, and went on again. The fathers of the desert had subdued the lusts of the flesh by hunger and stripes and physical suffering, and if mortification could exorcise the evil spirit within him, he would have no mercy on himself. He was a great distance from home, and, notwithstanding his resolution to suffer and endure, he was several times forced to sit down and rest on heaps of broken stones by the wayside; and on one of these occasions a spray of bramble-berries hanging over the hedge caught his eye, and looked so rich and sweet that he plucked one and raised it to his mouth. The next moment, however, he had flung it away from him. On another occasion he was startled to his feet by the sound of wheels, and as he walked on he was overtaken by a neighbouring farmer in his gig, who drew up as he was passing, and touched his hat.

“Making for home, Mr. Santley?” he asked, as he shook up the cushion on the vacant seat beside him. “I can put you down at your own door, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Henderson; I prefer walking, and I have some business to attend to.”

“All right, sir. It’s a fine evening for a walk. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

The vicar watched the gig diminish on the distant road till at length the hedgerows concealed it, with a certain sense of stoical satisfaction. He felt he was not all weakness; there was yet left some power of self-denial, some fortitude to endure self-inflicted chastisement.

It was nearly dark when he arrived again in Omberley. The windows were ruddy with fire and gaslight; there were no children playing in the streets; several of the small shopkeepers who kept open late, were now at last putting up their shutters. There was a genial glow from the red-curtained window of the village inn, and a sound of singing and merriment.

“Why should I not go in and join them?” he thought to himself. “What an effect it would have, if I stepped into the sanded taproom and called for a pipe and a quart of beer! The vicar smoking a long clay, with his frothing pewter on the deal table beside him! Why not? Has not the vicar his gross appetites as well as you? Why should you be scandalized, friends, if he should indulge in the same merry way as yourselves? Is he not a mere man like you, with the same animal needs and cravings? Fools, who shrink with horror from the humanity of a man because he wears a black coat and talks to you of duty and sacrifice and godliness! How little you know the poor wretch to whom you look for counsel and comfort and mediation with Heaven!”

He was turning away, when the taproom door was flung open, and half a dozen tipsy men, cursing and quarrelling, staggered out into the street.

Among them was a handsome, swarthy girl of two and twenty, gaily dressed in colours, with a coloured handkerchief bound over her black hair, and a guitar in her hand. They were evidently quarrelling about the girl, who was doing her best to make peace among them.

“You does me no good by your fighting and kicking up a row, masters. Decent folks won’t let a wench into the house when there’s always a fight got up about her. You spoils my market, and gets me an ill name, masters.”

“Any way, Jack Haywood shan’t lay a finger on thee, Sal!” cried a burly young fellow, deep in his cups, as he clenched his horny fist and shook it at Jack.

“What is’t to you what Jack does?” returned the girl, saucily. “Neither Jack nor thee shall lay a finger on me against my will. I reckon I can take care o’ myself, masters.”

“Ay, ay, thou canst that!” assented several voices.

The vicar, who had stood to witness this scene, now stepped in among the group. The men recognized him, and, touching their forelocks, slunk away in sheepish silence. He uttered not a word, but his pale face sobered them like a dash of cold water. Only the girl was left, and she stood, red and frightened, while her hands were nervously busied with the guitar.

“You are back again, Sal, and at your old ways,” said the vicar, in a low voice. “I see, all good advice and all encouragement are wasted on you.”

“I can’t help it, sir,” said the girl, sullenly. “I was born bad; I’m of a bad lot. It’s no use trying any more. It’s in the blood and the bone, and it’ll come out, in spite of everything.”

“Have you made much to-day?” asked the vicar.

“A shilling.”

“Where are you going to stop tonight?”

“At old Mary Henson’s, in Bara Street.”

“Then, go home at once, Sal,” said the vicar, giving her a half-crown. “Will you promise me?”

“Yes.”

“And you will speak to no man tonight? You promise?”

“Yes,” said the girl, taking the money, with a strange look of inquiry at the vicar.

“And try to say your prayers before you go to sleep.”

The girl dropped a curtsy, and went slowly down the street. With a bitter laugh, the vicar pursued his way homeward.

“In the blood and the bone! In the blood and the bone!” he; repeated to himself. “You are right, girl; we are born bad – born bad. The bestial madness of ages and aeons, the lust and lasciviousness of countless generations, are still in our blood, and our instincts are still the instincts of the beast and the savage. Hypocrite and blasphemer that I am! Whited sepulchre, reeking with corruption! Living lie and mask of holiness! O God, what a wretch am I, who dare, to speak of purity and repentance to this woman!”

When he reached the Vicarage, his sister was anxiously awaiting him, and supper was ready.

“Where have you been so long?” she asked, a little impatiently. “I think you might leave word when you expect to be detained beyond your usual time. It is eleven o’clock.”

“I could not say how long I should be,” replied the vicar, with a weary look, which touched his sister and changed her ill-temper to solicitude.

“You are quite tired out, poor fellow,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. “Well, come to supper. It is ready.”

“I cannot take anything at present,” replied Mr. Santley. “I will, go and do a little of my sermon.”

“Shall I leave something out for you, then?”

“Yes, please. Good night.”

He went into the study, lit the gas, and, locking the door, flung himself into an armchair.

“In the blood! in the blood!” he bitterly communed with himself. “And, with all our wild dreams and aspirations, we are but what science says we are, the conqueror of the lascivious ape, the offspring of some common ancestral bestiality, which transmitted to the simian its animalism free and unfettered except by appetite, and to man the germs of a moral law which must be for ever at variance with his sensual instincts. God! we are worse than apes – we the immortals, with our ideals of spirit and purity!”

He rose, and going across the room to the tall, carved oak cupboard, whose contents were a secret to all but himself, he unlocked it and opened the folding doors. The light fell on a large, beautiful statue of the Madonna, with the Infant Christ in her arms. The figure was in plaster, exquisitely coloured, and of a rare loveliness. He looked at it abstractedly for a long while.

“Mother of God!” he exclaimed at length, with passionate fervour. “Spotless virgin, woman above all women glorified, the solitary boast of our tainted nature – oh, dream and desire of men striving for their lost innocence, how vainly have I worshipped and prayed to thee! How ardently have I believed in thy immaculate motherhood! How yearningly I have cried to thee for thy aid and intercession! And no answer has been granted to my supplications. My feverish exaltation has passed from me, leaving me weak and at the mercy of my senses. Art thou, too, but a poetic myth of a later superstition – an idealization more beautiful, more divine than the frail goddesses of Greece and Rome? The art and poetry of the world have turned to thee for inspiration, the ascetic has filled the cold cell with the shining vision of thee, altars have been raised to thee over half the globe, the prayers of nations ascend to thee, and art thou but a beautiful conception of the heart, powerless to aid or to hear thy suppliants?”

He paused, as if, indeed, he expected some sign or word in answer to his wild appeal. Then, closing the doors again and locking them, he went towards his-desk. On it lay the manuscript of the sermon he had preached on the Unknown God.

“The Unknown God!” he exclaimed. “What if her husband is right! What if, indeed, there be no God, no God for us, no God of whom we shall ever be conscious! All science points that way. When the man is dead, his soul is dead too. We deny it; but what is our denial worth? It is our interest to deny it. All phenomena contradict our denial. No man has ever risen from the grave to give us assurance of our immortality. Ah, truly, ‘if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain!’”

He paced the room excitedly.

“Why act the knave and the hypocrite longer? Why delude the world with a false hope of a future that can never be? Why preach prayer and sacrifice, and suffering and patience, when this life is all? If Christ is not risen, our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain.”

He again paced the room; and then, going to a drawer where the keys of the church were kept, he took them, and stole noiselessly out of the house. All was very still outside. The stars were shining, and it was duskily clear. He traversed the churchyard, and reaching the porch he unlocked the door and entered. It was quite dark, except that the tall, narrow windows looked grey against the blackness of the rest of the building, and a little bead of flame burned in the sanctuary lamp. He closed the door after him, and went up the echoing nave to the chancel. Thence he groped his way to the pulpit, and ascending he looked down into the darkness before him.

He stood there in silence, straining his eyes into the gloom, and gradually there came out of the darkness faint, spectral rows of faces, turned up to his with a horrified and bewildered aspect. He uttered no word, but in his brain he was preaching from the text of Paul, and proving that Christ, indeed, had never risen, and that their faith was vain. This world was all, and there was nothing beyond it. Vice and virtue were but social and physical distinctions, implying that the consequences of the one were destructive of happiness, of the other were conducive to happiness. Sin was a fiction, and the sense of sinfulness a morbid development of the imagination. Every man was a law unto himself, and that law must be obeyed. A mans actions were the outcome of his constitution. He was not morally responsible for them. Indeed, moral responsibility was a philosophical error. In dumb show was that long, phrenzied sermon preached to a phantom congregation. At the close the vicar, omitting the usual form of benediction, descended from the pulpit, staggered across the chancel, and fell in a swoon at the foot of the steps which led to the altar.

CHAPTER XIII. IN THE LABORATORY

The grey dawn was glimmering through the chancel when Mr. Santley regained consciousness. He looked wonderingly about him, and at first was unable to understand how he came to be in his present position. That physical collapse had been a merciful relief from a state of mental tension which had become intolerable. He felt faint but calm, and the horrible excitement of the last few hours presented itself to his memory as a sort of ghastly nightmare from which he had been providentially awakened.

He rose and went out into the churchyard. The air was moist and cool. A strange white mist lay in fantastic pools and streaks on the bare hayfields. The corn was full of an indistinct white gauzy vapour. So were the trees. There was not much of it in the open air. It had a spectral look, and, like spirits, it seemed to require some material thing to interpenetrate and rest upon. The grass was heavy with dew, and the gravelled walk as dark coloured as though there had been rain. From the corn came the sound of innumerable chirpings and twitterings. The fields seemed to be swarming with sweet, sharp musical notes. In the trees, too, though there was no stir of wings, there was a very tumult of bird-song – not the full, joyous outpouring, but a ceaseless orchestral tuning up and rehearsing as it were. The familiar graveyard in this unusual misty light, and alive with this strange music, seemed a place in which ne had never been before. The effect was as novel as the first appearance of a well-known landscape buried in snow.