Chapter XXXIII

Next morning St. John wakes, recovered from his ill temper, his headache, and all the effects of his Irish saturnalia. Perhaps, had he known who it was that lay wakeful in a great ginger four-poster, two doors off, his slumbers would not have been so profound. The hounds meet twelve miles away, at Shepherds Hatch. By nine o'clock he is in the saddle, and riding quietly along the deep Essex lanes and wet fields, with a soft, south wind blowing in his face, and the grass, crisped by the slightest possible frost, beneath the horse's hoofs.

He is lucky enough to come in for the run of the season; has the satisfaction of seeing many better men than himself floundering, hatless and well-watered, in a brook, or getting croppers over stiff hawthorn hedges; over all which obstacles his grey, a new investment, of whose fencing powers he and his groom had been unjustly doubtful, carries him like a bird. As to whether his ladylove may relish this early preference of "bold Reynolds" to herself, any more than she relished his fatigue and headache last night, he troubles himself but little. He has no intention whatever of being a hen-pecked husband. When he proposed to her, he told her what he could give her, and what he could not--what she might expect, and what she might not: nor has this day's desertion been any departure from his half of the bargain. Somewhere about five o'clock he is back again at Blessington, splashed from head to heel; his tops, in which this morning you might have seen your face, all stained and discoloured; with a dab of mud on each cheek, and a third on the bridge of his nose. He runs upstairs lightly, whistling a tune, and has just reached the first landing, when, "Click-clack," he hears a woman's high-heeled shoes descending. It is Esther, who is walking listlessly down, with her eyes fixed on a great picture let into the wall--a large, white woman, with her clothes tumbling off, hurling her substantial person upon a spear; a young man, with arms like a blacksmith's, lying on the ground, making a profuse display of his charms, and, though with no very perceptible wound, evidently _in articulo mortis;_ a fat Cupid blubbering hard by--the whole entitled "Pyramus and Thisbe."

St. John looks upward, to see who the author of the "click-clacking" may be. "Who the devil is this pretty girl?" is his first thought. His second--a thought that makes him stagger back with the colour hurrying from his healthy cheek--a thought full of anger, astonishment, desire, and pain--a thought that involuntarily he speaks aloud, is "Esther."

At almost the same moment she has caught sight of him. In her case, there is no surprise; but the pain is as great, if not greater.

"Yes, it is I," she answers, almost inaudibly, trembling all over.

His first impulse seems to be to rush away from her, to pass quickly upstairs; his second takes him to her side.

"In Heaven's name, what brings _you_ here?" he asks, in a voice almost as low as her own, from intense repressed emotion.

No answer. His voice has carried her back, across the gulf of Jack's death, of her own servitude and failing health, to that night when, in the starry Felton fields, she had stood by his side, his beloved, promised wife. She is silent--struggling with a strong, vile, degrading temptation to fling down her tired head upon the shoulder of Miss Blessington's affianced husband, and weep out loud.

"Are you on a visit here?" he asks again, with stern brevity.

"Yes," she answers, bitterly, strengthened by his tone, in which there is small kindness, and much wrath; "I am paid fifty pounds a year to visit here."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I am Mr. and Mrs. Blessington's 'companion.'"

"Good God! You are here _always_, then?"

"Always."

A pause! Against his will his eyes dwell upon her, hungry and fierce, astonished at the alteration wrought in her whom he had once thought fairest among women. Faded, wasted, forlorn, to his cost he finds that he still thinks her so.

"Is this bondage to last all your life, then?" he inquires more collectedly, after a few seconds.

"Until they die, or until my voice fails."

"And what then?"

"I must look out for some other old people, to whom I can be ears, and voice, and feet."

"Good God! And what _can_ be your motive?"

"One _must_ live."

"I had thought the world wide enough for two people to walk apart," he says, with almost a groan. "I have entreated God that I might never look on your face again, and this is how my prayer is answered."

Another pause. "Tick-tack--tick-tack--tick-tack," goes a clock in the gallery overhead.

"You look extremely ill!"

"Do I?"

"You are wonderfully altered!"

"Yes, I know it!"

"What is it ails you?"

"Nothing."

"What does _this_ mean?"--touching her black dress with a jealous pang of fear that his innocent rival, the "lout who gave her the sixpenny Prayer Book, and inscribed his name with a crooked pin on the fly-leaf," is numbered with the dead; and that the hollow cheeks, dejected droop of the head, and crape-covered garments are for him.

The tears crowd into her eyes; they know the way there so well now. She turns away, and leans against the banisters to hide them.

A light breaks in upon him. He remembers that she had a brother, her girlish rhapsodies about whom used to make him rather impatient.

"I see," he says, in a softer tone; "forgive me for asking."

Encouraged by his voice, she lifts her face towards him with a tearful smile.

"You may be satisfied, I think," she says, simply. "You have had your revenge; I have been punished almost enough."

Revenge is sweet, they say; but at this moment I do not think that St. John finds it so.

"You did not know that I was here?" she asks, presently.

"Know it!" he repeats, passionately. "Not I. Do you suppose I would have come within a hundred miles of this house if I had known it?"

"I will try to keep out of your way," she answers, meekly.

"For God's sake, do! It is the most merciful thing that you can do for both of us."

"I would leave this place to-day, if I could," she answers, humbly raising her wistful, deprecating eyes to his; "but I cannot. My daily bread is here--yours is not. Why cannot you go?"

He hesitates. "I ought, I suppose," he answers, doubtfully. "I will, if you wish it."

"It is as _you_ wish," she replies.

Footmen are passing to and fro, through the hall, busy with preparations for dinner; any moment Mr. Gerard's blue-and-white angel may come sweeping downstairs and surprise them.

"I have not congratulated you yet, Mr. Gerard," Esther says, timidly.

"Congratulated me!--what upon?" he asks, absently, staring vacantly at her.

"Upon your engagement to Miss Blessington."

A shade crosses his face. "Oh yes, to be sure! I had forgotten. Thanks! you are very good, I'm sure."

"I hope you will be very happy--_quite_ happy."

"Thanks. Wish that I may be Prime Minister, or Commander-in-Chief, or something equally probable, while you are about it," he says, sardonically.

"I wish you to be happy," she repeats, gently, "and I hope that is not improbable."

"Such a wish in your mouth is something like a butcher with his knife at its throat wishing a sheep a long life!"

A guilty sense of hypocrisy in wishing him happy whom, less than forty-eight hours ago, she had been congratulating herself on his certain misery, keeps her dumb.

"Why could not you have sent me word that you were here, and I would have kept away?" he asks, flashing angrily upon her.

"I asked Miss Blessington to tell you, but she forgot."

He turns away with a muttered exclamation, not benedictory towards his betrothed, between his teeth.

"I will try to be as little annoyance to you as I can," says the poor child, in bitter mortification. "You will be out hunting most of the day, I daresay, and, except when I am waiting upon either Mr. and Mrs. Blessington, I am not often downstairs."

He takes no notice of her submissive speech, but stands, with his eyes moodily downcast, upon the white stone of the cold carpetless stairs.

"Believe me, I would go away, if I could," she says, piteously. "I did not wish to be in your way; but I had nowhere to go to."

A shade of pity softens his stern face.

"Are they kind to you?" he asks abruptly.

"Yes--oh yes--quite kind."

"And what, in God's name," he says, slowly, as if the question were forced from him against his will, by the slender fragility of her figure, by the pallid delicacy of her face--"And what, in God's name, can have induced your friends to allow you to accept such a situation, for which you are about as well fitted as I for the archbishopric of Canterbury?"

"I have not many friends, and I did not ask the advice of the few I have."

"They ought to have given it unasked," he says, gruffly.

"So they did, but I did not take it."

"Well, it is no business of mine," he says, harshly, ashamed and angry at himself for his temporary lapse into friendliness. "God knows I have had as good reason to hate you, and wish you ill, as ever man had! I _have_ hated you," he says, with fierce heartiness, "during the last three months, as I should not have thought it possible to hate anything so weak and tender. I _hope_ I hate you still!"

Remembering how much deeplier she had sinned against that other, and with how godlike a fulness and freedom he had pardoned her, she feels her heart rise up against him.

"The worse case I see you in, the more I ought to rejoice--the more I _should_ have rejoiced yesterday," he continues, with rapid passion; "and yet--and yet--"

He passes his hand across his forehead, pushing the hair away; and not even the dab of mud on his nose can hinder the expression of his countenance from having something of a tragical pathos in it.

"And yet what?" she asks, tremulously, moving a step nearer to him.

"And yet, for the life of me, while I am _with_ you, I cannot. When I am away from you, I can remember what you _are;_ when I am with you, I see only what you seem. Esther! Esther! why, in God's name, don't the two tally better?"

"Whether they tally or not can be of but little concern to you now, Mr. Gerard," she answers, with some exasperation.

His brown cheek flushes into shamed angry-red.

"You are right," he says, stiffly. "It _is_ no concern of mine; I am sorry I needed reminding."

"Why must we waste time digging that poor old past out of its grave?" she says, with persuasive gentleness, as her hand lays itself lightly, as if half afraid of being shaken off, upon his scarlet sleeve. "Why cannot we let bygones, that" (with a sigh) "are so completely bygones, be bygones? I did you an injury once--not an irreparable one, you will allow, since it is already repaired" (smiling half-scornful, half-melancholy); "and my whole life since has been a punishment--O God! _what_ a punishment!" (putting her hand for a second over her eyes). "I am tired of being punished now. We shall see very little of one another henceforth, but that little might as well be in civility as in incivility--mightn't it?"

"Civility!"--he repeats, without much of that quality in his tone--"civility between you and me! And what would that end in, pray? It would be oversweet at first, and bitterer than wormwood afterwards, as our former _civility_ was. No--no! we will have no sophisms, no absurd Platonisms here! God forbid my thrusting myself into temptation again! We will say 'good morning' and 'good evening' to one another, as people would remark it if we did not. But for the rest, let us hold our tongues and keep apart; and as soon as I can do it, without exciting great question, you may rely upon my going; and then we shall have done with one another for good, I pray God!"

She bends her head submissively. "You are right, I think."

"Click-clack--click-clack," come other high-heeled shoes; "swish! swish!" a long dress trails along. From the heaven of the upper regions the blue-and-white angel is in the act of descent. Without another word, the two part--the woman going quickly down, the man as quickly up.

"Good morning, Conny! Rather late in the day to say 'good morning,' isn't it?"

This is his greeting, accompanied with a rather constrained laugh, to his future proprietor.

"So you and Miss Craven have been renewing your acquaintance upon the landing?" replies the divinity, smiling a little inquisitively. "I was looking down at you from the gallery; you looked so picturesque!"

"If being cased from top to toe in black mud is picturesque, I am eminently so," answers he, looking down at his legs to hide a transient expression of confusion. "Well, good-bye for the present; I suppose I must be going to adorn for this unearthly meal."