Chapter XVI: I Put an End to One Folly

Hanging and wiving go by Destiny, which must be my excuse for accepting the silken cord which was weaving for my neck all this time. I knew no more than patient Griselda about my impending fate; yet Destiny was not to be gainsaid because I seemed content to resolve upon Gogo for my present welfare and protection.

He, good monster, never alluded again, during all the days I was with him, to his unhappy passion. He was slavish in his loyalty to his word, and in his attentions to the poor creature so utterly in his power. And if I could not but understand the significance of his sighs and oglings and contortions, my feigned ignorance of those hieroglyphics was undoubtedly the most merciful of all the tortures I might have inflicted on him. Thinking of this, I find salve for certain bruises on my conscience, which, nevertheless, were, I am sure, quite unnecessarily self-inflicted. I acted for the best, and with great pain to myself. He has admitted this since, though confessing he was long in forgiving me.

I was in the tower, in all, but four days, which, nevertheless, might have been as many weeks for their tediousness. Gogo was an incomparable slave and henchman, only his devotion necessarily lacked the relish of publicity. If I could have had but one other to whom to boast it, I could have endured it longer. But to be Single-heart’s exclusive fetish, immured in his wigwam and appropriated to his sole company, was what never appealed to me. Nor do I believe that it does truthfully to any other. We are omnivorous; we can’t live on spoon-meat alone; and there is an end of it.

“Gogo,” I said once, “why are you so attached to me?”

“Why?” said he, throwing up his hands, after his fashion, with a sort of protesting groan to the powers that be. “Because I am a creature of surfaces and impressions; because, drawing my life from the great external of all, it is my doom to worship externals. We talk of our inheriting the world. Pooh! we are just an itch on the skin of this monster, whose dark internals are as remote from us as our own hated organs. Have we ever a thought of possessing our kingdom? Think with what terror we contemplate a living burial. We are the dust of contact between earth and sky; are bandied between space and matter, the dross of one or the scum of the other. Love itself is but the measure of our penetration. It is the propagation of superficies: it probes no farther: and all the time is breathing in the air like a swimmer. Are my eyes in my feet? Ask me why I hate the dark, and am attached to the light--to the brightest gnat of an hour flying within it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said I. “And that is me, I suppose?”

“That is you,” he said--“dancing on a window-pane, and wondering what fate keeps you from the garden beyond.”

“And you,” I said, “are the spider lurking in the window-corner, _n’est ce pas_, and wondering what fate keeps you from devouring me. Well, you are very complimentary; but, for my part, I would rather have an hour’s dancing on the surface than possess all the world that’s under.”

“Ay,” he answered, “and that’s why I covet you.”

Now, was he not an inexplicable creature, and, it must be said, a depressing? Moreover, for all his advocacy of my cause, I could never quite reconcile him to my view of madam.

“Remember the day of the picture,” he would say; “and how she rebuked us all by her attitude. If I testify to your martyrdom, Diana, I must testify to hers that preceded it.”

“She is welcome to the palm,” I cried. “And may she live long to flaunt her conquest.”

He did not answer; and so letting his dissent pass by default, put a bar between us that was never quite surmounted.

In the meanwhile, day followed day, and the frost held, and I was cold and _ennuyée_; and still he delayed our flight on the score of peril. I had come but poorly clad for the test, and I cried and shivered much in our dismal refuge, where what fire we could afford must be kept low from dread of the smoke betraying us. Present food we had, and some wine that helped a little to comfort our dejection; and on the Friday he was due, tramping fourteen miles thither and back over the hills, to claim his fresh dole of the tree above Wellcot, where faithful Patty--who was in his confidence as to his retreat, and the means towards my salvation he hoped to make of it--was wont to conceal it. Dear darling! How I longed to convey her a message; but he would not hear of it.

“Of all ephemera,” he said, “she is the very transparent-bodied fly, the secrets of whose own heart she cannot help but reveal.”

So I had to submit, and hold her sweet image in my arms o’ nights, when the wind came in at the door and the stars crackled with cold. But Gogo was right, I had to confess, when once from the deep woods beyond Shole we heard the clanging of bloodhounds, and knew that my enemies were vainly seeking the trail which had no existence. Then I cowered low, and felt a new gush of affection for the resourceful giant who was so wise in the singleness of his passion.

Often by day I would climb up the ladder to the loft where the astrologer’s telescope yet remained, commanding, like a disused cannon, the house and village he had fancied under its dominion, and there spend hours spying hungrily for what tokens of life the bitter season afforded. They were not many or inspiriting; but they served at least to keep me in touch with that world of my fellows that seemed eternally lost to me.

On the Friday I fell at Gogo’s feet.

“Safe or unsafe,” I cried, “take me away! I can stand this loneliness no longer.”

His face was full of a sorrowful ecstasy.

“And it was a garden to me,” he murmured; “blind that I am!”

“I shall die,” I cried terribly, “and you will lay me with the dead clown under the tree.”

“So would you be for ever mine,” he continued, in a sort of dream.

I shrunk from him, and seeing my look, he cast himself down on his face before me.

“Command me as you will,” he cried; “only never, never bid me from serving you.”

“You will go?” I sat back, eagerly canvassing him. “Why should I dream of parting with you? Are not our fortunes pledged together, even if I did not owe you the best of all gratitude? You are so wise and brave; you will find a plan and a direction. Only I can stop here no longer.--O, I can’t!--Gogo, take me away--to London--anywhere.”

He raised himself.

“Spare me this evening to forage,” he said, “so that to-morrow we can at least start provided.”

In deep night he left me, to go to the tree. It was the first time I had been abandoned to my sole self. So long as I could discern his figure, striding over the fields, like some unearthly goblin, on its high stilts, I stood by the door gazing into the starlight. Then, when I could see him no more, I sat down just within, my back to the vast emptiness, and hugged and cried to myself against the long panic of waiting.

Not many minutes had I sat thus, when something--a footstep, a shadow--seemed to fall upon my heart with a shock that stopped its beating. Too terrified for look or utterance, I crouched low, hoping the thing would pass, and leave me unobserved.

“I have come, madam, to invite you to a safer asylum,” said a low and musical voice.

I gave an irresistible cry, suppressing it instinctively, even in its emission, lest it should call back my faithful squire, from his long toil across the fields, to a need which these gentle tones were far from justifying. I struggled to my feet, and made myself as small as possible against the wall.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“An outcast like yourself,” answered the shadow; “a fellow-sufferer at the hands of the very family to which you owe your misfortunes.”

“Who are you?” I could only whisper again.

“I am George Rowe,” it said. “Do you remember me? We have met once--an ineffaceable impression to me. I have followed your career since; unknown to you, have traced you by the flowers in your footsteps--yes, even to that wicked place, and your flight from it. I have watched you since from the woods below; have stood at this door at night and listened to your breathing till I maddened; have sorely bided my time, seeking to speak to you. I have tracked the honest tracker, your good servant and saviour; and, while I applaud his devotion, must warn you against the equivocal position in which your further acceptance of that devotion may place you.”

I could not see his face, but only the dusk of a comely form, as it stood now before me. Well could I recall, indeed, “the good-humoured gentleman in the grey coat,” who had once so espoused my childish cause, and earned thereby the hatred of his kinsmen. My confidence was returning to me with my wits.

“You are very considerate for us,” I said deridingly. “Do you come as madam your sister’s emissary, since you are so particular for my character?”

“Alas!” he said, “you do well to doubt me, being so related. But I am an outlaw from all that house’s influence and consideration.”

“An outlaw--you!” I murmured.

“Ay,” he answered; “ruined, menaced, and driven forth to nurse my wrongs in hiding.”

“Why, where?” I asked.

“To the woods,” he answered, “like Robin Hood.”

“O, an attractive asylum, sir, for distressed ladies,” I said.

He replied, “Maid Marian thought so.”

“Perhaps she had an attachment there,” said I. “I miss the application to myself.”

He laughed softly.

“Whether we fly from fear, or fly to love, we fly,” he said. “You may hold your enemies too cheap, not knowing that my lord makes interest with his sister, and for his own purposes, to subsidise your Dr. Peel. For the sake of the secrets of the prison-house, he will not leave her solus to the hue and cry. You have planted two dragon-heads in place of the one you severed.”

I shrunk before him.

“What do you mean? How do you know?”

“By the token,” he said, “that he destined me to your fate, and I answered with the better part of valour, which you will be wise to imitate.”

“To-morrow,” I muttered; “we had already decided.”

“That is not all, nor enough,” he urged. “You may be Una, _with_ a rhinoceros, and that is not enough. My lord rides a thunder-bolt. It is not enough to flee him; you must vanish--be no more.”

Now all of a sudden--I know not how--his words seemed to wake me to the fond illusion of my state. How, indeed, was I situated, with a legless Caliban to show me how to run? I had been blinded, by Gogo’s devotion, to the real nature of the presumption it had thought to justify. What honest right had he to have undertaken so responsible a deed, save he had provided for it to the last details? I felt suddenly very naked and forlorn--shiftless and crying, like some poor exposed child in the night. I clasped my fingers to the shadow, entreating it in a broken voice--

“What am I to do? Advise me, help me!”

It moved upon me, soft, and swift, and irresistible. I felt my hands imprisoned--seized as out of the grave into an assurance of human warmth and sympathy.

“For what else am I here?” demanded the fervent voice. “Have I not the prior claim? Have you never thought of me in all these years--of what you might be now, save for my interference?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Indeed, indeed I am not one to forget.”

“Well,” he said, “I am just a vagabond at last, and desperate in romance; and you--your reason is forfeit, if not your life. Be under no delusion about it; nor about the real impotence of this good fellow to save you. Come with me, then, while there is time, and be my little sister. I am lonely in the deep woods.”

I did not move or speak, but I gazed up intently into the white bloom of his face. The strangest thought was struggling for expression in me--of some conscious gravitation, through all these years, towards an affinity which had been shadowed out to me at that first and only meeting. I felt no shyness, but only a restful confidence in his company. Was not that strange? To be brother and sister, one and indivisible in the candid sympathies of Nature. I recognised in a moment that it was that ideal relationship which had always appealed to me for the best and purest--that I could never be happy again divorced from it.

Suddenly the tears were in my eyes.

“If I could truly be your little sister,” I said, “and keep house for you, as Gretel did for the gentle shepherd who had plucked her when a flower.”

He heaved a long sigh, full of rapture.

“Quick, then! let me pluck my flower,” says he, “and run.”

But now, at that, for some reason, a revulsion of feeling took me. I sank down upon the ground away from him, and hid my face in my hands.

“No, no,” I cried--“not yet, not now. O, leave me, _please_!”

Perhaps he was wise to understand and temporise. Anyhow, he went, though no farther than the door.

For a moment I hated myself; for a moment I felt the basest thing on earth. What use to reflect that reason and kindness were on my side: that, since I could not cure a poor fond fool, it were no mercy, but the contrary, to submit him to the continued infection of my presence? I said so to myself, and saying it, saw his face returning--full of light and eagerness--to learn the damning truth! To be held accursed in that great heart! I could not, I could not! Poor Gogo! Had he not given up everything for me? I would not desert him. Why should he not come too? But no: I saw in the same instant that that was impossible, since he himself had no thought, no wish, to be my brother. And perhaps, if I went, I should never see him again. Well, would not that be the best for him? Let me nurse my grief eternal, so long as he found _his_ cure in separation. It were better I should go. Freed of this incubus, he would have no longer need to crouch and starve. The world had no reason, so far as I knew, to identify him with my flight. And now every hour he remained with me was an added peril to his safety, his very existence!

Quite wild, I rose to my feet and went panting to the shadow.

“Take me away,” I said, “before he breaks my heart, returning.”

He took my hand tight in his, drew me under the starlight, and together we fled down the hill and into the woods.