Chapter X: Farewell

At the turn of winter John Prout went down to Dawlish, and did not come back. He sent a gloomy letter to Brendon, and explained that their master desired him to remain.

"He's come down to a shadow of himself," wrote John, "and the doctor told me yesterday, when I asked him how things were going with Mr. Hilary, that he'd taken a bad turn of late, and might not weather another year. He coughs something cruel; but he's wonderful cheerful since he comed to believe the old things. A clergyman often sits along with him by the hour and does him good seemingly. I be a large comfort to him, I do think, so I can't leave him no more, unless he takes a turn for the good. He wants to see you all again, and if he doesn't come back, you and Sarah Jane and Tabitha will have to come and see him, for he's set upon that. Never a man faced death braver. Now he thinks like he does, he'll be glad to go, I do believe. But he hasn't lost touch of Ruddyford, as you'll see by the rest of my letter."

There followed a string of directions from Woodrow to Brendon. Some Daniel approved, some he disapproved; but all were very carefully executed. He read Prout's letter to the farm, and wide sorrow and concern greeted it. The women mourned and openly wept together; Daniel went for days silent and abstracted. He spoke to none but his wife. Then Agg and Peter Lethbridge, reduced to considerable doubt concerning their own future, ventured to question Brendon. They explained their uncertainties and he set them at rest.

"What will happen when Mr. Woodrow goes is already determined," he said. "I can't tell you what it is till the time comes; but this I'll say: I can promise you both to bide here on your present money as long as you please me."

At Dawlish, Prout waited upon his fading master, nursed him like a woman, and added to his comfort in every way possible. To please John, Woodrow sent for a consulting physician from Exeter; but the man could give no hope.

Now Hilary had ceased to ride, though he let Prout drive him when the days were fair. Together they went in a little pony-carriage round about the fir-fledged hills of Haldon; and it was given to Hilary once more to see the first glory of spring larches, once more to look into the eyes of the violet and note the little sorrel shake forth her fleeting loveliness. Great peace of mind had now descended upon him, and with reduced activities an interest in the lesser things of nature awakened, and he loved to pluck the flowers, as a child plucks them, yet with the understanding of a man. The smell of the spring earth was good to him. He feared not at all to sink therein and return to Nature the dust that she had lent him. In his heart there reigned sure consciousness that this was not the end; that a higher, fuller life opened beyond the earthly portals; that the prelude and not the play was done when the clod fell and a man's coffin-lid vanished for ever.

To Prout he imparted these opinions, and John, who doubted not of eternity, rejoiced to see the strength and peace that henceforth marked his master's mind.

"How you could bear with me, John! Often, looking back, I marvel at the patience of you and of Brendon. You had all that I lacked; yet you listened to my trash and never did you rise and denounce me for a fool!"

"Not likely. Whatever you was, you wasn't that."

"I did things then, and thought them not wrong that I know now were wicked."

"Thank God for it that you know, master."

"But is it too late, John?"

"Never too late. Never too late."

"I must leave mercy to my wronged Maker. 'Tis well to be a free-thinker in a way--just as 'tis well for a country bred man to go to cities. You don't know what the country really means till you've been mewed up in the town; and you don't know what faith means till you've tried to live without it. So I feel. No freedom of thought will think right into wrong, John Prout."

"God's above all."

"Once I thought, with a wise man who lived before Christ came, that what we men call life is only a poor shadow dragging a corpse, like a prisoner drags his chain. Now I know better. Now the things that seemed good suffer an eclipse, and the things that seemed beautiful stand out in their naked, ugly truth. They were all a mirage--all shadows in a desert of sand. I thought that they quenched thirst and satisfied hunger. That was part of the great blindness, John. Now I know that the sun-dance and glare and dazzle was all a wicked sham. I wove them for myself; I blinded myself; I deluded myself. If I could tell you how base I'd been--what things I did, believing them to be reasonable and not wrong. The folly--the madness! I said to myself, 'Nature does neither right nor wrong; it is only the foolish man who calls her cruel or kind. She rises above these human ideas. And so will I.' Yes, I thought to copy Nature and follow the thing she prompted. I dinned into my own ears that what I did was far above right or wrong. I said to myself, 'Let the fools who like words call their actions "good" or "evil." Do you, for your part, look to it that your actions are "reasonable," and so content your conscience that demands only reason.' What a light has burned in on all that preposterous nonsense since! Crimes--crimes I have committed in the name of nature and reason. O God, Prout, when I think---- And now I know that it will take a forgiving Saviour to save me. Well may Christ have taught us that God is a merciful God! I should go mad if I did not grasp that unutterable truth, John. To His mercy I trust myself--and not only myself."

He prattled on of the dogmas he had now accepted, and behind every thought and pious hope John Prout saw Sarah Jane. Often the sick man spoke directly of her; more often, when declaring his new convictions he used no names; but Prout--from his inner knowledge--perceived which way his master's mind was tending. He gathered that Hilary hoped Sarah Jane would presently come to see with her husband's eyes and abandon a certain large enthusiasm for her own kind in favour of a narrower trust and confidence in the tenets of Christianity alone. Once or twice Prout believed that the other was actually going to confess his action of the past; but Hilary never did so. He told his old servant that the farm had been left to Brendon, but he gave no reason for the step. He was, however, quick enough to be astonished at John's lack of surprise.

"Did he tell you? Did you know it, that you take it so calmly?" he asked.

"To be frank, I did know it," answered John. "Don't blame her. You understand women better'n me; and you'll guess how hard 'twas for her to keep it in. 'Twas a night five year ago and more, when chance throwed us together at Lydford, and she helped me home against a storm. By the same token a rainbow showed over against the moon. Of course I never spoke of it again; more did she."

"You don't blame me?"

"Who be I to blame you? No man on earth have ever had a better master than what you have been to me."

"And no man ever loved a man better than you have loved me, John. Well I know it."

So oftentimes they talked, and when Hilary was unequal to speech he made Prout read to him and rehearse those things that he best liked to hear repeated.

Sometimes, however, the sick man cared for no company other than his thoughts; and then he would bid John depart, and for hours together brood upon the past and survey his vanished deeds in the light of present belief. A fading memory served to dim their details, and what was left faith much distorted. He remembered the glow and glory of the first kiss, and loathed that damnable contact as the beginning of the master-sin of his days; he beheld himself imparadised in those lovely arms; and he shuddered and saw all hell watching with hungry eyes.

Woodrow knew that he would not return to Ruddyford. He had planned to die there; but now he was indifferent, and already pictured his own mound under the shadow of the old church at Dawlish. He was desirous, however, to take leave of his few friends, and invited Prout to plan their visits in such a way that they should not know these meetings must be the last.

Miss Prout first came and spent three days. With her she brought little dishes made with her own hands; and while she remained at Dawlish she spent most of her time in the kitchen, to the concern of the landlady, who resented Tabitha. Hilary cared not much for Prout's sister, and bade her good-bye indifferently. She returned home with a black story of his decline, and foretold that he must soon pass. Next Daniel went down, but the time was full of work, and he stayed a very short while. To speak became increasingly difficult for Woodrow; yet he liked to listen to Daniel, and came to him in some respects as a learner. He invited Brendon to preach to him, and the earnestness and conviction of the big man impressed him. Old instincts awoke to the challenge at these dogmatic utterances, but the sufferer smothered them. He believed them no more than a mere mechanical process of the brain--a reflex action persisting after the death of the habit of thought that was responsible for it. He made himself believe all that Brendon did. And, last of all, he believed in hell, because Christ did.

Hilary was frank with Daniel, and did not hide his approaching end.

"I shall hope to see you once more," he said. "And that will be the last time. I should much wish you to be with me when I die, if that is not a selfish wish. Would you mind?"

"No. I want to be with you then. Do you like the minister here? Is he the right man for you?"

"I value him very much. A gentle, hopeful man."

"Be sure I'll come."

"And I must see Sarah Jane too. Don't tell her that it will be the last time, because that would be a great grief to her, for she's fond of me, I know."

"Yes, she is."

"Let her come next week for a day or two, if you can spare her. But I'll not tell her that it's the last 'good-bye.' All the same, I'm afraid she'll guess it for herself."

"Try to do her good--same as you have me," said Brendon. "You won't speak many more words on human ears now. Let 'em be as the Lord wills. He'll put it into your heart what to say to her. A better, nobler woman than my wife never lived. Fearless and brave and high-minded--I never saw the like of her and never shall. But all the same, from the first--from our courting--there was always something I couldn't understand. Her point of view--not all pure godliness; yet I'd not dare to say she was ungodly in anything. But a sort of high habit of mind that wouldn't bend to the yoke. Always hated and still hates to call herself a miserable sinner afore the footstool of Grace. Yet humble, and gentle, and true to my heart and my hopes here and hereafter, as the moss is true to the stone."

"No man was ever worthy of her, Daniel."

"I know it. Tell her the meek are blessed and inherit the earth."

"And blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. I've never known but one woman that I could think of as able to look at God, Daniel, and that's your wife. Don't ask me to dare to teach her--'tis for her to teach me; and teach you too. Why should she be fearful? She can't be. Perfect love casteth out fear. That's her lesson to us."

Brendon considered doubtfully.

"You may be right," he said. "All the same----"

And when the future owner of Ruddyford returned home, his wife made ready. She knew full well without words that this was her last visit to Hilary Woodrow; and she braced her mind for the ordeal and all that it must mean. She had long since ceased to fear that he would speak, and when Sarah Jane and Hilary met for the last time it was not necessary for him to inform her that their secret perished with themselves.

"Leave it to be told in the next world, if it is right that it should be told," he said to her. "Sometimes I think it may be a part of my purgation and proper punishment, in some place of learning and cleansing, that I may yet have to confess this terrible sin before my fellow spirits--even to the spirit of Daniel himself, when his turn comes. That seems justice, Sarah Jane, as man pictures justice in his feeble ignorance. But at any rate I'm convinced, so far as this life goes, that the proper course is silence. We've no right to wreck lives by imparting our knowledge to them, if that knowledge can only bring ceaseless suffering along with it. I've confessed my sin to God a thousand times. But I know that both punishment and absolution belong to the world to come, not to this."

"Like a schoolboy called up afore his master--to learn the best or worst," she said.

"Even like that. Nothing's settled down here; nothing is finished down here. Everything has to wait till the light touches it."

"And even good and evil ban't understood down here. Maybe you'll find in that light you won't cut such a poor figure after all. Ban't your many great, good, generous deeds and kindly thoughts to count? Ban't your last years to count? Be it a small thing that you've fought your way to your God through all that thicket of books?"

"Not a small thing for myself, certainly. All the difference between heaven and hell, Sarah Jane."

"Oh, don't let that last word come on your lips, for God's sake," she begged. "I do hate it, like I hate a snake. Sometimes, for all I'm so glad that you are happy and have got God, I can find it in me to wish you was the same as you used to be without Him. You was a deal braver, when you laughed at hell, than you be now. And I'll laugh at hell for ever and ever--laugh at it still, even if I was to find myself in it."

"Think of me as I am, Sarah Jane, and believe what I say now. Don't remember me as I was, or call back the vile things I uttered then. Do you remember that once I said God was only the shadow of man's self reflected against the background of his own self-consciousness? I thought that a very fine idea when I made it up. Now I know 'twas the Devil that prompted it."

"I reckoned nobody believed in God and hell both--except my own dear Daniel. And now he's got you to think the same. But I hoped 'twould be t'other way round, and you'd make him flout it."

"Christ believed in it."

"An' quenched it for ever, didn't He? So some seem to think, anyhow. Mr. Matherson be shaky about it, I'm sure, for Dan's very unsettled with the Luke Gospellers along of that very thing. He's going to leave 'em. 'Tis a great grief to him to go, but he says that Mr. Matherson's in danger, and that much larning have made him mad here and there. Did you ever hear tell of the Salvation Army?"

"Yes. It's a new thing, but it's growing fast, and my clergyman believes that in time to come it may be a great power for good in the world."

"Dan's very much took by it; but Mr. Matherson be doubtful. My husband's like to join 'em, I believe. He says they work on Bible bed-rock, and seem to him to follow closer on the actual words of the Lord than any of the regulars."

"If 'tis a good thing, God will surely bless it, Sarah Jane."

"'Tis all one to me, so long as Daniel is content."

They made pretence that this was not the last meeting, and that Sarah Jane should come down again in the summer and bring her child. But death was written on the man's face now, and she knew how soon the end must come. The religious atmosphere, with which he surrounded himself, stifled her worse than the physical odours of a sick chamber. When the clergyman came, she was glad to rush away for a time and walk by the sea.

Hilary rarely rose before noon; but on the day that she was to return home he partially dressed and went into a sitting-room. It faced south, and the train, which was to take her away, would pass along in sight of it.

Their actual parting was brief. Prout left them alone and waited outside.

"Good-bye--you--you--the best and bravest of living things that I have ever seen," he said.

"Good-bye, dear Hilary. We shall meet again--somewhere."

"I know it--thank my God I know it."

She went close to him and looked into his haggard face. Then she kissed him.

"I'll wave my handkercher as the train passes."

"And I'll wave mine, Sarah Jane."

Presently, when the train steamed along between Hilary Woodrow and the sea, though Prout waved from the window and Woodrow stood behind him and strained to catch his last glimpse of her, they only marked her hand held out, and the dance of her handkerchief fluttering. She saw nothing, for the blue of her April eyes was dimmed and drowned.