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CHAPTER X. THE KISS

The artist in search of a pretty rural subject could not do better than paint a village holiday – a holiday from which the men and women are all but excluded, and the village school-children and the old people are gathered together for a voyage through the leafy lanes to the picturesque playground of a neighbouring wood. Such an enjoyable spectacle as that presented on the day of the Omberley school-treat deserved to be immortalized by art, if only for the sake of filling a city parlour with a sense of eternal summer. It was a glorious August morning that laughed out over Omberley on the day of the great picnic. The young people were astir early, for it had been impossible to sleep from the excitement they felt after the first glimmer of dawn. About ten o’clock the streets were gay with troops of children, clean, rosy-cheeked, and dressed in their Sunday clothes, who went singing to the rendezvous at the schoolhouse. There they were received by Miss Dora Greatheart, who inspected them all, and expressed her approbation at finding them so neat and prim. In twos and threes the old people, the men in tall hats and swallow-tailed coats for the most part, and the women in their best black gowns and church bonnets, came slowly along the road, gossiping and laughing and breathing hard with the weakness of old age. Then came the musicians – old Gabriel Ware, the sexton, with his fiddle, and two younger men, one of whom played the concertina and the other the cornopean, each with a huge nosegay in his breast and wearing the jauntiest air conceivable. There was a happy buzz of excitement about the schoolhouse as the people assembled; a joyous babble of the clear treble voices of little lads and lasses, and the piping notes of garrulous patriarchs and ancient dames; a strange picture, as pathetic as it was pretty, of bright young faces and dancing little figures mingling among gray wrinkled visages and frail stooping shapes.

“Well, Dora, we are to have a fine day,” said Edith, as she entered the garden and shook hands with the schoolmistress.

“Splendid; only we shall be a little late in starting. We should have been off at ten, and the waggons have not come yet. Why, here is old Daddy coming!”

She had stepped out to the road to look for the waggons, and now she went to welcome the new arrival whom she called Daddy. He was a very old, very wiry little man, with a funny little face full of wrinkles, a pair of little grey eyes, and a perfectly bald head. This was the oldest inhabitant of Omberley; and though he was in his ninety-second year, he was as brisk and hearty as many who were twenty years his juniors.

“Well, Daddy, you have actually come!” said Dora, shaking hands with him. “I am very glad. And how do you feel to-day? Pretty strong and hearty?’

“Strong as Samson, mistress, and hearty as – hearty as anything,” replied the old man, with a chuckle.

“Please, miss,” said a young woman who accompanied him, “mother sends her duty, and will you kindly take care of him and see as he doesn’t go a-thinking.”

Daddy’s only symptom of senility was an aptitude to fall into a state of unconsciousness, and in these cases, which sometimes lasted for hours together, he would sit down wherever he was, and consequently ran considerable risks when he went out-of-doors alone. Though the old fellow was quite unable to give any account of himself during these lapses into oblivion, he always stoutly declared that he had been only thinking.

“And please, miss, you’ll find his bacca-box and his pipe in his tail pocket, and his hankercher, and the matches is in his vest pocket. He do forget where he puts his things.”

Daddy laughed scornfully.

“I never forgets nothing, I don’t,” he said boastingly. “I can mind o’ the great beech as was blown down on the green in the whirlywind of ‘92; ay, I mind – ”

A loud cheer from the school children interrupted the flow of Daddy’s reminiscences. The greeting was intended for the vicar and the patroness of the festival, Mrs. Haldane, who now drove up to the school-house. She was already acquainted with Dora, but she had not yet met either Edith or the oldest inhabitant. Mr. Santley introduced both as the waggons came in sight, and at once the cheering was renewed, and the children streamed out into the road. What a fine sight those waggons were v – the long, curved, wheeled ships of the inland farmer, painted yellow and red, and drawn by big horses, with huge collars and bright iron chains! The semicircular canvas awning had been removed, but the wooden arches which supported it were wreathed with leaves and flowers, and festoons hung overhead between arch and arch. The horses, too, were gaily decked out, each having a nosegay between its ears, and its mane and tail tied up with ribbons. The bottom of the waggons were covered with trusses of straw, to make comfortable seats for the old folk. The more daring of the lads were already clambering up the wheels, and securing seats on the flakes which went along the sides of the rustic ship like a sort of outrigger.

Before allowing Daddy to be helped on board, Miss Greatheart beckoned to her a little pale-faced girl who was obliged to use crutches.

“Nannie dear, I want you to look after Daddy as much as you can. When you are tired of him you must come and tell me. Don’t let him go away by himself, and wake him up if he sleeps too long.”

This was said in a whisper to the child, who smiled and nodded.

“Now, Daddy, here’s little Nannie Swales,” said Dora; “I want you to take care of her. You’re the only person I can trust to look after her properly. And she likes to talk to you and see you smoke.”

The little old man smiled and chuckled complacently.

“Put her aside of me, mistress, and I’ll see as no ill comes to her.”

What could have been more charmingly idyllic than those two great waggons, crowded with little shining-eyed tots, merry lads and lasses, withered old men and women, all happy and contented? The blue sky laughed down on them; the green leaves and flowers embowered them; and as a start was; made, one of the musicians struck up “For we’ll a-hunting go” on the concertina, and a score of clear, fresh voices joined in the jovial song.

Through the village, which turned out to wave hands to them as they passed singing and cheering, away through gold-green stretches of ripening harvest, past empty fields where the hay had all been cut and carted, between level expanses of root crops lying green in the hot sun, till at last the dark embankment of Barton Wood rises above the distant sky. How cool and refreshing it is, after the glare of the midday sun, to get into the green shadowland of these grand old beeches and sycamores!

The road winds leisurely as if to seek out the coolest recesses of the wood, and beneath the great bunches of heavy foliage, what quiet, dim distances one sees between the trunks, strewn thick with withered leaves, through which the moss and grass and a thousand moist plants thrust their emerald way, and blue and pink and yellow flowers are clustered in cushions of velvet colour! A few yards away from the road the air seems brown and transparent. That must be the reason why the leaves of the mountain ash are so darkly green, and the berries so brilliantly crimson. If you pluck a bunch and take it out of the wood, you will find it has become disenchanted; the colour is no longer the same.

The road is not a highway, but leads to an old quarry of brown sandstone. There has been no work done here for a few years, but many generations of stonemasons have plied hammer and chisel in this picturesque workshop. It is a tradition that the stone of Foxglove Manor, old as it is, was got here. The old church was built from these brown walls of stone; so was the Vicarage, and so were the windowsills and facings of all the houses in Omberley. It is an unusually large quarry, for a great deal of stone has been taken away during these two hundred odd years. A great deal of half-shaped stone lies about in large square and oblong blocks, both on the floor of the quarry, and among the trees at its entrance. The trees must have sprung up since many of these blocks were cut, otherwise it is not easy to see why they should have been put where you now find them. On two sides the walls of rock are high and precipitous, but on the others the grass and ferns and beeches are carried into the quarry as on the swell of a green wave. A stone shed and hut, roofed with red tiles, stand at the foot of one of these slopes, and here the commissariat department has established itself. A romantic, green, cosy, convenient spot for a picnic and a dance!

The waggons were driven right into the quarry, and the horses were hobbled and allowed to graze beneath the trees. The hour before dinner was spent in wandering through the woods gathering flowers and berries, in rolling about on the soft grass, or in smoking and chatting among the blocks of sandstone. When the cornopean sounded the signal for the feast, the youngsters came trooping in, dancing and eager to begin, for the excitement had prevented most of them from taking breakfast.

And what a luxurious feast it was The vicar, Mrs. Haldane, Edith, and Miss Greatheart, went about the various groups seeing that every one was well supplied with what they liked best. After the cold meats, pies, and pastry, came a liberal distribution of fruit and milk to the children, and a glass of wine to the old people; and at this point Daddy was made the object of so much nudging and whispering and signalling, that at last he got upon his feet and made a wonderful little speech on behalf of the company, keeping his wine-glass in his hand all the time, and every now and then holding it up between his eye and the light with the shrewd air of a connoisseur. Then there were three cheers for Mrs. Haldane, and three cheers for the vicar, three for Dora and for Edith, and happily some young rascal, whose milk had been too strong for him, proposed in a frightened scream three cheers for. Daddy, which were very heartily given by all the school children, though the seniors looked much shocked and surprised at so daring a demonstration.

In about an hour the racing and games were to begin, and meanwhile Mrs. Haldane, the vicar, and the two young ladies were to have lunch together. It is not necessary to enter into any detail of the various sports which took place, or to linger over the dancing and merrymaking that followed. When the fun was at its height, and Daddy was capering gaily to the jigging of the small orchestra, Edith, who felt only half interested, slipped quietly away into the wood. She was not surprised or aggrieved that Mr. Santley paid so much attention to the lady of the Manor, but she felt hurt that he seemed so completely to forget and overlook herself. She wished now to be a little alone in Arden, for Edith loved the woods, and in every glade she could imagine in her fanciful moments that Jaques, or Rosalind, or Touchstone had just gone by, so closely had she associated the dramatic idyl with every piece of English forest-land.

She followed at haphazard a foot-track that went through the trees until she reached a brook, which she found she could cross by means of three slippery-looking stepping-stones, against which the water bickered and gurgled as it raced along. All the steep banks were knee-deep in beautiful ferns close by the waters edge, and higher up the slope grew luxurious tufts of wild flowers. The sound of-the water was very pleasant to hear, and when she had nimbly jumped across it, instead of following the path, she went up the side of the stream to where a mountain ash leaned its dense clusters of blood-bright berries right across. At the foot of the tree was a large boulder, and, after a glance round her, she sat down and drew off her shoes and stockings. The weather was warm, and the clear, sun-flecked water was irresistibly inviting. There she sat for some time, dreamily paddling with her little white feet, like a pretty dryad whose tree grew in too dry a soil.

She had finished playing with the cool stream, and was letting her feet dry in the patches of sunlight that pierced through the branches above her, when she heard a sound of voices. She hastily tried to draw on her stockings, but her skin was still too moist; and so, gathering her feet under her skirt, she concealed herself as much as possible from the observation of the intruders. As they approached she recognized the voices with a start, and crouched down behind the boulder more closely than before.

“We can go no further this way,” said Mrs. Haldane.

“Oh yes, we can. I will assist you over the stones,” the vicar rejoined.

“They look very treacherous and slippery, and the water makes one nervous, running so fast.”

“Look, it is quite safe!” said the vicar; and Edith, peeping from the side of the boulder, saw him step quickly across the brook. “It is a pity you should miss the old Roman camp, when you are so near it.”

“If you will come back and assist me from this side, I will try them,” said Mrs. Haldane..

The vicar returned across the brook, and Edith saw the lady gather her dress and prepare to step on to the first stone.

“Now, you must be ready to reach me your hand in case I need it.”

“Oh, you will find it quite easy when you try. Don’t stop, but go right across without hesitation.”

Mrs. Haldane jumped fairly enough on to the first boulder, but, instead of allowing the forward impetus to carry her on, she tried to stop and steady herself on the narrow footing among the rushing water. She lost at once her balance and her courage, and turning to him with outstretched arms, she cried out, “Quick! quick! I shall fall!”

She threw herself back to the side as she spoke, and he caught her in his arms. Her arms were about his neck, her face close to his; he felt her breath upon his cheek. It was only for an instant, and as she tried to recover herself, their eyes met with a flash of self-consciousness. In the passionate excitement of that supreme moment he strained her to his breast, and pressed his lips to her in a long, violent kiss.

Edith sprang to her feet as though she had been stung; but instantly she recollected herself, and sank down into her hiding-place.

Mrs. Haldane tore herself from the arms that encircled her, and fronted the vicar with a flushed, angry face.

“Are you mad, Mr. Santley?” she asked indignantly. “Allow me to pass at once.”

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.