"Yes," she said, still holding him, still reading his face with her anxious eyes, but feeling the ground cut from under her feet. She was a little breathless with anxiety and excitement. "I wonder – that you did not tell me of it – this morning."
"Dear Aunt Catherine," he said, "pardon me, but you have a little prejudice, you know, against these people. And it was so entirely accidental. You might have thought, had I told you, that it had been done on purpose."
"Did I ever doubt what you said to me, Edward?"
"No," he said, taking her hands in his tenderly, as she thought; and indeed the action was not without real tenderness, for his heart was touched. "No," he said, smiling, "but yet you would have had a little doubt – a little wonder whether it was really so."
"And it was really so?" she said, looking into his face, "really – really – no little shadow of a wish for – a little provocation, a little talk, a little fun if you like, Edward? Oh, no, I have no prejudice. I should know it was quite natural. And you mean that there was nothing at all, nothing of this – a mere accident, nothing more?"
He kissed her cheek, and he laughed at her in a filial way.
"Didn't I tell you, Aunt Catherine? You believe me – oh, yes; but then you ask me if really – really I am saying what is true? Really – really as often as you like; it was accident, and nothing more."
This was how all the eloquent things which Catherine had prepared to say were never said. She went up to bed pleased and happy, yet not so pleased as if he had confessed her version of the story to be the true one. She did not doubt his word – oh no, no – but yet – the other version looked more true to nature. She could have understood it better that way.
CHAPTER VI.
IN THE LABYRINTH
After these events there seemed a lull, in which nothing more seemed to happen. Though time is so short, and our modern pace of living, we flatter ourselves, so much more rapid than of old, how few after all are the periods in which things happen, and with what long stretches of vacant days between! Hester could hardly explain to herself how it was that Edward Vernon's sudden evening visit, so unexpected, so unprecedented, had made an entire revolution in her life. There had been no mutual confessions of love, no proposal, no acceptance such as are supposed to be necessary. There was nothing to confide to her mother, had it been possible to take any one into that strait union of two suddenly become one. The effect bewildered her entirely, and she could not tell how it had been produced; but yet it was so. They had been on the eve of this, she felt, for years, and the first time that they met, in a moment of complete freedom, their souls flowed together, flowed into one. Perhaps he had not meant it when he came. The dim parlour and the sleepy mother, trying hard to be polite, quite unconscious how unnecessary her presence was; the young man, with his eager eyes, scarcely keeping himself in – came before her like a curious picture a hundred times in a day: and then the sudden sweep of the torrent after it, the almost involuntary, impetuous, unalterable junction of these two hearts and lives. But the shock even of happiness when it comes so suddenly is great; and Hester was not sure even that she was happy. He seemed to have led her to the edge of some labyrinth, without freedom to leave it, or to advance into its mysteries. There was a clue, indeed, but it was lying in loose coils at her feet, and who could tell if it ever could be sufficiently straightened, sufficiently tightened, to give any real guidance? There was no habit of meeting in their lives, no way of seeing each other even, without attracting suspicion. He sent her a letter next morning, full of love, and of ecstatic realisation that she was his, and that in all his difficulties he was sure of her sympathy, but it was understood that he was not to make such a breach of all his habits as to come to see her; and Hester was too proud to break through hers, as she had done that one morning in order to see him. So that everything remained a secret between them, and save for the sudden understanding into which they had leaped, the sort of betrothal which both took for granted, there was no difference in their outward lives; which was a state of things infinitely painful to the girl who lived her usual daily life with her mother and her friends in a state of guilty abstraction, thinking of him all the time, and feeling herself a domestic traitor. She felt that it was but the shell of her that remained, following mechanically the usual occupations, talking from the lips outward, absorbed in a long perpetual reverie of new consciousness, new hopes and fears. That secret world had need to have been bright to make up to her for the sense of guilt and treachery with which she entered into it: and it was not bright. The air was dark and tremulous as in that sad valley, sad yet sweet, which, in Dante, lies outside of hell. She never could tell at what moment some dark unknown shape of calamity might appear through its twilight coming towards them; for Edward had been driven to her by anxiety and trouble, and the sense of a burden which he could not bear alone. What was it? He did not tell her in his letter. The other little notes he wrote were but appeals to her sympathy – petitions to her to love him, to think of him. Ah! Hester thought to herself, no fear of that – but how? What was she to think? in what way was her imagination to follow him, groping dimly amid scenes she did not understand? His secret was as a germ of fire in her heart – which by times blazed up into hot flames, devouring her with all the anguish of that thirst to know which is one of the tortures of uneasy love. What was it that troubled him so, that alarmed him so, that might ruin and overwhelm him – that might make him fly, which was the most mysterious hint of all? But to all these questions she got no satisfaction. For the first few days she had a little furtive outlet to her anxiety in questioning Roland, which she did with a vague sense of treachery to Edward, as if she were endeavouring to surprise his secrets by a back way, but very little perception of the false impression which her interest in his communications was making upon Roland, who himself became day by day more ready to believe that marriage might become a possible venture, and that the decision of it rested chiefly with himself. He knew no other reason why she should question him than interest in himself, and it was with a grateful zeal that he attempted to gratify a curiosity which was so legitimate, yet so unusual. He explained his trade with that pleasure which the wisest of men feel in talking about themselves, and never divined that her rapid mind passed everything through one narrow test, i. e. whether it was possible that it could concern Edward. She did not even remark the attendrissement with which he received her questions, with eyes that said volumes. These eyes overflowed with pleasure and sentiment as he made his little disquisitions.
"After this," he said, with a laugh, "you will be armed cap-à-pied against any doubtful agency, and able when you like to speculate for yourself."
"And why should not I speculate," said Hester, "if I had any money? It is like fighting, I suppose. It feels like living, they say. But after all it is no true life – only figures, as you tell me."
"Figures," said Roland, "mean so much; in this elemental way they mean money. And money means – "
"Figures over again," Hester said, with a certain weary disdain. It was not possible that this alone could be the tragic danger, the burden of the soul that Edward meant. But Roland was thinking his own thoughts, and interpreted her comments in a way of his own.
"It means most things in this world," he said; "unfortunately, however high-minded we are, we can do nothing without it. It means of course show and luxury, and gaiety, and all the things you despise; but at the same time – It means," he said, after a little pause, "the house which two people could make into paradise. It means ease of mind, so that a man can rise every day without anxiety, knowing that he has enough for every claim upon him. Ah! how can I say all that it means – you would laugh, or be frightened. It means the right to love, and the right to say it." Roland was making use of all his well-worn artillery, but of something more besides which he had not quite understood the existence of – something which lent a very eloquent tremor to his voice and doubled the seduction of his eyes.
"Oh! I was not thinking of anything half so sentimental," said Hester. She never looked at him, to be affected by his glances, or paid any attention to his voice. And yet there had been a moment when Roland's departure made the world itself shrink and look narrow: but she remembered nothing about that now. "To tell the truth, all I was thinking of was buying and selling," she said; "for business means that, doesn't it? Of course I suppose, as we must have money to live, you may say that money is the first thing in life, more necessary than bread; but I did not mean that."
Conversations which ended in this way were, however, very little serviceable to Hester, for how could she tell which of these mysteries of the craft had entangled Edward, or if any of them could justify the seriousness of his excitement, the tragic sense of a possible catastrophe, the wild expedient of flight, which had been in his words! All this talk about the vicissitudes of money was too petty to satisfy her mind as a reason. And still less was that talk calculated to promote Roland's purpose, who did not care very much what he was saying so long as he could recommend himself to her favourable opinion. What he wanted was to show her that the future had large possibilities of advancement. He wanted, without committing himself or doing anything that could be afterwards commented upon as "behaving badly," to leave upon Hester's mind a delicate intimation that he meant to come back, to speak more plainly, to say things more worthy of her attention; and that she might be able to make up her mind in the meantime and not be taken by surprise. Roland was not so romantic as to be unaware that the advantages lay on his own side; he had solid gifts to give, and a position to offer, which could not be carelessly considered by any person of sense. And he was well aware that there was no crowd of candidates contending for Hester's hand. She had to him the air of a girl neglected, altogether out of the way of forming any satisfactory engagements, almost painfully divested of that "chance" which Emma looked at with such sensible if matter-of-fact eyes. Roland, to do him justice, was all the more willing to show her a romantic devotion on this account, but it kept him free from anxiety about his own hopes. There had been Harry indeed – but she would not have Harry. And Edward he was aware had paid her furtive "attentions" at Ellen Merridew's parties; but what could Edward do? He could not pay serious addresses to any one, in his circumstances, far less to Hester: and he was not the fellow to marry a girl without money and under the cold shade of Catherine's disfavour. This last was one of the things that made Roland himself hesitate – but he thought it might be got over. And there could be no doubt that his mind had made great strides towards making itself up during this Christmas visit. But it was a short visit on the whole, for he had not much time to spare for pleasure, and his business had been summarily ended. Emma thought it was owing to Hester's interference that she was left behind, Reginald Merridew having not yet "spoken;" but there was in reality a certain sympathy in Roland's mind with his sister's honest desire to be settled, and there would be much convenience in it could it be accomplished, he felt. He went away accordingly, slightly depressed by Hester's indifferent farewell, and remembering the look of over-clearness in her eyes when he had gone away the first time with a sort of fond regret. He was sure that day that she had shed a few tears over his departure, of which there was no appearance now. But soon he recovered his spirits, asking himself to look the situation in the face. Who else was there? What rival could he have? There was nobody. She was stranded in that old house as if it had been a desolate island. And she could not be content to vegetate there for ever, a girl of her spirit. There was a practical element in Roland's character, notwithstanding his romantic eyes.
And Hester was so ungrateful that his departure was almost a relief to her. She forgot altogether that she had cried the first time when he went away, and she was glad to be set free from the hope, which at the same time was a fear, of finding out something about Edward's troubles from his chance revelations. Her mind turned now with unbroken eagerness to the sole means of intercourse which she had with her lover, which could be calculated upon with any freedom, which were Ellen's parties – the Thés Dansantes! It seemed incredible that her entire existence should be concentrated in a weekly assembly so frivolous, so thoughtless, and nonsensical, and that all those grave and troublous thoughts should seek interpretation in a dance. But so it was. The first of them brought her only disappointment, and that of a kind that she felt almost maddening – for Edward did not appear. He gave her no warning, which was cruel, and when she found, after hours of waiting, that he was not expected, the shock of resentment and shame and dismay almost stunned her: but pride carried the day. She threw herself into the current with a sort of desperation, and held her place with the gayest: then entered, sombre and silent, upon another week of suspense. The second occasion was not so bad. He was there, and appropriated her as usual, and breathed hints into her ear which kept her in a whirl of excitement.
"How can I explain to you," he said, "here? And even if I could explain to you, I don't want to do it, for it is all miserable trade, which you would not understand – which I don't wish you to understand."
"But I want to understand it, Edward. You don't think how cruel it is to me to tell me just so much, then leave me outside."
"Should I not have told you so much?" he said, looking at her. "You are right. I believe you are right, Hester; but my heart was running over, and to no one else could I say a word. I could not put a little bit of my burden upon any one but you. I know it was selfish, dear."
"Oh, Edward; it is not that. I will bear your burden; I am glad to help you; I would bear it all for you if I could," she cried with her bright eyes widening, her cheeks glowing with enthusiasm. "Don't you know that I would bear it all if I could? It is not that. But tell me, only tell me a little more."
He shook his head.
"Hester," he said, "that is not what a man wants in a woman; not to go and explain it all to her with pen and ink, and tables and figures, to make her understand as he would have to do with a man. What he wants, dear, is very different – just to lean upon you – to know that you sympathise, and think of me, and feel for me, and believe in me, and that you will share whatever comes."
Hester said nothing, but her countenance grew very grave.
"Don't you think that a woman could do all that – and yet that it would be easier for her if she understood what it was, and why it was?" she said, after a pause.
"Dear," said Edward, gazing at her with glowing eyes. He was in a hopeful mood, and he allowed himself to indulge the love and pleasure he felt in her, having bound her to him with a chain more fast than iron. "Darling! was it ever known that a woman, a girl like you (if there ever was a girl like my Hester), thought of what would be easiest? And you who would bear it all, you said."
"So I should – gladly; but then I should understand."
"My only love! understanding is nothing, it matters nothing; another fellow, any man, a clerk in the office, would understand. I want your sympathy. I want – you."
"Oh, Edward!" she cried, "you have me and my sympathy – even if you were wrong you should have my sympathy. But is it just, is it good, do you think, that you should ask all that and tell me nothing? I am a woman, but I am not a fool. I can understand most things. Try me – tell me – I will set my mind to it. Sympathy that is ignorant cannot be so good as sympathy that knows."
He made a little pause, and then he said, looking at her, she felt, severely, with a scoff in his voice —
"And where is this explanation to take place? Will you appoint to meet me somewhere with my balance-sheet and my vouchers? Perhaps you will come to my room at the bank? or appoint an accountant whom you can trust?"
"Edward!" she drew her hand out of his arm and then put it back again after a moment's hesitation, "do you want me to look a wretch even to myself? Why should you say all this? and why – why be so unjust to me? You forget that when one knows nothing one thinks all sorts of things, and invents a hundred terrors. Tell me how it is in the general not details. You do not want silly sympathy."
"I want all your sympathy, silly or not. I want you. Hester, if we are to escape notice we must dance like the rest; we cannot stand and talk all night. And I am just in the mood for it!" he cried.
Many people no doubt have waltzed with very little inclination for it, people who were both sad and sorry, disappointed, heartbroken; but few more reluctant than Hester, who felt her position intolerable, and by whom the complacent injustice of it, the calm assertion that such blind adherence was all that was to be looked for from a woman, was more irritating and offensive than can be described. Was it possible that he thought so? that this was what she would have to encounter in the life she should spend with him? Her advice, her intelligent help, her understanding, all ignored, and nothing wanted but a kind of doggish fidelity, an unreasoning belief? Hester felt it cruel to be made to dance even, to be spun through the crowd as if in the merest caprice of gaiety while at such a crisis of her fate.
But neither this nor their subsequent conversations made any difference; the evening passed for her as in a dream. Edward, who was not much of a dancer, and seldom cared to perform these rites with any partner but herself, danced repeatedly with others that night, while Hester stood by looking on with gathering bewilderment. She had a headache, she said. It was her mother's way of getting free of every embarrassment, and Hester was acquainted with the expedient, though she had not hitherto been tempted to use it. She sat by Mrs. Merridew, the mother of the house, who was a kind woman, and disposed to be good to her. "Just say the word, my dear, and as soon as our carriage comes I will take you home," this lady said; "for to sit with a racking headache and watch other young folks dancing is more than flesh and blood can bear." But alas! Mrs. Merridew's carriage was not ordered till two o'clock, and Hester had to bear her burden. And of course it was not thus that the evening ended. He came to seek her at Mrs. Merridew's side, and heard the account of her headache with a sympathetic countenance.
"This was our dance," he said; "but come into the hall instead, where it is cool, and let me get you some tea." He placed her there in the shelter of the evergreens, when all the hubbub of the next dance was in full progress. They were quiet, almost alone, and Edward was in a fever of high spirits and excitement. He had said little about love in that strange moment when he had taken possession of her. Now he made up for all deficiencies. She endeavoured at first to bring him back to what she called the more important subject. "Can any subject be more important?" he said with tender reproach. And she was silenced, for what could she say? And the moments flew too fast and were too brief to be lost in any struggle. They parted with a few mysterious words whispered into her ear, which did much however to bring back the painful tension which had relaxed a little in his presence. "If I send to you, you will see me, Hester?" he whispered. "You won't think of proprieties? I might have to put your love to the test – to ask you – "
"What?" she cried with almost a spasm of alarm. He gave her hand a warning clasp as he put her into the fly, and then stooping to arrange the shawls around her, kissed it secretly. And that was all. She drove home in the silence and dark, feeling every word thrill her through, going over it again and again. What was this test of love that might be required of her? What did he expect her to do for him, in ignorance, in blind trust? Hester had too high a spirit to accept this rôle with ease. She was bewildered – dazzled by the lavish outpouring of his love; but all that did not blind her to the strange injustice of this treatment, the cruelty of her helpless position. For what could she do? She could not desert him in his hour of need; if he made this call upon her which he spoke of so mysteriously, it would no doubt be in his utmost need, when to desert him would be like a traitor. And Hester knew that she could confront any danger with him or for him – but what was it? A dilemma so terrible had never presented itself to her imagination. There was a cruelty in it, a depreciation of all the nobler parts of her, as if only in ignorance could she be trusted. Her mother's questions about the ball, and whether she had danced much, and who her partners had been, were insupportable, as insupportable as the maunderings of Emma. In short, if there was anything that could have made this mystery and darkness in which her way seemed lost, more hard to bear, it was the background of amusement and supposed light-heartedness against which it was set. "My head ached," she said. "I scarcely danced at all," by way of freeing herself; but this opened only another kind of torture, for poor Mrs. John, well used to the feminine indulgence of headaches, had a whole surgery of little remedies, and bathed her child's forehead, and drew back her hair, and would have administered sal-volatile, tea, eau-de-cologne – there was no telling how many cures – if she had been allowed.
"Let me fan you then, my love: sometimes that does me a great deal of good. Just let me pour a little eau-de-cologne first; you don't know how cooling it is."
"Oh, mamma! let me be still; let me be in the dark; go to bed, and don't mind me," cried Hester.
"My love! how could I do that and leave my child to suffer," said Mrs. John, heroically – and it was heroic, for the night was cold, the fire burning low, the hour three o'clock. Hester, with her brain throbbing, all inaccessible to eau-de-cologne, did not know how to free her mother from this too generous unnecessary martyrdom. She began to talk to break the spell.
"Emma is very happy," she said, "she danced with Edward Vernon. She thinks perhaps it may make the other speak, or that even Edward himself – " Hester broke off with a quiver in her lip. "I am becoming malicious like the rest," she said.
"That is not malicious, dear," said Mrs. John. "Emma is very amusing, being so frank, but she is right enough when you come to think of it; for what can she do if she does not marry? And I am sure Edward Vernon, though Catherine makes such a fuss about him, is nothing so very great. I wonder what he meant coming here that one night, and so late."
"It was by accident," Hester said.
"It was a very odd accident," cried her mother, "no one else ever did so."
"He had been sitting late over his work, and his head was very full of – business."
Mrs. John looked in all the confidence of superior wisdom into her daughter's face. A smile dawned upon her lips.
"Perhaps you think he was coming to confide his troubles about his business, Hester, to you and me."
"And why not?" said Hester, raising herself from her bed.
Mrs. John dropped her fan in her surprise, and sat down abruptly upon the little chair by Hester's bedside, to her daughter's great relief.
"Why not?" she said. "I think, though you are my own, that you are the strangest girl I ever knew. Do you think a man ever talks to women about these things? Oh, perhaps to a woman like Catherine that is the same as a man. But to anybody he cares for – never, oh, never, dear! I suppose he has a respect for you and me; think of any man venturing to bring business into my drawing-room, though it is only a poor little parlour now, not a drawing-room at all. Oh, no, that could never – never be! In all my life I never descended so low as that," Mrs. John said, with dignity. "I used to be brought into contact with a great many business people when your poor dear papa was living; but they never talked 'shop,' as they call it, before me."
"But my father himself?" said Hester, her eyes blazing with the keenest interest; "you knew all his affairs?"
Mrs. John held her delicate little hands clasped for a moment, and then flung them apart, as if throwing the suspicion away.
"Never!" she cried; "he respected me too much. Your poor papa was incautious about money, Hester, and that has done a great deal of harm to both of us, for we are poor, and we ought to have been rich; but he always had too much respect for me to mix me up with business. You are very inexperienced, my dear, or you would know that such a thing could not be."
Hester followed her mother with her large eyes, with a wondering wide gaze, which answered well enough for that of believing surprise, almost awe, which Mrs. John was very willing to recognise as a suitable expression. And there was indeed a sort of awe in the girl's perception of her mother's perfectly innocent, perfectly assured theory of what was right in women. What wonder that a man should think so, when women themselves thought so? This strange discovery composed and stilled her when at last she was left in the dark and in peace.
Hester kept gazing through that wintry blackness, with eyes still wide open, and her clear brows puckered with wonder and alarm. Was it natural, then, a thing she could accept as just, that it was enough for her to sympathise, to share the consequences, to stand by the chief actor whatever happened, but never to share in the initiative or have any moral concern in the motive or the means of what was done? A sense of helplessness began to take the place of indignation in her mind. Was that what they called the natural lot of women? to suffer, perhaps to share the blame, but have no share in the plan, to sympathise, but not to know; to move on blindly according to some rule of loyalty and obedience, which to any other creature in the world would be folly and guilt? But her mother knew nothing of such hard words. To her this was not only the right state of affairs, but to suggest any better rule was to fail in respect to the lady whose right it was to be left ignorant. Hester tried to smile when she recalled this, but could not, her heart being too sore, her whole being shaken. He thought so too perhaps, everybody thought so, and she alone, an involuntary rebel, would be compelled to accept the yoke which, to other women, was a simple matter, and their natural law. Why, then, was she made unlike others, or why was it so?
Edward had been in great spirits that night. The next time they met was in the afternoon late, when Hester was returning from a visit to Mrs. Morgan. It was nearly dark, and it startled her to see him standing waiting for her under one of the trees past the gate of the Heronry. She went slowly, somewhat reluctantly, to join him on the sign just discernible in the dark which he made her. He caught her hand quickly, as she came up, and drew it within his arm.
"You have been so long with that old woman, and I have wanted you so," he cried, leading her away along the deserted country road, which struck off at right angles with the Common. "Couldn't you divine that I wanted you? Didn't you know by instinct I was longing for consolation?"
"Oh, Edward! what is wrong? What has made so great a change in you?" she cried.
He drew her arm closer and closer through his, and leaned upon her as if his appeal for support was physical too.
"I told you it was too long to explain," he said; "it is all the worry of business. Sometimes things seem going well, and then I am top-gallant high, and vex you with my levity, as the other night – you know you were vexed the other night: and then things turn badly, and I am low, low down in the depths, and want my love to comfort me. Oh, if you only belonged to me, Hester, and we had a home somewhere where I could go in to you and say 'Console me!'"
"But Edward, your business never used to be a fever and an excitement like this."
"How do you know? I did not dare to come to you; and you were a child then. Ah, but you are quite right, Hester; it was different. But a man cannot vegetate for ever. I endured it as long as I could. Now it is all on a turn of the cards, and I may be able to face the world to-morrow, and have my own way."
"On a turn of the cards! Edward, you cannot mean it is play? You are not a – gambler?" Hester gave a little convulsive cry, clutching him by the arm with both her hands.
He laughed. "Not with cards, certainly," he said. "I am a respectable banker, my darling, and very knowing in my investments, with perhaps a taste for speculation – but that nobody has brought home to me yet. It is a very legitimate way of making a fortune, Hester. It is only when you lose that it becomes a thing to blame."
"Do you mean speculation, Edward?"
"Something of that sort; a capital horse when it carries you over the ford – and everything that is bad when you lose."
"But do you mean – tell me – that it is simple speculation – that this is all that makes you anxious?" Hester had never heard that speculation was immoral, and her mind was relieved in spite of herself.