"Even if I had not liked _him_," pursue I, finding words come quickly enough now, and speaking with indignant volubility, as, having risen, I again face him--"even if I had wanted to flirt with some one, why on earth should I have chosen _you_?" (eying him with scornful slowness, from his wide-awake to his shooting-boots), "_you_, who never even _amused_ me in the least! Often when I have been talking to you, I have yawned till the tears came into my eyes! I have been afraid that you would notice it. If I had known" (speaking with great bitterness), "I should have taken less pains with my manners."

He does not answer a word. What answer _can_ he make? He still stands under the wintry tree, white to lividness; drops of cold sweat stand on his brows; and his fine nostrils dilate and contract, dilate and contract, in an agony of anger and shame.

"What _could_ have put such an idea into your head?" cry I, clasping my hands, while the tears rain down my cheeks, as--my thoughts again flying to Barbara--I fall from contempt and scorn to the sharpest reproach.

"Who would have thought of such a thing? when there are so many better and prettier people who, for all I know, might have liked you. What wicked perversity made you fix upon _me_ who, even if I had not belonged to any one else, could never, _never_ have fancied you!"

"Is that true?" he says, in a harsh, rough whisper; "are you sure that you are not deceiving yourself? are you sure that under all your rude words you are not nearer loving me than you think?--that it is not that--with that barrier between us--you cannot reconcile it to your conscience--"

"Quite, _quite_ sure!" interrupt I, with pa.s.sionate emphasis, looking back unflinchingly into the angry depths of his eyes, "it has nothing to say to conscience! it has nothing to say to the _wrongness_ of it"

(crimsoning as I speak). "If it were quite right--if it were my _duty_--if it were the only way to save myself from _hanging_" (reaching after an ever higher and higher climax), "I _never_, NEVER could say that I was fond of you! I do not see what there is to be fond of _in_ you! before G.o.d, I do not!"

"There!" he says, hoa.r.s.ely stretching out his hand, as if to ward off a blow, "that will do!--stop!--you will never outdo that!"

A moment's pause.

Down in the loneliness of this dell, the twilight is creeping quickly on: when once it begins it tarries not. Out in the open country I dare say that it is still broad daylight; but here, the hues of the moss carpet are growing duller, and the brook is darkening. In a sudden panic, I hastily catch up my hat, which has fallen to the ground, and without a word or look of farewell, begin to run fast along the homeward path. Before I have gone ten yards he has overtaken me. His face is distorted by pa.s.sion out of all its beauty.

"Nancy," he says, in a voice rendered almost unrecognizable by extreme agitation, walking quickly alongside of me, "we are not going to part like this!"

"Do not call me Nancy!" cry I, indignantly; "it makes me _sick_!"

"What does it matter what I call you?" he cries, impatiently; "of what consequence is such a trifle? I will call you by what name you please, but for this once you _must_ listen to me. I know, as well as you do, that it is my last chance!"

"_That_ it is!" put in I, viciously.

The path is beginning to rise. After mounting the slope, we shall soon be out of the wood, and in the peopled open again.

"How can I help it, if I have gone mad?" he cries violently, evidently driven to desperation by the shortness of the time before him.

"Mad!" echo I, scornfully, "not a bit of it! you are as sane as I am!"

All this time we are posting along in mad haste. Thank G.o.d! the high-road is in sight, the cheerful, populous, light high-road. The trees grow thinner, and the path broadens. Even from here, we can plainly see the carts and carters. He stops, and making me stop, too, s.n.a.t.c.hes both my hands.

"Nancy!" he says, harshly, stooping over me, while his eyes flame with a haggard light. "Yes, I _will_ call you so this once--to me now you _are_ Nancy! I will _not_ call you by _his_ name! Is it _possible_? You may say that it is my egotism; but, at a moment like this, what is the use of shamming--of polite pretense? Never, _never_ before in all my life have I given love without receiving it, and I _cannot_ believe"--(with an accent of pa.s.sionate entreaty)--"that I do now! Feeling for you as I do, do you feel absolutely _nothing_ for me?"

"_Feel_!" cry I, driven out of all moderation by disgust and exasperation. "Would you like to know how I feel? I feel _as if a slug had crawled over me_!"

His face contracts, his eyes darken with a raging pain. He _throws_ my hands--the hands a moment ago so jealously clasped--away from him.

"Thank you!" he says, after a pause, in a stiff voice of constraint. "I am satisfied!"

"And a very good thing too!" say I, st.u.r.dily, still at boiling-point, and diminishing with quick steps the small s.p.a.ce still intervening between me and the road.

"Stay!" he says, overtaking me once again, as I reach it, and laying his hand in detention on my arm. "One word more! I should be sorry to part from you--such friends as we have been"--(with a sneer)--"without _one_ good wish. Lady Tempest, I hope"--(smiling with malevolent irony)--"that your fidelity will be rewarded as it deserves."

"I have no doubt of it!" reply I, steadily; but even as I speak, a sharp jealous pain runs through my heart. Thank G.o.d! he cannot see it!

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

Yes, here out in the open it is still quite light; it seems two hours earlier than it did below in the dark dingle--light enough as plainly to see the faces of those one meets as if it were mid-day. I suppose that my late companion and I were too much occupied by our own emotions to hear, or at least notice the sound of wheels approaching us; but no sooner have I turned and left him, before I have gone three paces, than I am quickly pa.s.sed by an open carriage and pair of grays--_quickly_, and yet slowly enough for me to recognize the one occupant. As to her--for it is Mrs. Huntley--she must have seen me already, as I stood with Mr. Musgrave on the edge of the wood, exchanging our last bitter words.

It is impossible that she could have helped it; but even had it been possible--had there been any doubt on the subject, that doubt would be removed by the unusual animation of her att.i.tude, and the interest in her eyes, that I have time to notice, as she rolls past me.

I avert my face, but it is too late. She has seen my hat thrown on anyhow, as it were with a pitchfork--has seen my face swollen with weeping, and great tears still standing unwiped on my flushed cheeks.

What is far, _far_ worse, she has seen him, too. This is the last drop in an already over-full cup.

There is nothing in sight now--not even a cart--so I sit down on a heap of stones by the road-side, and, covering my hot face with my hands, cry till I have no more eyes left to cry with. Can _this_ be the day I called good? Can _this_ be that bright and merry day, when I walked elate and laughing between the deep furrows, and heard the blackbird and thrush woo their new loves, nor was able myself to refrain from singing?

My brain is a black chaos of whirling agonies, now together, now parting; so that each may make their separate sting felt, and, in turn, each will have to be faced. Preeminent among the dark host, towering above even the thought of Barbara, is the sense of my own degradation.

There must have been something in my conduct to justify his taking me so confidently for the bad, light woman he did. One does not get such a character for nothing. I have always heard that, when such things happen to people, they have invariably brought them on themselves. In incoherent misery, I run over in my head, as well as the confusion of it will let me, our past meetings and dialogues. In almost all, to my distorted view, there now seems to have been an unseemly levity. Things I have said to him; easy, familiar jokes that I have had with him; not that _he_ ever had much sense of a jest--(even at this moment I think this incidentally)--course through my mind.

Our many _tete-a-tetes_ to which, at the time, I attached less than no importance: through many of which I unfeignedly, irresistibly _gaped_; our meetings in the park--accidental, as I thought--our dawdling saunters through the meadows, as often as not at twilight; all, _all_ recur to me, and, recurring, make my face burn with a hot and stabbing shame.

And _Roger_! This is the way in which I have kept things straight for him! This is the way in which I have rewarded his boundless trust! he, whose only fear was lest I should be dull! lest I should not amuse myself! Well, I have amused myself to some purpose now. I have made myself _common talk for the neighborhood_! _He_ said so. I have brought discredit on Roger's honored name! Not even the consciousness of the utter cleanness of my heart is of the least avail to console me. What matter how clean the heart is, if the conduct be light? None but G.o.d can see the former; the latter lies open to every carelessly spiteful, surface-judging eye. And Barbara! Goaded by the thought of her, I rise up quickly, and walk hastily along the road, till I reach a gate into the park. Arrived there, and now free from all fear of interruption from pa.s.sers-by, I again sit down on an old dry log that lies beneath a great oak, and again cover my face with my hands.

What care I for the growing dark? the darker the better! Ah! if it were dark enough to hide me from myself! How shall I break it to her--I, who, confident in my superior discernment, have always scouted her misgivings and turned into derision her doubts? If I thought that she would rave and storm, and that her grief would vent itself in _anger_, it would not be of half so much consequence. But I know her better. The evening has closed in colder. The birds have all ceased their singing, and I still sit on, in the absolute silence, unconscious--unaware of any thing round me; living only in my thoughts, and with a resolution growing ever stronger and stronger within me. I will _not_ tell her! I will _never_ tell _any one_. I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me. Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart--out of the book of unerasable past deeds!

Of course, by the cessation of his visits, Barbara will learn her fate in time. _In time._ Yes! but till then--till the long weeks in their lapse have brought the certainty of disappointment and mistake? How can I--myself knowing--watch her gentle confidence (for latterly her doubts--and whose would not?--have been set at rest) decline through all the suffering stages of uneasy expectation and deferred hope, to the blank, dull sickness of despair? How, without betraying myself, see her daily with wistful eyes looking--with strained ears listening--for a face and a step that come not? If she were one to love lightly, one of the many women who, when satisfied that it is no longer any use to cry and strive for the unattainable, the out of reach, clip and pare their affections to fit the unattainable, the within reach--! But I know differently.

Hitherto, whenever love has been offered to her--and the occasions have been not few--she has put it away from her; most gently, indeed, with a most eager desire to pour balm and not vinegar into the wounds she has made; with a most sincere sorrow and a disproportioned remorse at being obliged to cause pain to any living thing; yet, with a quiet and indifferent firmness, that left small ground for lingering hopes. And now, having once loved, she will be slow to unlove again.

It is quite dark now--as dark, at least, as it will be all night--and two or three stars are beginning to quiver out, small and cold, in the infinite distances of the sky. The sight of them, faintly trembling between the bare boughs of the trees, is the first thing that calls me back to the consciousness of outward things. Again I rise, and begin to walk, stumbling through the long wet knots of the unseen gra.s.s, toward the house. But when I reach it--when I see the red gleams shining through the c.h.i.n.ks of the window-shutters--my heart fails me. Not yet can I face the people, the lights--Barbara! I turn into the garden, and pace up and down the broad, lonely walks: I pa.s.s and repa.s.s the cold river-G.o.ds of the unplaying fountain. I stand in the black night of the old cedar's shade. On any other day no possible consideration would have induced me to venture within the jurisdiction of its inky arms after nightfall; to-day, I feel as if no earthly or unearthly thing would have power to scare me. How long I stay, I do not know. Now and then, I put up my hands to my face, to ascertain whether my cheeks and eyes feel less swollen and burning; whether the moist and searching night-air is restoring me to my own likeness. At length, I dare stay no longer for fear of being missed, and causing alarm in the household. So I enter, steal up-stairs, and open the door of my boudoir, which Barbara and I, when alone, make our usual sitting-room. The candles are unlit; and the warm fire--evidently long undisturbed--is shedding only a dull and deceiving light on all the objects over which it ranges. So far, at least, Fortune favors me. Barbara and Vick are sitting on the hearth-rug, side by side. As I enter, they both jump up, and run to meet me. One of them gives little raptured squeaks of recognition. The other says, in a tone of relief and pleasure:

"Here you are! I was growing so frightened about you! What can have made you so late?"

"It was so--so--pleasant! The thrushes were singing so!" reply I, thus happily inaugurating my career of invention.

"But, my dear child, the thrushes went to bed two hours ago!"

"Yes," I answer, at once entirely nonplussed, "so they did!"

"Where _have_ you been?" she asks, in a tone of ever-increasing surprise. "Did you go farther than you intended?"

"I went--to see--the old Busseys," reply I, slowly; inwardly pondering, with a stupid surprise, as to whether it can possibly have been no longer ago than this very afternoon, that the old man mistook me for the dead Belinda--and that I held the old wife's soapy hand in farewell in mine; "the--old--Busseys!" I repeat, "and it took--me a long--_long_ time to get home!"

I shiver as I speak.

"You are cold!" she says, anxiously. "I hope you have not had a chill--" (taking my hands in her own slight ones)--"yes--_starved_!--poor dear hands; let me rub them!" (beginning delicately to chafe them).

Something in the tender solicitude of her voice, in the touch of her gentle hands, gives me an agony of pain and remorse. I s.n.a.t.c.h away my hands.

"No! no!" I cry, brusquely, "they do very well!"

Again she looks at me, with a sort of astonishment, a little mixed with pain; but she does not say any thing. She goes over to the fire, and stoops to take up the poker.