Chapter II No After-glow
The object that had attracted Honor’s attention was an inscription carved upon the fallen beech tree. Ignorant of the interest awakened by that ancient work of Christopher’s hand, when the same came to be discovered by woodmen, she glanced hurriedly at the initials and love-knot, now weathered and toned by time and the tree’s growth; then she produced a little pocket-knife, and, not without difficulty, erased the record of her husband’s red-letter day in a vanished summer.
Mark Endicott sat within ten yards of Honor while she worked; but he continued unconscious of her near presence, for the song of a robin and the music of Teign muffled the small noise she made. Moreover, the blind man’s own voice contributed to deaden all other sound, for, following his ancient use, he thought aloud. This Honor discovered, hesitated a moment, then, her task upon the tree completed, listened to Mark Endicott.
There are blind, dark forces that spin the fabric of man’s day and night from his own emotions and sudden promptings. In thoughtless action and unconsidered deed; in impulse born of high motive or of low, they find their material, weave our garments; and, too often, led by destiny, steep most innocent white robes in poisoned blood, as Deianira that of Hercules. Thus they fashion man’s black future out of his sunny past, breed his tears from his laughter, his enduring sorrows from fleeting whims, and tangle him soul-deep in networks of his own idle creation. Our secure hour is the signal to their activities; they sleep while we are watchful; they wake when we enter upon our pleasures and seek for joy.
Moved by a sentiment that herself might be the object of his thoughts, and her heart yearning to him as he sat there alone, Honor gave heed to the slow voice and listened to Mark Endicott’s oral musings upon the time that was past. Fitfully he spoke, with unequal intervals of silence between the sentences. But his thoughts were of a piece; he dwelt upon a theme that he could now endure to handle—a theme rendered familiar to his mind by constant repetition and convictions rooted beyond power of further argument. Of Honor indeed he had been thinking; for the sound of her voice and the touch of her hand he had greatly longed. These were numbered first among the few good things left to him; but from reflection upon his niece he had now passed to her dead husband, and he spoke and thought of Myles Stapledon. His voice, though he communed with himself, was so clear that no word escaped the listener; and every utterance came as cloud upon cloud to darken her day and deepen her night henceforward.
“A man good in the grain—frugal—industrious—patient—yet the one thing needful denied him—held out of his reach. Maybe faith had made him almost a hero—maybe not. Anyway, there was strong meat in the rule he set himself; and he didn’t swerve even to the bitter end of it.... Strange, strange as human nature, that his way of life could reach to that. Yet I heard the words upon his lips; I heard him say how self-slaughter might be a good, high deed. And certain ’tis the Bible has no word against it. Little he thought then—or I—that he’d take that road himself....... And the foundations of his life so simple as they were. His pleasures to find out flowers and seeds in season, and the secret ways of wild creatures. To think that ’twas only the Moor, and the life of it, and the moods of it, that he sucked such iron from. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’ That it should have been help to do such a thing as he did! All a big mind turned to ruination for lack of faith..... Close touch with natural things taught him the killing meaning of selfishness; for everything in nature is selfish but Nature’s self. Out of the innocence of barren heaths, the honesty of the sky, the steadfastness of the seasons and the obedience of green things to the sun—out of all these he gathered up the determination to do a terrible deed....... ’Twas all they taught him, for Nature’s a heathen. Yet a wonderful departure; and the heart of him held him up at the last, for his face was happy, his eyes at peace, so they said. ’Twas a glimpse of that life to come he could never believe in here that made his eyes at peace. God spoke to him I doubt. Yet never a glimmer of promise did he see, or a whisper of hope did he hear in this life. And he gave up the only life he knew for her—died brave enough, to the tune of his own words spoken long, long since.... And the suicide of him not guessed, thank God. Even she couldn’t see—so quick as she is. The dust was flung in her eyes by a kind angel. Yes, surely she was blinded by some holy, guardian thing, for his great nature was understood by her. She had sense enough for that.”
He shook his head for a space, then fell into silence again.
He had uttered his conclusion—this old, wise man—in the ear of the soul on earth most vitally involved. He had been for long years a voice that conjured some sense out of his own darkness; he had lightened the difficulties of others; he had spoken not seldom to the purpose and won a measure of love and respect; yet here, by same flaw of mind, or by the accident of blindness; by weakness that hinted approaching senility, or by mere irony of chance, he had taken a wrong turning and missed the transparent truth concerning Myles Stapledon. The dead man’s own past utterances were in a measure responsible; and upon them Mark had long since built this edifice of error; he had lived in the belief for two years; had accepted it as life’s most tragic experience, to be taken by him in silence to the grave.
But now this opinion crashed into the mind of Honor Yeoland, and she reeled before it and was overwhelmed. Up into the blue sky she looked blankly, with a face suddenly grown old. For an instant she fought to reject the word; for an instant she had it in her to cry out aloud that the old man lied; then the life of Mark Endicott—the sure bulwark of his unfailing wisdom and right judgment rose before her, and she believed that what he said was true. Not in her darkest hour had the possibility of such an event entered Honor’s thoughts. Agony she had suffered at Stapledon’s death, and the mark of it was on her face for ever, but he had left her for the last time at peace to seek a course that might maintain peace; he had departed full of awakened content to find the road to new life, not death.
Yet this utterance under the woods made her uncertain of her better knowledge; this remorseless, unconscious word, thrown by a voice that had never spoken untruth, was, as it seemed, a blind oracle above appeal from human suffering, an inspired breath sent at God’s command to reveal this secret in her ear alone. The glare suddenly thrown upon her mind she held to be truth’s own most terrible white light; and she stood helpless and confounded, with her future in ruins. At least some subdued Indian summer of promised content with Christopher had seemed to await her. Now that, too, was torn away and whelmed in frost and snow; for Myles had killed himself to give it to her; Myles had not believed her solemn assurance, but, convinced that she still placed him second in her affection, had set her free. With steady heart and clear eye he had gone to death, so ordering his end that none should guess the truth of it. And none had guessed, save only this ancient man, whose judgment within Honor’s knowledge was never at fault.
She believed him; she saw that her present state, as the wife of Christopher, could only confirm him in his conviction; she pictured Mark Endicott waiting to hear how, all unconsciously, she had followed the path Myles Stapledon marked out for her when he died. And then she looked forward and asked herself what this must mean.
A part of her answer appeared in the old man who sat, ignorant of her presence, before her. He—the instrument of this message—had spoken his belief indeed, but with no thought of any listener other than himself. She knew Mark Endicott; she was aware that he had rather himself suffered death than that this matter should have reached her ear. Loyalty to him was not the least part of her determination now. He must never know what he had done.
Neither could she tell her husband for a kindred reason. Such news would cloud his mind for ever, and lessen all his future joy in living.
Before the loneliness of such an unshared grief the woman’s soul rose up in arms, and, for one brief moment, she rebelled against her lot, told herself that the evangel of evil had spoken falsely, determined with herself to reject and cast aside this thought as a suspicion unworthy, a lie and a libel on the dead. But the unhappy soul of her was full of the fancied truth. Had she possessed power to turn deaf ears and reject this theory as vain and out of all harmony with her own knowledge of Myles Stapledon, Honor’s state had been more gracious; but it was beyond her mental strength to do so. Understanding the dead man no less and no more than her uncle, she read new subtleties into the past before this bitterness, credited Myles with views that never existed in his mind at all, and concluded with herself that he had indeed taken his own life that she might be what she now was—the wife of Christopher Yeoland.
Therefore her own days stretched before her evermore overshadowed until the end of them, and her thoughts leapt whole abysses of despair, as the revelation gradually permeated her being. Seed was sown in that moment, as she stood with the blue sky mirrored in her brown eyes, and a growth was established, whose roots would keep the woman’s heart aching till age blunted sensibility, whose fruits would drop gall upon her thirst while life lasted. Unshared darkness must be her portion—darkness and cruel knowledge to be revealed to none, to be hidden out of all searching, to be concealed even beyond the reach of Christopher’s love and deepest sympathy. He indeed had her heart now, and knew the secret places of it; therefore, in a sort of frenzy, she prayed to God at that moment, and called upon Him to show her where she might hide this thing and let it endure unseen.
The boy by the river had not observed Honor, and her uncle remained ignorant of her presence. She turned, therefore, and departed, lacking strength at that moment to speak or hearten his desolate life with the music of her voice. She stole away; and in the woods, returning, her husband met her and rejoiced in the accidental encounter.
“Good luck!” he cried. “I’d lost half myself the moment you disappeared, and had made up my mind to mourn unobtrusively till you came back to me. Why hasn’t outraged Nature sent a thunderbolt to suppress Courteney Clack? I might have known that desperate surgeon would have prescribed amputation upon most shadowy excuse.”
“He has been very busy.”
“And done absolutely the right thing, viewed from standpoint of forestry; which makes it impossible to say what one feels. But forget all that. Home we won’t go yet. Come and see the sunset.”
A promise of great aerial splendours filled the sky as the day waned, and Yeoland, to whom such spectacles were precious as formerly, hastened upwards to the high lands with his wife by his side.
Together they passed through the wood of pines above Godleigh, then, pursuing their way onwards, the man caught a shadow of sobriety from Honor, being quick at all times to note the colour of her thoughts. The fact that she was sad called for no wonder where they then stood, for now in her eyes were mirrored Bear Down’s wind-worn sycamores, ripe thatches, whitewashed farm-buildings, and grey walls. The relinquished home of her forefathers lay there, and she had now come from visiting the last of her line. This Christopher supposed, and so understood her demeanour.
Overhead a splendid turmoil of gloom and fire waxed heavenwide, where wind and cloud and sinking sun laboured magnificently together.
“I know every strand in your dear thoughts, love; I could write the very sequence of them, and take them down in shorthand from your eyes.”
She smiled at him. That favourite jest of his had been nearly true until now. Henceforth it could be true no more. It was not the picture of home and the thirsty, shorn grass lands spread around it that made her soul sink so low. Even Christopher henceforth was outside the last sanctuary of her heart, and must so remain. There had come a new sorrow of sorrows, to be hidden even from her second self—a grief not to be shared by him, a legacy of tears whose secret fountains he must never find.
She held his hand like a child, and something of her woe passed into him; then he knew that she was very sad, and suspected that her unhappiness had source in deeper things than the renewed spectacle of her home. He instantly fell into sympathy; but it was only a little deeper than that of an artist. What she felt now—walking where Myles Stapledon had so often walked—he could readily conceive; and it made him sad also, with a gentle, æsthetic melancholy that just fell short of pain. For him and for Honor he believed that a future of delicate happiness was spread. These clouds were natural, inevitable; but they scarcely obscured the blue. So he argued, ignorant of that anguish in the mind of his wife. For her the anticipated summer of peace appeared not possible. Now her future stretched before her—ghost-haunted in sober truth. Here was such a mournful twilight as broods over all personifications of highest grief; for her, as for those Titan figures—each an incarnate agony—who pace the aisles of olden drama, there could be no removal into the day-spring of hope, no departure into any night of indifference. Only an endless dusk of sorrow awaited her. Western light was upon her face; but not the glory of evening, nor yet the whole pageant of the sun’s passing, could pierce the darkness of her heart.
They stood upon Scor Hill above the Moor; and Christopher spoke—
“This was his god—poor old Myles! This was a symbol to him of the Creator. A great, restful god, yet alive and alert. A changeless god—a god to pray to even—a listening god.”
“He would have given all that he had to know a listening god,” she said.
“And yet who is there but has sometimes seen his god, moving dimly, awfully, behind the veil? A flash—a divine gleam at higher moments. We fall on our knees, but the vision has gone. We yearn—we yearn to make our crying heard; but the clay comes between. That was his case. You and I have our Christ to cling to. He sweetens our cup of life—when we let Him. But Myles—he walked alone. That is among my saddest thoughts—among the very saddest thoughts that Nature and experience bring to me.”
“The earth is very full of things that bring sad thoughts.”
“Yes, and a man’s heart still more full. There are plaintive sorrows I could tell you about—the sadness of hidden flowers, that no human eye ever looks upon—the sadness of great, lonely mists on lonely lands; the sadness of trees sleeping in moonlight; the sadness of a robbed bird; the eternal sadness and pathos of man’s scant certainties and undying hopes. How wonderful he is! Nothing crushes him; nothing stills the little sanguine heart of him, throbbing on, beating on through all the bitter disillusions of this our life from generation to generation.”
Far below them, in fulvous light of a wild sunset, the circle of Scor Hill appeared. Concerning the memories its granite girded, Christopher knew little; but, at sight of Watern’s crest, now dark against the flaming sky, he remembered that there lay the scene of Stapledon’s end, and regretted that he had come within sight of it that night. To him the distant mountain was a theatre of tragedy; to Honor, an altar of sacrifice.
Without words they waited and gazed upon the sky to witness after-glow succeed sunset. Over the Moor a vast and radiant mist burnt under the sun and faded to purple where it stretched beneath the shadows of the hills; and the earth, taking this great light to her bosom, veiled herself within it. All detail vanished, all fret of incident disappeared, while the inherent spirit of the place stood visible, where loneliness and vastness stretched to the sunset and heaved up their huge boundaries clad only in a mystery of ruddy haze. Particulars departed from the wilderness, save where, through alternate masses of gloom and transparent vapour, carrying their harmonies of orange and tawny light to culmination and crown of fire, there twinkled a burn—twinkled and tumbled and flashed, under mellow drapery of air and cloud, beneath flaming depths of the sunset, and through the heart of the earth-born mist, like a thread of golden beads. Here colour made a sudden music, sang, and then sank back into silence.
For heavy clouds already reared up out of the West to meet the sun; and amid far-flung banners and pennons and lances of glory he descended into darkness. Then the aspect of earth and heaven changed magically; day waned and grew dense, while a great gloom swept over the heath and rose to the zenith under a cowl of rain. Dim radii still turned upon the clouds where light fought through them; but their wan illumination was sucked away and they died before their shafts had roamed full course. The cry of the river rose and fell, the rain began to whisper, and all things merged with unaccustomed speed into formless chaos of twilight.
“No after-glow—then we must look within our own breasts for it—or, better still, each other’s breasts,” said the man.
But neither heart nor voice of the woman answered him.
The End