Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER LII
"Love is enough."
And so, as the days go by, the short and silent days, it comes to pass that a sort of peace falls upon my soul; born of a slow yet deep assurance that with Barbara it is well.
One can do with probabilities in prosperity, when to most of us careless ones it seems no great matter whether there be a God or no? When all the world's wheels seem to roll smoothly, as if of themselves, and one can speculate with a confused curiosity as to the nature of the great far cause that moves them; but in grief�in the destitute bareness, the famished hunger of soul, when "one is not," how one craves for certainties! How one yearns for the solid heaven of one's childhood; the harping angels, the never-failing flowers; the pearl gates and jeweled walls of God's great shining town!
They may be gone; I know not, but at least one certainty remains�guaranteed to us by no outside voice, but by the low yet plain tones that each may listen to in his own heart. That, with him who is pure and just and meek, who hates a lie worse than the sharpness of death, and loves others dearer than himself, it shall be well.
Do you ask where? or when? or how? We cannot say. We know not; only we know that it shall be well.
Never, never shall I reach Barbara's clear child-faith; Barbara, to whom God was as real and certain as I; never shall I attain to the steady confidence of Roger. I can but grope dimly with outstretched hands; sometimes in the outer blackness of a moonless, starless night; sometimes, with strained eyes catching a glimpse of a glimmer in the east. I can but feel after God, as a plant in a dark place feels after the light.
And so the days go by, and as they do, as the first smart of my despair softens itself into a slow and reverent acquiescence in the Maker's will, my thoughts stray carefully, and heedfully back over my past life: they overleap the gulf of Barbara's death and linger long and wonderingly among the previous months.
With a dazed astonishment I recall that even then I looked upon myself as one most unprosperous, most sorrowful-hearted.
What in Heaven's name ailed me? What did I lack? My jealousy of Roger, such a living, stinging, biting thing then; how dead it is now!
Barbara always said I was wrong; always!
As his eyes, in the patient mournfulness of their reproachful appeal, answer again in memory the shrewish violence of my accusation on the night of the ball�the last embers of my jealousy die. He does not love me as he did; of that I am still persuaded. There is now, perhaps, there always will be, a film, a shade between us.
By my peevish tears, by my mean and sidelong reproaches, by my sulky looks, I have necessarily diminished, if not quite squandered the stock of hearty, wholesome, honest love that on that April day he so diffidently laid at my feet. I have already marred and blighted a year and three-quarters of his life. I recollect how much older than me he is, how much time I have already wasted; a pang of remorse, sharp as my knife, runs through my heart; a great and mighty yearning to go back to him at once, to begin over again at once, this very minute, to begin over again�overflows and floods my whole being. Late in the day as it is�doubly unseemly and ungracious as the confession will seem now�I will tell him of that lie with which I first sullied the cleanness of our union. With my face hidden on his broad breast, so that I may not see his eyes, I will tell him�yes, I will tell him. "I will arise, and go to him, and say, 'I have sinned against Heaven and before thee.'"
So I go. I am nearing Tempest: as I reach the church-yard gate, I stop the carriage, and get out.
Barbara was always the one that, after any absence from home, I used first to run in search of. I will go and seek her now.
It is drawing toward dusk as I pass, in my long black gown, up the church-path, between the still and low-lying dead, to the quiet spot where, with the tree-boughs waving over her, with the ivy hanging the loose luxuriance of its garlands on the church-yard wall above her head, our Barbara is taking her rest.
As I near the grave, I see that I am not its only visitor. Some one, a man, is already there, leaning pensively on the railings that surround it, with his eyes fixed on the dark and winterly earth, and on the newly-planted, flagging flowers. It is Roger. As he hears my approaching steps, the swish of my draperies, he turns; and, by the serene and lifted gravity of his eyes, I see that he has been away in heaven with Barbara. He does not speak as I come near; only he opens his arms joyfully, and yet a little diffidently, too, and I fly to then.
"Roger!" I cry, passionately, with a greedy yearning for human love here�at this very spot, where so much of the love of my life lies in death's austere silence at my feet�"love me a little�ever so little! I know I am not very lovable, but you once liked me, did not you?�not nearly so much as I thought, I know, but still a little!"
"A little!"
"I am going to begin all over again!" I go on, eagerly, speaking very quickly, with my arms clasped about his neck, "quite all over again; indeed I am! I shall be so different that you will not know me for the same person, and if�if�" (beginning to falter and stumble)�"if you still go on liking her best, and thinking her prettier and pleasanter to talk to�well, you cannot help it, it will not be your fault�and I�I�will try not to mind!"
He has taken my hands from about his neck, and is holding them warmly, steadfastly clasped in his own.
"Child! child!" he cries, "shall I never undeceive you? are you still harping on that old worn-out string?"
"Is it worn out?" I ask, anxiously, staring up with my wet eyes through the deep twilight into his. "Yes, yes!" (going on quickly and impulsively), "if you say so, I will believe it�without another word I will believe it, but�" (with a sudden fall from my high tone, and lapse into curiosity)�"you know you must have liked her a good deal once�you know you were engaged to her."
"Engaged to her?"
"Well, were not you?"
"I never was engaged to any one in my life," he answers with solemn asseveration; "odd as it may seem, I never in my life had asked any woman to marry me until I asked you. I had known Z�phine from a child; her father was the best and kindest friend ever any man had. When he was dying, he was uneasy in his mind about her, as she was not left well off, and I promised to do what I could for her�one does not lightly break such a promise, does one? I was fond of her�I would do her any good turn I could, for old sake's sake, but marry her�be engaged to her!�"
He pauses expressively.
"Thank God! thank God!" cry I, sobbing hysterically; "it has all come right, then�Roger!�Roger!"�(burying my tear-stained face in his breast)�"I will tell you now�perhaps I shall never feel so brave again!�do not look at me�let me hide my face; I want to get it over in a hurry! Do you remember�" (sinking my voice to an indistinct and struggling whisper)�"that night that you asked me about�about Brindley Wood?"
"Yes, I remember."
Already, his tone has changed. His arms seem to be slackening their close hold of me.
"Do not loose me!" cry I, passionately; "hold me tight, or I can never tell you�how could you expect me? Well, that night�you know as well as I do�I lied."
"You did?"
How hard and quick he is breathing! I am glad I cannot see his face.
"I was there! I did cry! she did see me�"
I stop abruptly, choked by tears, by shame, by apprehension.
"Go on!" (spoken with panting shortness).
"He met me there!" I say, tremulously. "I do not know whether he did it on purpose or not, and said dreadful things! must I tell you them?" (shuddering)�"pah! it makes me sick�he said" (speaking with a reluctant hurry)�"that he loved me, and that I loved him, and that I hated you, and it took me so by surprise�it was all so horrible, and so different from what I had planned, that I cried�of course I ought not, but I did�I roared!"
There does not seem to me any thing ludicrous in this mode of expression, neither apparently does there to him.
"Well?"
"I do not think there is any thing more!" say I, slowly and timidly raising my eyes, to judge of the effect of my confession, "only that I was so deadly, deadly ashamed; I thought it was such a shameful thing to happen to any one that I made up my mind I would never tell anybody, and I did not."
"And is that all?" he cries, with an intense and breathless anxiety in eyes and voice, "are you sure that that is all?"
"All!" repeat I, opening my eyes very wide in astonishment; "do not you think it is enough?"
"Are you sure," he cries, taking my face in his hands, and narrowly, searchingly regarding it�"Child! child!�to-day let us have nothing�nothing but truth�are you sure that you did not a little regret that it must be so�that you did not feel it a little hard to be forever tied to my gray hairs�my eight-and-forty years?"
"Hush!" cry I, snatching away my hands, and putting them over my ears. "I will not listen to you!�what do I care for your forty-eight years?�If you were a hundred�two hundred�what is it to me?�what do I care�I love you! I love you! I love you�O my darling, how stupid you have been not to see it all along!"
And so it comes to pass that by Barbara's grave we kiss again with tears. And now we are happy�stilly, inly happy, though I, perhaps, am never quite so boisterously gay as before the grave yawned for my Barbara; and we walk along hand-in-hand down the slopes and up the hills of life, with our eyes fixed, as far as the weakness of our human sight will let us, on the one dread, yet good God, whom through the veil of his great deeds we dimly discern. Only I wish that Roger were not nine-and-twenty years older than I!
THE END. |
Admission Charges
Address
Buses
B&B�s/Guest Houses
Campsites/Caravans
Credit Cards
Cricket
Disabled Facilities
Email
Fax
Film
Food
Parks/Gardens
Golf
Hotels
Libraries
Opening Hours
Places of Worship
Pubs/Bars
Schools/Colleges:
Shops/Gifts
Taxis:
Telephone No.
Tourist Information
Vets
Web Address
Illustration(s) or 