Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

“ Was it the sight of Joyce and her lover that had made me think of myself as a woman? I cannot tell. All I know is that when we walked into the squire's ball-room a quarter of an hour afterwards, I felt my face flame as I saw his gaze rest upon me for a moment, and I longed most heartily to be back again in my high-necked homespun frock, with no corals round my throat at all. So inconsistent are we at nineteen!
Fortunately my awakening self-consciousness was soon put to flight by other more engrossing emotions. ”

“ My heart beat wildly; I could feel it, I could hear it, fluttering like a caged bird against the hard-wood of the fence against which I leaned.
"The squire gives you the best he has," said Trayton Harrod. "Does the man you think you love do as much?"
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I don't know whether it was my fancy or not, but his voice seemed to tremble. I had never heard his voice tremble before.
"How can I tell?" said I, as well as I could speak the words for shame and heartache.
"A woman can tell fast enough," murmured he. And then he stopped; he came one step nearer to me. ”

“ Then I had the tea-things to wash up with Joyce, and the clean linen to put away. And when all our work was done Trayton Harrod had gone, and I went up into the little attic whence mother had called me in the early evening, and sat down again in the dark to have it out with myself about all the puzzling events of this puzzling day.
Joyce had not yet come up to bed; I was all alone. The twilight was dead; the stars shone above—thousands of stars looking down upon me with a story of courage and hope in their bright eyes—I wonder whether I understood it! ”

“ I knew there was no bitterness, that there never would be any bitterness, in my sister's heart towards me.
There was no one in the waiting-room, mother had gone out onto the wharf with the strange lady; I put my arms round Joyce's neck, and drew her face down to mine. "God bless you!" I said, reverently, and I think for the first time in my life I felt what the words meant.
"It's all for the best, dear," added she, gently, leaning her cheek against my hair. "You know we never really do alter things that are going to happen by anything we do. It's arranged for us by a wise Providence." ”

“ The twilight had faded and the night was dark, save for that fitful, fickle moon. A thin gauze of cloud hung now before the white disk, and the light that filtered through it showed another thin gauze of mist floating above the sea of dark marsh-land; the breeze that crept up among the aspens on the cliff had scarcely a memory of summer.
"What can be done?" asked I, in answer to that brief, terse declaration.
"There is only one thing that I can see," said he. "You are right; Hoad must be paid. It is not a matter of choice. The money must be borrowed to pay him with." ”

“ The squire is such a good-fellow."
"Oh, don't ask me to talk about it," cried I. "I know he is good; I know all you say."
"If the truth were known, I expect there's a good bit of pride in it," smiled he. "You are your father's own daughter about that. And there's the squire, no doubt, thinks he's not half good enough for you. A man mostly does if he cares for a woman."
"It isn't that. I can't marry the squire, because I don't love him, and there's an end," cried I, desperately. ”

“ After a while I think it must have lulled my anger to rest. The sea has always been a good friend to me, in its storms as in its calm. I like to see it rage as I dare not rage, and I like to see it calm as I cannot be calm. The restless sea has taught me as many things as the quiet marsh; they are both very wide. And that day I am sure it lulled my irritable temper.
Before long I began to think that I, to say the least of it, had treated my deliverer with scant courtesy. When I got to the farm that divides the marsh from the beach I turned round to see if he were following. ”

“ We put him under the yew-trees beside our little brother John, with his face towards the sun's setting behind the pine-trees; every one said it was a beautiful place for him to rest in; and Joyce wept her simple, silent tears over the hopeful words spoken by the Rev. Cyril Morland, whom mother had chosen to read the service. But as for me, my heart was too hot and rebellious to shed any tears or to see any hope or comfort; I hated the sun for shining so brightly, the world for being so fair, and folk for thinking it natural enough that an old man should come to an end of his life. ”

“ I can't always be of the same mind as she is. I don't see why people need always be of the same mind as their relations; but it doesn't follow that they're ungrateful and heartless, because they are not. I've heard mother say that she doesn't believe that I care any more for her than for any tramp upon the high-road; but that isn't true."
The squire laughed.
"No; of course it isn't true," said he, "and Mrs. Maliphant doesn't think it."
"Oh yes, I think she does sometimes," persisted I. "She would like me to be like Joyce. But I shall never be like Joyce!" ”

“ A month had passed since Joyce had come home, since that night when Trayton Harrod and I stood under the abbey eaves in the lightning and the storm—a long, long summer's month. The hay had all been gathered in long ago, and the harvest was golden and ready for the reaping; the plain that had once been so green was growing mellower every day; the thick, reedy grass that blooms with a rich dark tassel upon our marsh made planes of varied brown tints [235] over the flatness of the pastures—the whole land was warm with color ”

“ There was nothing in their standing together side by side, but there was something in the way they thus stood, an indefinable sense of a companionship in suffering which hardened me to stone.
"I wonder you venture to have an opinion on such things, mother," said I, in a voice loud enough for him to hear. "Men don't like us women to have any opinions. They only like women who care for nothing but house-keeping."
Mother looked at me dumfounded, and the squire turned grieved eyes on me; Joyce bent her head, but Harrod glanced round at me with anger on his heavy mouth. ”

“ No, Joyce, you can't deceive me. I know that you want to see him every hour and every minute of your life, and that when you don't something goes wrong inside you all the while."
Joyce sighed gently, and drew her shawl around her. "You're so impetuous," sighed she. "Liking one person doesn't make one forget every one else."
"Liking, no," said I, and then I stopped.
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The marsh-land had grown dark with a passing cloud, and the aspens on the cliff shivered in the rising wind. A window opened in the house behind, and Deborah's voice came calling to us across the lawn. ”

“ All through those weary watching hours, I was watching for other footsteps besides those that were coming—so slow and sure—to take away what I had loved all my life; black upon my heart lay the shadow of a deeper remorse than that of letting a dying man believe in a possibility that set his mind at rest: I wanted to see Trayton Harrod that I might undo what I had done, that I might tell him the truth about Joyce. ”

“ My heart had gone down with a sudden, sick feeling when he had said he must leave Knellestone. I can remember it now. I did not ask myself what it meant. I suppose I thought, if I thought at all, that it was anxiety for the welfare of the farm; but I remember very well how it felt.
"Oh, Mr. Harrod, you don't really mean that!" said I, hurriedly.
"Mean what?" answered he, without relaxing a muscle of his face.
"That you will give up your work here."
"Indeed I do," answered he, with a little hard laugh, showing those white teeth of his. "A man must do his work his own way, or not at all." ”

“ No, nobody be to blame at all."
"Margaret, Margaret, for God's sake, collect yourself!" cried Joyce, her voice breaking into something like a sob. "You frighten me. What do you mean? What can you mean?"
"No, nobody to blame," repeated I, wildly, without paying any heed to her; "only just what one might have known would happen. One, with every gift that God can give, and the other, with—nothing but a vile temper that makes folk shun her even after they've seemed to be friends with her. What does it matter that you have promised to marry another man? ”

“ I looked back along the way, that was pink, but Trayton Harrod was not in sight, and with something that was very like disappointment at my heart, I went on again, following the dike, that now ran not far from the shore, until I came to where it widens into a channel between a greensward on one side and the high ridge of shingle on the other. Its end is in a deep pool sheltered beneath the hood of a gray cliff—a cliff adorned at its base with the blackberry and ash, and whitening at its top into the chalk that here begins to give its glistening frontal to the gales of the turbulent sea. ”

“ The fog was beginning to lift. The distant hills of the South Downs rose out of the sea of vapor, and were as towering mountains in the mystery, lying dim and yet blue against the struggling light of the sunset behind. The white headland that I had left detached itself boldly against the sea-line—for the mist [113] was only on the level land now, where it lay like a sheet a few feet above the marsh, so that the objects on the ground itself shone, illumined by the slanting rays of the sun, till each one had a value of its own in the scene. ”

“ Along the under-cliff of the Manor woods the crimson of beeches made gorgeous patches of painting upon the sombre background of pines, and larches held amber torches up among the paler gold of elm-trees.
God's earth was very fair, but why had he taken away all that made it glad? Not far from here had we two first met in the rain and mist; here had we started the lapwing in the green spring-time and scared the cuckoo from its nest, usurped; here had we many a time followed the game and learned the ways of birds and beasts ”

“ May no one whom I love ever know, what it is to feel remorse!
A whisper ran round the village that Joyce Maliphant was pining away her beauty for love of the gay young captain who had once courted her, and who was now going to wed with Miss Mary Thorne, the heiress. Deb told me of it, she had heard the rumor coming out of church; but I don't believe we, any of us, thought that it mattered much what Frank Forrester did. He could never have made Joyce happy, why should he not make Mary Thorne happy? ”

“ Involuntarily there came to my mind that time on the cliff, the night before she went away to Sydenham, when I had told her that she was overrating her own strength—that she would never be able to live without Frank. I had not met Trayton Harrod then, but now I knew that what I had said was true: "When a girl loves a man she wants him every minute of her life, and something goes wrong in her heart all the time that she is parted from him." ”