Christabel R. Coleridge

“ Then Godfrey got up from his knees, and felt the sting of shame and self-reproach a little blunted, so that his natural reticence and pride began to revive, and he felt that he would behave properly and not make the family affairs a spectacle for surprised and disapproving Palmers.
He did not again go near Guy, who was, indeed, quite unfit to talk to him, and who puzzled Cuthbert more than ever, as, even while the perilous faintness was hardly kept at bay, he whispered, with a sort of triumph—
“Remember; if I die, I’m not beaten.” ”

“ They heard their voices as they made the round, but the little octagon room was empty.
“Look at him,” said Guy, “and tell me just what you see in his face. Yes,” as she glanced at him, “I know he is like me. But if you were drawing that face—like a flower—what should you try to show?”
“He looks very unhappy,” said Florella. “He wanted some one to help him.”
“He had no one. He was a victim to himself or his fate. Don’t you think he looks rather a despicable fellow?”
“No; but he looks as if he did so need to be helped. Yes; he does look like a person who might fail in a desperate crisis.” ”

“ She jumped up, and swinging herself into the deep high recess of the little casement, pushed it open and looked out.
Beneath her lay a wild untrimmed garden divide! by a sunk fence from a large paddock sloping towards a narrow valley, with heathery hills beyond. The sky was blue and still, with long streaks of pearly silvery cloud across the hilltops. A flight of rooks came home to a group of tall elm trees beside the house, filling the still air with sound.
“It’s awfully jolly and heavenly!” said Constancy, staring at the dazzling clouds with strong, unfaltering eyes. ”

“ Florella—such is life—looked at her watch to see how much time there remained before dinner, and, finding that she had an hour to spare, proceeded to boil the kettle and make the tea, while Peggy praised her handiness, and took her tea with pleasure, as she sat in her old wooden chair by the fire. She looked quite cheerful and absorbed in the present; while on Florella’s mind pressed a weight of fear. Her hands were cold, she could not swallow the tea. ”

“ Her soul was alive within her, and wrestled with the angel—whether of light or of darkness, she did not know. She held Guy’s soul with hers as with her hand she might have held his, giving him all her strength, and her spirit stretched and strained as the muscles might have done in a struggle for dear life. ”

“ No; he was not defeated. He would neither avoid Constancy nor cease to recommend himself to her. He would meet her on every possible opportunity; he would not give way an inch. He would succeed unless—other fellows—? There were other fellows, of course. There was Guy.
Godfrey stumbled through a great clump of brambles and bushes, over a low wall and down a rough field to the riverside, where he dimly saw the bridge in the uncertain light. He felt chilled and miserable; his resolute hope failed him. There was Guy. She always liked Guy, and he always roused himself to talk and laugh with her. ”

“ Miss Maxwell looked at the blooming girl with her outspoken voice and her straight-looking eyes, her sailor hat, and her boyish jacket, as if she had never thought of any one like her before; she sighed and looked solemn, but pulled out the drawer of the card-table, and took therefrom, with great mystery, two or three yellow-looking letters, an old Prayer-book, and a very dirty pack of cards, and on one of these she pointed out a dark stain. “My loves,” she whispered; “this was stained on that fatal night with Squire Waynflete’s life blood.” ”

“ Godfrey looked on delighted, and drew quite false conclusions; for, if Constancy loved Rawdie, and admired Mrs Waynflete, it was for their own sakes and not for his.
The hour and the maiden had come for the happy, prosperous youth. The vigorous inspiring companionship filled him with delight, the roses of that summer were redder and its sun warmer than he had ever known. Love came upon him with a rush of joyful hope, and, as was natural to him, his passion became a purpose, which he expected to fulfil. He would work hard for a degree, for she would scout a failure. He must win her ”

“ He could not trust himself to think of the gun in the gun-cupboard at the side of the bookcase, of the doctor’s medicine, of which too large a dose would be so easy—of the brandy in the cellar—which would drown all this agony or give strength to defy it. These images of escape pressed on him like living souls. Either would be so easy. Pray? Yes, but in such moments, before the prayer is offered, the victory must be won. The will of steel that had endured so much was breaking now. Guy got up and thought that he would look at that gun, which had been unused all the autumn. ”

“ Florella was always impelled to talk, or, perhaps more truly, to think by Guy. She was drifting again into talk that belonged only to him, and that she would not have held with any one else.
“I don’t quite know what else to say,” she answered. “It is not exactly seeing things or noticing them. It is feeling the picture in them. This dance has a picture in it. Often I don’t feel so about things that are very beautiful.”
“Did you ever see Hamlet?” said Guy, apparently with an abrupt change of subject. ”

“ Guy looked the haunting terror in the face. He took its likeness—“wrote it down,” as he had said—spoke to it—defied it—well, those were times better forgotten, and when Rawdie hung on to his trousers and pulled him back, he knew that he was making a mad rush at—nothing at all. But more and more the conviction strengthened, that whatever personal influences shaped the forms of his experience, behind it lay a “power outside himself that made for” evil, a power at one with all the evil of the world. Where, then, was the power that makes for good? ”

“ The wind whistled softly round the house, and stirred the neglected creepers outside, so that they creaked on their rusty nails, and tapped with their long arms against the windows. She felt the bygoneness and unusedness of the place, and a feeling of awe stole over her. Suddenly a sound of eerie sobbing and sighing, followed first by a wild, mournful cry and then by a ringing laugh sounded through the house. The next moment Cosy came running down the passage, laughing still.
“There! See how easy it is,” she said. “That’s how ghost-stories are hatched. ”

“ In the meantime Godfrey, stung to the very quick by Constancy’s shallow answer to the confession which he had forced from the depths of his soul, was kicking against the pricks of disappointed passion, and trying to persuade himself that they did not hurt him. He could not work, he barely scraped through his final examination; he could think of nothing but how to escape from himself. He could not face Guy till his plan of restitution was matured, and he caught at the Rabys’ invitation to go and spend a gay Christmas among a lively set of other young people at Kirkton Hall. ”

“ By the fireside sat Waynflete’s brother, the parson of the parish, and over the chimney, in the light of the candle’s on the card-table, was the picture of his eldest son and heir. The squire and the vicar were big, powerful men, with fair, bushy brows, and faces that told of rough riding and coarse living, hard weather and hard drinking, the only mark of their gentle blood that frank expectation of deference and service which marks a ruling class. The keener, thinner face of their visitor had the opposite look, that of a man accustomed to defer, and perhaps to flatter, for his livelihood. ”

“ Guy looked back at him, but said nothing; and as he took leave, Cuthbert remained for a minute or two.
“That young fellow is a good deal out of health,” said the doctor. “Hasn’t he a mother or any one to look after him?”
“Not a soul capable, except me,” said Staunton. “I’m going to do it as well as I can, and he will let me.”
“Well, remember this: whether he can avoid nervous shocks or no, he must not have them. And he can’t be too much afraid of the brandy. Get him out of whatever oppresses him. It’s the only plan. The heart is weak, and the brain—excitable.” ”

“ Are you ill? What is the matter?” Guy looked at her, as she said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him shut and lock his bedroom door behind him. Turning away in distress and alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday enjoyment.
“Oh,” he said, in answer to her appeal, “Guy is like that if he has a headache. ”

“ As she had dimly felt at first, the object of a life’s labour is not so dear as the labour itself; and whenever the charms of Waynflete were discussed, Margaret felt that she was an Ingleby woman. She was as constant to the facts of her life as she had been to the idea that had dominated it.
Under the influence of these feelings, she one day sat down, and wrote to Guy a note in which she told more of the truth than she had admitted to those living in the house with her. ”

“ At first Guy wished for no more. He did not try to draw Florella more closely into his inner life, she made the outer one so fair. It was delightful to see her cut cake and pour out tea, to hear her chat to her aunt, or play with Rawdie, and when, at Mr Clifton’s suggestion, she undertook some little kindnesses to a few old women, a little notice of some rough girls, when she put her hand to the help of Waynflete, it seemed to Guy in truth like the descent of an angel. ”

“ But surely the true end of Guy Waynflete’s story, of the battle which every soul that is born into the world must fight, but which he waged under such strange conditions, is not here, but in that unseen world, where the souls of the old Waynfletes had gone before him, where the real issues of the battle are decided, where the real story began.
There only, where the souls of the wicked, as well as of the righteous, are in the hand of God, can be gathered the fruits of Guy’s victory. ”

“ When the visitor was gone, Florella walked aside, and, in the late afternoon, she went away by herself over the withering heather to the rock where she had shown Guy the harebells.
There was no blue now, either in flowers or sky; the wind was driving a heavy, smoky mist before it, and the air was, as Dante calls it, “brown.”
Could it be possible that Guy had meant her to know what he was doing?
She knew, she saw, that the old story was not “dead and done for!” There came upon her an awful, formless dread that Guy would never reach Waynflete “safe.” ”

“ Guy Waynflete—she did not try in her thoughts to separate the generations—seemed to have been pursued by an evil power. Was there no good angel to help him?
Florella saw—as she saw the thought in her pictures—the radiant image, all light and wings and glory, the instinctive presentment of a heavenly being which was her spiritual and artistic inheritance. Perhaps, in the light of that fair fancy, she fell asleep; but suddenly there was no outward vision any more, but a great awe and a passionate yearning within. A voice seemed to cry from the depths, “Oh, helping is so hard—so hard! ”

“ All this was satisfactory to Guy, and so, in another way, was his “reconciliation” with the last of the Maxwells of Ouseley. Matters seemed to be drawing towards a point of success, of which the coming gathering was a kind of symbol. As he was returning from a ride in the broad, spreading sunlight of an August afternoon, he thought of all that the past year had brought to him. It was but a year since he had shown Florella the picture in the octagon-room, and her words had roused him to make a fight for his freedom. ”

“ For Violet, in startling confirmation of the last words, had suddenly rushed forward and launched herself on the neck of a young man in brown tweed, who was coming up the steps of the verandah.
“Cuth, Cuth! Oh, how lovely! Oh, did you know we were here?”
“I have known long enough to mitigate my alarm at your greeting. Your letters were at the post-office. Yes—here we are. How do you do, Miss Vyner?”
“I shall believe in brain-waves in future,” said Constancy, as she gave him her hand. “I had just recalled a conversation with you and Mr Waynflete, and I see you coming. Is he with you?” ”

“ Guy believed that his soul was saved. There are no other words for it, though these may convey a hundred other meanings. But there was “more to come.” Whether this conviction was well-founded, or whether, as Cuthbert would have told him, it sprang from the depression of exhausted nerves and spirits; from the melancholy too often associated with trials such as his, it equally proved that he was not free as other men were for the sweetness of life and love.
As other men? Were other men free? ”

“ Godfrey was not coming home for Christmas. Nerves and brain would endure no longer the solitude—that was not solitude. He put his hand over his eyes.
“If Rawdie had not been there last night.” But Rawdie had been there—there always was something. As to the mill, there were flashes of certainty as to the right course, and a word or a kindly deed of old Cooper’s just gave strength to put them in practice. The sun struggled through the fog yesterday, and raised his spirits; the day before there was a letter from Cuthbert. ”

“ Constancy had not seen Guy for more than nine months, her last remembrance of him was among the dancers at the Kirkton Hall garden-party, and she realised at once, as he came along the verandah, that the slight youth with his pathetic eyes had grown into a very remarkable person. ”

“ The turn to it must still be passed on the way to the bridge.
And as for the ghost? Was that, too, an hereditary affection of the nerves, a monomania; in fact, just that dislocation of the brain which made both him and his ancestor irresponsible for their actions, a sign that showed that they were not free agents, that the dreadful and degrading fate that had overtaken his namesake was equally inevitable for himself? Yes. The Being that haunted him and controlled him was nothing but Himself, and his “objectivity” only the chimera of an abnormal brain. ”

“ He obeyed Guy loyally, but he also watched over him like a father. He had a careful old wife, who sent him in cups of tea, and provided him with luncheons, and this care he contrived should be extended to the young man too. He worked hard, so as to save him exertion, and never resented the quick, sharp orders, or the short, absent manner, and Guy was grateful—more grateful than he knew how to show. The old manager’s devotion helped him very much. There was Rawdie, also, whom he had begged of Godfrey, who slept on his bed and nestled at his side, and was a living presence, and a loving one too. ”

“ He has galloped ever since Guy Waynflete betrayed his friend to King James the Second, and saved his own dirty skin. Ye’ll hear him, Mr Maxwell, when you sleep under this roof when the wind’s up—and luck’s down. Maybe ye’ll see the traitor’s ghost. My son Guy has seen him—or else he lied, which is like enough. Shut the window, brother Godfrey, and snuff the candles.”
“Will you deal again, sir?” said Maxwell of Ouseley.
“No,” cried the squire; “cards won’t bring the lad back. Get your book, brother Godfrey, and read us a prayer. Pray, man, pray! and Mr Maxwell can join us.” ”

“ Then Jem yelled out, and I got loose, and the bridge cracked—no wonder!—I woke up here by degrees. I knew when you came and held my hand, and when Rawdie licked my face; but I couldn’t do a thing. I had to stop. And now to be alive—and alone!”
“Thank God, my boy, it’s all over.”
“Yes, I thank God,” said Guy. Then he added, quietly, “It doesn’t matter how much of it has been what you call natural, or what caused the horror that poor Jem burlesqued. I had to fight. It’s true enough—all temptations are common to man. I might have been as he is. Now, Cuthbert, let the rest be silence. ”

“ He rode slowly uphill, over wide roads with low grey walls on either side, behind which grew oats and turnips, past strong-looking stone villages, all white and grey and wind swept, till the land grew poorer and more open, and turf, mixed with furze and heather, began to appear, and at length he turned over the top, and came out upon the great rolling moors, here clear and sunny, there veiled in the smoke and fog of distant centres of human life. ”

“ Here in a cold, fresh little house, with latched doors painted with thin white paint, and deeply recessed windows looking into a little garden full of hardy plants, now turning brown and yellow with the autumn frosts, they found an apple-cheeked old lady dressed in a shot-silk gown of so old a style that it was just about to come again into fashion. ”

“ When old Miss Maxwell, picking York and Lancaster roses in her little garden, looked down the bleak grey street of Ouselwell, and beheld a stranger riding up, she felt, as she said afterwards, a presentiment of something unusual, which, as strange and striking young men were not common in Ouselwell, was perhaps not surprising. But it was fulfilled when the stranger left his horse at the inn, and walking up to her gate, bowed politely, and introduced himself as Guy Waynflete, a friend of her cousin, Mr Cuthbert Staunton. ”

“ Guy was capable of hearing a good deal without committing himself. He would not promise to reason with Jeanie, nor to telegraph to Godfrey; but he agreed to interview Mr Van Brunt, and in his secret heart, he hoped that that dry-goods store in Chicago might prove to be solvent, and its owner’s character and intentions clear as the day, and that his duty as “one of the family” would not be to protect Jeanie from the snares of an adventurer. ”

“ But Guy had certainly accomplished something. Was it given to man to do so much, and yet to have more? Cuthbert knew well how sweet the outlook was into “the level of every day,” how natural and healthful were the hopes, and even the fears, that had dawned on Guy’s spirit. But could flowers grow on such a field of battle?
Constancy and her friends intended to spend at least a week at Zwei-brücken.
Guy said that it looked bad to ride when the ladies were walking, but he was able in this way to share in mountain expeditions, and Cuthbert hoped that he enjoyed them. ”

“ The squire turned and swore at him, then went on in the same tone as before, “But my eldest son Guy, who broke his mother’s heart, and was too late for her deathbed, is too late to save his father, and himself. I leave him my curse for a coward and a fool. And I leave it for all that come after him to follow in his steps. And for t’other one, brother Godfrey, you’d better take and put him into the Church, if you can; he’s a thickhead, but an honest lad. So there, Attorney Maxwell, take your own, and the luck ye’ve earned go with it!” ”