Adela Cathcart Volume Ii Part 2

"'How do you do, Miss Lizzie? A labour of love?' I said, a.s.s that I was!

"'Yes,' she answered; 'I've been over to Farmer Dale's, to fetch some cream for mamma's tea.'

"She knew well enough I had meant a ministration to the poor.

"'Oh! I beg your pardon,' I rejoined; 'I thought you had been round your district.'

"This was wicked; for I knew quite well that she had no district.

"'No,' she answered, 'I leave that to my sister. Mamma is my district.

And do you know, her headaches are as painful as any washerwoman's.'

"This shut me up rather; but I plucked up courage presently.

"'You don't seem to like going to church, Miss Lizzie.'

"Her face flushed.

"'Who dares to say so? I am very regular in my attendance.'

"'Not a doubt of it. But you don't enjoy being there.'

"'I do.'

"'Confess, now.--You don't like my sermons.'

"'Do you like them yourself, Mr. Armstrong?'

"Here was a floorer! Did I like them myself?--I really couldn't honestly say I did. I was not greatly interested in them, further than as they were my own, and my best attempts to say something about something I knew nothing about. I was silent. She stood looking at me out of clear grey eyes.

"'Now you have begun this conversation, Mr. Armstrong, I will go on with it,' she said, at length. 'It was not of my seeking.--I do not think you believe what you say in the pulpit.'

"Not believe what I said! Did I believe what I said? Or did I only believe that it was to be believed? The tables were turned with a vengeance. Here was the lay lamb, attacked and about to be worried by the wolf clerical, turning and driving the said wolf to bay. I stood and felt like a convicted criminal before the grey eyes of my judge. And somehow or other I did not hate those clear pools of light. They were very beautiful. But not one word could I find to say for myself. I stood and looked at her, and I fear I began to twitch at my neck cloth, with a vague instinct that I had better go and hang myself. I stared and stared, and no doubt got as red as a turkey-c.o.c.k--till it began to be very embarra.s.sing indeed. What refuge could there be from one who spoke the truth so plainly? And how do you think I got out of it?" asked Mr.

Armstrong of me, John Smith, who, as he told the story, felt almost in as great confusion and misery as the narrator must have been in at that time, although now he looked amazingly jolly, and breathed away at his cigar with the slow exhalations of an epicure.

"Mortal cannot tell," I answered.

"One mortal can," rejoined he, with a laugh.--"I fell on my knees, and made speechless love to her."

Here came a pause. The countenance of the broad-church-man changed as if a lovely summer cloud had pa.s.sed over it. The jolly air vanished, and he looked very solemn for a little while.

"There was no c.o.xcombry in it, Smith. I may say that for myself. It was the simplest and truest thing I ever did in my life. How was I to help it? There stood the visible truth before me, looking out of the woman's grey eyes. What was I to do? I thank G.o.d, I have never seen the truth plain before me, let it look ever so ghostly, without rus.h.i.+ng at it. All my advances have been by a sudden act--to me like an inspiration;--an act done in terror, almost, lest I should stop and think about it, and fail to do it. And here was no ghost, but a woman-angel, whose _Thou art the man_ was spoken out of profundities of sweetness and truth.

Could I turn my back upon her? Could I parley with her?--with the Truth?

No. I fell on my knees, weeping like a child; for all my misery, all my sense of bondage and untruth, broke from me in those tears.

"My hat had fallen off as I knelt. My head was bowed on my hands. I felt as if she could save me. I dared not look up. She tells me since that she was bewildered and frightened, but I discovered nothing of that. At length I felt a light pressure, a touch of healing, fall on my bended head. It was her hand. Still I hid my face, for I was ashamed before her.

"'Come,' she said, in a low voice, which I dare say she compelled to be firm; 'come with me into the Westland Woods. There we can talk. Some one may come this way.'

"She has told me since that a kind of revelation came to her at the moment; a sight not of the future but of the fact; and that this lifted her high above every feeling of mere propriety, subst.i.tuting for it a conviction of right. She felt that G.o.d had given this man to her; and she no more hesitated to ask me to go with her into the woods, than she would hesitate to go with me now if I asked her. And indeed if she had not done so, I don't know what would have come of it--how the story would have ended. I believe I should be kneeling there now, a whitened skeleton, to the terror and warning of all false churchmen who should pa.s.s through the lonely lane.

"I rose at once, like an obedient child, and turned in the direction of the Westland Woods, feeling that she was by my side, but not yet daring to look at her.--Now there are few men to whom I would tell the trifle that followed. It was a trifle as to the outside of it; but it is amazing what _virtue_, in the old meaning of the word, may lie in a trifle. The recognition of virtue is at the root of all magical spells, and amulets, and talismans. Mind, I felt from the first that you and I would understand each other."

"You rejoice my heart," I said.

"Well, the first thing I had to do, as you may suppose, to make me fit to look at her, was to wipe my eyes. I put my hand in my pocket; then my first hand in the breast pocket; then the other hand in the other pocket; and the slow-dawning awful truth became apparent, that here was a great brute of a curate, who had been crying like a baby, and had no handkerchief. A moment of keen despair followed--chased away by a vision of hope, in the shape of a little white cloud between me and the green gra.s.s. This cloud floated over a lady's hand, and was in fact a delicate handkerchief. I took it, and brought it to my eyes, which gratefully acknowledged the comfort. And the scent of the lavender--not lavender water, but the lavender itself, that puts you in mind of country churches, and old bibles, and dusky low-ceiled parlours on Sunday afternoons--the scent of the lavender was so pure and sweet, and lovely!

It gave me courage.

"'May I keep it?' I asked

"'Yes. Keep it,' she answered.

"'Will you take my arm now?'

"For answer, she took my arm, and we entered the woods. It was a summer afternoon. The sun had outflanked the thick clouds of leaves that rendered the woods impregnable from overhead, and was now s.h.i.+ning in, a little sideways, with that slumberous light belonging to summer afternoons, in which everything, mind and all, seems half asleep and all dreaming.

"'Let me carry the jug,' I said.

"'No,' she answered, with a light laugh; 'you would be sure to spill the cream, and spoil both your coat and mamma's tea.'

"'Then put it down in this hollow till we come back.'

"'It would be full of flies and beetles in a moment. Besides we won't come back this way, shall we? I can carry it quite well. Gentlemen don't like carrying things.'

"I feared lest the tone the conversation had a.s.sumed, might lead me away from the resolution I had formed while kneeling in the lane. So, as usual with me, I rushed blindly on the performance.

"'Miss Lizzie, I am a hypocritical and unhappy wretch.'

"She looked up at me with a face full of compa.s.sionate sympathy. I could have lost myself in that gaze. But I would not be turned from my purpose, of which she had no design, though her look had almost the power; and, the floodgates of speech once opened, out it came, the whole confession I have made to you, in what form or manner, I found, the very first time I looked back upon the relation, that I had quite forgotten.

"All the time, the sun was sending ever so many sloping ladders of light down through the trees, for there was a little mist rising that afternoon; and I felt as if they were the same kind of ladder that Jacob saw, inviting a man to climb up to the light and peace of G.o.d. I felt as if upon them invisible angels were going up and down all through the summer wood, and that the angels must love our woods as we love their skies. And amidst the trees and the ladders of ether, we walked, and I talked, and Lizzie listened to all I had to say, without uttering a syllable till I had finished.

"At length, having disclosed my whole bondage and grief, I ended with the question:

"'Now, what is to be done?'

"She looked up in my face with those eyes of truth, and said:

"'That money must be paid, Mr. Armstrong.'

"'But how?' I responded, in despair.

"She did not seem to heed my question, but she really answered it.

"'And, if I were you, I would do no more duty till it was paid.'

"Here was decision with a vengeance. It was more than I had bargained for. I was dumb. A moment's reflection, however, showed me that she was perfectly right--that what I had called _decision with a vengeance_, was merely the utterance of a child's perception of the true way to walk in.

"Still I was silent; for long vistas of duty, and loss, and painful action and effort opened before me. At length I said: