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Notwithstanding

<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> <blockquote>"Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end."—Rabindra Nath Tagore. </blockquote> Mr. Stirling had no curiosity—that quality which in ourselves we designate as interest in our fellow-creatures, even while we are kneeling at a keyhole. But his interest in others amounted to a passion. He drew slowly through his hand a little chain, looking at each link with kindly compassion. The first link had been the expression in Janey's eyes when his nephew had unconsciously maligned Annette. The sudden relief as from pain, the exultation in those gentle, patient eyes, had brought him instantly to her side as her ally against herself. And in his interview with her, the commonplace pitiful reason had spread itself out before him. She loved some one, probably Mr. Black, or her cousin Roger—at any rate some one who was drifting into love with Annette. He felt confident when he left Janey that she would not use her weapon against Annette as a means to regain her lover—that Annette was safe as far as she was concerned. Janey was not of those[Pg 238] who blindfold their own eyes for long. He had, he knew, removed the bandage from them. That was all that was necessary. And now here was Roger, kindly, sociable Roger, whom he had always got on with so well,—in spite of the secret contempt of the country-bred man for a man who neither shoots not hunts,—here was Roger suddenly metamorphosed into a laconic poker, hardly willing to exchange a word with himself or Annette at luncheon. Mr. Stirling perceived, not without amusement, that Roger was acutely jealous of him, and drew the last link of the chain through his hand. Then it was Roger to whom Janey Manvers was attached, Roger who was in love with Annette? That good-looking Mr. Black apparently did not come into the piece at all. The situation had, after all, a classic simplicity. Two women and one man. He had seen something not unlike it before. And he smiled as he remembered how Miss Blinkett once supplied him unasked with sundry details of the affiancement of her cousin the Archdeacon with the Bishop's sister, and her anxious injunction when all was divulged that he must not on any account put it into a book. That promise he had kept without difficulty, but not in Miss Blinkett's eyes, who, when his next novel appeared, immediately traced a marked resemblance between the ardent love-making of the half-Italian hero and the gratified comments of the Archdeacon while allowing himself to be[Pg 239] towed into harbour by the blameless blandishments of the Bishop's sister. Would Roger in turn think he had been "put in"? Mr. Stirling realized that it was only too likely. For he knew to his cost how deeply embedded in the mind of the provincial male is the conviction that there is nothing like him under the sun. In the novel which Mr. Stirling had recently finished, he had drawn, without a hairbreadth's alteration, the exact portrait of a married brother-novelist, as an inordinately pompous old maid of literary fame. When the book appeared this character called forth much admiration from the public in general, and the brother-novelist in particular; but it caused a wound so deep and so rankling in the bosom of Aunt Maria that all intercourse was broken off between her and Mr. Stirling for ever, in spite of the fact that he was able to assure her—only she never believed it—that his novel was in the press before he made her acquaintance. But this is a digression. Mr. Stirling showed some absence of mind during luncheon, and then owned that he was in a small difficulty about the afternoon. He had promised to drive Mrs. Stoddart and Annette to the old cross at Haliwell. But the victoria only held two comfortably, and the horse which was to have taken him in the dogcart had fallen lame. "I think I shall commandeer you and your dogcart," he said to Roger. "Take a few hours' holiday for once, Manvers, and do us all[Pg 240] a good turn at the same time. We can put some cushions in your cart, so that Miss Georges will be sufficiently comfortable." Roger was electrified, but he made no sign. He mumbled something about a foreman, he hung back, he was able to reassure himself afterwards by the conviction that he had appeared most unwilling, as indeed he did; but very deep down within him he felt a thrill of pleasure. He was tired to death, though he did not know it, of the routine of his life, though he clung to it as a bird will sometimes cling to its cage. He had had enough of farm buildings and wire fencing, and the everlasting drainage of land, the weary water-logged Lowshire land. His eyes became perfectly round, and he looked at his plate with his most bottled-up expression. But he was pleased. Fortunately for Annette, she knew that. It did not strike him that she might be disconcerted by his apparent unwillingness to escort her. His savage irritation against Mr. Stirling as "a clever chap who could talk a bird out of a tree" was somewhat mollified. Perhaps, after all, he was interested in Mrs. Stoddart, a widow of about his own age. Roger shot a furtive glance from under his tawny eyelashes at Mrs. Stoddart, suddenly bolted a large piece of peach, and said he thought he could manage it.   It was a still August afternoon, and Roger drove Annette through the sunny countryside.[Pg 241] The cool breath of the sea blew softly in their faces, travelling towards them across the low-lying woods and cornfields. For there are few hills in Lowshire. It is a land of long lines: long lines of tidal river and gleaming flats, and immense stretches of clover—clover which is a soft green for half the summer, and then a sea of dim blue pink. The heather and the gorse-land creep almost down among the fields, with here and there a clump of pines taking care of tiny cottages so muffled in the gorse that you can only see the upper windows, or keeping guard round quaint little churches with flint towers. And everywhere in the part of Lowshire where the Rieben winds, there are old bridges of red blue brick shouldering up among the buttercups, and red cows, with here and there a blue one, standing without legs in the long grass. And scattered far apart, down deep blackberried lanes, lie the villages of pink-plastered cottages clustering together, red roof by red roof, with a flinty grey church in the midst. The original artist who designed and painted Lowshire must have always taken a dab of blue in his brush just when he had filled it with red, to do the bridges and the old farms and barns and the cows. For in Lowshire the blues and the reds are always melting into each other like the clover. Roger and Annette were heading towards the sea, and so you would have thought would be their companion the Rieben. But the Rieben[Pg 242] was in no hurry. It left them continually to take the longest way, laying itself out in leisurely curves round low uplands, but always meeting them again a few miles farther on, growing more stately with every detour. Other streams swelled it, and presently wharves and townships stretched alongside of it, and ships came sailing by. It hardly seemed possible to Annette that it could be the same little river which one low arch could span at Riff. At last they turned away from it altogether, and struck across the wide common of Gallowscore amid its stretches of yellowing bracken; and Roger showed her where, in past times, a gibbet used to hang, and told her that old Cowell the shepherd, the only man who still came to church in smock-frock and blue stockings, had walked all the way from Riff to Gallowscore, as a lad, to see three highwaymen hanging in chains on it. The great oak had been blown down later, gibbet and all, and the gibbet had never been set up again. A walking funeral was toiling across the bracken in the direction of the church on the edge of the common, and Roger drew up and waited bareheaded till it had passed. And he told Annette of the old iniquitous Lowshire "right of heriot" which came into force when a tenant died, and how his uncle Mr. Manvers, the last lord of the manor, had let it lapse, and how Dick, the present owner, had never enforced it either. [Pg 243] "I couldn't have worked the estate if he had," said Roger simply. "Lady Louisa told Dick he ought to stick to it, and make me enforce it, but I said I should have to go if he did. The best horse out of his stable when a man died, and the best cow out of his field. When Dick understood what heriot meant he would not do it. He was always open-handed." Annette looked at the little church tolling its bell, and at the three firs gathered round it. "There is a place like this in The Magnet," she said. "That is why I seem to know it, though I've never seen it before. There ought to be a Vicarage just behind the firs, with a little garden enclosed from the bracken." "There is," said Roger, and then added, with gross ingratitude to its author, "I never thought much of The Magnet. I like the bits about the places, and he says things about dogs that are just right, and—robins. He's good on birds. But when it comes to people——!" Annette did not answer. It was not necessary. Roger was under way. "And yet," he added, with a tardy sense of justice, "Stirling's in some ways an understanding man. I never thought he'd have made allowance for old Betty Hesketh having the wood mania and breaking up his new fence, but he did. Such a fuss as Bartlet kicked up when he caught her at his wood-stack! Of course he caught her at it. Old folks can't[Pg 244] help it. They get wood mania when they're childish, if they've known the pinch of cold for too many years. And even if their sheds are full of wood—Betty has enough to last her lifetime—they'll go on picking and stealing. If they see it, they've got to have it. Only it isn't stealing. Mr. Stirling understood that. He said he'd known old ladies the same about china. But the people in his books!" Roger shook his head. "Didn't you like Jack and Hester in The Magnet! I got so fond of them." "I don't remember much about them. I dare say I should have liked them if I had felt they were real, but I never did. It's always the same in novels. When I start reading them I know beforehand everybody will talk so uncommonly well—not like——" "You and me," suggested Annette. "Well, not like me, anyhow. And not like Janey and the kind of people I know—except perhaps Black. He can say a lot." "I have felt that too," said Annette, "especially when the hero and heroine are talking. I think how splendidly they both do it, but I secretly feel all the time that if I had been in the heroine's place I never could have expressed myself so well, and behaved so exactly right, and understood everything so quickly. I know I should have been silent and stupid, and only seen what was the right thing to say several hours later, when I had gone home." [Pg 245] Roger looked obliquely at her with an approving eye. Here indeed was a kindred soul! "In The Magnet," he said, with a sudden confiding impulse, "the men do propose so well. Now in real life they don't. Poor beggars, they'd like to, but they can't. Most difficult thing, but you'd never guess it from The Magnet. Just look at Jack!—wasn't that his name?—how he reels it all out! Shows how much he cares. Says a lot of really good things—not copy-book, I will say that for him. Puts it uncommonly well about not being good enough for her, just as Mr. Stirling would himself if he were proposing. That's what I felt when I read it. Jack never would have had the nerve to say all that, but of course a clever chap like Mr. Stirling, sitting comfortably in his study, with lots of time and no woman to flurry him, could make it up." Annette did not answer. Perhaps she did not want to flurry him. "I could never say anything like that," said Roger, flicking a fly off Merrylegs' back, "but I might feel it. I do feel it, and more." "That is the only thing that matters," said Annette, with a tremor in her voice. "This is not the moment!" whispered Roger's bachelor instinct, in sudden panic at its imminent extinction. "I'd better wait till later in the afternoon," he assented cautiously to himself. "A dogcart's not the place." [Pg 246] They crossed the common, and drove through an ancient forest of oak and holly in which kings had hunted, and where the last wolf in England had been killed. And Roger told her of the great flood in the year of Waterloo, when the sea burst over the breakwater between Haliwater and Kirby, and carried away the old Hundred bridge, and forced the fishes into the forest, where his grandfather had seen them weeks afterwards sticking in the bushes. When they emerged once more into the open the homely landscape had changed. The blackberried hedges were gone, replaced by long lines of thin firs, marking the boundaries between the fields. Sea mews were wheeling and calling among the uncouth hummocked gorse, which crowded up on either side of the white poppy-edged road. There was salt in the air. Roger pointed with his whip. "The Rieben again," he said. But could this mighty river with its mile-wide water be indeed the Rieben? Just beyond it, close beside it, divided only by a narrow thong of shingle, lay the sea. And Roger told Annette how at Mendlesham Mill the Rieben had all but reached the sea, and then had turned aside and edged along, stubbornly, mile after mile, parallel with it, almost within a stone's throw of it. "But it never seems all to fall in and have done with it," he said, pointing to where it[Pg 247] melted away into the haze, still hugging the sea, but always with the thong of shingle stretched between. The Rieben skirting the sea, within sound of it, frustrated by its tides, brackish with its salt, but still apart, always reminded Roger of Lady Louisa. She too had drawn very near, but could not reach the merciful sea of death. A narrow ridge of aching life, arid as the high shingle barrier, constrained her, brackish month by month, from her only refuge. But Roger could no more have expressed such an idea in words than he could have knitted the cable-topped shooting-stockings which Janey made him, and which he had on at this moment. The carriage in front had stopped at a lonely homestead among the gorse. On a low knoll at a little distance fronting the marsh stood an old stone cross. Mrs. Stoddart and Mr. Stirling had already taken to their feet, and were climbing slowly through the gorse up the sandy path which led to the Holy Well. Roger and Annette left the dogcart and followed them. Presently Mr. Stirling gave Mrs. Stoddart his hand. Roger timidly offered his to Annette. She did not need it, but she took it. His shyness stood him in good stead. She had known bolder advances. Hand in hand, with beating hearts, they went, and as they walked the thin veil which hides[Pg 248] the enchanted land from lonely seekers was withdrawn. With awed eyes they saw "that new world which is the old" unfold itself before them, and smiled gravely at each other. The little pink convolvulus creeping in the thin grass made way for them. The wild St. John's wort held towards them its tiny golden stars. The sea mews, flapping slowly past with their feet hanging, cried them good luck; and the thyme clinging close as moss to the ground, sent them delicate greeting, "like dawn in Paradise." Annette forgot that a year ago she had for a few hours seen a mirage of this ecstasy before, and it had been but a mirage. She forgot that the day might not be far distant when this kindly man, this transfigured fellow-traveller, might leave her, when he who treated her now with reverence, delicate as the scent of the thyme, might not be willing to make her his wife, as that other man had not been willing. But how could she do otherwise than forget? For when our eyes are opened, and the promised land lies at our feet, the most faithless of us fear no desertion, the most treacherous no treachery, the coldest no inconstancy, the most callous no wound; much less guileless souls like poor unwise Annette. She had told Mrs. Stoddart that she would never trust anyone again, and then had trusted her implicitly. She had told herself that she would never love again, and she loved Roger. [Pg 249] A certain wisdom, not all of this world, could never be hers, as Mrs. Stoddart had said, but neither could caution, or distrust, or half-heartedness, or self-regard. Those thorny barricades against the tender feet of love would never be hers either. Ah, fortunate Annette! It seems, after all, as if some very simple, unsuspicious folk can do without wisdom, can well afford to leave it to us, who are neither simple nor trustful. Still hand in hand, they reached the shoulder of the low headland, and sat down on the sun-warmed, gossamer-threaded grass. The ground fell below their eyes to the long staked marsh-lands of the Rieben, steeped in a shimmer of haze. Somewhere, as in some other world, sheep-bells tinkled, mingled with the faint clamour of sea-birds on the misty flats. The pale river gleamed ethereal as the gleaming gossamer on the grass, and beyond it a sea of pearl was merged in a sky of pearl. Was anything real and tangible? Might not the whole vanish at a touch? They could not speak to each other. At last she whispered— "The sea is still there." She had thought as there was a new heaven and a new earth that there would be no more sea. But there it was. God had evidently changed His mind. A minute speck appeared upon it. [Pg 250] Roger pulled himself together. "That's the Harwich boat," he said, "or it may be one of Moy's coaling-ships. I rather think it is." He gazed with evident relish at the small puff of smoke. He experienced a certain relief in its advent, as one who descries a familiar face in a foreign crowd. He said he wished he had brought his glasses, as then he could have identified it. And he pointed out to her, far away in the mist, the crumbling headlands of the Suffolk coast, and the church tower of Dunwich, half lost in the sea haze, waiting for the next storm to engulf it. Recalled to a remembrance of their destination by the coal-boat, they rose and walked slowly on towards the old stone cross standing bluntly up against a great world of sky. Mr. Stirling and Mrs. Stoddart were sitting under it; and close at hand a spring bubbled up, which slipped amid tumbled stone and ling to a little pond, the margin fretted by the tiny feet of sheep, and then wavered towards the Rieben as circuitously as the Rieben wavered to the sea. There was nothing left of the anchorite's cell save scattered stones, and the shred of wall on which Mrs. Stoddart was sitting. But a disciple of Julian of Norwich had dwelt there once, Mr. Stirling told them, visited, so the legend went, by the deer of the forest when the moss on their horns fretted them, and by sick wolves with[Pg 251] thorns in their feet, and by bishops and princes and knights and coifed dames, with thorns in their souls. And she healed and comforted them all. And later on Queen Mary had raised the cross to mark the spot where the saint of the Catholic Church had lived, as some said close on a hundred years. "It is a pity there are no saints left nowadays," said Mr. Stirling, "to heal us poor sick wolves." "But there are," said Annette, as if involuntarily, "only we don't see them until we become sick wolves. Then we find them, and they take the thorn away." A baby-kite, all fluff, and innocent golden eyes, and callow hooked beak, flew down with long, unsteady wings to perch on the cross and preen itself. Presently a chiding mother's note summoned it away. Mr. Stirling watched it, and wondered whether the link between Mrs. Stoddart and Annette, which he saw was a very close one, had anything to do with some dark page of Annette's past. Had Mrs. Stoddart taken from her some rankling thorn?—healed some deep wound in her young life? He saw the elder woman's eyes looking with earnest scrutiny at Roger. "The girl believes in him, and the older woman doubts him," he said to himself. Annette's eyes followed a narrow track through the gorse towards a distant knoll with a clump of firs on it. "I should like to walk to the firs," she said. [Pg 252] Roger thought that an excellent idea, but he made no remark. Mr. Stirling at once said that it could easily be done if she were not afraid of a mile's walk. The knoll was farther than it looked. Mrs. Stoddart said that she felt unequal to it, and she and Mr. Stirling agreed to make their way back to the carriage, and to rejoin Roger and Annette at Mendlesham Mill. The little stream was company to them on their way, playing hide-and-seek with them, but presently Roger sternly said that they must part from it, as it showed a treacherous tendency to boggy ground, and they struck along an old broken causeway on the verge of the marsh, disturbing myriads of birds congregated on it. "Shall I do it now?" Roger said to himself. He made up his mind that he would speak when they reached the group of firs, now close at hand, with a low grey house huddled against them. He had never proposed before, but he stolidly supposed that if others could he could. The sun had gone in, and a faint chill breath stirred the air. "But where is the river gone to?" said Annette. Roger, who had been walking as in a dream, with his eyes glued to the firs, started. The river had disappeared. The sun came out again and shone instead on drifting billows of mist, like the clouds the angels sit on in the picture-books. "It is the sea roke," he said; "we must hurry." [Pg 253] "It won't reach Mrs. Stoddart, will it?" said Annette breathlessly, trying to keep up with his large stride. "Damp is so bad for her rheumatism." "She is all right," he said almost angrily. "They have wraps, and they are half-way home by now. It's my fault. I might have known, if I had had my wits about me, when Dunwich looked like that, the roke would come up with the tide." He took off his coat and put it on her. Then he drew her arm through his. "Now," he said peremptorily, "we've got to walk—hard." All in a moment the mist blotted out everything, and he stopped short instantly. "It will shift," he said doggedly. "We must wait till it shifts." He knew well the evil record of that quaggy ground, and of the gleaming, sheening flats—the ruthless oozy flats which tell no tales. The birds which had filled the air with their clamour were silent. There was no sound except the whisper everywhere of lapping water, water stealing in round them on all sides, almost beneath their feet. The sound meant nothing to Annette, but Roger frowned. The tide was coming in. "The roke will shift," he said again doggedly. And it did. The tawny clouds, yellow where the sun caught them, drifted past them and parted. They saw the homely earth beneath[Pg 254] their feet, the tiny pink convolvulus peering up at them. "Do you see that bunch of firs?" he said. "Yes." "Well, we've got to get there. We must run for it." They ran together towards it over the slippery sedge, and up the still more slippery turf. The sun came out brilliantly, and she laughed and would have slackened to look at the fantastic world sailing past her; but he urged her on, his hand gripping her elbow. And he was right. By the time they reached the trees they were in a dense white darkness, and the nearest fir whipped them across the face. Annette was frightened, and it was Roger's turn to laugh—a short, grim laugh, with considerable relief in it. "Ha! That's right," still holding her elbow tightly, and reaching out with the other hand. "We've fired into the brown and no mistake. Here's the middle tree. Two more this side. Then down. Mind your footing, and hold on to me." They slid down into a dry ditch—at least, Roger said it was dry. "And good luck, too," he said. "Made that ditch myself to carry off the snow-water. Awful lot of water off the bank in winter." He pulled her up the other side, and then stopped and felt about him. "The garden wall should be here," he said. "Empty house. Take shelter in it. Yes."[Pg 255] He groped, and met with resistance. "Here it is." They stumbled slowly along beside a wall. "Lot of nettles, I'm afraid. Sorry, but can't be helped," as they plunged into a grove of them. "Here we are." His hand was on an iron gate which gave and opened inwards. She felt a house rising close above them. Roger relinquished her, with many injunctions to stand still, and she heard his steps going away along a flagged path. Annette was not country-bred, and she had not that vague confidence in her mother earth which those who have played on her surface from childhood never lose in later life. She was alarmed to find herself alone, and she shivered a little in the dripping winding-sheet of the mist. She looked round her and then up. High in heaven a pale disk showed for a moment and was blotted out. The sun!—it was shining somewhere. And far away, in some other world, she heard a lark singing, singing, as it soared in the blue. A key in a lock turned, and a door close at hand grated on its hinges. "Wait till I light a match," said Roger's welcome voice. The match made a tawny blur the shape of a doorway, and she had time to reach it before it flickered out. Roger drew her into the house, and closed the door. <hr />[Pg 256] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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