CHAPTER V
A quarter of an hour brought her into the High Street, and for want
of a more important errand she called at the harness-maker's for a
dog-collar that she required.
It happened to be market-day, and Nicholas, having postponed the
engagements which called him thither to keep the appointment with her
in the Sallows, rushed off at the end of the afternoon to attend to
them as well as he could. Arriving thus in a great hurry on account
of the lateness of the hour, he still retained the wild, amphibious
appearance which had marked him when he came up from the meadows to
her side--an exceptional condition of things which had scarcely ever
before occurred. When she crossed the pavement from the shop door,
the shopman bowing and escorting her to the carriage, Nicholas
chanced to be standing at the road-waggon office, talking to the
master of the waggons. There were a good many people about, and
those near paused and looked at her transit, in the full stroke of
the level October sun, which went under the brims of their hats, and
pierced through their button-holes. From the group she heard
murmured the words: 'Mrs. Nicholas Long.'
The unexpected remark, not without distinct satire in its tone, took
her so greatly by surprise that she was confounded. Nicholas was by
this time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet
perceived her. Influenced by her father's lecture, she felt angry
with him for being there and causing this awkwardness. Her notice of
him was therefore slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her
vexation at his presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat
down in her seat. Instead of catching his waiting eye, she
positively turned her head away.
A moment after she was sorry she had treated him so; but he was gone.
Reaching home she found on her dressing-table a note from her father.
The statement was brief:
I have considered and am of the same opinion. You must marry him.
He can leave home at once and travel as proposed. I have written to
him to this effect. I don't want any victuals, so don't wait dinner
for me.
Nicholas was the wrong kind of man to be blind to his Christine's
mortification, though he did not know its entire cause. He had
lately foreseen something of this sort as possible.
'It serves me right,' he thought, as he trotted homeward. 'It was
absurd--wicked of me to lead her on so. The sacrifice would have
been too great--too cruel!' And yet, though he thus took her part,
he flushed with indignation every time he said to himself, 'She is
ashamed of me!'
On the ridge which overlooked Froom-Everard he met a neighbour of
his--a stock-dealer--in his gig, and they drew rein and exchanged a
few words. A part of the dealer's conversation had much meaning for
Nicholas.
'I've had occasion to call on Squire Everard,' the former said; 'but
he couldn't see me on account of being quite knocked up at some bad
news he has heard.'
Nicholas rode on past Froom-Everard to Elsenford Farm, pondering. He
had new and startling matter for thought as soon as he got there.
The Squire's note had arrived. At first he could not credit its
import; then he saw further, took in the tone of the letter, saw the
writer's contempt behind the words, and understood that the letter
was written as by a man hemmed into a corner. Christine was
defiantly--insultingly--hurled at his head. He was accepted because
he was so despised.
And yet with what respect he had treated her and hers! Now he was
reminded of what an agricultural friend had said years ago, seeing
the eyes of Nicholas fixed on Christine as on an angel when she
passed: 'Better a little fire to warm 'ee than a great one to burn
'ee. No good can come of throwing your heart there.' He went into
the mead, sat down, and asked himself four questions:
1. How could she live near her acquaintance as his wife, even in his
absence, without suffering martyrdom from the stings of their
contempt?
2. Would not this entail total estrangement between Christine and
her family also, and her own consequent misery?
3. Must not such isolation extinguish her affection for him?
4. Supposing that her father rigged them out as colonists and sent
them off to America, was not the effect of such exile upon one of her
gentle nurture likely to be as the last?
In short, whatever they should embark in together would be cruelty to
her, and his death would be a relief. It would, indeed, in one
aspect be a relief to her now, if she were so ashamed of him as she
had appeared to be that day. Were he dead, this little episode with
him would fade away like a dream.
Mr. Everard was a good-hearted man at bottom, but to take his enraged
offer seriously was impossible. Obviously it was hotly made in his
first bitterness at what he had heard. The least thing that he could
do would be to go away and never trouble her more. To travel and
learn and come back in two years, as mapped out in their first
sanguine scheme, required a staunch heart on her side, if the
necessary expenditure of time and money were to be afterwards
justified; and it were folly to calculate on that when he had seen
to-day that her heart was failing her already. To travel and
disappear and not be heard of for many years would be a far more
independent stroke, and it would leave her entirely unfettered.
Perhaps he might rival in this kind the accomplished Mr. Bellston, of
whose journeyings he had heard so much.
He sat and sat, and the fog rose out of the river, enveloping him
like a fleece; first his feet and knees, then his arms and body, and
finally submerging his head. When he had come to a decision he went
up again into the homestead. He would be independent, if he died for
it, and he would free Christine. Exile was the only course. The
first step was to inform his uncle of his determination.
Two days later Nicholas was on the same spot in the mead, at almost
the same hour of eve. But there was no fog now; a blusterous autumn
wind had ousted the still, golden days and misty nights; and he was
going, full of purpose, in the opposite direction. When he had last
entered the mead he was an inhabitant of the Froom valley; in forty-
eight hours he had severed himself from that spot as completely as if
he had never belonged to it. All that appertained to him in the
Froom valley now was circumscribed by the portmanteau in his hand.
In making his preparations for departure he had unconsciously held a
faint, foolish hope that she would communicate with him and make up
their estrangement in some soft womanly way. But she had given no
signal, and it was too evident to him that her latest mood had grown
to be her fixed one, proving how well founded had been his impulse to
set her free.
He entered the Sallows, found his way in the dark to the garden-door
of the house, slipped under it a note to tell her of his departure,
and explaining its true reason to be a consciousness of her growing
feeling that he was an encumbrance and a humiliation. Of the
direction of his journey and of the date of his return he said
nothing.
His course now took him into the high road, which he pursued for some
miles in a north-easterly direction, still spinning the thread of sad
inferences, and asking himself why he should ever return. At
daybreak he stood on the hill above Shottsford-Forum, and awaited a
coach which passed about this time along that highway towards
Melchester and London.
