I am also caled No-more, Too-late, Farewell.
— DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
IT was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Tristram leaned on the stone balustrade that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was watching two distant figures, followed by a black dot, stroll away across the park. One of them seemed to drag himself unwillingly1. Mr. Tristram congratulated himself on the acumen2 which had led him to keep himself concealed3 until Doll and Hugh had started for Beaumere.
Sybell had announced at luncheon4, in the tone of one who observes a religious rite5, that she should rest till four o’clock, and would be ready to sit for the portrait of her upper lip at that hour.
It was only half-past two now. Mr. Tristram had planted himself exactly in front of Rachel’s windows, with his back to the house. “She will keep me waiting, but she will come out in time,” he said to himself, nervous and self-confident by turns, resting his head rather gracefully6 on his hand. His knowledge of womankind supported him like a life-belt, but it has been said that life-belts occasionally support their wearers upside down. Theories have been known to exhibit the same spiteful tendency towards those who place their trust in them.
“Of course, she has got to show me that she is offended with me,” he reflected, gazing steadily7 at the Welsh hills. “She would not have come out if I had asked her, but she will certainly come as I did not. I will give her half an hour.”
Rachel, meanwhile, was looking fixedly8 at Mr. Tristram from her bedroom window with that dispassionate scrutiny9 to avoid which the vainest would do well to take refuge in noisome10 caves.
“I wonder,” she said to herself, “whether Hester always saw him as I see him now. I believe she did.”
Rachel put on her hat and took up her gloves. “If this is really I, and that is really he, I had better go down and get it over,” she said to herself.
Mr. Tristram had given her half an hour. She appeared in the low stone doorway11 before the first five minutes of the allotted12 time had elapsed, and he gave a genuine start of surprise as he heard her step on the gravel13. His respect for her fell somewhat at this alacrity14.
“I have been waiting in the hope of seeing you,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation15. “I am anxious to have a serious conversation with you.”
“Certainly,” she said.
They walked along the terrace, and presently found themselves in the little coppice adjoining it. They sat down together on a wooden seat round an old cedar16, in the heart of the golden afternoon.
It was an afternoon the secret of which autumn and spring will never tell to winter and summer, when the wildest dreams of love might come true, when even the dead might come down and put warm lips to ours, and we should feel no surprise.
A kingfisher flashed across the open on his way back to the brook17 near at hand, fleeing from the still splendour of the sunfired woods where he was but a courtier, to the little winding18 world of grey stones and water, where he was a jewelled king.
When the kingfisher had left them tête-àtête Mr. Tristram found himself extremely awkwardly placed on the green bench. He felt that he had not sufficiently19 considered beforehand the peculiar20 difficulties which, in the language of the law, “had been imported into his case.”
Rachel sat beside him in silence. If it could be chronicled that sympathetic sorrow for her companion’s predicament was the principal feeling in her mind, she would have been an angel.
Mr. Tristram halted long between two opinions. At last he said brokenly:
“Can you forgive me?”
What woman, even in her white hair, even after a lifetime spent out of earshot, ever forgets the tone her lover’s voice takes when he is in trouble? Rachel softened21 instantly.
“I forgave you long ago,” she said gently.
Something indefinable in the clear full gaze that met his daunted22 him. He stared apprehensively23 at her. It seemed to him as if he were standing24 in cold and darkness, looking in through the windows of her untroubled eyes at the warm sunlit home which had once been his, when it had been exceeding well with him, but of which he had lost the key.
A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came sailing on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel’s knee.
“I was angry at first,” she said, her voice falling across the silence like another leaf. “And then after a time I forgave you. And later still, much later, I found out that you had never injured me — that I had nothing to forgive.”
He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained volubly — for here he felt he was on sure ground — that, on the contrary, she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an infernal blackguard, that men were coarse brutes25, not fit to kiss a good woman’s shoe latchet, &c. &c. He identified his conduct with that of the whole sex, without alluding26 to it as that of the individual Tristram. He made it clear that he did not claim to have behaved better than “most men.”
Rachel listened attentively27. “And I actually loved him,” she said to herself.
“But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her love raises a man, transfigures him, ennobles his whole life,” &c. &c.
“My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at the time,” said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were spoken.
Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last was the reproach he had been expecting.
He assured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once more. He denounced the accursed morals of the day above which he ought to have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all unmarried men.
“That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett,” she said scornfully to herself, and then her cheek blanched28 as she remembered that Hugh was not exempt29 after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient, but she waited quietly for the inevitable30 proposal.
Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic31 and facile utterance32, which the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, had become so entangled33 in the morals of the age, that it took him some time to extricate34 himself from the subject before he could pass on to plead in an impassioned manner the cause of the man, unworthy though he might be, who had long loved her, loved her now, and would always love her, in this world and the next.
It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had many. But if the proposal was long the refusal was longer. Rachel, who had a good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic35 life made great demands, that the true artist must live entirely36 for his art, that domestic life might prove a hindrance37. She had read somewhere that high hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished38 these objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have not seen them for a day or two.
Even when she was forced to become more explicit39 it was at first impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him devotedly40 could not at last prevail against the odious41 conviction that she was determined42 not to marry him.
“Then, in that case you never loved me?”
“I do not love you now.”
“You are determined not to marry?”
“On the contrary, I hope to do so.”
Rachel’s words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment that she hoped anything of the kind.
“You prefer some one else. That is the real truth.”
“I prefer several others.”
Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally43 with his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his docile44 pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence and she had learnt it.
“You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an aristocrat45 than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever his faults may be, loves you for yourself.”
Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied46 to a gentleman is as offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman?
Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly.
“That depends upon the fortune-hunter,” she said with that touch of hauteur47 which, when the vulgar have at last drawn48 it upon themselves by the insolence49 which is the underside of their courtesy, always has the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull.
In their own language they invariably “stand up to it.” Mr. Tristram stood up physically50 and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two rabbits to hurry back into their holes.
Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again. His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour51 of rank, now that her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He should have repudiated52 such an idea with scorn if he had not heard it from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she had chosen. It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions from him, and to bid her good-bye.
“We shall never meet again,” he said, holding her hand, and looking very much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He had read somewhere a little poem about “A Woman’s No,” which at the last moment meant “Yes.” And then there was another which chronicled how after several stanzas53 of upbraiding54 “we rushed into each other’s arms.” Both recurred55 to him now. He had often thought how true they were.
“I do not think we shall meet again,” said Rachel, who apparently56 had an unpoetic nature; “but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other and to our — former attachment57.”
“Well, good-bye.” He still held her hand. If she was not careful she would lose him.
“Good-bye.”
“You understand it is for always?”
“I do.”
He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she really let him go?
“I am not the kind of man to be whistled back,” he said fiercely. It was an appeal and a defiance58, for he was just the kind of man, and they both knew it.
“Of course not.”
“That is your last word?”
“My last word.”
He dropped her hand, and half turned to go.
She made no sign.
Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind him. At the little gate he stopped a moment listening intently. No recalling voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were talking about. With a trembling hand he slammed the gate and departed.
Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long that the stooping sun found out the solemn outstretched arms of the cedar, and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle’s wing. Each little twig59 and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold against the twilight60 that lurked61 beneath the heavy boughs62.
She sat so still that a squirrel came tip-toeing across the moss63, and struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her, first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek64 head, with the other, and decided65 that she was harmless.
Presently a robin66 dropped down close to her, flashing up his grey underwing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, and from its sun-stirred depths said his say.
The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons when the shadows are lengthening67 he sings sadness into your heart. If you are joyful68 shut your ears against him, for you may keep peace but never joy while he is singing. He knows all about it, “love’s labour lost,” the grey face of young Love dead, the hard-wrought grave in the live rock where he is buried. And he tells of it again, and again and again, as if Love’s sharp sword had indeed reddened his little breast, until the heart aches to hear him. But he tells also that consolation69 is folded not in forgetfulness, but in remembrance. That is why he sings in the silence of the autumn dawn, before memory closes her eyes, and again near sunset, when memory wakes.
Still Rachel sat motionless.
She had laboured with dumb unreasoning passion to forget, as a man works his hand to the bone night after night, week after week, month after month, to file through the bars of his prison. She found at last that forgetfulness came not of prayer and fasting: that it was not in her to forget. The past had seemed to stretch its cruel desecrating70 hand over all the future, cutting her off from the possibility of love and marriage, and from the children whom in dreams she held in her arms. As she had said to Hester, she thought she “had nothing left to give.”
But now the dead past had risen from its grave in her meeting with her former lover, and in a moment, in two short days and wakeful nights, the past relinquished71 its false claim upon her life. She saw that it was false, that she had been frightened where no fear was, that her deliverance lay in remembrance itself, not in the handcuffs with which until now she had bound her deliverer.
Mr. Tristram had come back into her life, and with his own hands had destroyed the overthrown72 image of himself, which lay like a barrier across her heart. He had replaced it by an accurate presentment of himself as he really was.
“Only that which is replaced is destroyed,” and it is often our real self in its native rags, and not as we jealously imagine another king in richer purple who has replaced us in the throne-room of the heart that loved us. To the end of life Rachel never forgot Mr. Tristram, any more than the amber73 forgets its fly. But she was vaguely74 conscious as he left her that he had set her free. She listened to his retreating step hardly daring to breathe. It was too good to be true. At last there was dead silence. No echo of a footfall. Quite gone. He had departed not only out of her presence but out of her life.
She breathed again. A tremor75 like that which shakes the first green leaf against the March sky stole across her crushed heart, empty at last, empty at last. She raised her hand timidly in the sunshine. She was free. She looked round dazzled, bewildered. The little world of sunshine and the turquoises76 of sky strewn among the golden network of the trees smiled at her, as one who brings good tidings.
A certain familiar hold on life and nature, so old that it was almost new, which she had forgotten, but which her former self used to feel, came back suddenly upon her like a lost friend from over seas. Scales seemed to fall from her eyes. The light was too much for her. She had forgotten how beautiful the world was. Everything was possible.
Some in the night of their desolation can take comfort when they see the morning star shuddering77 white in the east, and can say “Courage, the day is at hand.”
But others never realise that their night is over till the sun is up. Rachel had sat in a long stupor78. The message writ79 large for her comfort in the stars that the night was surely waning80 had not reached her, bowed as she thought beneath God’s hand. And the sure return of the sun at last came upon her like a miracle.
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1
unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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acumen
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| n.敏锐，聪明 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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rite
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| n.典礼，惯例，习俗 | |
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6
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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7
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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9
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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10
noisome
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| adj.有害的，可厌的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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17
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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18
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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19
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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20
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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21
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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22
daunted
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| 使（某人）气馁，威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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alluding
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| 提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 ) | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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28
blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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29
exempt
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| adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者 | |
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30
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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33
entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
extricate
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| v.拯救，救出；解脱 | |
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35
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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36
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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hindrance
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| n.妨碍，障碍 | |
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38
demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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39
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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40
devotedly
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| 专心地； 恩爱地； 忠实地； 一心一意地 | |
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41
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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tally
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| n.计数器，记分，一致，测量；vt.计算，记录，使一致；vi.计算，记分，一致 | |
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44
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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45
aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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46
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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hauteur
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| n.傲慢 | |
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48
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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49
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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50
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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51
glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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52
repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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53
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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54
upbraiding
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| adj.& n.谴责（的）v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的现在分词 ) | |
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55
recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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56
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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57
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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58
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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59
twig
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| n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解 | |
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60
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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61
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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62
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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63
moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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64
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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65
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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66
robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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67
lengthening
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的现在分词 )； 加长 | |
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68
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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69
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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70
desecrating
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的现在分词 ) | |
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71
relinquished
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| 交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃 | |
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72
overthrown
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| adj. 打翻的，推倒的，倾覆的 动词overthrow的过去分词 | |
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73
amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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74
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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75
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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76
turquoises
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| n.绿松石( turquoise的名词复数 )；青绿色 | |
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77
shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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78
stupor
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| v.昏迷；不省人事 | |
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79
writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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80
waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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