She never forgot that scene. Julia's part in it gave it a most strange air to Eleanor; so did her own. Julia was moving about, quite at home, preparing cups of tea for everybody, herself included; and waiting upon Mr. Rhys with a steady care and affectionateness which evidently met with an affectionate return. The cottage room with its plain furniture – the little common blue cups in which the tea was served – the fire in the chimney on the coarse iron fire-dogs – the reclining figure on the couch, and her own riding-habit in the middle of the room; were all stereotyped on Eleanor's memory for ever. The tea refreshed her very much.
"How are you going to get home, Miss Powle?" asked her host. "Have you sent for a carriage?"
"No – I saw nobody to send – I can walk it quite well now," said Eleanor. And feeling that the time was come, she set down her tea-cup and came to bid her host good-bye; though she shrank from doing it. She gave him her hand again, but she had no words to speak.
"Good-bye," said he. "I am sorry I am not well enough to come and see you; I would take that liberty."
"And so I shall never see him again," thought Eleanor as she went out of the cottage; "and nobody will ever speak any more words to me of what I want to hear; and what will become of me! What chance shall I have very soon – what chance have I now – to attend to these things? to get right? and what chance would all these things have with Mr. Carlisle? I could manage my mother. What will become of me!"
Eleanor walked and thought, both hard, till she got past the village; finding herself alone, thought got the better of haste, and she threw herself down under a tree to collect some order and steadiness in her mind if possible before other interests and distractions broke in. She sat with her face buried in her hands a good while. And one conclusion Eleanor's thoughts came to; that there was a thing more needful than other things; and that she would hold that one thing first in her mind, and keep it first in her endeavours, and make all her arrangements accordingly. Eleanor was young and untried, but her mind had a tolerable back-bone of stiffness when once aroused to take action; her conclusion meant something. She rose up, then; looked to see how far down the sun was; and turning to pursue her walk vigorously – found Mr. Carlisle at her side. He was as much surprised as she.
"Why Eleanor! what are you doing here?"
"Trying to get home. I have been thrown from my pony."
"Thrown! where?"
"Away on the moor – I don't know where. I never was there before. I am not hurt."
"Then how come you here?"
"Walked here, sir."
"And where are your servants?"
"You forget. I am only Eleanor Powle – I do not go with a train after me."
But she was obliged to give an account of the whole affair.
"You must not go alone in that way again," said he decidedly. "Sit down again."
"Look where the sun is. I am going home," said Eleanor.
"Sit down. I am going to send for a carriage."
Eleanor protested, in vain. Mr. Carlisle sent his groom on to the Lodge with the message, and the heels of the horses were presently clattering in the distance. Eleanor stood still.
"I do not want rest," she insisted. "I am ready to walk home, and able.
I have been resting."
"How long?"
"A long while. I went into Mrs. Williams's cottage and rested there. I would rather go on."
He put her hand upon his arm and turned towards the Lodge, but permitted her after all to move only at the gentlest of rates.
"You will not go out in this way again?" he said; and the words were more an expression of his own will than an enquiry as to hers.
"There is no reason why I should not," Eleanor answered.
"I do not like that you should be walking over moors and taking shelter in cottages, without protection."
"I can protect myself. I know what is due to me."
"You must remember what is due to me," he said laughing, and stopping her lips when she would have replied. Eleanor walked along, silenced, and for the moment subdued. The wish was in her heart, to have let Mr. Carlisle know in some degree what bent her spirit was taking; to have given him some hint of what he must expect in her when she became his wife; she could not find how to do it. She could not see the way to begin. So far was Mr. Carlisle from the whole world of religious interests and concerns, that to introduce it to him seemed like bringing opposite poles together. She walked by his side very silent and doubtful. He thought she was tired; put her into the carriage with great tenderness when it came; and at parting from her in the evening desired her to go early to rest.
Eleanor was very little likely to do it. The bodily adventures of the day had left little trace, or little that was regarded; the mental journey had been much more lasting in its effects. That night there was a young moon, and Eleanor sat at her window, looking out into the shadowy indistinctness of the outer world, while she tried to resolve the confusion of her mind into something like visible order and definiteness. Two points were clear, and seemed to loom up larger and clearer the longer she thought about them; her supreme need of that which she had not, the faith and deliverance of religion; and the adverse influence and opposition of Mr. Carlisle in all the efforts she might make to secure or maintain it. And under all this lurked a thought that was like a serpent for its unrecognized coming and going and for the sting it left, – a wish that she could put off her marriage. No new thing in one way; Eleanor had never been willing it should be fixed for so early a day; nevertheless she had accepted and submitted to it, and become accustomed to the thought of it. Now repugnance started up anew and with fresh energy. She could hardly understand herself; her thoughts were a great turmoil; they went over and over some of the experiences of the day, with an aimless dwelling upon them; yet Eleanor was in general no dreamer. The words of Mr. Rhys, that had pierced her with a sense of duty and need – the looks, that even in the remembrance wrung her heart with their silent lesson-bearing – the sympathy testified for herself, which intensified all her own emotions, – and in contrast, the very tender and affectionate but supreme manner of Mr. Carlisle, in whose power she felt she was, – the alternation of these images and the thoughts they gave rise to, kept Eleanor at her window, until the young moon went down behind the western horizon and the night was dark with only stars. So dark she felt, and miserable; and over and over and over again her cry of that afternoon was re-echoed, – "What shall I do! what will become of me!"
Upon one thing she fixed. That Mr. Carlisle should know that he was not going to find a gay wife in her, but one whose mind was set upon somewhat else and upon another way of life. This would be very distasteful to him; and he should know it. How she would manage to let him know, Eleanor left to circumstances; but she went to bed with that point determined.
CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE BARN
"It hath been the longest night
That e'er I watched, and the most heaviest."
Good resolutions are sometimes excellent things, but they are susceptible of overturns. Eleanor's met with one.
She was sitting with Mr. Carlisle the very next day, in a disturbed mood of mind; for he and her mother had been laying plans and making dispositions with reference to her approaching marriage; plans and dispositions in which her voice was not asked, and in which matters were carried rapidly forward towards their consummation. Eleanor felt that bands and chains were getting multiplied round her, fastening her more and more in the possession of her captor, while her own mind was preparing what would be considered resistance to the authority thus secured. The sooner she spoke the better; but how to begin? She bent over her embroidery frame with cheeks that gradually grew burning hot. The soft wind that blew in from the open window at her side would not cool them. Mr. Carlisle came and sat down beside her.
"What does all this mean?" said he laughingly, drawing his finger softly over Eleanor's rich cheek.
"It's hot!" said Eleanor.
"Is it? I have the advantage of you. It is the perfection of a day to me."
"Eleanor," cried Julia, bounding in through the window, "Mr. Rhys is better to-day. He says so."
"Is he?" said Eleanor.
"Yes; you know how weak he was yesterday; he is not quite so weak to-day."
"Who is Mr. Rhys?" said Mr. Carlisle.
"O he is nice! Eleanor says nice rhymes to Rhys. Wasn't my tea nice, Eleanor? We had Miss Broadus to tea this afternoon. We had you yesterday and Miss Broadus to-day. I wonder who will come next."
"Is this a sick friend you have been visiting?" said Mr. Carlisle, as Julia ran off, having accomplished the discomfiture of her sister.
"No, not at all – only I stopped at Mrs. Williams' cottage to rest yesterday; and he lives there."
"You saw him?"
"Yes; Julia found me, and I could not help seeing him."
"But you took tea there, Eleanor? With whom?"
"I took tea with Julia and her sick friend. Why not? She was making a cup of tea for him and gave me one. I was very glad of it. There was no one else in the house."
"How is your sister allowed to do such things?"
"For a sick friend, Mr. Carlisle? I think it is well anybody's part to do such things."
"I think I will forbid embroidery frames at the Priory, if they are to keep me from seeing your eyes," said he, with one arm drawing her back from the frame and with the other hand taking her fingers from it, and looking into her face, but kissing her. "Now tell me, who is this gentleman?"
Eleanor was irritated; yet the assumption of authority, calm and proud as it was, had a mixture of tenderness which partly soothed her. The demand however was imperious. Eleanor answered.
"He was Alfred's tutor – you have seen him – he has been very ill all summer. He is a sick man, staying in the village."
"And what have you to do with such a person?"
"Nothing in the world! I stopped there to rest myself, because I was too tired to walk home."
He smiled at her kindling indignation, and gave her a kiss by way of forgiveness for it; then went on gravely.
"You have been to that cottage before, Eleanor?"
"Yes."
"How was that?"
"I went with Julia when she was carrying some refreshments to her sick friend. I will do that for anybody, Mr. Carlisle."
"Say that over again," he said calmly, but with a manner that shewed he would have it. And Eleanor could not resist.
"I would do that for anybody, Macintosh," she said gently, laying her hand upon his arm.
"No, darling. You shall send nurses and supplies to all the folk in the kingdom – if you will – but you shall pay such honour as this to nobody but me."
"Mr. Carlisle," said Eleanor rousing again, "if I am not worthy your trust, I am not fit to do either you or anybody else honour."
She had straightened herself up to face him as she said this, but it was mortifying to feel how little she could rouse him. He only drew her back into his arms, folding her close and kissing her again and again.
"You are naughty," he said, "but you are good. You are as sweet as a rose, Eleanor. My wife will obey me, in a few things, and she shall command me in all others. Darling, I wish you not to be seen in the village again alone. Let some one attend you, if I am not at hand."
He suffered her to return to her embroidery; but though Eleanor's heart beat and her cheek was flushed with contending feelings, she could not find a word to say. Her heart rebelled against the authority held over her; nevertheless it subdued her; she dared not bring her rebellion into open light. She shrank from that; and hid now in her own thoughts all the new revelations she had meant to draw forth for Mr. Carlisle's entertainment. Now was no time. In fact Eleanor's consciousness made her afraid that if she mentioned her religious purposes and uneasiness, this man's acuteness would catch at the connecting link between the new dereliction of duty and the former which had been just rebuked. That would lay her open to imputations and suspicions too dishonouring to be risked, and impossible to disprove, however false. She must hold her tongue for the present; and Eleanor worked on at her embroidery, her fingers pulling at it energetically, while feeling herself much more completely in another's power than it suited her nature to be. Somehow at this time the vision of Rythdale Priory was not the indemnification it had seemed to her before. Eleanor liked Mr. Carlisle, but she did not like to be governed by him; although with an odd inconsistency, it was that very power of government which formed part of his attraction. Certainly women are strange creatures. Meanwhile she tugged on at her work with a hot cheek and a divided mind, and a wisely silent tongue; and M. Carlisle sat by and made himself very busy with her, finding out ways of being both pleasant and useful. Finally he put a stop to the embroidery and engaged Eleanor in a game of chess with him; began to teach her how to play it, and succeeded in getting her thoroughly interested and diverted from her troublesome thoughts. They returned as soon as he left her.
"I can never speak to him about my religious feelings," mused Eleanor as she walked slowly to her own room, – "never! I almost think, if I did, he would find means to cheat me out of them, in spite of all my determinations – until it would be too late. What is to become of me? What a double part I shall play now – my heart all one way, my outer life all another. It must be so. I can shew these thoughts to no one. Will they live, shut up in the dark so?"
Mr. Rhys's words about "seeking" recurred to her. Eleanor did not know how, and felt strange. "I could follow his prayers, if I heard them," she said to herself; – "I do not know how to set about it. I suppose reading the Bible is good – that and good books."
And that Eleanor tried. Good books however were by and by given up; none that she had in the least suited her wants; only the Bible proved both a light and a power to her. It had a great fascination for Eleanor, and it sometimes made her hopeful; at any rate she persevered in reading it, through gloom and cheer; and her mind when she was alone knew much more of the former condition than of the latter. When not alone, she was in a whirl of other occupations and interests. The preparations for her marriage went on diligently; Eleanor saw it and knew it, and would not help though she could not hinder. But she was very far from happy. The style and title of Lady Rythdale had faded in her imagination; other honour and glory, though dimly seen, seemed more desirable to Eleanor now, and seemed endangered by this. She was very uneasy. She struggled between the remaining sense of pride, which sometimes arose to life, and this thought of something better; at other times she felt as if her marriage with Mr. Carlisle would doom her forever to go without any treasure but what an earthly coronet well lined with ermine might symbolize and ensure. Meanwhile weeks flew by; while Eleanor studied the Bible and sought for light in her solitary hours at night, and joined in all Mr. Carlisle's plans of gayety by day. September and October were both gone. November's short days begun. And when the days should be at the shortest – "Then," thought Eleanor, "my fate will be settled. Mr. Carlisle will have me; and I can never disobey him. I cannot now."
November reached the middle, and there wanted but little more than a month to the wedding-day. Eleanor sat one morning in her garden parlour, which a mild day made pleasant; working by the glass door. The old thought, "What will become of me!" was in her heart. A shadow darkened the door. Eleanor looked up, fearing to see Mr. Carlisle; it was her little sister Julia.
Julia opened the door and came in. "It is nice in the garden, Eleanor," she said. "The chrysanthemums are so beautiful as I never saw them – white and yellow and orange and rose-colour, and a hundred colours. They are beautiful, Eleanor."
"Yes."
"May I have a great bunch of them to take to Mr. Rhys?"
"Have what you like. I thought you used to take them without asking."
Julia looked serious.
"I wish I could go down to the village to-night, I know" – she said.
"To-night! What do you wish that for?"
"Because, Mr. Rhys is going to preach; and I do want to go so much; but I can't."
"Going to preach! – why is he so well as that?"
"He isn't well at all," said Julia, – "not what you would call well. But he says he is well. He is white and weak enough yet; and I don't think that is being well. He can't go to Lily Dale nor to Rythdale; so some of the people are coming to Wiglands."
"Where is he going to preach?"
"Where do you think? In Mr. Brooks's barn. They won't let him preach at the inn, and he can't have the church; and I do want to see how he can preach in the barn!"
Mr. Brooks was a well-to-do farmer, a tenant of the Rythdale estate, living near the road to the old priory and half a mile from the village of Wiglands. A consuming desire seized Eleanor to do as her little sister had said – hear Mr. Rhys preach. The desire was so violent that it half frightened her with the possibility of its fulfilment.
She told Julia that it was an absurd wish, and impracticable, and dismissed her; and then her whole mind focussed itself on Mr. Brooks's barn. Eleanor saw nothing else through the morning, whatever she was doing. It was impossible! yet it was a first, last, and only chance, perhaps in her life, of hearing the words of truth so spoken as she knew they would be in that place that night. Besides, she had a craving curiosity to know how they would be spoken. One month more, Eleanor once securely lodged in Rythdale Priory, and her chance of hearing any words whatever spoken in a barn, was over for ever; unless indeed she condescended to become an inspector of agricultural proceedings. Yet she said to herself over and over that she had no chance now; that her being present was a matter of wild impossibility; she said it and re-said it, and with every time a growing consciousness that impossibility should not stop her. At last impossibility shaped itself into a plan.
"I am going down to see Jane Lewis, mamma," was Eleanor's announcement at luncheon.
"To day, Eleanor?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"But Mr. Carlisle will be here, and he will not like it."
"He will have enough of me by and by, ma'am. I shall may be never have another chance of taking care of Jane. I know she wants to see me, and I am going to-day. And if she wants me very much, I shall stay all night; so you need not send."
"What will Mr. Carlisle say to all that?"
"He will say nothing to it, if you do not give him an opportunity, mamma. I am going, at all events."
"Eleanor, I am afraid you have almost too much independence, for one who is almost a married woman."
"Is independence a quality entirely given up, ma'am, when 'the ring is on'?"
"Certainly! I thought you knew that. You must make up your mind to it. You are a noble creature, Eleanor; but my comfort is that Mr. Carlisle will know how to manage you. I never could, to my satisfaction. I observe he has brought you in pretty well."
Eleanor left the room; and if the tide of her independence could have run higher, her mother's words would have furnished the necessary provocative.
Jane Lewis was a poor girl in the village; the daughter of one who had been Eleanor's nurse, and who now old and infirm, and unable to do much for herself or others, watched the declining days of her child without the power to give them much relief. Jane was dying with consumption. The other member of the family was the old father, still more helpless; past work and dependent on another child for all but the house they lived in. That, in earlier days, had been made their own. Eleanor was their best friend, and many a day, and night too, had been a sunbeam of comfort in the poor house. She now, when the day was far enough on its wane, provided herself with a little basket of grapes, ordered her pony, and rode swiftly down to the village; not without attendance this time, though confessing bitterly to herself the truth of her mother's allegations. At the cottage door she took the basket; ordered the pony should come for her next morning at eight o'clock, and went into the cottage; feeling as if she had for a little space turned her back upon troublesome people and things and made herself free. She went in softly, and was garrulously welcomed by her old nurse and her husband. It was so long since they had seen her! and she was going to be such a great lady! and they knew she would not forget them nevertheless. It was not flattery. It was true speech. Eleanor asked for Jane, and with her basket went on into the upper little room where the sick girl lay. There felt, when she had got above the ground floor, as if she was tolerably safe.
It was a little low room under the thatch, in which Eleanor now hid herself. A mere large closet of a room, though it boasted of a fireplace, happily. A small lattice under the shelving roof let in what it could of the light of a dying November day. The bed with its sick occupant, two chairs, a little table, and a bit of carpet on the floor, were all the light revealed. Eleanor's welcome here was also most sincere; less talkative, it was yet more glad than that given by the old couple down stairs; a light shone all over the pale face of the sick girl, and the weary eye kindled, at sight of her friend.
Extreme neatness was not the characteristic of this little low room, simply for want of able hands to ensure it. Eleanor's first work was to set Jane to eating grapes; her next, to put the place in tidy order. "Lady Rythdale shall be useful once more in her life," she thought. She brushed up the floor, swept the hearth, demolished cobwebs on the walls, and rubbed down the chairs. She had borrowed an apron and cap from old Mrs. Lewis. The sick girl watched her with eager eyes.
"I can't bear to see you a doing of that, Miss Eleanor," she exclaimed.
"Hush, Jane! Eat your grapes."
"You've a kind heart," said the girl sighing; "and it's good when them that has the power has the feelings."
"How are your nights now, Jane?"
"They're tedious – I lie awake so; and then I get coughing. I am always so glad to see the light come in the mornings! but it's long a coming now. I can't get nobody to hear me at night if I want anything."
"Do you often want something?"
"Times, I do. Times, I get out of wanting, because I can't have – and times I only want worse."
"What do you want, Jane?"
"Well, Miss Eleanor, – I conceit I want to see somebody. The nights is very long – and in the dark and by myself – I gets feared."
To Eleanor's dismay she perceived Jane was weeping.
"What in the world are you afraid of, Jane? I never saw you so before."
"'Tisn't of anything in this world, Miss Eleanor," said Jane. Her face was still covered with her hands, and the grapes neglected.
Eleanor was utterly confounded. Had Jane caught her feeling? or was this something else?
"Are you afraid of spirits, Jane?"
"No, Miss Eleanor."
"What is it, then? Jane, this is something new. I never saw you feeling so before."
"No, ma'am – and I didn't. But there come a gentleman to see me, ma'am."
"A gentleman to see you? What gentleman?"
"I don't know, Miss Eleanor; only he was tall, and pale-like, and black hair. He asked me if I was ready to die – and I said I didn't know what it was I wanted if I wasn't; and he told me – Oh, I know I'll never have rest no more!"
A burst of weeping followed these words. Eleanor felt as if a thunderbolt had broken at her feet; so terrible to her, in her own mood, was this revelation of a kindred feeling. She stood by the bedside, dismayed, shocked, a little disposed to echo Jane's despairing prophecy in her own case.
"Did he say no more to you, Jane?"
"Yes, Miss Eleanor, he did; and every word he said made me feel worser. His two eyes was like two swords going through me; and they went through me so softly, ma'am, I couldn't abear it. They killed me."
"But, Jane, he did not mean to kill you. What did he say?"
"I don't know, Miss Eleanor – he said a many things; but they only made me feel – how I ain't fit – "
There was no more talking. The words were broken off by sobs. Eleanor turned aside to the fire-place and began to make up the fire, in a blank confusion and distress; feeling, to use an Arabic phrase, as if the sky had fallen. She could give no comfort; she wanted it herself. The best she could think of, was the suggestion that the gentleman would come again, and that then he would make all things plain. Would he come while Eleanor was there, that afternoon? What a chance! But she remembered it was very unlikely. He was to preach in the evening; he would want to keep all his strength for that. And now the question arose, how should she get to the barn.
The first thing was to soothe Jane. Eleanor succeeded in doing that after a while. She made her a cup of tea and a piece of toast, and took some herself; and sat in the darkening light musing how she should do. One good thing was secure. She had not been followed up this afternoon, nor sent for home; both which disagreeables she had feared. Jane dozed, and she thought; and the twilight fell deeper and deeper.
There was after all only one way in which Eleanor could accomplish her desire; though she turned the matter all round in her head before she would see it, or determine upon adopting it. No mortal that she knew could be trusted with the secret – if she meant to have it remain a secret: and that at all costs was Eleanor's desire. Julia might have been trusted, but Julia could not have been brought along. Eleanor was alone. She thought, and trembled, and made up her mind.
The hour must be waited for when people from the village would be setting forth to go to Brooks' farm. It was dark then, except some light from the stars. Eleanor got out a bonnet of Jane's, which the owner would never use again; a close little straw bonnet; and tied over it a veil she had taken the precaution to bring. Her own hat and mantle she laid away out of sight, and wrapped round her instead a thick camlet cloak of the sick girl's, which enveloped her from head to feet. Pretty good disguise – thought Eleanor to herself. Mr. Carlisle would not find her out in this. But there was no danger of his seeing her. She was all ready to steal out; when she suddenly recollected that she might be missed, and the old people in terror make a hue and cry after her. That would not do. She stripped off the bonnet again and awoke the sleeping girl.
"Jane," she said bending over her, "I have somebody else to see – I am going out for a little while. I will be back and spend the night with you. Tell your mother to leave the door open for me, if she wishes to go to bed; and I will look after you. Now go to sleep again."
Without waiting for Jane to think about it, Eleanor slipped out, bonnet in hand, and went softly down stairs. The old man was already gone to bed in a little inner chamber; the old mother sat dozing by the fire. Standing behind her Eleanor put on the bonnet, and then gently opening the house door, with one step was in the road. A moment stood still; but the next moment set off with quick, hasty steps.
It was damp and dark; the stars were shining indeed, yet they shed but a glimmering and doubtful light upon Eleanor's doubtful proceeding. She knew it was such; her feet trembled and stumbled in her way, though that was as much with the fever of determination as with the hinderings of doubt. There was little occasion for bodily fear. People, she knew, would be going to the preaching, all along the way; she would not be alone either going or coming. Nevertheless it was dark, and she was where she had no business to be; and she hurried along rather nervously till she caught sight of one or two groups before her, evidently bent for the same place with herself. She slackened her footsteps then, so as to keep at a proper distance behind them, and felt that for the present she was secure. Yet, it was a wild, strange walk to Eleanor. Secure from personal harm she might be, and was, no doubt; but who could say what moral consequences might follow her proceeding. What if her mother knew it? what if Mr. Carlisle? Eleanor felt she was doing a very questionable thing; but the desire to do it on her part amounted to a necessity. She must hear these words that would be spoken in the barn to-night. They would be on the subject that of all others interested her, and spoken by the lips that of all others could alone speak to the purpose. So Eleanor felt; so was in some measure for her the truth; and amid all her sense of doubt and danger and inward trembling, there was a wild thrill of delight at accomplishing her object. She would hear – yes, she would hear – what Mr. Rhys had to say to the people that night. Nobody should ever know it; neither he nor others; but if they did, she would run all risks rather than be balked.
It was a walk never to be forgotten. Alone, though near people that knew not she was near; in the darkness of night; the stars shewing only the black forms of trees and hedgerows, and a line of what could not be called light, where the road ran; keeping in the shadow of the hedge and hurrying along over the undiscerned footway; – it was a novel experience for one who had been all her life so tended and sheltered as she. It was strange and disagreeable. Waymarks did not seem familiar; distances seemed long. Eleanor wished the walk would come to an end.
It did at last. The people, – there was a stream of them now pouring along the road, indeed so many that Eleanor was greatly surprised at them, – turned off into a field, within which at a few rods from the road stood the barn in question; at the door of which one or two lamps hung out shewed that something unusual was going on there. Mr. Brooks had several barns, the gables and roofs of which looked like a little settlement in the starlight, not far off; but this particular barn stood alone, and was probably known to the country people from former occasions; for they streamed towards it and filed in without any wavering or question. So Eleanor followed, trembling and wondering at herself; passed the curtain that hung at the door, and went in with the others.