CHAPTER IV
NO OBSTACLES
Hepworth returned after a time. Elisabeth still sat by the table. She had bent her head over her folded arms and still wept, but quietly, like a child that is worn out with pain. Hepworth went up to her and laid his hand lightly on her head.
"My poor lass!" he said. "My poor lass!"
At his touch Elisabeth gave over weeping. She raised her head and began to dry her tears. But she still remained sitting at the table and showed no disposition to go away. Hepworth crossed over to the fireside and stood there watching her.
"I wish I could do something to help you," he said, presently. "God knows I would if I could."
"And I'm sure of it, sir," said Elisabeth. "But it's no good. Nothing can help me—nothing. If I could only be satisfied—if I only knew that my poor boy was dead, I think I could rest, but I don't know it, and, oh, Mr. Hepworth, the feeling is a terrible one."
"Yes," he answered. "I think I know what you feel, Elisabeth. But—"
He paused unable to say more. He had been about to tell her to have faith in God that all would come right. Half-an-hour previously he would have used the conventional words with glib ease, never doubting them, but something in the story which she had told him made him desist. He found himself in some respects sharing Elisabeth's wondering doubt. Why were these things allowed? Why was wickedness permitted to work against the peace and well-being of the innocent? Why did the wicked man flourish as a green-bay tree, while the guiltless worked out his life in tears and sorrow? The thought of it stayed him from offering the formal consolations of religion to the woman before him. To do so would have seemed the right thing to him before that night—after listening to Elisabeth's story it appeared futile, even unfitting. And so he stood there watching her and could think of nothing to say.
Elisabeth rose at last and turned to Hepworth.
"It was kind of you, sir," she said, "to listen to what I've had to tell you. I think it's done me good—it's hard to carry secrets like that about, and you're the first person to hear of mine. Perhaps—"
She paused and looked at him doubtfully.
"What is it, Elisabeth?" he asked.
"I thought, sir, that perhaps, now you know my story, you—you wouldn't care—"
"I don't know what you mean," he said, looking at her in some astonishment.
"I mean that you may not like me to stay here," she said.
No—no!" said Hepworth. "Don't say that, Elisabeth, I shouldn't like you to think of me in that way. I want you to regard me as your friend. Would that be a friendly action? Come—come, don't talk like that."
"You're very kind, sir," she answered. "I'll serve you, Mr. Hepworth, faithfully, as long as you like to employ me."
"That will be as long as you like to stay, Elisabeth," he said.
He went across the room and held out his hand to her. She took it timidly, and looked at him with something of nervous shyness in her eyes. "Elisabeth," said Hepworth, still holding her hand, "I can't forget—what I told you to-night, you know. It's all true, that, aye, and more true now than it was when I first spoke. But, of course, it's no good now."
"No, sir," she answered in a low voice.
"I thought to be your lover," he said, "and in time your husband, Elisabeth. Oh, my dear, I love you as truly as ever a man loved a woman in this world. And now, as I can't be either husband or lover, let me be your friend, Elisabeth. Let me help you if I can. Will you?"
"Yes," she said. "I will. Why shouldn't I? There's no one else. You're all the friend I have."
"Good-night, Elisabeth," he said.
"Good-night, Mr. Hepworth," she answered.
He released her hand and she turned away. At the door she stopped and looked at him.
"I am grateful," she said, "and I wish—I wish for your sake that—that I could do what you wish,"
Then she disappeared and Hepworth was alone. He sat down by the dying fire and thought. Usually he smoked a pipe of tobacco before going to bed, but that night he forgot it and sat staring listlessly at the red ashes. It seemed to him that years had gone by since he said good-night to the last of his rustic guests. The last hour had seemed like years, and he felt, with a dim, vague consciousness, that its passage had been accompanied by the flight of something within himself that he had no power to define or to analyse. The man who now sat by the dying fire was not the man who had entered the room an hour previously. All his life had flowed with smooth purpose to that point, and there it had encountered new forces and had become—what? He tried to think what the events of the evening meant to him, but could decide nothing. All he knew was that he loved Elisabeth with a keen, strong, passionate devotion, and that her confidence in him had intensified that devotion ten-fold.
He sat while the fire died out and the parlour filled with gloom, still thinking. He recalled her voice, her manner, her attitude as she told him her story; he re-lived the moment when she burst into tears and he himself was seized with a fierce desire to take her into his arms and bid her sob out her sorrow on his breast. He had never loved her so much as at that moment, and he began to wonder why. But while he wondered, it never occurred to him that it was because of his great pity for her. He was unskilled in analysis of motive and character, despite his moody brooding over his own heart, and he had no thought within him of the foundations of his own love. It was enough for him that his heart had gone out to this particular woman.
Hepworth suddenly recalled the words which Elisabeth had spoken as she left the room. She had wished—for his sake—that she could do what he asked: he wondered if that meant that she would have married him if she had been free. He leaped at the notion as a drowning man at a passing straw. If she had been free?—might it not be that she was free? She had said that her husband might be alive or might be dead, and that if she only knew him to be dead, her mind would be at ease. And if her mind were at ease, why should she not eventually love him, Hepworth? He strode about the room, thinking it over, and at last went to bed, hopeful with new ideas. It seemed to him that his love was so great that nothing could stand in its way.
Upon the following day Hepworth detained Elisabeth in the parlour and spoke to her on the matter. He said that he was loth to re-open a subject so painful to her, but he had thought over her story and had come to the conclusion that it would be well for her peace of mind if she found out whether her husband were alive or dead.
"To live in doubt," he said, "must be terrible, Elisabeth; you said so, yourself, last night."
"Yes, sir," she answered; "but then I live in hope, too."
"Ah!" he said, "you are hoping that he will come back to you?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes—I am. But—oh! I'm afraid it's no use."
"Then why not find out all that you can?" he asked.
"I'm afraid to hear that—that he was killed," she said, "Sometimes I have a feeling that I shall see him again, and it gets so strong that I feel quite happy, and even light-hearted. And yet—I'm sure it's only because I wish that it could be so."
"Would it not be better for your peace of mind if you knew the worst or the best?" he said.
"The worst or the best?" she repeated. "Yes, sir, perhaps it would. But, oh! what if it's the worst, Mr. Hepworth, what if it's the worst?"
Hepworth said no more of the matter at that time, but after some days Elisabeth referred to it, and told him that she had been thinking it over, and had decided that it would be well to gain definite news if possible. Hepworth was secretly pleased that she should come to this decision. He felt that it might make matters plainer between them. After talking the matter over with Elisabeth, he wrote on her behalf to the governor of the convict prison in which her husband had been confined, and asked him for full information as to Verrell's fate.
Elisabeth passed the next few days in an anxious suspense which was fully shared in by Hepworth. At last she brought him his letters one morning with one lying uppermost which bore an official appearance. He looked from it to her face, and then gave it into her hands.
"Go away and read it," he said. "It's yours, Elisabeth. Tell me afterwards what news it contains."
Elisabeth came back after what seemed a long interval, during which he had sat staring at his untasted breakfast. He dare not lift his eyes when he heard her enter the room. She came to his side and laid the open letter before him.
"I know the worst now, sir," she said. "He is dead—there is no doubt."
She turned away and left the room. Hepworth read the letter, and knew why her voice had seemed so full of hopeless sorrow. The news it contained left no room for doubt. Elisabeth was free. He strode about the parlour thinking over it. Later he gave her the letter to keep, and from that time never mentioned it to her again.
The winter months went by, and at last the first faint tints of green appeared on the hedgerows, and spring came with new life. All that time Hepworth made no reference to his love, but at last he determined to speak once more. During the long days of winter time had gone for him with almost unobserved quickness—it dragged but yet hastened; circumstances seemed to pull it back, but love drove it forward, and at last Hepworth felt that he must speak all that was in his heart. Meeting Elisabeth one afternoon by the roadside outside the farmstead, he stopped her and asked her to marry him. "I will give all my life," he said, "to making you forget your sorrow. You shall be happy with me, Elisabeth."
She searched his face with earnest eyes, and then suddenly gave him her hand. "Yes," she said, "I can be happy with you; and I will try to love you."
Hepworth walked home with her. It seemed to him that a new world was opening with the new spring.