CHAPTER XXXVII.
A SUMMER AFTERNOON.
"Let it stay there a while," Murdoch had said. "I am not ready for it yet." And it staid there between the head-stone and the old stone wall covered with the long grass and closed in by it. He was not ready for it yet. The days were not long enough for him as it was. His mother and Christian rarely saw him, but at such times as they did each recognized in him a new look and understood it. He began to live a strange, excited life. Rachel Ffrench did nothing by halves. He was seen with her constantly. It continually happened that where she was invited he was invited also. He forgot that he dreaded to meet strangers and had always held aloof from crowds. There were no strangers now and no crowds; in any gathering there was only one presence and this was enough for him. When people would have cultivated him and drawn him out, he did not see their efforts; when men and women spoke to him they found that he scarcely heard them and that even as they talked he had unconsciously veered toward another point. He did things sometimes which made them stare at him.
"The fellow is like a ghost," a man said of him once.
The simile was not a bad one. He did not think of what he might be winning or losing—for the time being mere existence was all-sufficient. At night he scarcely slept at all. Often he got up and rambled over the country in the darkness, not knowing where he was going or why he walked. He went through the routine of the day in haste and impatience, doing more work than was necessary and frequently amazing those around him by losing his temper and missing his mark. Ffrench began to regard him with wonder. Divers things were a source of wonder to Ffrench, in these days. He understood Rachel less than ever and found her less satisfactory. He could not comprehend her motives. He had become accustomed to feeling that she always had a motive in the background, and he made the natural mistake of supposing that she had one now. But she had none. She had suddenly given way to a mysterious impulse which overmastered her and she let herself go, as it were. It did not matter to her that the time came when her course was discussed and marveled at; upon the whole, she felt a secret pleasure in defying public comment as usual, and going steadily in her own path.
She did strange things too. She began to go among the people who knew Murdoch best,—visiting the families of the men who worked under him, and leading them on to speak of him and his way of life. It cannot be said that the honest matrons she honored by her visits were very fond of her or exactly rejoiced when she appeared. They felt terribly out of place and awe-stricken when she sat down on their wooden chairs with her rich dress lying upon the pipe-clayed floors. Her beauty and her grandeur stunned them, however much they admired both.
"I tell yo' she's a lady," they said. "She knows nowt about poor folk, bless yo', but she's getten brass to gie away—an' she gies it wi'out making doment. I mun say it puts me out a bit to see her coom in, but she does na go out wi'out leavin' summat."
She made no pretense of bringing sympathy and consolation; she merely gave money, and money was an equivalent, and after all it was something of an event to have her carriage stop before the gate and to see her descend and enter in all her splendor. The general vague idea which prevailed was that she meant to be charitable after the manner of her order,—but that was a mistake too.
It happened at last that one day her carriage drew up before the house at whose window Murdoch's mother and Christian sat at work.
It was Saturday, and Janey Briarley, in her "cleanin' up" apparel opened the door for her.
"They're in th' parlor," she answered in reply to her question. "Art tha coom to see 'em?"
When she was ushered into the parlor in question, Mrs. Murdoch rose with her work in her hand; Christian rose also and stood in the shadow. They had never had a visitor before, and had not expected such a one as this.
They thought at first that she had come upon some errand, but she had not. She gave no reason for her presence other than she would have given in making any call of ceremony.
As she sat on the narrow sofa, she saw all the room and its meagerness,—its smallness, its scant, plain furnishing; its ugly carpet and walls; the straight, black dress of the older woman, the dark beauty of the girl who did not sit down but stood behind her chair, watching. This beauty was the only thing which relieved the monotony of the place, but it was the most grating thing she saw, to Rachel Ffrench. It roused within her a slow anger. She resented it and felt that she would like to revenge herself upon it quietly. She had merely meant to try the effect of these people and their surroundings upon herself as a fine experiment, but the effect was stronger than she had anticipated. When she went away Christian accompanied her to the door.
In the narrow passage Rachel Ffrench turned and looked at her—giving her a glance from head to foot.
"I think I have seen you before," she said.
"You know you have seen me," the girl answered.
"I have seen you on the Continent. Your apartment was opposite to ours in Paris—when you were with your mother. I used to watch the people go in and out. You are very like your mother."
And she left her, not looking back once,—as if there was no living creature behind, or as if she had forgotten that there was one.
Christian went back to the room within. She sat down but did not take up her work again.
"Do you know why she came?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"She came to look at us—to see what manner of people we were—to see how we lived—to measure the distance between our life and hers. As she went away," she went on, "she remembered that she had seen me before. She told me that I was very like my mother."
She leaned forward, her hands clasped palm to palm between her knees.
"There was a man who did my mother a great wrong once," she said. "They had loved each other in a mad sort of way for a long time, but in the end, I suppose, he got tired, for suddenly he went away. When he was gone, my mother did not speak of him and it was as if he had never lived, but she grew haggard and dreadful and lost her beauty. I was a little child and she took me with her and began to travel from one place to another. I did not know why at first, but I found out afterward. She was following him. She found him in Paris, at last, after two years. One foggy night she took me to a narrow street near one of the theaters, and after we got there I knew she was waiting for some one, because she walked to and fro between two of the street lamps dragging me by the hand. She walked so for half an hour, and then the man came, not knowing we were there. She went to him, dragging me with her, and when she stood in front of him, threw back her veil and let the light shine upon her. She lifted her hand and struck him—struck him full upon the face, panting for breath. 'I am a woman,' she said. 'I am a woman and I have struck you! Remember it to your last hour as I shall!' I thought that he would strike her back, but he did not. His hands fell at his sides, and he stood before her pale and helpless. I think it was even more terrible than she had meant it to be——"
Mrs. Murdoch stopped her, almost angrily.
"Why do you go back to it?" she demanded. "Why should you think of such a story now?"
"It came to me," she answered. "I was thinking that it is true that I am like her,—I bear a grudge such a long time, and it will not die out. It is her blood which is strong in me. She spoke the truth."
Early in the afternoon Rachel Ffrench, sauntering about the garden in the sun, saw Murdoch coming down the road toward the house,—not until he had first seen her, however. His eyes were fixed upon her when she turned, and it seemed as if he found it impossible to remove them, even for a breath's time. Since his glance had first caught the pale blue of her dress he had not once looked away from it. All the morning, in the midst of the smoke and din of the workrooms, he had been thinking of the hours to come. The rest of the day lay before him. The weather was dazzling; the heat of summer was in the air; the garden was ablaze with flowers whose brightness seemed never to have been there before; there was here and there the drone of a bee, and now and again a stir of leaves. The day before had been of another color and so might the morrow be, but to-day left nothing to be believed in except its own sun and beauty.
When at last he was quite near her, he seemed for a little while to see nothing but the faint pale blue of her dress. He never forgot it afterward, and never remembered it without a sense of summer heat and languor. He could not have told what he said to her, or if he at first spoke at all. Soon she began to move down the path and he followed her,—simply followed her,—stopping when she stopped to break a flower from its stem.
It was as she bent forward once that she told him of what she had done.
"This morning," she said, "I went to see your mother."
"She told me so," he answered.
She broke the stem of the flower and stood upright, holding it in her hand.
"You do not ask me why I went."
"Why?" he asked.
Their eyes met, and she was silent for a moment. Then she said, with perfect deliberateness:
"I have known nothing of the life you live. I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted—to bring it near."
He drew quite close to her, his face pale, his eyes burning.
"Near!" he repeated. "To bring it near. Do you—do you know what you have said?"
"To bring it near," she said again, with no less deliberateness than before, but with a strange softness.
Just for to-day, she had told herself, she would try the sensation of being swept onward by the stream. But she weighed herself as she spoke, and weighed him and his passion, and her power against its force.
But he came no closer to her. He did not attempt to touch even her hand or her dress. His own hands fell helplessly at his sides, and he stood still before her.
"Oh, God!" he said in a hushed voice, "How happy I am!"