Volume Iii Part 16 (1/2)
Perhaps she loved him still? Perhaps the remembrance of him had called the guilty blush to her cheek? ”Ah! if it is so!” he cried with angry vehemence, ”he shall die. I will be revenged!”
”Vengeance! who talks of vengeance?” said a voice near, and, looking up, he saw Goody Grey leaning on her staff. Involuntarily he tendered her some halfpence.
”I want them not,” she said. ”It does not do for the blind to lead the blind.”
”What mean you, woman? I am in no mood to be trifled with.”
”Don't I know that?” she replied; ”don't I know the bitterness of the heart? Do you think I have lived all these years and don't know where misery lies?”
”Where does it lie?” he asked.
”In your heart. Where it wouldn't have been if you hadn't been there;”
and she pointed in the direction of the Hall. ”'Tis a gay meeting, and may be as sad a parting.”
”Why so?” asked he again.
”Do the hawk and dove agree together in the same nest?”
”The dove would stand but a poor chance,” said Robert.
”True.” She turned upon her heel and went into the cottage, and seating herself in a low chair, began rocking it backwards and forwards, singing, in a kind of low, monotonous chant,
”When the leaves from the trees begin to fall Then the curse hangs darkly over the Hall.”
”That must be now, then,” said Robert, who had followed her in, ”for the leaves are falling thick enough and fast enough in the wood.”
”Darker and darker as the leaves fall thicker,” she replied, ”and darkest of all when they are on the ground, and the trees bare.”
”What will happen then?”
”Ask your own heart: hasn't it anger, hatred, and despair in it? Did I not hear you call aloud for vengeance?”
”And what good can come of it?” continued she, seeing he made no reply; ”like you, I've had all that in my heart, until curses loud and bitter have followed one after another, heaped on those who injured me, and yet I'm as far off from happiness as ever. I began to seek it when I was a young woman, and look! my hair is grey, and yet I have not found it; while the fierce anger, the strong will to return evil for evil, have faded from my spirit like the slow whitening of these grey hairs.
There's only despair now, and hatred for those, for _her_ who did me wrong.”
”Do we all hate as mercilessly as this? I feel that a look, a word of love would turn my heart from bitterness.”
”Then the injury has not been deep. I've lived here a lonely woman twenty years, and a look, a word, will sometimes call the fierce blood to my heart. When the injury is eternal and irremediable then the hate must be lasting too.”
”The injured heart may forgive,” said Vavasour.
”It may forgive. But forget its hate! its wrongs! its despair! Never, never,” said she, fiercely.
”It may be so,” said Robert, half aloud.
”May be so? It is so. Hate is a deadly enemy; don't let it creep into your heart; tear it out! cast it from you! for once you have it, it is yours for ever; even death cannot part it from you.”
”I doubt that. We know that even a dying sinner's heart may repent and be softened; the thought that he is peris.h.i.+ng from the earth nursing a deadly sin at his heart would do much; he would never dare die so.”
”Prayers, the pleadings of an agonised, breaking heart may be vain--in vain--was vain, young man, for I tried it,” replied Goody Grey, her voice suddenly changing from fierceness to mournful sadness.