Part 21 (1/2)

'We might help, if we understood one another, I have often fancied. I know something of your theories. I should much like to hear you some day on the scheme of the school in Switzerland, and also on the schoolmaster's profession. She whom we have lost was full of it, and spoke of it to me as much as her weakness would permit. The subject seemed to give her strength.'

'She has always encouraged me,' said Weyburn.' I have lost her, but I shall feel that she is not absent. She had ideas of her own about men and women.'

'Some she mentioned.'

'And about marriage?'

'That too.'

Aminta shook herself out of a sudden stupor.

'Her mind was very clear up to the last hour upon all the subjects interesting her son. She at one time regretted his not being a soldier, for the sake of his father's memory. Then she learned to think he could do more for the world as the schoolmaster. She said you can persuade.'

'We had our talks. She would have the reason, if she was to be won. I like no other kind of persuasion.'

'I long to talk over the future school with you. That is, to hear your plans.'

They were at the foot of the hill, in view of an inn announcing livery stables. She wished to walk the whole distance. He shook his head.

The fly was ready for her soon, and he begged to see her safe home. She refused, after taking her seat, but said: 'At any other time. We are old friends. You will really go through the ceremony of consulting me about the school?'

He replied: 'I am honoured.'

'Ah, not to me,' said Aminta. 'We will be the friends we--You will not be formal with me?--not from this day?'

She put out her hand. He took it gently. The dead who had drawn them together withheld a pressure. Holding the hand, he said: 'I shall crave leave of absence for some days.'

'I shall see you on the day,' said she. 'If it is your desire: I will send word.'

'We both mourn at heart. We should be in company. Adieu.'

Their hands fell apart. They looked. The old school time was in each mind. They saw it as a sh.o.r.e-bank in grey outline across morning mist.

Years were between; and there was a division of circ.u.mstance, more repelling than an abyss or the rush of deep wild waters.

Neither of them had regrets. Under their cloud, and with the grief they shared, they were as happy as two could be in recovering one another as friends.

On the day of the funeral Aminta drove to the spot where they had parted--she walked to the churchyard.

She followed the coffin to its gravel-heap, wis.h.i.+ng neither to see nor be seen, only that she might be so far attached to the remains of the dead; and the sense of blessedness she had in her bowed simplicity of feeling was as if the sainted dead had cleansed and anointed her.

When the sods had been cast on, the last word spoken, she walked her way back, happy in being alone, unnoticed. She was grateful to the chief mourner for letting her go as she had come. That helped her to her sense of purification, the haven out of the pa.s.sions, hardly less quiet than the repose into which the dear dead woman, his mother, had entered.

London lay beneath her. The might of the great hive hummed at the verge of her haven of peace without disturbing. There she had been what none had known of her: an ambitious girl, modest merely for lack of intrepidity; paralyzed by her masterful lord; aiming her highest at a gilt weatherc.o.c.k; and a disappointed creature, her breast a home of serpents; never herself. She thought and hoped she was herself now.

Alarm lest this might be another of her moods, victim of moods as she had latterly been, was a shadow armed with a dart playing round her to find the weak spot. It sprang from her acknowledged weakness of nature; and she cast about for how to keep it outside her and lean on a true though a small internal support. She struck at her desires, to sound them.

They were yesterday for love; partly for distinction, for a woman having beauty to s.h.i.+ne in the sphere of beauty; but chiefly to love and be loved, therefore to live. She had yesterday read letters of a man who broke a music from the word--about as much music as there is in a tuning--fork, yet it rang and lingered; and he was not the magical musician. Now those letters were as dust of the road. The sphere of beauty was a gla.s.s lamp-globe for delirious moths. She had changed.

Belief in the real change gave her full view of the compliant coward she had been.

Her heart a.s.sured her she had natural courage. She felt that it could be stubborn to resist a softness. Now she cared no more for the hackneyed musical word; friends.h.i.+p was her desire. If it is not life's poetry, it is a credible prose; a land of low undulations instead of Alps; beyond the terrors and the deceptions. And she could trust her friend: he who was a singular constancy. His mother had told her of his preserving letters of a girl he loved when at school; and of his journeys to an empty house at Dover. That was past; but, as the boy, so the man would be in sincerity of feeling trustworthy to the uttermost.