Chapter X: ‘two Souls May Sleep and Wake Up One.’

It was about a week after Mr. Pentreath had begun _Werther_, and he was now approaching the end of the story, when he came to the minister’s house at his usual hour, and found Cynthia sitting alone in the parlour. Naomi had a headache, and had gone up-stairs to lie down. It was not often that Joshua Haggard’s daughter gave way to any such feminine ailment, and it was a surprise to Oswald to find her absent. He had been riding among his farms all the morning, looking at ancient tiled roofs that had a tendency to subside in the middle; at barns and cart-sheds, with mouldering thatches and worm-eaten timbers; at enclosures of meadow-land, where primroses, cowslips, and wild hyacinths grew abundantly, but where the grass was sour for lack of draining.

‘I wanted her to rest on the sofa here,’ said Cynthia, ‘but she fancied she would be better in a darkened room. She has been looking ill for the last few days. I am sometimes afraid’--timidly, and with hesitation--‘that she is not quite happy.’

‘I am afraid we are none of us quite happy,’ answered Oswald, with an undisguised sigh.

Cynthia’s needle travelled to and fro with the usual rhythm. It seemed to Oswald as if it were some weary tune to which he was forced to listen.

‘Shall I go on with _Werther_?’ he asked presently, after he had looked at the stocks and carnations, and over them at the sleepy old inn, where the landlord stood in his porch and contemplated his neighbours, like an image of immutability. People who could remember Combhaven twenty years ago remembered just the same figure in the porch. It had grown a trifle more obese in the twenty years, that was all.

‘I would rather you waited till Naomi was well enough to hear the end,’ said Cynthia.

‘But are not you anxious to know what becomes of that unhappy wretch? Have you no pity for him?’ asked Oswald almost angrily.

‘I pity him for being so wretched,’ answered Cynthia; ‘but I think if he had been good, and wise, and brave, he would have gone far away where he would never have seen Charlotte any more. Instead of writing unhappy letters to his friend he would have prayed to God to help him, and fled from temptation.’

‘You will see that in the end he did go away--very far from Charlotte and temptation. But you have seen him in the heat of the battle: you will see him by and by a conqueror--or conquered--whichever you like to call it.’

‘Will you let me read the end for myself? You can read it aloud to us both when Naomi is better.’

‘No; you shall hear the end as you have heard the rest--from my lips.’

‘But Naomi--’ expostulated Cynthia.

‘I will read it again to Naomi. Why should I not read it to you this afternoon? You have been more interested in the story than Naomi.’

Cynthia made no further objection, but went on with her work silently. Oswald took his favourite seat by the open window, in the shadow of the chintz curtain, with the spicy odours of stocks and carnations floating in upon the sultry air. They had the room almost entirely to themselves. Aunt Judith came in and out two or three times in the afternoon on some small errand, and looked at the two with a curious expression in her sharp black eyes--a look which might have set Oswald thinking had he been observant enough to notice it. But he was deep in the sorrows of Werther, who was fast approaching his final agony, and Cynthia was listening as she had listened that other day in the wood, with her hands lying idle in her lap, and the glossy white linen she had been working upon crumpled in a heap under those idle hands.

‘Very nicely Joshua’s new shirts will get on at that rate, and she so eager to set about them,’ mused Judith as she went back to the shop, with close-locked lips; ‘to think that novel-reading and such abominations should flourish in my brother’s house. But what else could be expected of such a marriage? Lucky for Joshua if nothing worse comes of it.’

Oswald read on, in nowise disturbed by Miss Haggard’s entrance to look for an account-book in the bureau, or to get her thimble from the chimneypiece. He had come to that scene of abject passion--of self-abandonment and despair--when Werther, having resolved to put an end to his misery, comes in the winter evening to see his idol for the last time. Forgetful of herself for the moment, Charlotte reproaches him for coming. She shrinks from the idea of being alone with him, and recovers her self-possession with an effort. She seats herself at her harpsichord, and begins a minuet; then asks Werther to read to her his own translation of a part of Ossian, which he brought her a few days ago. Perhaps no scene in the wide range of sentimental fiction surpasses this in restrained power, in suppressed passion. Not a whisper, not a thought of impurity sullies the picture from the first line to the last: there is only a fatal, irresistible love.

‘She tore herself from him, and in hopeless bewilderment, trembling between love and anger, she cried, “This is the last time, Werther! You must see me no more!” And casting a look full of love upon the wretched one, she fled into the adjoining room, and shut the door behind her. Werther stretched out his arms after her, but dared not detain her. He lay upon the ground, his head on the sofa, and remained in this position for half an hour, until a sudden noise recalled him to himself. It was the servant, who came to lay the table. He walked up and down the room; and when he found himself alone again, went to Charlotte’s door, and called in a low voice, “Lotte, Lotte!--only one word--one farewell!” There was no answer. He waited, and knocked, and waited again; then tore himself away, crying, “Farewell, Lotte! Farewell for ever!”’

Cynthia sat listening with dilated eyes and hands tightly clasped, as if the whole scene were reality--as if she could see Werther there at her feet, grovelling on the ground. There stood the open harpsichord at which Charlotte had been playing. The vivid picture shaped itself before her eyes. The winter evening and home-like fire-lit room, the hopeless sinner lying there unpitied and alone, the suicide’s dark resolve in his mind; and Charlotte knew not his fatal intention. She refused him the poor comfort of a last farewell. No hand was stretched out to save him. It was too awful a picture.

Cynthia clasped her hands before her face, and burst into tears. In the next moment Oswald was on his knees beside her, trying to unclasp those small nervous hands.

‘You pity _him_,’ he cried passionately; ‘pity me, then, for I suffer as he suffered; I love as he loved, and yet have courage to live, and to go on fighting with an invincible passion--though I feel the struggle is vain--and to try to be happy with another; yes, to hold firmly to the tie which once promised happiness, and which now means only bondage. Pity me, Cynthia, pity _me_; not that poor shadow in the book, who lived and suffered, and is dead and at rest; for there was such a man. Pity me, Cynthia; for I have loved you, and have been fighting against that love ever since that sweet time before my father’s death, when you came to his sick-bed as an angel of mercy, and brought woe unutterable to me.’

He had poured forth his confession in a torrent of words not to be arrested by Cynthia’s choked sobs or look of horror, or the pleading gesture of her tremulous hands.

‘Oswald, how can you be so cruel?’

‘Cruel! Is it cruel to suffer, to be miserable, to know myself the worst and weakest of men, and to hate myself--as I do, Cynthia, from my soul? Do you think I have not struggled? Yes, and conquered myself, after a fashion. I am going to marry Naomi, and we are to be a happy couple,--as married couples go nowadays--happier than nine out of ten, perhaps; for, at least, I can admire and respect my wife; and I once believed I loved her, before I knew you and the hidden depths of my own heart, and the meaning of that word “love.” Yes, we are going to be vastly happy. The builders are doing wonders for our house; and we shall be thought much of and looked up to by the neighbourhood. I may keep a pack of hounds very likely by and by, and teach my wife to ride across country. I am not going to shoot myself, as Werther did.’

‘Why did you read that book to me?’ asked Cynthia, with a piteous accent that thrilled him. It sounded like an admission of weakness--a faint cry of despair.

‘Why?’ he cried, trying to take her hands in both his own. ‘Can’t you understand why? Because it is my own story; because it was my only way of telling you my love, and I burned to tell you. It was an irresistible longing. I could not keep silence any longer. Somehow, in some language, if not in plainest speech, I must tell you. And now bid me die, my Charlotte, and I will slay myself, like Werther. Only say to me, Life would be easier for all of us if thou wert dead, and I will not live another day to disturb your placid existence. I am your slave, dearest, your abject obedient slave!’

‘If you are,’ said Cynthia, trembling violently, and paler than the wood anemones she had gathered to deck the old Squire’s sick-room, ‘if you are, you will obey me. Never speak to me again as you have spoken to-day; forget that you have ever been so wicked. Ask your Saviour to give you a better heart, and respect my dear husband and his daughter.’

Before Oswald could answer honest Sally entered with the big mahogany tea-tray, knowing no more of the thundercloud of passion in the atmosphere than the maid who laid the supper in the story of Werther. Mr. Pentreath had risen from his knees to pace the room after that last speech of his, and there was no extraordinary picture offered to the eye of the handmaiden. Cynthia folded her work even more carefully than usual, but with hands that trembled sorely. She smoothed the white linen garment which had progressed so slightly towards completion this afternoon, and laid it in its allotted place, and took her stand by the window, watching for her husband’s return. She tried to seem at her ease, but not the faintest tinge of colour relieved the absolute pallor of her face. Strangely was that face changed from the radiant countenance that had welcomed Joshua Haggard at Penmoyle one little year ago.

Oswald walked up and down the parlour while Sally set out the homely feast--a big loaf in an iron tray, a brown butter-pot of Wedgewood’s ware, a dish of lettuce and overgrown radishes. Anon appeared Miss Haggard; and had either Oswald or Cynthia been in an observant mood, they might have remarked that the industrious Judith had not paid as much attention as usual to her afternoon toilet. The corkscrew curls were somewhat roughened, the large mosaic brooch, which she was wont to put on by way of evening dress, was missing.

‘I think I’ll go and have a look at the builders,’ said Oswald, taking up his hat. ‘I’ll come round again in the evening, perhaps, and see how Naomi is.’

No one attempted to hinder his going; so, after a brief adieu to the two ladies, he departed, leaving Werther lying on the little round table by the window. Cynthia took up the volume, and turned eagerly to the page at which he had left off reading.

‘Ah!’ sighed Miss Haggard, ‘that’s the worst of novel-reading. It grows upon people.’

Cynthia neither heeded nor heard. Her thoughts were with the suicide who was roaming bareheaded in the winter night, outside the gates of the little town, not knowing whither or how long he wandered.

Joshua came in while his wife was standing with the open book in her hand, absorbed, unconscious of his entrance.

‘Why, little one, how pale you are!’ he said, in that gentler tone which his voice assumed unwittingly whenever he spoke to his wife. ‘I missed your welcoming look as I came across the street.’

‘There’s too much novel-reading in this family,’ snapped Judith. ‘You mustn’t expect things to go on as they ought, if you let the young Squire bring bad books into your house.’

‘This is not a bad book!’ cried Cynthia indignantly. ‘It is a beautiful book!’

‘I say that it is a bad book!’ answered Judith fiercely. ‘And I’ve good reason to know it--a book that puts bad thoughts into people’s heads. Gainsay me if you dare, Mrs. Haggard!’

Cynthia’s white face turned from her dumbly. What did she guess--what had she overheard? Something assuredly. Deepest shame took possession of Joshua’s wife. She felt the burden of unspeakable guilt--she who was only the passive object of an unauthorised passion.

‘Why, Judith, Cynthia, what is this! Who would dare to bring a wicked book into my house; my son that is soon to be, above all? And if he were capable of doing such a shameful thing, would my wife read the book?’

‘It is not wicked,’ said Cynthia, handing him the offending _Werther_. ‘It is a story of sorrow--not wickedness. If stories are to be written at all, they must tell of sorrow--and human weakness, and sinfulness. Even the Bible tells us that life is made up of these.’

‘Very much so,’ remarked Judith. ‘There’s nothing the Bible says about human nature’s wickedness that human nature doesn’t faithfully carry out.’

Joshua took the book and glanced at it helplessly. He was not able to take a bird’s-eye view of plot and style, swoop upon a catchword here and there, and straightway made up his mind that the book was altogether vile, after the manner of certain modern critics. He turned the leaves thoughtfully, saw a story told in a series of letters, much talk of the beauties of Nature, a little philosophy, some mention of a country pastor and children--their innocent gambols in rustic gardens, their affection for a kind elder sister, bread-and-butter, village life, a pastoral air altogether: not a bad book assuredly, decided Joshua.

‘I do not think, my dear Judith, that you are a very acute judge of literature,’ he said mildly.

‘Perhaps not,’ assented Miss Haggard, with a faint moan. ‘But I hope I am a tolerable judge of human nature.’

‘I can trust my future son’s honour for not bringing any ill-chosen book into my house; and I can trust my wife’s purity well enough to know that it would revolt against anything evil.’

‘Nothing like trustfulness in this life,’ remarked Judith sententiously, as she took up the teapot.

Now a general proposition--indisputable in its nature though vague in its drift--flung out in this way, has a tendency to instil disquiet into the most tranquil mind. There was not much in the words, but the tone meant a great deal; most of all, a kind of scornful pity. It was like that remark of Iago’s anent Michael Cassio’s honesty--the plainest, most straightforward observation; yet dropping the poison seed of doubt into the heart of the listener.

Joshua Haggard looked at his sister’s pursed-up lips wonderingly, and then at his wife’s pale face, in which there was an expression that was new to him.

Great heavens! what did it mean? Not guilt; not the lightest taint of evil? No; he could never believe the faintest shadow of evil of his beloved--not even the most venial deceit, the smallest double-dealing. She was the purest of the pure--pure as the saintly damsels of old--the women who ministered to the apostles in the sweet early dawn of Christianity. He could admit her to be no less pure than these--as white a soul--unsullied by human frailty. He had preached the sinfulness of the human heart--it was the very keystone of his creed--a sinful humanity in need of being called and regenerated, chosen and purified, redeemed by a vicarious sacrifice. But here he was false to his own theology: he would not admit of original sin in this one pure soul. Love had issued his imperious edict, like a papal bull, and this one woman was to be without sin.

‘My love, you are trembling,’ said Joshua, taking his wife’s cold hand, after a long and earnest scrutiny of the pale sad face. ‘There must be something amiss in the book if it has agitated you so.’

‘It is a very sorrowful story,’ she faltered; ‘I could not help crying--at the end.’

‘Oswald must bring you no more books to make you unhappy. I heard you all laughing pleasantly one afternoon when he was reading some Scotch book about an old gentleman and a dog. He must bring you only pleasant books. In a world where there is so much real sorrow, it is foolish and even wrong to waste our tears upon story-books. That is one reason why I have always tried to keep such books out of my house.’

‘I will never read such stories again,’ said Cynthia earnestly. ‘Only tell me how to please you, and I will be obedient in all things.’

Judith sighed audibly. It was a way she had at times, and always exercised a depressing influence upon her family circle.

‘Is there anything wrong, Judith?’ inquired the minister.

‘No, brother; it’s only my chest.’

This was her invariable answer; but as medical science had never yet discovered anything amiss in this region--not so much as a brief attack of indigestion--the reply was generally accepted as a sort of formula, and her sighing was taken to mean something which Miss Haggard did not choose to communicate.

‘My dearest, you have always been obedient,’ said Joshua, pressing his wife’s little hand; ‘I have never been dissatisfied with you. But I do not like to see you low-spirited about a foolish book, written by some weak-minded German,’ said Joshua, with a sublime ignorance as to the pretentions of the great Wolfgang.

‘Try me with some hard thing,’ exclaimed Cynthia, with increasing earnestness; ‘put my gratitude and affection to the proof. Do I forget what you have done for me--how you saved me from heathen ignorance? how I owe you all that I am and all that I hope to be? _Could_ I be ungrateful to you, my benefactor and my deliverer?’

Had Judith Haggard been a student of Shakespeare, she would have here quoted Ophelia’s remark upon the Player-queen inwardly or audibly--

‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much!’

But as her sole notion of the poet was that he had been rather a low and loose-lived person who wrote plays, and glorified much drinking of sack and canary as a cardinal virtue, she relieved her feelings with another sigh, deeper than the last.

‘Don’t mind me, brother,’ she said; ‘it’s only my chest.’

Joshua neither heard the sigh nor the excuse; his eyes were fixed upon his wife’s white face, down which the gathering tears rolled slowly.

‘Ungrateful, my love!’ he cried; ‘have I ever claimed gratitude from you? My part has been to thank God for having given me so dear a companion. Only be happy, my darling; that is the sole obedience I ask from you. Let no foolish fancies out of books disturb your peace of mind. God has given us real happiness, dear; let us be thankful for it and value it, lest the cloud should come upon us because we have made light of the sunshine.’

He drew her to him and kissed her tenderly; and in that hour at least there was no shadow of distrust in his mind.