Chapter III: ‘we Two Stood There with Never a Third.’

In the sultry August afternoon--earth glorious in the full power of the sunshine--Oswald Pentreath went up to Matcherly Common. It was a long walk and a hot one, but in this land of beauty there were many welcome spots of shade--cool lanes shadowed by tangled greenery, natural arcades of oak and hawthorn, wild apple and elderberry, from which he could look out on the glittering sea, almost intolerable in its sunlit splendour. There was the wood to cross; a deep and cool retreat, where interwoven boughs made summer days seem a perpetual evensong. Only here and there stole a shaft of vivid light through the beechen branches; while now and then the ruddy fur of a squirrel shot like a flash of colour through the gloom.

Oswald walked slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, giving himself up to the soft influence of the scene and hour, and thinking of Cynthia.

Would she grant his prayer? Would she meet him? Love and hope said yes; and the thought of the meeting was rapture, though despair lay beyond it. He was to die to-night--or at least all of him that made life worth having--but he was to be happy first; happy for the brief span of time in which he could hold her in his arms and press one kiss upon her innocent brow, and bless her and leave her.

The thought that his letter might reach the wrong hands had not occurred to him. He had seen Cynthia sitting in the wilderness, and had thrown his letter almost at her feet; Jim’s approach had made him retreat suddenly, but it had never struck him that Cynthia might not see the letter, and that Jim might.

The common was on high ground rising above the wood--a broad tract of undulating land clothed with furze, and with a pool of water here and there, just like that stretch of heath, far away, where Joshua Haggard had found his second wife. The mines, whose deserted shafts disfigured this billowy expanse of golden bloom, had not been worked since Watt first applied steam to mining. They had yielded well enough in their day, had made some men rich and ruined others; and there stood the dilapidated engine-houses with their tall chimneys, wide apart across the common, like sentinel towers on the coast of a golden sea.

Cynthia was there. Oswald found her sitting on a yellow bank at the base of the abandoned shaft, sitting with a book open in her lap, trying to read. She started up, as he came towards her, with a frightened look, as if his coming had been a surprise to her, and stood before him very pale, with clasped hands.

‘Dearest, best, how shall I thank you!’ he cried, taking her hands and kissing them in a rapture of gratitude.

‘Do not thank me at all, Oswald; indeed, I am afraid I have done very wrong in coming; you ought not to have asked me, you ought never to have come back to Combhaven, unless it was in your heart to be true to Naomi. O Oswald, why can you not love her as she deserves to be loved, as you did once love her? She is so good, so noble, like my dear husband in all high thoughts. Why cannot your heart come back to her? Why should we all be miserable because you are inconstant?’

The poor little soul had come here to say this. She had come with a clear and honest purpose in her mind--come to bring the wanderer back to the path of duty.

‘Can a man help his fate?’ said Oswald gloomily. ‘It is my fate to love you. I shall love you till I die. But don’t be frightened, Cynthia; I will be the cause of misery to none of you. I am going to America; my mind is quite made up on that point.’

‘And you will break Naomi’s heart. If you could see the change in her since you left us you could not help being sorry.’

‘I am sorry. My soul is sick with sorrow. But my heart cannot go back to Naomi. It never was hers. I never knew what love meant till I loved you. I made the fatal error of mistaking affection for love. I am sorry for her; sorry that I have wronged so noble a creature; sorry for the loss of that peaceful life which I once thought to share with her. But I cannot go back. You might as well ask me to be a child again. The star of my manhood shone upon me when I saw you.’

‘I wish I were wiser,’ said Cynthia sadly; ‘I wish I could speak as I feel I ought to speak; I might convince you then, perhaps.’

‘Not if you had the eloquence of Brougham and the wisdom of Bacon. Naomi and I are parted for ever, dearest, and at her own desire. It is best that it should be so. Providence has been good to me in loosening a bond that would have made two lives miserable.’

And then he said no more about Naomi, but began to talk of himself, and love, and fate, and parting, and despair. Foolish words that have been said so often, empty breath for the most part, bearing no result upon this earth save idle sorrow and wasted tears, yet which mean so much for the speaker and the one who listens. Cynthia had come there to hear no such passionate complaints and protestations. She had come intent upon delivering her pious lecture, talking to him of grace and redemption, and the sacred stream which washes away all sin, and winning him back to duty and Naomi. Yet she lingered and heard him. It was the last time. They were parting for ever. Who should blame them for this one half-hour, which would stand hereafter like a chasm in the life of each, dividing youth and passion from sober age and duty? It could matter to no one that they had met thus, and thus parted.

‘You will try to lead a good life?’ pleaded Cynthia, when Oswald had told his pitiful story--told how he had honestly striven to forget her, and had failed; ‘you will cling to the cross? O, let me think when you are far away, across that wide cruel sea, that your soul is safe, that you are one of the elect, that I shall meet you where the seas are jasper, and the glory of the Lamb lights the shining streets! You will try to be good, Oswald? Promise me that!’

‘I would wear raiment of camel’s-hair and a hempen girdle for your sake, dearest.’

‘You will go to chapel--church is so cold and dull; it has no awakening power, it does not call the lost home? You will seek out some stirring preacher like Joshua, and let him lead you to the sheltering rock, and you will drink the living water and be saved?’

Oswald looked down at the fair young face lifted to his with such utter earnestness, not one thought of earth in the pleading soul; only thorough and implicit belief in something higher and better than earth, a prize to be struggled for and won. In that Greek race in which the runners carried lighted lamps in their hands, they were the winners who reached the goal with their lamps still burning. So in the Christian race, the light once quenched there is but little hope for the runner. It might be safely said of Cynthia, as she looked up at her lover with innocent eyes, charging him to be thoughtful for eternity, that her lamp still burned with purest light.

Oswald looked down at her through a mist of tears.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for your sake I will try to make myself fit for heaven. I have been careless of these things. I meant to let Naomi make me a Christian, but she was to have had all the trouble. But for your sake, to meet you hereafter in a fairer world, to see this dear face again shining amidst the angel-faces, I will struggle, I will strive to make my life worthier and better.’

‘God bless and comfort you, and establish you in well-doing!’ said Cynthia. ‘And now good-bye. I must not stay a moment longer; I have been too long already.’

She looked at her watch. Four o’clock, and she had three miles to walk before five. There would be much astonishment and questioning if she was not punctual in her appearance at the tea-table.

‘You will let me walk through the wood with you?’

‘No; what would be the use? I have said all I had to say. It would only make us more unhappy.’

‘It would give us one more hour together,’ said Oswald; ‘an hour in paradise.’

‘The Christian’s paradise is to be reached by thornier paths than those through Matcherly Wood,’ answered Cynthia, with a reproving air. ‘Good-bye, Oswald.’

Her earnestness dominated him, weak and childish as she looked, with the fair hair clustering in baby curls under the shady cottage-bonnet. Very soft and gentle, but very firm at the same time, she seemed, in her simple straightforwardness of purpose; and Oswald obeyed her.

‘Since it must be so, then, good-bye,’ he said gloomily. ‘I promised that I would be content with a brief farewell, such as condemned criminals have. You have given me a little sermon into the bargain. I ought to be more than satisfied. Farewell, my best beloved; the seas will roll between us soon, and there will be nothing left for me but the picture and memory of to-day; nothing but the dreams that haunt my pillow--the sweet unreal presence of her I love.’

He took her to his breast, she having no more force to resist those circling arms than a lily to recoil from the hand that gathers it; took her gently and solemnly to his heart, and pressed his lips on her forehead. It was a long and fervent kiss; but if there was passion in it, that passion was no base or sensual feeling; only the passion of a great love and a deep despair.

‘Bless you, my darling!’ he cried. ‘God bless you and guard you, and make all days and paths pleasant and peaceful for you when I am far away!’

And so they parted--for ever. Unhappily, there was one who saw the lingering meeting, the fond embrace, the fervent kiss, but could not hear the words that went with them.