At the moment of his departure a telegram was handed to him--a few
words from his mother, stating that they were glad to know his
address, and informing him that his brother Cuthbert had proposed to
and been accepted by Mercy Chant.
Clare crumpled up the paper and followed the route to the station;
reaching it, he found that there would be no train leaving for an
hour and more. He sat down to wait, and having waited a quarter of
an hour felt that he could wait there no longer. Broken in heart and
numbed, he had nothing to hurry for; but he wished to get out of a
town which had been the scene of such an experience, and turned to
walk to the first station onward, and let the train pick him up
there.
The highway that he followed was open, and at a little distance
dipped into a valley, across which it could be seen running from edge
to edge. He had traversed the greater part of this depression, and
was climbing the western acclivity when, pausing for breath, he
unconsciously looked back. Why he did so he could not say, but
something seemed to impel him to the act. The tape-like surface of
the road diminished in his rear as far as he could see, and as he
gazed a moving spot intruded on the white vacuity of its perspective.
It was a human figure running. Clare waited, with a dim sense that
somebody was trying to overtake him.
The form descending the incline was a woman's, yet so entirely was
his mind blinded to the idea of his wife's following him that even
when she came nearer he did not recognize her under the totally
changed attire in which he now beheld her. It was not till she was
quite close that he could believe her to be Tess.
'I saw you--turn away from the station--just before I got there--and
I have been following you all this way!'
She was so pale, so breathless, so quivering in every muscle, that he
did not ask her a single question, but seizing her hand, and pulling
it within his arm, he led her along. To avoid meeting any possible
wayfarers he left the high road and took a footpath under some
fir-trees. When they were deep among the moaning boughs he stopped
and looked at her inquiringly.
'Angel,' she said, as if waiting for this, 'do you know what I have
been running after you for? To tell you that I have killed him!'
A pitiful white smile lit her face as she spoke.
'What!' said he, thinking from the strangeness of her manner that she
was in some delirium.
'I have done it--I don't know how,' she continued. 'Still, I owed it
to you, and to myself, Angel. I feared long ago, when I struck him
on the mouth with my glove, that I might do it some day for the trap
he set for me in my simple youth, and his wrong to you through me.
He has come between us and ruined us, and now he can never do it any
more. I never loved him at all, Angel, as I loved you. You know it,
don't you? You believe it? You didn't come back to me, and I was
obliged to go back to him. Why did you go away--why did you--when I
loved you so? I can't think why you did it. But I don't blame you;
only, Angel, will you forgive me my sin against you, now I have
