Towards the morning Mary gave birth to a female child, which appeared healthy and strong, despite its untimely arrival. Mary never saw it. She had been conscious at intervals, and told the doctor and the women something which agitated them; but after the birth she sank, and died in about two hours.
XX
By the old barn under one of the Spanish chestnut-trees, Felise sat down to wait for Martial. She was clad in black—mourning for Mary Shaw. The thickness of the chestnut spray did not permit a single ray of the morning sun to reach her, as the beech had done. No rounded dot of sunshine lit up the black shadow of her dress under the green boughs. The swallows were still about the barn, as they had been when she came with her rod along the brook. They would never quite leave it till they flew to warmer lands; even in October they would rest in a row on the ridge, and twitter of their coming journey. But the songs in the wood hard-by were silent, the thrush and the blackbird had ceased, and the cuckoo had long been gone. There was no music of sweet birds’ throats as dry August stooped under her sheaves.
The prickly green fruit of the chestnuts was visible among the boughs, and in the hedge by the copse the red berries of the bryony clustered thickly. Pouting at the top, the thistles which always strew the sward by a wood were ready to pour forth a shower of thistledown. Two large dragonflies shot to and fro, excited into swiftest motion by the heat. Once a green and golden woodpecker passed, sweeping downwards in his flight almost to the ground, and rising again to the height of the trees.
From afar came the hum of a threshing-machine, winnowing out the fresh corn from the ear. A hum that sank to a mournful note and rose again—a curve of sound. There is something inarticulately human in the cry of the threshing-machine. Wheat and bread—labour and life—the past of the sowing, the future of the uncertain autumn, hazy and deepening into the gloom of winter. In the glow, and light, and heat of today, forget not that the leaves shall fall and the stubble be beaten by the rains and whitened by the snow; yet hope on, because the sunlight and the flowers shall assuredly succeed again. Inarticulately expressing the meaning of the years and the rise and fall of time, the low hum stretches itself across the wide fields of grain.
The sparrows that had chattered so loudly round the eaves of the barn had gone out into the wheat. The swallows came at intervals and again soared into the air. Only the two dragonflies remained, rushing to and fro.
Martial had told her all, manfully laying bare the recesses of his heart; warned thereto by his experience of the mill-pool, which told him not to trifle longer with the shadow on the dial. While we linger—while we stay—the shadow slips from the edge of the disk into universal night.
“He cannot love me;” this was the burden of her thoughts. “He cannot love me.”
He could admire her, he could worship her beauty, he could appreciate her worth, he could value her love, he could and would labour for her with all his powers, but he could not love.
He had loved another woman before her, and the spring of love was dry.
A woman will be able to understand the bitterness of this to her—he had loved another, therefore he could not love her.
A creaking of wagon-wheels went by in the narrow lane, it was a load of yellow sheaves, heavily jolting over the ruts, crushing the rushes that had grown in the way, the sheaves brushing against the wild clematis still flowering high up the bushes. She could see the top of the load above the hawthorn and hazel, slowly ascending the hill by the wood.
“He cannot love me.”
He was hers, and yet he was not hers.
Thus Rosa was in part avenged, and returned bitterness for bitterness to the heart of her rival. Though now forsaken, she had received the first-fruits of love, and they could not be given to another. If Felise’s existence was cruel to Rosa, so now Rosa’s existence was cruel to Felise—yet not so cruel.
For with a deep sigh Felise became content.
“It is better,” she said—“it is better than not to have him at all. Had that been so, if I could not have had him, then it would have been best that the deep sea should cover me.”
To the bitter jealousy of his first love given to another, she became superior, and overcame the sting and venom of the thought.
It mattered not—he was Martial—he was hers.
But this was not all that her love had overcome. Rumours had been spread abroad since Mary Shaw’s death, of a kind which might have easily caused years of misunderstanding, might even have changed the course of their lives, had it not been for the steadfastness of Felise.
There was a scandal in the hamlet, that the child of Mary Shaw could claim another parent than the common labourer, Abner Brown. A gentleman had been seen to meet her clandestinely. Miller Bond had done this mischief unwittingly. At the inquest they cross-questioned and worried him; they ascertained that Abner was the last person seen with her, and also that another person—Martial Barnard—had frequently met her there. The jury returned a verdict of suicide, but immediately afterwards Abner was arrested by the police on suspicion of murder, and put in the cell at Maasbury.
No one had seen Mary leap in. She had admitted herself on her deathbed that she did so, but that might be to shield Abner. At all events he would have to go before the magistrates and explain where he was when she did it. Abner said he had walked down into the
