XXV
A few days afterwards Felise started early in the morning to meet Martial. She was half an hour before the usual time; she was restless and anxious, and could not wait. There was no definite cause for her anxiety—it was a vague feeling of uneasiness, traceable in a great measure to the unhappy death of Mary. By that sudden loss her confidence in the future had been shaken.
Till some sharp sorrow comes we look forward frankly, and never question the certainty that tomorrow will bring the same settled and pleasant circumstances which surround us today.
Her confidence in the future was shaken. Martial was hers now—but tomorrow?
Mary had only left the house an hour, when under the uncontrollable impulse of her secret unhappiness she leaped into the mill-pool.
Felise could not bear Martial to be away from her; so long as he was near, her heart was at peace; the instant he was gone, her uneasiness returned. She could not wait till the usual time, but started too soon.
There was also the thought that now Martial had given up his farm, in a little while he would leave his house, and would perhaps go from her for months—no one could say for how long.
The brook by which she walked flowed on through the meadow, now with its waters level with the sward, now deep between steep banks where the current had worn away the earth. Sometimes a blackbird rushed out from under a hawthorn-bush at her approach; the blackbird loves the water always, and most of all in the warm August days. Now and again the breeze rustled the green flags, tipped with brown, and the tall reeds in the corner seemed to advance and step towards her as they bowed. Felise walked musing by the brook, dreaming in the sunshine, through the shadow of the willows and alders, by the purple loosestrife lifting its spires almost to her hand, by the green rushes where the furrow came to the stream.
Far, far up in the azure there were thin wisps of white cloud idling motionless in the air, flecks such as a painter might throw from his brush; and between them yet more faint and extended webs of vapour. It was hardly cloud—it was thistledown cloud—so fine, delicate, and vanishing, the eye could scarcely trace the lines and pencilling on the sky.
Less brilliantly white because it passed through these, the sunshine fell softly upon the aftermath—on the short grass; and in the brook, looking down from the high bank, she saw the image of the sun, shorn of his dazzling rays, reflected in the water.
The heat was not so overwhelming, the light not so fiery and white-hot; the breeze which blew at times came almost cool, and the rustling of the flags sounded dreamily. A softness and repose had settled on the aftermath and on the stubble; there was haze in the distance, and the masses of elm foliage were rounded and smooth.
The cawing of the rooks going over scarce disturbed the silence of the morning; there was a tone of complacent rest in their calls to each other. Nothing was quick or suggested haste but the hist-hist of a wood-pigeon’s wings cleaving the air with vehement strokes.
Flags and tall grasses and green things, growing down to the water’s edge and encroaching on the bank, hid the forget-me-nots under their tangled cover.
Once again the shadow was idle on the dial; Time was idle, drowsy in summer indolence.
Away in the stubble women were gleaning, gathering ears of wheat from among the streaked convolvulus and the pale field veronica. A sound of pastoral things stays in the word “gleaning;” yet It is the most aching of labours—stoop, stoop, stoop. They laboured and sought the ears of wheat while the summer was slumbering around them.
Love lingered by the brook and watched the running water, touching the reeds and letting them slip through the fingers, pausing to gather a flower, and then in the act sparing it. Let it bloom; do not injure a flower; let it stay in the sunshine by the running stream.
All things seem possible in the open air.
By the water some part of her old faith returned to her. The voice of the sunshine was hope; in the breeze there was a soothing reassurance; a swallow flew before her, following the winding brook low over the sward, and thought shot forward swifter than he.
There are moments when the earth is so beautiful that sorrow seems a dream. It cannot be—it is not real, this regret; we have fancied it, or surely the sun would not shine, the water sparkle like this. To the beautiful, sadness is unknown—it is not in its sphere; is this why we instinctively cling to loveliness?
He had said that he could not love her; yet by the running water, in the soft light of the cloud-shaded sunshine, she felt that it was not true: he would love her, he must love. Some day he must love her.
So by the stream and through the woodlands Felise came to the old barn, and sat down under the chestnut-tree. A jackdaw flew from it, calling jack-jack-daw as he passed over the ridge of yellow-red tiles. In a minute or two she got up—she had sat down opposite the cavernous space where the doors of the barn had been—and went round the tree and sat down so as to have it between her and the barn. Either there had been some slight scarce perceptible movement of something in the barn, or the shadow had deepened, or her imagination, more nervous than usual, fancied it. Of course it was nothing—she would have laughed at the idea of the barn being haunted; yet she went round and sat down behind the chestnut.
Almost immediately a hand was placed on her shoulder; she started, and, as happens in sudden alarm, her lips parted. Before she could cry out a handkerchief was thrust between her teeth, choking the sound in her throat.
