XXXIX
Under the Holly
It seemed to Hester that she had been for hours out of doors, and that the lingering June evening would never end. Now and then she met in the fields a party of Redborough people taking a walk—a mother with a little group of children, a father with a taller girl or boy, a pair of lovers. They all looked after her, wondering a little that a young lady, and one who belonged to the Vernons (for everybody knew her), should be out so late alone. “But why should she not have a young man too?” the lovers thought, and felt a great interest in the question whether they should meet her again, and who he might be. But still it could not be said to be dark—the wild roses were still quite pink upon the hedges. The moments lingered along, the clocks kept chiming by intervals. Hester, by dint of long thinking, felt that she had become incapable of all thought. She no longer remembered what she had intended to say to him, nor could divine what he would say. If it were but over, if the moment would but come! She felt capable of nothing but that wish; her mind seemed to be running by her like a stream, with a strange velocity which came to nothing. Then she woke up suddenly to feel that the time had come. The summer fields all golden with buttercups had stolen away into the grey, the hedgerows only betrayed themselves by a vague darkness. She could not see the faces, or anything but ghostlike outlines of those she met. The time had come when one looks like another, and identity is taken away.
There was nobody upon the Grange road. She went along as swift as a shadow, like a ghost, her veil over her face. The holly-tree stood black like a pillar of cloud at the gate, and someone stood close by waiting—not a creature to see them far or near. They clasped hands and stood together enveloped by the greyness, the confused atmosphere of evening, which seemed to hide them even from each other.
“Thank Heaven I have you at last. I thought you were never coming,” Edward said.
“It was not dark enough till now. Oh, Edward! that we should meet like thieves, like—”
“Lovers, darling. The most innocent of lovers come together so—especially when the fates are against them; they are against us no more, Hester. Take my arm, and let us go. We have nothing to wait for. I think I have thought of everything. Goodbye to the old life—the dreary, the vain. My only love! Come, there is nothing to detain us—”
It was at this moment that the secret listener—who came without any intention of listening, who wanted only to see who it was and what it meant—losing her shoe in the heavy ground of the shrubbery, stole into that corner behind the wall.
“Oh, Edward, wait—there is everything to detain us. Did you not get my note? They say things are going wrong with Vernons—that the bank—I can’t tell what it is, but you will understand. Harry said nothing could be done till you came.”
“Harry is a fool!” he said, bitterly. “Why didn’t he take his share of the work and understand matters? Is it my fault if it was all thrown into my hands? Hester, you are my own love, but you are a fool too! Don’t you see? Can’t you understand that this is the very reason? But why should I try to explain at such a moment—or you ask me? Come, my darling! Safety and happiness and everything we can wish lie beyond yon railway. Let us get away.”
“I am not going, Edward. Oh, how could you think it! I never meant to go.”
“Not going!” he laughed, and took her hands into his, with an impatience, however, which made him restless, which might have made him violent, “that is a pretty thing to tell me just when you have met me for the purpose. I know you want to be persuaded. But come, come; I will persuade you as much as you can desire when I get you safe into the train.”
“It is not persuasion I want. If it was right I would go if all the world were against it. Edward, do you know what it looks like? It looks like treachery—like deserting your post—like leading them into danger, then leaving them in their ignorance to stumble out as they can.”
“Well?” he said. “Is that all? If we get off with that we shall do very well, Hester. I shouldn’t wonder if they said harder things still.”
“If the bank should—come to harm. I am a Vernon too. I can’t bear it should come to harm. If anything was to happen—”
“If it will abridge this discussion—which surely is ill-timed, Hester, to say the least—I may admit at
