Warrender walked back with the party as far as the Rectory gate. Indeed, so simple was the place, the entire family came out with them, straying along under the thick shade of the trees to the little gate which was nearest the Rectory. It was a lovely summer night, as different as possible from the haze and chill of the preceding one, with a little new moon just disappearing, and everything softened and whitened by her soft presence in the sky. Mrs. Wilberforce and Minnie went first, invisible in the dimness of the evening, then the two solid darknesses of the rector and Warrender. Dick came behind with Mrs. Warrender, and Chatty followed a step in the rear of all. The mother talked softly, more than she had done as yet. She told him that their home henceforward would probably be in Highcombe, not here—“That is, not yet, perhaps, but soon,” she said, with a little eagerness not like the melancholy tone with which a new-made widow talks of leaving her home—and that it would please her to see him there, if, according to the common formula, “he ever came that way.” And Dick declared with a little fervour which was unnecessary that he would surely go, that it would be always a pleasure. Why should he have said it? He had no right to say it; for he knew, though he could not see, with once more that pang of mingled pleasure and misery, that there was a look of pleased satisfaction on Chatty’s face as she came softly in the darkness behind.
XV
Dick was astir very early next morning. He did his packing hurriedly, and strolled out in the freshness of the early day. But not to enjoy the morning sunshine. He walked along resolutely towards the house which had suddenly acquired for him so painful an interest. For why? With no intention of visiting it; with a certainty that he would see no one there; perhaps with an idea of justifying himself to himself for flying from its neighbourhood, for putting distance, at least the breadth of the island, between him and that place, which he could not henceforward get out of his mind. To think that he had come here so lightly two days ago with his old uncle’s commission, and that now no inducement in the world, except death or hopeless necessity, could induce him to cross that threshold. If the woman were on her deathbed, yes; if she was abandoned by all and without other help, as well might be, as would be, without doubt, one time or another. But for nothing else, nothing less. He walked along under the wall, and round the dark shrubberies behind which enveloped the house. All was quiet and peace, for the moment at least; the curtains drawn over the windows; the household late of stirring; no lively housewife there to rouse maids and men, and stir up a wholesome stir of living. The young man’s cheerful face was stern as he made this round, like a sentinel, thinking of many things that were deep in the gulf of the past. Two years of his life which looked like a lifetime, and which were over, with all the horrors that were in them, and done with, and never to be recalled again. He was still young, and yet how much older than anyone was aware! Twenty-seven, yet with two lives behind him: one that of youth, to which he had endeavoured to piece his renewed existence; and the other all complete and ended, a tragedy, yet like many tragedies in life, cut off not by death. Not by death, for here were both the actors again within reach of each other—one within the sleeping house, one outside in the fresh air of the morning—with a gulf like that between Dives and Lazarus, a gulf which no man might cross, of disgust and loathing, of pain and hatred, between.
The door in the wall opened stealthily, softly, and someone came out. It was so early that such precautions seemed scarcely necessary. Perhaps it was in fear of seeing him, though that was so unlikely, that Lizzie looked round so jealously. If so, her precautions were useless, as she stepped out immediately in front of the passenger whom she most desired to avoid. He did not speak to her for a moment, but walked on, quickening his pace as hers fluttered into a run, as if to escape him. “Stop,” he said at length. “You need not take the trouble to conceal yourself from me.”
“I’m not concealing—anything,” said Lizzie, half angry, half sullen, with a flush on her face. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” she added quickly.
“I don’t say you’ve done anything wrong; for what I can tell you may be doing the work of an angel.”
She looked up at him eagerly, and the tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t know for that. I—I don’t ask nothing but not to be blamed.”
“Lizzie,” he said, “you were always a good girl—and to be faithful as you seem, may, for anything I know, be angels’ work. I could not do it, for my part.”
“Oh no,” she said, hurriedly. “It could not be looked for from you—oh no, no!”
“But think if you were to ruin yourself,” he said. “The rector saw you the other day, but he will say nothing. Yet think if others saw you.”
“Sir,” cried Lizzie, drawing back, “it will do me more harm and vex granny more to see
