‘Forgive me, Jack, and be patient. Remember that I am speaking of something that lies outside my province. I cannot advise you in this difficult matter.’ His voice trailed off into silence. But presently, as if gaining hope, he remarked casually: ‘All I dare say is this: that if I were a young man in love, and my lady had first taken me to her heart and then for a seeming trifle cast me out, I should not believe too readily that she no longer loved me. And if I found myself, one fine February morning, within a day’s ride of her, I should not waste time discussing her with a prosy old priest, who, of necessity, could know nothing of the ways of women.’
Having blandly addressed these remarks to a particular square-inch of carpet, Brother Raphe slowly raised his eyes and smiled at his young friend with an air of apology. His innocent gaiety of heart was infectious, and Marden, with sudden emotion, ran to him like a boy and clasped his arm. ‘Sir, you are goodness itself. You make me ashamed. And I believe you may be right in this. I do indeed. She loved me two days ago, and if I can prove myself innocent she may love me again, why not?’
‘Resolve that she shall,’ said Brother Raphe, ‘and I’ll wager she will. But never mind about proving your innocence, Jack. That can come later if come it must. Ask her forgiveness first; and if she loves you, as I believe she does, all will be well. Woman is a sealed mystery to me, as to all men; but I remember to have heard it said that a woman will forgive a man anything except his being in the right when they quarrel. Be ardent, Jack, ardent and sudden. And if she deny you, do not hear her. As for your innocence, that can wait till after the wedding.’
‘Heaven bless you,’ cried Marden fervently, ‘I’ll go now and bid her name the day. No, I won’t. I have a better plan still. I’ll name it for her and take no denial.’
Brother Raphe’s eyes widened in wonder, and his plump face became rosy with admiration and goodwill. ‘Why, what a resourceful fellow you are, upon my word!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wager she’ll never resist you.’
But Marden did not hear this prophecy, for he was already gone.
CHAPTER 11
A SECOND WOOING: CONTAINING FEW WORDS BUT OF MUCH MOMENT
While Celia Humphrey, in a trance of misery, went woodenly about her household duties, supervised her domestics, listened mechanically to her father’s talk, and told herself that she had done with men for ever, a horse called Tarquin, the best in the Marden stables, carried his master swiftly towards her. To be riding so gallant an animal gave Marden a sense of exhilaration and power, which, added to the new hope that beat in him, made him feel irresistible. On fire with love, and with a kind of glad fury goading him, he had already persuaded himself of success; and this persuasion endured until the moment when he found himself entering the drive of the house at Fedrum. There, a trembling came over him, and he wondered at himself. How came I here, and what am I doing? She does not love me: I had best go back. But Tarquin carried him on: and here the drive ended, here was the house, and here, within ten yards of him, was Celia herself, returning from a walk, with her favourite dog, a large black retriever, following at her heels. His heart turned over in his breast; hope worked a dire agony in him; but suddenly, with anger, he recalled her scornful face of yesterday, and so at last went forward gladly and sternly as to battle. She was not yet aware of his presence. She walked slowly towards the house; and because the world was empty, the fair sky a mockery, the sunlight cruel, she looked only on the ground, and told herself, for the twentieth time, that she would never see that presuming wretch again; nor wanted to, since it was clear that he did not truly love her.
‘Good morning, madam!’
He was dismounted; and Tarquin, knowing his manners, trotted quietly away in the direction of the stables. Celia turned and stared, for a moment unbelieving. ‘So you are back?’ she said. How cool she is, he thought: a bright sword, finely tempered. But he smiled grimly, and bowed. ‘I am back.’
They faced each other with bright angry eyes. From the house came the sound of a gong, militant, challenging, rousing to battle.
‘Why have you come?’ she asked. ‘I have come to tell you, my dear, that everything is arranged and we are to be married at once, you and I.’
Her cheeks reddened; her eyes flashed. ‘You are impudent, sir.’
‘I am resolved, madam.’
Her eyes became brighter still, and her mouth trembled. ‘It is very civil in you, Mr Marden, that you take the trouble to inform me of my future, since it seems I am given no voice in the matter.’
He was silent.
‘So I am to marry you? And at once, I think you said?’
‘At once.’ He stood his ground. ‘That is,’ he added, sadly conscious of the anticlimax, ‘next week, on any day of your choosing.’
Celia laughed. ‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that we are permitted to dine first. Shall we go in, Jack? My father will be waiting.’
FULL CIRCLE
CHAPTER 1
COWMAN SHELLETT’S MYTH, AFTER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY, IS SEEN TO BE FLOURISHING
On one of a milliard spinning spheres, and perhaps on one alone, a small bright cone of consciousness thrusts its few inches above the vast rubble of Dark and Void. It has endured for but a moment in the cosmic scale, but that moment is the history of life, and for ourselves it is as full of matter, and as unimaginably long, as for a sentient atom would be a moment of ours, who, standing midway between these immensities, and compounding them, stars and atoms, into one metaphysical brew, make our small doomed selves the measure of all things. In Marden Fee the clock of our century records a new quarter; and Time, in that fraction of a moment, has been busy at his work: graving new lines on the faces of men and women, writing his story beat by beat in their hearts, and bringing to birth, for an extension of the chronicle, new souls, new worlds, a living palimpsest. Man too, in whom the wolf ravings and the peacock struts, is more of darkness than of light; but in his apprehension of time he cannot but excel his brother beasts; and his memories, though brief, are at least more enduring than theirs. In this, and perhaps in a certain cunning, Cowman Shellett, for example, differs from the cattle he has care of. A jest will make him slowly grin, if it be broad and gross enough; a bit of horseplay may even make him laugh aloud; and the proximity of his wife, Tisha, may rouse his appetite at any season, and will unless another appetite happen to distract him. In these activities he differs conspicuously from the beasts of the field. He is now in his fifty-eighth year: cadaverous, hungry-eyed, and habitually stooping. No greater contrast to him can be imagined than his host at this moment, for Mr Bailey is now a hale old man, white-haired, genially self-important, comfortably rotund, yet with a look, sometimes, of wistful expectancy in his eye. He has never thought very highly of his son-in-law, and often wishes he could be fonder of his numerous grandchildren; but neighbourly is neighbourly, as they say in Marden Fee, and Shellett is an honest fellow and has made an honest woman of Tisha: an honest woman and a very weary woman, hard put to it to keep a vestige of her handsomeness and a spark of her former good temper. Seth Shellett, her eldest, is here now, taking his mug of ale with the rest. (He is Squire Marden’s gamekeeper, and though Tisha rejoices in his good fortune, she often wishes he were back at home in her overcrowded cottage instead of at Maiden Holt.) Old Mykelborne is here, a venerable white-bearded figure still ready to invoke the authority of Postle Paul. But brisk Farmer Broome is dead these many years; Roger Peakod was taken by the press gang on his nineteenth birthday and has not been seen since; and Gipsy Noke, now a substantial patriarch, comes to this tavern no more, having, with his flocks and herds, his sons and daughter, and his wife Jenny, established himself firmly in the valley region called Nightingale Roughs, which lies on the further side of Glatting Wood and well beyond the parish border. Noke of Roughs, indeed, is so prosperous, so remote in spirit from his former neighbours, that he has become already something of a legend; and the story of how he was once rough-handled for taking Jenny Mykelborne to bed before he had taken her to church, is one that gets little credit from the younger men. And it makes the improbable boast no easier to swallow that Cowman Shellett, when loquacious in drink, will vouch for the truth of it, and add how he himself, with more impunity, got his mistus with young Seth a full fi’ month afore the wedden. In his younger days he formed the habit of talking about it. ‘Ay neighbours,’ he would say, ‘I tuk un to the rutten-plain a full fi’ month afore, and got my Seth.’ ‘Ah,’ say the youngsters, ‘you was a countable good wencher them times, Tahm.’ ‘So I was,’ says Tom, grinning bashfully into his beer-mug. ‘And naun so slow these days, tellee.’ In such talk, less by Tom Shellett’s design than by happy chance, was born years ago a myth highly congenial to his self-esteem. And today that myth flourishes.