5. THE NARRATIVE OF WALTER HARTRIGHT
Early in the summer of 1850 I and my surviving companions left the
wilds and forests of Central America for home. Arrived at the
coast, we took ship there for England. The vessel was wrecked in
the Gulf of Mexico--I was among the few saved from the sea. It
was my third escape from peril of death. Death by disease, death
by the Indians, death by drowning--all three had approached me;
all three had passed me by.
The survivors of the wreck were rescued by an American vessel
bound for Liverpool. The ship reached her port on the thirteenth
day of October 1850. We landed late in the afternoon, and I
arrived in London the same night.
These pages are not the record of my wanderings and my dangers
away from home. The motives which led me from my country and my
friends to a new world of adventure and peril are known. From
that self-imposed exile I came back, as I had hoped, prayed,
believed I should come back--a changed man. In the waters of a
new life I had tempered my nature afresh. In the stern school of
extremity and danger my will had learnt to be strong, my heart to
be resolute, my mind to rely on itself. I had gone out to fly
from my own future. I came back to face it, as a man should.
To face it with that inevitable suppression of myself which I knew
it would demand from me. I had parted with the worst bitterness
of the past, but not with my heart's remembrance of the sorrow and
the tenderness of that memorable time. I had not ceased to feel
the one irreparable disappointment of my life--I had only learnt
to bear it. Laura Fairlie was in all my thoughts when the ship
bore me away, and I looked my last at England. Laura Fairlie was
in all my thoughts when the ship brought me back, and the morning
light showed the friendly shore in view.
My pen traces the old letters as my heart goes back to the old
love. I write of her as Laura Fairlie still. It is hard to think
of her, it is hard to speak of her, by her husband's name.
There are no more words of explanation to add on my appearance for
the second time in these pages. This narrative, if I have the
strength and the courage to write it, may now go on.
My first anxieties and first hopes when the morning came centred
in my mother and my sister. I felt the necessity of preparing
them for the joy and surprise of my return, after an absence
during which it had been impossible for them to receive any
tidings of me for months past. Early in the morning I sent a
letter to the Hampstead Cottage, and followed it myself in an
hour's time.
When the first meeting was over, when our quiet and composure of
other days began gradually to return to us, I saw something in my
mother's face which told me that a secret oppression lay heavy on
her heart. There was more than love--there was sorrow in the
anxious eyes that looked on me so tenderly--there was pity in the
kind hand that slowly and fondly strengthened its hold on mine.
We had no concealments from each other. She knew how the hope of
my life had been wrecked--she knew why I had left her. It was on
my lips to ask as composedly as I could if any letter had come for
me from Miss Halcombe, if there was any news of her sister that I
might hear. But when I looked in my mother's face I lost courage
to put the question even in that guarded form. I could only say,
doubtingly and restrainedly--
"You have something to tell me."
My sister, who had been sitting opposite to us, rose suddenly
without a word of explanation--rose and left the room.
My mother moved closer to me on the sofa and put her arms round my
neck. Those fond arms trembled--the tears flowed fast over the
faithful loving face.
"Walter!" she whispered, "my own darling! my heart is heavy for
you. Oh, my son! my son! try to remember that I am still left!"
My head sank on her bosom. She had said all in saying those
words.
* * * * * * * * * *
It was the morning of the third day since my return--the morning
of the sixteenth of October.
I had remained with them at the cottage--I had tried hard not to
embitter the happiness of my return to THEM as it was embittered
to ME. I had done all man could to rise after the shock, and
accept my life resignedly--to let my great sorrow come in
tenderness to my heart, and not in despair. It was useless and
hopeless. No tears soothed my aching eyes, no relief came to me
from my sister's sympathy or my mother's love.
On that third morning I opened my heart to them. At last the
words passed my lips which I had longed to speak on the day when
my mother told me of her death.
"Let me go away alone for a little while," I said. "I shall bear
it better when I have looked once more at the place where I first
saw her--when I have knelt and prayed by the grave where they have
laid her to rest."
I departed on my journey--my journey to the grave of Laura
Fairlie.
It was a quiet autumn afternoon when I stopped at the solitary
station, and set forth alone on foot by the well-remembered road.
The waning sun was shining faintly through thin white clouds--the
air was warm and still--the peacefulness of the lonely country was
overshadowed and saddened by the influence of the falling year.
I reached the moor--I stood again on the brow of the hill--I
looked on along the path--and there were the familiar garden trees
in the distance, the clear sweeping semicircle of the drive, the
high white walls of Limmeridge House. The chances and changes,
the wanderings and dangers of months and months past, all shrank
and shrivelled to nothing in my mind. It was like yesterday since
my feet had last trodden the fragrant heathy ground. I thought I
should see her coming to meet me, with her little straw hat
shading her face, her simple dress fluttering in the air, and her
well-filled sketch-book ready in her hand.
Oh death, thou hast thy sting! oh, grave, thou hast thy victory!
I turned aside, and there below me in the glen was the lonesome
grey church, the porch where I had waited for the coming of the
woman in white, the hills encircling the quiet burial-ground, the
brook bubbling cold over its stony bed. There was the marble
cross, fair and white, at the head of the tomb--the tomb that now
rose over mother and daughter alike.
I approached the grave. I crossed once more the low stone stile,
and bared my head as I touched the sacred ground. Sacred to
gentleness and goodness, sacred to reverence and grief.
I stopped before the pedestal from which the cross rose. On one
side of it, on the side nearest to me, the newly-cut inscription
met my eyes--the hard, clear, cruel black letters which told the
story of her life and death. I tried to read them. I did read as
far as the name. "Sacred to the Memory of Laura----" The kind
blue eyes dim with tears--the fair head drooping wearily--the
innocent parting words which implored me to leave her--oh, for a
happier last memory of her than this; the memory I took away with
me, the memory I bring back with me to her grave!
A second time I tried to read the inscription. I saw at the end
the date of her death, and above it----
Above it there were lines on the marble--there was a name among
them which disturbed my thoughts of her. I went round to the
other side of the grave, where there was nothing to read, nothing
of earthly vileness to force its way between her spirit and mine.
I knelt down by the tomb. I laid my hands, I laid my head on the
broad white stone, and closed my weary eyes on the earth around,
on the light above. I let her come back to me. Oh, my love! my
love! my heart may speak to you NOW! I It is yesterday again since
we parted--yesterday, since your dear hand lay in mine--yesterday,
since my eyes looked their last on you. My love! my love!
* * * * * * * * * *
Time had flowed on, and silence had fallen like thick night over
its course.
The first sound that came after the heavenly peace rustled faintly
like a passing breath of air over the grass of the burial-ground.
I heard it nearing me slowly, until it came changed to my ear--
came like footsteps moving onward--then stopped.
I looked up.
The sunset was near at hand. The clouds had parted--the slanting
light fell mellow over the hills. The last of the day was cold
and clear and still in the quiet valley of the dead.
Beyond me, in the burial-ground, standing together in the cold
clearness of the lower light, I saw two women. They were looking
towards the tomb, looking towards me.
Two.
They came a little on, and stopped again. Their veils were down,
and hid their faces from me. When they stopped, one of them
raised her veil. In the still evening light I saw the face of
Marian Halcombe.
Changed, changed as if years had passed over it! The eyes large
and wild, and looking at me with a strange terror in them. The
face worn and wasted piteously. Pain and fear and grief written
on her as with a brand.
I took one step towards her from the grave. She never moved--she
never spoke. The veiled woman with her cried out faintly. I
stopped. The springs of my life fell low, and the shuddering of
an unutterable dread crept over me from head to foot.
The woman with the veiled face moved away from her companion, and
came towards me slowly. Left by herself, standing by herself,
Marian Halcombe spoke. It was the voice that I remembered--the
voice not changed, like the frightened eyes and the wasted face.
"My dream! my dream!" I heard her say those words softly in the
awful silence. She sank on her knees, and raised her clasped
hands to heaven. "Father! strengthen him. Father! help him in
his hour of need."
The woman came on, slowly and silently came on. I looked at her--
at her, and at none other, from that moment.
The voice that was praying for me faltered and sank low--then rose
on a sudden, and called affrightedly, called despairingly to me to
come away.
But the veiled woman had possession of me, body and soul. She
stopped on one side of the grave. We stood face to face with the
tombstone between us. She was close to the inscription on the
side of the pedestal. Her gown touched the black letters.
The voice came nearer, and rose and rose more passionately still.
"Hide your face! don't look at her! Oh, for God's sake, spare him----"
The woman lifted her veil.
"Sacred to the Memory of Laura, Lady Glyde----"
Laura, Lady Glyde, was standing by the inscription, and was
looking at me over the grave.
[The Second Epoch of the Story closes here.]