The Flight of the Shadow

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"I am not. I do not believe there is any such penalty."

"You dare me?"

"I do."

"Marry, then, and take the consequences."

"If there were any, you would not thus warn me of them."

"John Day, you are no gentleman!"

"I shall not ask your definition of a gentleman, madam."

"Your father was a clown!"

"If my father were present, he would show himself a gentleman by making
you no answer. If you say a word more against him, I will leave the
room."

"I tell you your father was a clown and a fool--like yourself!"

John turned and went to the stable, had old Sturdy saddled, and came to
me.

On his way over the heath, he spent an hour trying to find the place
where he had been the night before, but without success. I presume that
Sturdy, with his nose in that direction, preferred his stall, and did not
choose to find the quarry. As often as John left him to himself, he went
homeward. When John turned his head in another direction, he would set
out in that direction, but gradually work round for the farm.

John told me all I have just set down, and then we talked.

"I have already begun to learn farming," I said.

"You are the right sort, Orbie!" returned John. "I shall be glad to teach
you anything I know."

"If you will show me how a farmer keeps his books," I answered, "that I
may understand the bailiff's, I shall be greatly obliged to you. As to
the dairy, and poultry-yard, and that kind of thing, Martha can teach me
as well as any."

"I'll do my best," said John.

"Come along then, and have a talk with Simmons! I feel as if I could bear
anything after what you saw last night. My uncle is not far off! He is
somewhere about with the rest of the angels!"

CHAPTER XXX.

ONCE MORE, AND YET AGAIN.

From that hour I set myself to look after my uncle's affairs. It was the
only way to endure his absence. Working for him, thinking what he would
like, trying to carry it out, referring every perplexity to him and
imagining his answer, he grew so much dearer to me, that his absence was
filled with hope. My heart being in it, I had soon learned enough of the
management to perceive where, in more than one quarter, improvement,
generally in the way of saving, was possible: I do not mean by any
lowering of wages; my uncle would have conned me small thanks for such
improvement as that! Neither was it long before I began to delight in the
feeling that I was in partnership with the powers of life; that I had to
do with the operation and government and preservation of things created;
that I was doing a work to which I was set by the Highest; that I was at
least a floor-sweeper in the house of God, a servant for the good of his
world. Existence had grown fuller and richer; I had come, like a toad out
of a rock, into a larger, therefore truer universe, in which I had work
to do that was wanted. Had I not been thus expanded and strengthened, how
should I have patiently waited while hearing nothing of my uncle!

It was not many days before John began to press me to let my uncle have
his way: where was the good any longer, he said, in our not being
married? But I could not endure the thought of being married without my
uncle: it would not seem real marriage without his giving me to my
husband. And when John was convinced that I could not be prevailed upon,
I found him think the more of me because of my resolve, and my
persistency in it. For John was always reasonable, and that is more than
can be said of most men. Some, indeed, who are reasonable enough with
men, are often unreasonable with women. If in course of time the
management of affairs be taken from men and given to women--which may God
for our sakes forbid--it will be because men have made it necessary by
their arrogance. But when they have been kept down long enough to learn
that they are not the lords of creation one bit more than the weakest
woman, I hope they will be allowed to take the lead again, lest women
should become what men were, and go strutting in their importance. Only
the true man knows the true woman; only the true woman knows the true
man: the difficulty between men and women comes all from the prevailing
selfishness, that is, untruth, of both. Who, while such is their
character, would be judge or divider between them, save one of their own
kind? When such ceases to be their character, they will call for no
umpire.

John lived in his own house with his mother, but they did not meet. His
mother managed his affairs, to whose advantage I need hardly say; and
John helped me to manage my uncle's, to the advantage of all concerned.
Every morning he came to see me, and every night rode back to his worse
than dreary home. At my earnest request, he had a strong bolt put on his
bedroom-door, the use of which he promised me never to neglect. At my
suggestion too, he let it be known that he had always a brace of loaded
pistols within his reach, and showed himself well practiced in shooting
with them. I feared much for John.

After I no longer only believed, but knew the bailiff trustworthy, and
had got some few points in his management bettered, I ceased giving so
much attention to details, and allowed myself more time to read and walk
and ride with John. I laid myself out to make up to him, as much as ever
I could, for the miserable lack of any home-life. At Rising he had not
the least sense of comfort or even security. He could never tell what his
mother might not be plotting against him. He had a very strong close box
made for Leander, and always locked him up in it at night, never allowing
one of the men there to touch him. The horse had all the attention any
master could desire, when, having locked his box behind him, he brought
him over to us in the morning.

One lovely, cold day, in the month of March, with ice on some of the
pools, and the wind blowing from the north, I mounted Zoe to meet John
midway on the moor, and had gone about two-thirds of the distance, when I
saw him, as I thought, a long way to my right, and concluded he had not
expected me so soon, and had gone exploring. I turned aside therefore to
join him; but had gone only a few yards when, from some shift in a
shadow, or some change in his position with regard to the light, I saw
that the horse was not John's; it was a gray, or rather, a white horse.
Could the rider be my uncle? Even at that distance I almost thought I
recognized him. It must indeed have been he John saw at the quarry! He
was not gone abroad! He had been all this long time lingering about the
place, lest ill should befall us! "Just like him!" said my heart, as I
gave Zoe the rein, and she sprang off at her best speed. But after riding
some distance, I lost sight of the horseman, whoever he was, and then saw
that, if I did not turn at once, I should not keep my appointment with
John. Of course had I _believed_ it was my uncle, I should have followed
and followed; and the incident would not have been worth mentioning, for
gray horses are not so uncommon that there might not be one upon the
heath at any moment, but for something more I saw the same night.

It was bright moonlight. I had taken down a curtain of my window to mend,
and the moon shone in so that I could not sleep. My thoughts were all
with my uncle--wondering what he was about; whether he was very dull;
whether he wanted me much; whether he was going about Paris, or haunting
the moor that stretched far into the distance from where I lay. Perhaps
at that moment he was out there in the moonlight, would be there alone,
in the cold, wide night, while I slept! The thought made me feel lonely
myself: one is indeed apt to feel lonely when sleepless; and as the moon
was having a night of it, or rather making a day of it, all alone with
herself, why should we not keep each other a little company? I rose, drew
the other curtain of my window aside, and looked out.

I have said that the house lay on the slope of a hollow: from whichever
window of it you glanced, you saw the line of your private horizon either
close to you, or but a little way off. If you wanted an outlook, you must
climb; and then you were on the moor.

From my window I could see the more distant edge of the hollow: looking
thitherward, I saw against the sky the shape of a man on horseback. Not
for a moment could I doubt it was my uncle. The figure was plainly his.
My heart seemed to stand still with awe, or was it with intensity of
gladness? Perhaps every night he was thus near me while I slept--a
heavenly sentinel patrolling the house--the visible one of a whole camp
unseen, of horses of fire and chariots of fire. So entrancing was the
notion, that I stood there a little child, a mere incarnate love, the
tears running down my checks for very bliss.

But presently my mood changed: what had befallen him? When first I saw
him, horse and man were standing still, and I noted nothing strange,
blinded perhaps by the tears of my gladness. But presently they moved on,
keeping so to the horizon-line that it was plain my uncle's object was to
have the house full in view; and as thus they skirted the edge of heaven,
oh, how changed he seemed! His tall figure hung bent over the pommel, his
neck drooped heavily. And the horse was so thin that I seemed to see,
almost to feel his bones. Poor Thanatos! he looked tired to death, and I
fancied his bent knees quivering, each short slow step he took. Ah, how
unlike the happy old horse that had been! I thought of Death returning
home weary from the slaughter of many kings, and cast the thought away. I
thought of Death returning home on the eve of the great dawn, worn with
his age-long work, pleased that at last it was over, and no more need of
him: I kept that thought. Along the sky-line they held their slow way,
toilsome through weakness, the rider with weary swing in the saddle, the
horse with long gray neck hanging low to his hoofs, as if picking his
path with purblind eyes. When his rider should collapse and fall from his
back, not a step further would he take, but stand there till he fell to
pieces!

Fancy gave way to reality. I woke up, called myself hard names, and
hurried on a few of my clothes. My blessed uncle out in the night and
weary to dissolution, and I at a window, contemplating him like a
picture! I was an evil, heartless brute!

By the time I had my shoes on, and went again to the window, he had
passed out of its range. I ran to one on the stair that looked at right
angles to mine: he had not yet come within its field. I stood and waited.
Presently he appeared, crawling along, a gray mounted ghost, in the light
that so strangely befits lovers wandering in the May of hope, and the
wasted spectre no less, whose imagination of the past reveals him to the
eyes of men. For an instant I almost wished him dead and at rest; the
next I was out of the house--then up on the moor, looking eagerly this
way and that, poised on the swift feet of love, ready to spring to his
bosom. How I longed to lead him to his own warm bed, and watch by him as
he slept, while the great father kept watch over every heart in his
universe. I gazed and gazed, but nowhere could I see the death-jaded
horseman.

I bounded down the hill, through the wilderness and the dark alleys, and
hurried to the stable. Trembling with haste I led Zoe out, sprang on her
bare back, and darted off to scout the moor. Not a man or a horse or a
live thing was to be seen in any direction! Once more I all but concluded
I had looked on an apparition. Was my uncle dead? Had he come back thus
to let me know? And was he now gone home indeed? Cold and disappointed, I
returned to bed, full of the conviction that I had seen my uncle, but
whether in the body or out of the body, I could not tell.

When John came, the notion of my having been out alone on the moor in the
middle of the night, did not please him. He would have me promise not
again, for any vision or apparition whatever, to leave the house without
his company. But he could not persuade me. He asked what I would have
done, if, having overtaken the horseman, I had found neither my uncle nor
Death. I told him I would have given Zoe the use of her heels, when
_that_ horse would soon have seen the last of her. At the same time, he
was inclined to believe with me, that I had seen my uncle. His intended
proximity would account, he said, for his making no arrangement to hear
from me; and if he continued to haunt the moor in such fashion, we could
not fail to encounter him before long. In the meantime he thought it well
to show no sign of suspecting his neighbourhood.

That I had seen my uncle, John was for a moment convinced when, the very
next day, having gone to Wittenage, he saw Thanatos carrying Dr.
Southwell, my uncle's friend. On the other hand, Thanatos looked very
much alive, and in lovely condition! The doctor would not confess to
knowing anything about my uncle, and expressed wonder that he had not yet
returned, but said he did not mind how long he had the loan of such a
horse.

Things went on as before for a while.

John began again to press me to marry him. I think it was mainly,
I am sure it was in part, that I might never again ride the midnight
moor--"like a witch out on her own mischievous hook," as he had once
said. He knew that, if I caught sight of anything like my uncle anywhere,
John or no John, I would go after it.

There was another good reason, however, besides the absence of my uncle,
for our not marrying: John was not yet of legal age, and who could tell
what might not lurk in his mother's threat! Who could tell what such a
woman might not have prevailed on her husband to set down in his will! I
was ready enough to marry a poor man, but I was not ready to let my lover
become a poor man by marrying me a few months sooner. Were we not happy
enough, seeing each other everyday, and mostly all day long? No doubt
people talked, but why not let them talk? The mind of the many is not the
mind of God! As to society, John called it an oyster of a divinity. He
argued, however, that probably my uncle was keeping close until he saw us
married. I answered that, if we were married, his mother would only be
the more eager to have her revenge on us all, and my uncle the more
careful of himself for our sakes. Anyhow, I said, I would not consent to
be happier than we were, until we found him. The greater happiness I
would receive only from his hand.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MY UNCLE COMES HOME.

Time went on, and it was now the depth of a cold, miserable winter. I
remember the day to which I have now come so well! It was a black day.
There was such a thickness of snow in the air, that what light got
through had a lost look. It was almost more like a London fog than an
honest darkness of the atmosphere, bred in its own bounds. But while the
light lasted, the snow did not fall. I went about the house doing what I
could find to do, and wondering John did not come.

His horse had again fallen lame--this time through an accident which made
it necessary for him to stay with the poor animal long after his usual
time of starting to come to me. When he did start, it was on foot, with
the short winter afternoon closing in. But he knew the moor by this time
nearly as well as I did.

It was quite dark when he drew near the house, which he generally entered
through the wilderness and the garden. The snow had begun at last, and
was coming down in deliberate earnest. It would lie feet deep over the
moor before the morning! He was thinking what a dreary tramp home it
would be by the road--for the wind was threatening to wake, and in a
snow-wind the moor was a place to be avoided--when he struck his foot
against something soft, in the path his own feet had worn to the
wilderness, and fell over it. A groan followed, and John rose with the
miserable feeling of having hurt some creature. Dropping on his knees to
discover what it was, he found a man almost covered with snow, and nearly
insensible. He swept the snow off him, contrived to get him on his back,
and brought him round to the door, for the fence would have been awkward
to cross with him. Just as I began to be really uneasy at his prolonged
absence, there he was, with a man on his back apparently lifeless!

I did not stop to stare or question, but made haste to help him. His
burden was slipping sideways, so we lowered it on a chair, and then
carried it between us into the kitchen, I holding the legs. The moment a
ray of light fell upon the face, I saw it was my uncle.

I just saved myself from a scream. My heart stopped, then bumped as if it
would break through. I turned sick and cold. We laid him on the sofa, but
I still held on to the legs; I was half unconscious. Martha set me on a
chair, and in a moment or two I came to myself, and was able to help her.
She said never a word, but was quite collected, looking every now and
then in the face of her cousin with a doglike devotion, but never
stopping an instant to gaze. We got him some brandy first, then some hot
milk, and then some soup. He took a little of everything we offered him.
We did not ask him a single question, but, the moment he revived, carried
him up the stair, and laid him in bed. Once he cast his eyes about, and
gave a sigh as of relief to find himself in his own room, then went off
into a light doze, which, broken with starts and half-wakings, lasted
until next day about noon. Either John or Martha or I was by his bedside
all the time, so that he should not wake without seeing one of us near
him.

But the sad thing was, that, when he did wake, he did not seem to come to
himself. He never spoke, but just lay and looked out of his eyes, if
indeed it was more than his eyes that looked, if indeed _he_ looked out
of them at all!

"He has overdone his strength!" we said to each other. "He has not been
taking care of himself!--And then to have lain perhaps hours in the snow!
It's a wonder he's alive!"

"He's nothing but skin and bone!" said Martha. "It will take weeks to get
him up again!--And just look at his clothes! How ever did he come nigh
such! They're fit only for a beggar! They must have knocked him down and
stripped him!--Look at his poor boots!" she said pitifully, taking up one
of them, and stroking it with her hand. "He'll never recover it!"

"He will," I said. "Here are three of us to give him of our life! He'll
soon be himself again, now that we have him!"

But my heart was like to break at the sad sight. I cannot put in words
what I felt.

"He would get well much quicker," said John, "if only we could tell him
we were married!"

"It will do just as well to invite him to the wedding," I answered.

"I do hope he will give you away," said Martha.

"He will never give me away," I returned; "but he will give me to John.
And I will not have the wedding until he is able to do that."

"You are right," said John. "And we mustn't ask him anything, or even
refer to anything, till he wants to hear."

Days went and came, and still he did not seem to know quite where he was;
if he did know, he seemed so content with knowing it, that he did not
want to know anything more in heaven or earth. We grew very anxious about
him. He did not heed a word that Dr. Southwell said. His mind seemed as
exhausted as his body. The doctor justified John's resolve, saying he
must not be troubled with questions, or the least attempt to rouse his
memory.

John was now almost constantly with us. One day I asked him whether his
mother took any notice of his being now so seldom home at night. He
answered she did not; and, but for being up to her ways, he would imagine
she knew nothing at all about his doings.

"What does she do herself all day long?" I asked.

"Goes over her books, I imagine," he answered. "She knows the hour is at
hand when she must render account of her stewardship, and I suppose she
is getting ready to meet it;--how, I would rather not conjecture. She
gives me no trouble now, and I have no wish to trouble her."

"Have you no hope of ever being on filial terms with her again?" I said.

"There can be few things more unlikely," he replied.

I was a little troubled, notwithstanding my knowledge of her and my
feeling toward her, that he should regard a complete alienation from his
mother with such indifference. I could not, however, balance the account
between them! If she had a strong claim in the sole fact that she was his
mother, how much had she not injured him simply by not being lovable!
Love unpaid is the worst possible debt; and to make it impossible to pay
it, is the worst of wrongs.

But, oh, what a heart-oppression it was, that my uncle had returned so
different! We were glad to have him, but how gladly would we not have let
him go again to restore him to himself, even were it never more to rest
our eyes upon him in this world! Dearly as I loved John, it seemed as if
nothing could make me happy while my uncle remained as he was. It was a
kind of cold despair to know him such impassable miles from me. I could
not get near him! I went about all day with a sense--not merely of loss,
but of a loss that gnawed at me with a sickening pain. He never spoke. He
never said _little one_ to me now! he never looked in my eyes as if he
loved me! He was very gentle, never complained, never even frowned, but
lay there with a dead question in his eyes. We feared his mind was
utterly gone.

By degrees his health returned, but apparently neither his memory, nor
his interest in life. Yet he had a far-away look in his eyes, as if he
remembered something, and started and turned at every opening of the
door, as if he expected something. He took to wandering about the yard
and the stable and the cow-house; would gaze for an hour at some animal
in its stall; would watch the men threshing the corn, or twisting
straw-ropes. When Dr. Southwell sent back his horse, it was in great hope
that the sight of Death would wake him up; that he would recognize his
old companion, jump on his back, and be well again; but my uncle only
looked at him with a faint admiration, went round him and examined him as
if he were a horse he thought of buying, then turned away and left him.
Death was troubled at his treatment of him. He on his part showed him all
the old attention, using every equine blandishment he knew; but having
met with no response, he too turned slowly away, and walked to his
stable, Dr. Southwell would gladly have bought him, but neither John nor
I would hear of parting with him: he was almost a portion of his master!
My uncle might come to himself any moment: how could we look him in the
face if Death was gone from us! Besides, we loved the horse for his own
sake as well as my uncle's, and John would be but too glad to ride him!

My uncle would wander over the house, up and down, but seemed to prefer
the little drawing-room: I made it my special business to keep a good
fire there. He never went to the study; never opened the door in the
chimney-corner. He very seldom spoke, and seldomer to me than to any
other. It _was_ a dreary time! Our very souls had longed for him back,
and thus he came to us!

Sorely I wept over the change that had passed upon the good man. He must
have received some terrible shock! It was just as if his mother, John
said, had got hold of him, and put a knife in his heart! It was well,
however, that he was not wandering about the heath, exposed to the
elements! and there was yet time for many a good thing to come! Where one
_must_ wait, one _can_ wait.

John had to learn this, for, say what he would, the idea of marrying
while my uncle remained in such plight, was to me unendurable.

CHAPTER XXXII.

TWICE TWO IS ONE.

The spring came, but brought little change in the condition of my uncle.
In the month of May, Dr. Southwell advised our taking him abroad. When we
proposed it to him, he passed his hand wearily over his forehead, as if
he felt something wrong there, and gave us no reply. We made our
preparations, and when the day arrived, he did not object to go.

We were an odd party: John and I, bachelor and spinster; my uncle, a
silent, moody man, who did whatever we asked him; and the still,
open-eyed Martha Moon, who, I sometimes think, understood more about it
all than any of us. I could talk a little French, John a good deal of
German. When we got to Paris, we found my uncle considerably at home
there. When he cared to speak, he spoke like a native, and was never at a
loss for word or phrase.

It was he, indeed, who took us to a quiet little hotel he knew; and when
we were comfortably settled in it, he began to take the lead in all our
plans. By degrees he assumed the care and guidance of the whole party;
and so well did he carry out what he had silently, perhaps almost
unconsciously undertaken, that we conceived the greatest hopes of the
result to himself. A mind might lie quiescent so long as it was
ministered to, and hedged from cares and duties, but wake up when
something was required of it! No one would have thought anything amiss
with my uncle, that heard him giving his orders for the day, or acting
cicerone to the little company--there for his sake, though he did not
know it. How often John and I looked at each other, and how glad were our
hearts! My uncle was fast coming to himself! It was like watching the
dead grow alive.

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