CHAPTER XIV

OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS

The cottage inhabited by Weyburn's mother was on the southern hills over

London. He reached it late in the afternoon. His mother's old servant,

Martha, spied the roadway at the gate of the small square of garden. Her

steady look without welcome told him the scene he would meet beyond the

door, and was the dead in her eyes. He dropped from no height; he stood

on a level with the blow. His apprehensions on the road had lowered him

to meet it.

'Too late, Martha?'

'She's in heaven, my dear.'

'She is lying alone?'

'The London doctor left half an hour back. She's gone. Slipped, and fell,

coming from her room, all the way down. She prayed for grace to see her

son. She 'll watch over him, be sure. You 'll not find it lone and cold.

A lady sits with it--Lady Ormont, they call her--a very kind lady. My

mistress liked her voice. Ever since news of the accident, up to ten at

night; and never eats or drinks more than a poor tiny bit of

bread-and-butter, with a teacup.'

'Weyburn went up-stairs.

Aminta sat close to the bedside in a darkened room. They greeted

silently. He saw the white shell of the life that had flown; he took his

mother's hand and kissed it, and knelt, clasping it.

Fear of disturbing his prayer kept Aminta seated. Death was a stranger to

him. The still warm, half-cold, nerveless hand smote the fact of things

as they were through the prayer for things as we would have them. The

vitality of his prayer was the sole light he had. It drew sustainment

from the dead hand in his grasp, and cowered down to the earth claiming

all we touch. He tried to summon vision of a soaring spirituality; he

could not; his understanding and senses were too stricken. He prayed on.

His prayer was as a little fountain, not rising high out of earth, and in

the clutch of death; but its being it had from death, his love gave it

food.

Prayer is power within us to communicate with the desired beyond our

thirsts. The goodness of the dear good mother gone was in him for

assurance of a breast of goodness to receive her, whatever the nature of

the eternal secret may be. The good life gone lives on in the mind; the

bad has but a life in the body, and that not lasting,--it extends,

dispreads, it worms away, it perishes. Need we more to bid the mind

perceive through obstructive flesh the God who reigns, a devil

vanquished? Be certain that it is the pure mind we set to perceive. The

God discerned in thought is another than he of the senses. And let the

prayer be as a little fountain. Rising on a spout, from dread of the

hollow below, the prayer may be prolonged in words begetting words, and

have a pulse of fervour: the spirit of it has fallen after the first jet.

That is the delirious energy of our craving, which has no life in our

souls. We do not get to any heaven by renouncing the Mother we spring

from; and when there is an eternal secret for us, it is befit to believe

that Earth knows, to keep near her, even in our utmost aspirations.

Weyburn still knelt. He was warned to quit the formal posture of an

exhausted act by the thought, that he had come to reflect upon how he

might be useful to his boys in a like calamity.

Having risen, he became aware, that for some time of his kneeling

Aminta's hand had been on his head, and they had raised their souls in

unison. It was a soul's link. They gazed together on the calm, rapt

features. They passed from the room.

'I cannot thank you,' he said.

'Oh no; I have the reason for gratitude,' said she. 'I have learnt to

know and love her, and hope I may imitate when my time is near.'

"She . . . . at the last?'

'Peacefully; no pain. The breath had not left her very long before you

came.'

'I said I cannot; but I must--

'Do not.'

'Not in speech, then.'

They went into the tasteful little sitting-room below, where the

stillness closed upon them as a consciousness of loss.

'You have comforted her each day,' he said.

'It has been my one happiness.'

'I could not wish for better than for her to have known you.'

'Say that for me. I have gained. She left her last words for you with me.

They were love, love . . . pride in her son: thanks to God for having

been thought worthy to give him birth.'

'She was one of the noble women of earth.'

'She was your mother. Let me not speak any more. I think I will now go. I

am rarely given to these--'

The big drops were falling.

'You have not ordered your carriage?'

'It brings me here. I find my way home.'

'Alone?'

'I like the independence.'

'At night, too!'

'Nothing harmed me. Now it is daylight. A letter arrived for you from

High Brent this morning. I forgot to bring it. Yesterday two of your

pupils called here. Martha saw them.'

Her naming of the old servant familiarly melted him. 'You will not bear

to hear praise or thanks.'

'If I deserved them. I should like you to call on Dr. Buxton; he will

tell you more than we can. He drove with me the first day, after I had

sent you the local doctor's report. I had it from the messenger, his

assistant.'

Weyburn knew Dr. Buxton's address. He begged her to stay and take some

nourishment; ventured a remark on her wasted look.

'It is poor fare in cottages.'

'I have been feeding on better than bread and meat,' she said.' I should

have eaten if I had felt appetite. My looks will recover, such as they

are. I hope I have grown out of them; they are a large part of the

bondage of women. You would like to see me safe into some conveyance. Go

up-stairs for a few minutes; I will wait here.'

He obeyed her. Passing from the living to the dead, from the dead to the

living, they were united in his heart.

Her brevity of tone, and her speech, so practical upon a point of need,

under a crisis of distress, reminded him of Lady Charlotte at the time of

the groom's arrival with her letter.

Aminta was in no hurry to drive. She liked walking and looking down on

London, she said.

'My friend and schoolmate, Selina Collett, comes to me at Whitsuntide. We

have taken a house on the Upper Thames, above Marlow. You will come and

see us, if you can be persuaded to leave your boys. We have a boathouse,

and a bathing-plank for divers. The stream is quiet there between rich

meadows. It seems to flow as if it thought. I am not poetical; I tell you

only my impression. You shall be a great deal by yourself, as men prefer

to be.'

'As men are forced to be--I beg!' said he. 'Division is against my

theories.'

'We might help, if we understood one another, I have often fancied. I

know something of your theories. I should much like to hear you some day

on the scheme of the school in Switzerland, and also on the

schoolmaster's profession. She whom we have lost was full of it, and

spoke of it to me as much as her weakness would permit. The subject

seemed to give her strength.'

'She has always encouraged me,' said Weyburn.' I have lost her, but I

shall feel that she is not absent. She had ideas of her own about men and

women.'

'Some she mentioned.'

'And about marriage?'

'That too.'

Aminta shook herself out of a sudden stupor.

'Her mind was very clear up to the last hour upon all the subjects

interesting her son. She at one time regretted his not being a soldier,

for the sake of his father's memory. Then she learned to think he could

do more for the world as the schoolmaster. She said you can persuade.'

'We had our talks. She would have the reason, if she was to be won. I

like no other kind of persuasion.'

'I long to talk over the future school with you. That is, to hear your

plans.'

They were at the foot of the hill, in view of an inn announcing livery

stables. She wished to walk the whole distance. He shook his head.

The fly was ready for her soon, and he begged to see her safe home. She

refused, after taking her seat, but said: 'At any other time. We are old

friends. You will really go through the ceremony of consulting me about

the school?'

He replied: 'I am honoured.'

'Ah, not to me,' said Aminta. 'We will be the friends we--You will not be

formal with me?--not from this day?'

She put out her hand. He took it gently. The dead who had drawn them

together withheld a pressure. Holding the hand, he said: 'I shall crave

leave of absence for some days.'

'I shall see you on the day,' said she. 'If it is your desire: I will

send word.'

'We both mourn at heart. We should be in company. Adieu.'

Their hands fell apart. They looked. The old school time was in each

mind. They saw it as a shore-bank in grey outline across morning mist.

Years were between; and there was a division of circumstance, more

repelling than an abyss or the rush of deep wild waters.

Neither of them had regrets. Under their cloud, and with the grief they

shared, they were as happy as two could be in recovering one another as

friends.

On the day of the funeral Aminta drove to the spot where they had

parted--she walked to the churchyard.

She followed the coffin to its gravel-heap, wishing neither to see nor be

seen, only that she might be so far attached to the remains of the dead;

and the sense of blessedness she had in her bowed simplicity of feeling

was as if the sainted dead had cleansed and anointed her.

When the sods had been cast on, the last word spoken, she walked her way

back, happy in being alone, unnoticed. She was grateful to the chief

mourner for letting her go as she had come. That helped her to her sense

of purification, the haven out of the passions, hardly less quiet than

the repose into which the dear dead woman, his mother, had entered.

London lay beneath her. The might of the great hive hummed at the verge

of her haven of peace without disturbing. There she had been what none

had known of her: an ambitious girl, modest merely for lack of

intrepidity; paralyzed by her masterful lord; aiming her highest at a

gilt weathercock; and a disappointed creature, her breast a home of

serpents; never herself. She thought and hoped she was herself now. Alarm

lest this might be another of her moods, victim of moods as she had

latterly been, was a shadow armed with a dart playing round her to find

the weak spot. It sprang from her acknowledged weakness of nature; and

she cast about for how to keep it outside her and lean on a true though a

small internal support. She struck at her desires, to sound them.

They were yesterday for love; partly for distinction, for a woman having

beauty to shine in the sphere of beauty; but chiefly to love and be

loved, therefore to live. She had yesterday read letters of a man who

broke a music from the word--about as much music as there is in a

tuning--fork, yet it rang and lingered; and he was not the magical

musician. Now those letters were as dust of the road. The sphere of

beauty was a glass lamp-globe for delirious moths. She had changed.

Belief in the real change gave her full view of the compliant coward she

had been.

Her heart assured her she had natural courage. She felt that it could be

stubborn to resist a softness. Now she cared no more for the hackneyed

musical word; friendship was her desire. If it is not life's poetry, it

is a credible prose; a land of low undulations instead of Alps; beyond

the terrors and the deceptions. And she could trust her friend: he who

was a singular constancy. His mother had told her of his preserving

letters of a girl he loved when at school; and of his journeys to an

empty house at Dover. That was past; but, as the boy, so the man would be

in sincerity of feeling trustworthy to the uttermost.

She mused on the friend. He was brave. She had seen how he took his blow,

and sorrow as a sister, conquering emotion. It was not to be expected of

him by one who knew him when at school. Had he faults? He must have

faults. She, curiously, could see none. After consenting to his career as

a schoolmaster, and seeing nothing ludicrous in it, she endowed him with

the young school-hero's reputation, beheld him with the eyes of the girl

who had loved him--and burnt his old letters!--bitterly regretted that

she burnt his letters!--and who had applauded his contempt of ushers and

master opposing his individual will and the thing he thought it right to

do.

Musing thus, she turned a corner, on a sudden, in her mind, and ran

against a mirror, wherein a small figure running up to meet her, grew

large and nodded, with the laugh and eyes of Browny. So little had she

changed! The stedfast experienced woman rebuked that volatile, and some

might say, faithless girl. But the girl had her answer: she declared they

were one and the same, affirmed that the years between were a bad night's

dream, that her heart had been faithful, that he who conjures visions of

romance in a young girl's bosom must always have her heart, as a crisis

will reveal it to her. She had the volubility of the mettled Browny of

old, and was lectured. When she insisted on shouting 'Matey! Matey!' she

was angrily spurned and silenced.

Aminta ceased to recline in her carriage. An idea that an indolent

posture fostered vapourish meditations, counselled her sitting rigidly

upright and interestedly observing the cottages and merry gutter-children

along the squat straight streets of a London suburb. Her dominant

ultimate thought was, 'I, too, can work!' Like her courage, the plea of a

capacity to work appealed for confirmation to the belief which exists

without demonstrated example; and as she refrained from probing to the

inner sources of that mental outcry, it was allowed to stand and remain

among the convictions we store--wherewith to shape our destinies.

Childishly indeed, quite witlessly, she fell into a trick of repeating

the name of Matthew Weyburn in her breast and on her lips, after the

manner of Isabella Lawrence Finchley, when she had inquired for his

Christian name, and went on murmuring it, as if sucking a new bonbon,

with the remark: 'It sounds nice, it suits the mouth.' Little Selina

Collett had told, Aminta remembered, how those funny boys at Cuper's

could not at first get the name 'Aminta' to suit the mouth, but went

about making hideous faces in uttering it. She smiled at the

recollection, and thought, up to a movement of her lips, one is not

tempted to do that in saying Matthew Weyburn!