CHAPTER VI.
SHAKSPEARE—(SONNETS).
The next morning Harry sat in sullen silence at the breakfast-table, scarcely raising his head. Agnes and Rose, with faltering, timid voices, never ceased addressing him. They pressed upon him the food which he could not taste, they asked his opinion with tearful eyes and a visible tremor on the most trifling matters, they laid caressing hands upon his shoulders when they passed behind his chair; but these affectionate acts were very visible. They could not conceal the suppressed excitement of their great anxiety, nor their consciousness that another crisis had come in Harry’s fate.
And even little Lettie stirred on her chair restlessly, like a startled bird, and felt her heart leaping at her very throat, and scarcely could speak for her parched lips and the strong beating of this same little anxious heart. And no one knew what heavy throbs beat against Martha’s breast—no longer fluttering and tremulous, but heavy as a death-knell. She said little, it is true, but still she addressed Harry sometimes as usual—as usual—perhaps with a tenderer tone—though Harry made no answer, save in monosyllables, to any of them all; and Martha very speedily rose from her place, and left the room.
Another spasmodic attempt at conversation was made by Agnes and Rose, but their own hearts beat so loudly in their ears, that they trembled for Harry hearing them. Poor Harry! through those long slow moments which were hours to them, he hung idly over the table, trifling with his baby’s coral—and it was not until all endeavours at speech had failed, and a total silence—a silence of the most intense and painful excitement to his companions—had fallen upon them, that rousing himself with an effort, and putting back the hair from his damp forehead, he slowly rose and went away.
Katie Calder, not understanding all this, and slightly depressed by it, had just stolen out of the room to gather up their books for school; so no one, save the wistful Lettie, was left with the young wife and Rose. They sat still for a short time in silence, eagerly listening to Harry’s footsteps as he passed through the hall to his little library, and closed the door; and then Agnes clasped her hands upon her side, and gasped for breath, and said in a voice between a cry and a whisper:
“What will she say to him? Oh, what will Martha say to Harry, Rose?”
“I cannot tell—I cannot tell,” said Rose, wringing her hands. “Oh, if it were only over! I could break my heart when I look at Harry—I could break my heart!” And Rose put her hands over her face in just such a passionate burst of restrained sobbing as had come upon Violet before.
After some time, they heard the slow footstep of Martha coming down the stairs, and both of them ran to the door to whisper an entreaty to her to “be gentle with Harry. Poor Harry!” They could scarcely say it for tears.
When Martha entered the library, Harry lounging in the window-seat, was languidly turning over a paper. He, poor Harry! was little less excited than they were, and heats and chills came over him, and his eye fell under Martha’s mother eye; but the second nature which had risen like a cloud over that boy’s heart which still moved within him, made him stubborn and defiant still. When she came in, he threw down his paper with a slight start, as of impatience; and turning to her, rapidly asked: “Well, Martha, what have you to say to me?”
“Am I to have liberty to say it, Harry?”
“What folly to ask me such a question,” said Harry, angrily. “Does my sister need to make a formal affair of it, like this, when she has anything to say to me? Sit down, Martha, and don’t look as if you came to school me; I may not be able to bear that very patiently, and I should be sorry to hurt you. Sit down, and tell me what it is?”
Martha sat down with gathering coldness upon her face—coldness of the face alone, a mask to hide very different emotions.
“I come to-day while you are full master of yourself, and are alone,” she said, with slow and deliberate emphasis—Harry did not know that she compelled herself to speak so, lest the burning tide of other words should pour forth against her will—“to answer a question you asked yesterday. You desired to know what your neighbours meant by ceasing to seek you; Harry, I wish to tell you what they mean.”
Harry looked at her for a moment, as if about to speak, but rapidly turning away eyes which could not meet the steady gravity of hers, he took up his paper, and without looking at it, played with it in his hand.
“They mean,” proceeded Martha, slowly, “that they do not choose to extend the courtesies of ordinary life to one who scorns and never seeks, the ordinary respect which is every man’s right who lives without outward offence against God or man; they mean that they cannot pretend to honour what you have set yourself to disgrace; they mean that the name, the house, the family, which you can resign for the meanest of earthly pleasures, have no claim of special regard upon them. Your life is known in every peasant’s house; they talk of you at the firesides of your labourers: they say, poor Allenders, and tell each other how you are led away—Harry! I ask you what right you have to be led away? You tell me you are not a child, and will not bear to be schooled by me. What right have you, a man—a man, Harry—to suffer any other man to lead you into evil? And this is what your neighbours mean.”
Harry dashed the paper from him in sudden passion. “And what right have you—what right have you? Martha, I have borne much: what right have you to speak to me in such words as these?”
“God help me! the dearest right that ever mother had,” exclaimed Martha, no longer slowly; “because my soul has travailed and agonized; because I put my hopes upon you, Harry—my hopes that were once shipwrecked, to be cast away again! Look at me, mind me all your life, boy, before you defy me! Night and day, sleeping and waking, I have carried you on my heart. When I was in my first youth, I cried with strong crying, and pangs such as you never knew, for power and wealth, and to win it with my hands. Who was it for, but you? Then I came to a dearer hope. I thought you would win it, Harry; and I would eat bread out of your hands, and exult in you, and call upon the heavens and the earth to see that you were mine. What of my hopes? They are ill to slay, but God has touched them, and they have died out of my heart. I have failed, and you have failed, and there is no more expectation under the sun. But I call you to witness you are mine—bought with the blood of my tears and my travail—my son, Harry—my son!”
He did not answer, he did not look at her, but only covered his face with his hands.
“We are worsted, but we need not be destroyed,” continued Martha. “I accept the failure that is past, and acquiesce in it, because it has been God’s will—but God never wills that we should fail in the future, Harry. God be thanked that it lies continually before us, free of stain. And hope is hard to me—maybe it is because my tribulations have not wrought patience, that experience does not bring me hope. But I will hope again—I will make another venture, and look for another harvest, Harry, if you will bid me! Not like the last—God forbid that it should be like the last! I will turn my face towards the needful conquest we have to make—you and me—and hope for that, though it is greater than taking a city. But Harry, Harry, I cannot bear to see you sinking—harder than it is to them, who are weeping for you yonder, it is to me who cannot shed a tear. Harry, am I to hope again?”
But sad and terrible was the gleam in Martha’s dry strained eyes; not like sunshine but like lightning, was the feverish hope for which she pleaded.
And Harry rose and took her hand, himself trembling with strong emotion. “From this day henceforth,” he vowed, with a choking voice, “never more, Martha, never more, can I forget myself, and them, and you.”
And there fell upon Martha a sudden relief of weeping, such as her eyes had not known for months. “You were once my boy, my bairn, Harry,” she said, with a strange hysteric smile, “I cannot forget that you were my bairn, my little brother—Harry—my hope!”
And Harry covered his face once more, and was not ashamed to weep.
Poor Harry! for ever under the evil which had crusted his nature over, under all the pride, the jealousy, the self-assertion of conscious, remorseful, unrepentant sin, the boy’s heart tender, fresh, and hopeful still dwelt in his breast. Only God can reconcile these strange contradictions; but when you reached to it—and many a time had this added a pang to Martha’s sufferings—you could not choose but deem it an innocent heart.
By and by Martha left the room—left him there to meditate upon this and on the past. Poor Harry’s heart lightened; in spite of himself, his attention wandered from these things of solemn weight and interest to little Harry playing under the walnut tree. Now and then, it is true, he put his hand over his eyes, and made his face grave, and mused, and even prayed; but anon his mind wandered again. The great excitement of the last hour sank into repose, and Harry had seldom been so easily amused with the little stumbles and misadventures of his child. At the other window, Agnes and Rose, unable to see anything, with their sick hearts and tearful eyes, sat in absorbed silence, looking out indeed, but without noticing even the favourite boy. Above, Martha was kneeling before God, in prayer which wrung not her heart only, but every fibre of her strained frame. Upon the sunny road without, little Lettie went silently to school, wiping a tear now and then from her cheek—all for Harry; while Harry sat in the window of his library, the cloud gone from his brow, and a smile upon his lip, watching his child at play—with simple pleasure and interest, as if he himself were a child.
And then he opened the window, and called to little Harry. With a sudden start, Agnes rose, and went out upon the lawn to read his face. His face was cloudless, smiling, full of quiet satisfaction and repose; and he had already begun to play with the child at the window. Agnes had only time to telegraph that all was well to Rose, when Harry called to her to get her bonnet and go out with him. With joy and relief she ran into the house to obey, and Harry met her at the library door, and said he wanted a little rest and relaxation to-day, and that she must persuade Martha and Rose to let him row them down the river in the neglected boat; and Agnes went up-stairs singing, and half weeping for joy.