CHAPTER XIV

PILGRIMAGE

I

Not to know--in no way to be prevailed upon in this his return to life by knowledge of whether she lives or has died. In no way to be strengthened--but of himself to live--if life has been permitted her; in no way to be shaken if her life has been required. To be judged apart from her....

Come with this Mr. Wriford while for a year he thus places in proof his acceptance. He takes up his life where on his flight from London he had left it. To do that--not to admit his every impulse which calls upon him to hide, to live in seclusion, and there dwell with his memories, cherish his affliction--is part of his bond pledged by her bedside. The secret of happiness has been purchased for him; let him not mock that which has been paid. He has the secret; let him exercise it. Abandonment to grief--what is that but pity of self? Life in retreat, unable to face the world--what is that but admission that his fate, that which affects himself, is harder than he can bear?

Bound up in this, he takes train immediately from Whitecliffe to London, presently is involved in all the tortures that his welcoming inflicts upon him. His return is made a sensation of the hour by his friends and soon, as he finds, by that larger circle to whom his books have made him known. "Where have you been?" It is a question to which he seems to have to spend every hour of all his days in formulating some kind of answer. It is a question--and all the congratulation and felicitation that goes with it--that often he tells himself he can no longer stand and must escape. "Where have you been?" and all the while it is at Whitecliffe--in that room, among those scenes--that his heart is, and that he desires only to be left alone to keep there. But he does not escape. But he does not keep himself alone. It is self that bids him. It is self he has come out to know and face. He forces himself to see with the eyes of those that do them the kindnesses that are done him. He makes himself respond. He permits himself no shrinking.

He revisits Mr. and Mrs. Filmer. They have "got along very well without him," they tell him.

"I am bound to say," says Mrs. Filmer, "that at the time we thought your conduct showed very little consideration for us. I am bound to say that."

"A mere postcard," says Mr. Filmer, "can relieve much suspense; but one does not of course always think of duties to others, h'm, ha."

"Well, that's just what I am here to think of," Mr. Wriford responds. "Is there anything I can do? Anything you want?"

There is nothing, as it appears, except a manifestation of fear that he proposes to upset the establishment by quartering himself upon them, relief from which expands them somewhat, and they proceed with the news that two of the boys, his nephews, are on their way home on leave.

The boys come, and in their affairs and in their interests he finds better response to the "Anything I can do?" than was received from the Filmers. Till their arrival he has had, in seclusion of his rooms, intervals when he can retreat within his thoughts. There is a holiday home to be made for them, and he takes a flat and occupies himself with them, and these intervals are denied him. The young men are here to have a good time. There are their eyes for him to see with--not his own. He has a trick, they both notice it, of saying: "Well, tell me just how you look at the business." It is a trick that is expressed also in his manner, in a certain inviting, sympathetic way that he has, and it comes to be noticed in the much wider circle of his friends. "Used to be a fearfully reserved chap, Wriford," they say. "Never quite knew whether he was shy or thought himself too good for you. Do you notice how different he is now?"

"Do you ever notice him when he's alone, though--sitting in the club here and not knowing you're looking at him?" another would reply. "There's a look on his face then--he's been through it, Wriford, I'll bet money."

II

Ah, he has been through it and daily feels the mark of it. Time swings on. He settles down. The sensation of his return evaporates. His nephews go back to their duties. He settles down. This is his post--here in the hurly-burly. He will not desert it. He takes up his work again. Long days he sits staring at the blank sheets of paper before him. His thoughts are ready. There obtrudes between them and the marshalling of them memories of how it had been planned he again was to resume them: "Won't I keep you quiet just, dear!" ... That is self, pity for himself, grieving for himself. Let him put it away. Let him get to work. Let it return--ah, let her face, her voice, her jolly laughter return to him just for an hour when work is done, just while he lies awake....

Come to this Mr. Wriford when a year is gone. Summer again--June again--the holidays again--again that day. He has lived through a year of it. Through a long year he has proved himself. If he might know certainly that she is dead, he could not fall back again. That is what he has feared at the outset. He does not fear it now. He has lived through a year of it. He is assured of himself now. If he might but make a pilgrimage to Whitecliffe, see where he had walked with her, see where perhaps she lies, permit his spirit to walk those roads, those paths, those fields with her again, suffer it to stand beside her...!

He goes. He goes first, on a sudden fancy, to far Port Rannock and stands beside the mound that marks the grave he knows there.

"Well, you old Puddlebox," says Mr. Wriford, standing there. "Well, you old Puddlebox. How goes it? How goes it now? Well enough with you, old Puddlebox! You knew the secret. I know it now. Too late for me, old Puddlebox. But, if you know, you'll be shouting your praises on it, eh, old Puddlebox? What was it you said as the sea came on to us? 'Well, we've had some rare times together, boy, since first you came down the road.'"

He suddenly cried: "I would to God--I would to God you might shake off this earth, these stones, and come to me face to face for one moment while I clasped your hand!"

III

So on to Whitecliffe. So to his pilgrimage there. Just such another day awaits him as on that day a year ago. Sunshine and clouded sun, as he walks the parade. Presage of rain, as on through Yexley Green to Whitehouse he goes. Whitehouse still stands empty; he walks the garden, looks through the windows, tries the door, treads again the rooms where last he had walked with her. "Jolly little Essie's room" this was to have been.... This was where he would write.... This was where wouldn't she keep him quiet just! ... She sat there while he told her...

Up the path to the cliff, along the cliff and past that place, paused long upon it, and on to Whitecliffe Church. Here is the churchyard. He knows all these old graves--he had peered here and here and here with Essie, puzzling their quaint inscriptions. It is for a new stone he looks. Yes, there is one. Three sides of the church he walks and only the old stones sees. Come to the porch, a new white cross confronts him. He goes to it. It is not hers! Sense tells him they would not have brought her here, would not have left her here. They would have taken her home. Yes, but that moment while he crossed the turf towards the cross, that moment while its letters came in view--and were not "Essie,"--has shaken him so that his limbs tremble, so that he must somewhere rest ... there is the porch.

A troop of noisy boys come through the gate, and then more boys by ones and twos. An old man who comes from within the church and looks out upon the churchyard for a moment remarks to him first that there is going to be a shower, then, calling out in reproof at a pair of the laughing boys, that it is choir-practice just going to begin. The old man returns to his duties; the last of the boys seem to have arrived: there are sounds within the church and premonitory notes of the organ; some heavy drops of the rain that has been threatening; then in a sudden stream the shower.

From where he sits he can see far up the road beyond the gate. He sees a group that had been approaching shelter beneath a distant tree. The downpour falls in a deluge that is fierce and short, passes and leaves the path in puddles, and with unnoting eyes he sees the group beneath the tree desert its shelter and come hurrying towards the church. The organ is playing now, voices swing in sudden volume of sound; unheeding, as with his eyes he is watching without seeing, he yet is subconsciously aware of the regular rise and fall of psalms.

With his eyes unseeing! They suddenly, as he watches, declare to him that which sets a drumming in his head, a snatching at his breath. The group has reached the gate. It is an old man drawing a wicker bath-chair, an old lady walking behind it. Drumming in his head; it passes; there succeeds to it a rocking of all the ground about his feet, a swimming, a receding, a swift approaching of all the land beyond the porch. That old man is opening the gate, turning his back to draw the bath-chair carefully through, revealing one that sits within it, coming on now ... coming on now ... closer and closer and closer...

This Mr. Wriford simply stands there. He doesn't do anything, and he doesn't say anything. He can't. You see, he has been through a good deal for a good long time. This is the end of a long passage for him. You know how weak he is. You probably despise him. Well, then, despise him now. He has no parts, no qualities, for this. He makes a bungling business of it. He has come to the doorway of the porch and simply stands there. They have seen him. They are staring at him. They are saying things. They are exclaiming. He doesn't hear. He just stands there....

Then he begins. He jolts down off the step of the porch. He stumbles along the few paces to the bath-chair. She that is seated there gives a kind of laugh and a kind of cry. He falls on his knees, kneeling in puddles, and puts his arms out, and takes her in them, and catches her to him, and buries his face against her, and holds her, holds her--and has nothing at all that he can say, not even her name.

Well, nor has she. She just has her arms about him.... When at last she speaks, Mr. and Mrs. Bickers have gone--into the church, or into the air, or into the ground--gone somewhere for some reason. And even then it is not at first speech but some odd little sound that she makes, and at that he looks up and she stoops to him--and there they are, her cheek against his cheek.

"My back's a fair old caution," says Essie then. "They don't think I'll ever walk again."

He stammers something about "I'll carry you, dear. I'll carry you."

Each in the other's arms, her cheek against his cheek.

"Just going to Whitehouse, we were," says Essie. "My goodness, if it hadn't rained and made us come for shelter!"

He says something about: "It's empty--it's still empty for us--Whitehouse."

Some one opens the church door. Young voices and music that have been muffled come streaming through towards them--

_Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord: or who shall rise up in his holy place?_

_Even he that hath clean hands and a pure heart: and that hath not lift up his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive his neighbour._

A sound escapes him. He feels a sudden moisture from her face to his. The singing goes deeper; then with triumphant surge and sweep breaks out again:

"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors...._"

"What, are you crying too?" says Essie. "Aren't we a pair of us, though?"

THE END

_By the author of "The Clean Heart"_

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

By A. S. M. HUTCHINSON

Author of "The Clean Heart" and "Once aboard the Lugger----"

Frontispiece $1.35 net.

The plot of "The Happy Warrior" is unusual, its love interest is sweet and pure, and there is a fight of which it is truthfully said that there is nothing more virile and tense in literature.

Shows the touch of the master hand ... Mr. Hutchinson is nothing if not original. His own strong individuality is apparent in his method and in his style.--_New York Times_.

Mr. Hutchinson has a newer and a better grasp of style, which manifests itself in clear, forcible English, and a really fine intermixture of humor and pathos. We have here a sweet and pure love story.--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_.

"The Happy Warrior" is a remarkable publication ... Mr. Hutchinson establishes himself as a master of characterization, keen observer with a fine sense of the dramatic, and as fine a prose poet as we have had since Meredith.--_Chicago Post_.

A brilliant piece of work.... Its author takes his place at once among living novelists whose work is something more than a successful commercial product. "The Happy Warrior" establishes Mr. Hutchinson among the artists.--_London Daily Telegraph_.

... His romance and his humor are all his own, and the story is shot through and through with a fleeting romance and humor that is all the more effective because it is so evanescent. Few novels exist in which the characters are as viable as Mr. Hutchinson's.--_Boston Transcript_.

_By the author of "The Clean Heart."_

ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER----

By A. S. M. HUTCHINSON

Author of "The Clean Heart" and "The Happy Warrior."

327 pages. $1.30 net.

This is the novel that gave Mr. Hutchinson a conspicuous place among the younger English authors who have so recently achieved literary distinction. It is not a sea story, as its title would appear to indicate, but a delightful comedy of English life, containing the most romantic of love stories, written with such rare humor that it stands apart from the great mass of present-day fiction. It is a novel to read and reread, for through all the laughter and quaintness shines the reality of life.

At once serious in its mockery of seriousness and touched with genuine sentiment in its sympathy with the emotions of youth ... Altogether it is refreshing.--_Everybody's Magazine_.

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