CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE DRIVE HOME.

The girls were boiling a kettle and making afternoon tea, while the men were getting their horses and buggy furniture together, at about four o'clock. Elizabeth was on her knees, feeding the gipsy fire with dry sticks, when Mr. Yelverton came to her with an alert step.

"I am going to drive the little buggy back," he said, "and you are coming with me. The others will start first, and we will follow."

She looked up with a startled expression that puzzled and disappointed him.

"_What!_" he exclaimed, "do you mean to say that you would rather not?"

"Oh, no, I did not mean that," she faltered hurriedly; and into her averted face, which had been deadly pale since she came out of the cave, the hot blood flushed, remembering how long he and she had stood there together in a profound and breathless solitude, and the very blackest night that ever Egypt knew, after he took her into his arms, and before they remembered that they had a second candle and matches to light it with. In that interval, when she laid her head upon his shoulder, and he his red moustache upon her responsive lips, she had virtually accepted him, though she had not meant to do so. "No," she repeated, as he silently watched her, "you know it is not that."

"What then? Do you think it is improper?"

"Of course not."

"You would really like it, Elizabeth?"

"Yes--yes. I will come with you. We can talk as we go home."

"We can. That was precisely my object in making the arrangement."

Eleanor, presiding over her crockery at a little distance, called to them to ask whether the water boiled--and they perceived that it did. Mr. Yelverton carried the kettle to the teapot, and presently busied himself in handing the cups--so refreshing at the close of a summer picnic, when exercise and sun and lunch together have resulted in inevitable lassitude and incipient headaches--and doling out slices of thin bread and butter as Patty deftly shaved them from the loaf. They squatted round amongst the fern fronds and tussocks, and poured their tea vulgarly into their saucers--being warned by Mr. Brion that they had no time to waste--and then packed up, and washed their hands, and tied on their hats, and shook out their skirts, and set forth home again, declaring they had had the most beautiful time. The large buggy started first, the host driving; and Mr. Yelverton was informed that another track would be taken for the return journey, and that he was to be very careful not to lose himself.

"If we do lose ourselves," said Mr. Yelverton, as his escort disappeared over the crest of the hill, and he still stood in the valley--apparently in no haste to follow--tucking a light rug over his companion's knees, "it won't matter very much, will it?"

"Oh, yes, it will," she replied anxiously. "I don't know the way at all."

"Very well; then we will keep them in sight. But only just in sight--no more. Will you have the hood up or down?"

"Down," she said. "The day is too lovely to be shut out."

"It is, it is. I think it is just about the most lovely day I ever knew--not even excepting the first of October."

"The first of October was not a lovely day at all. It was cold and dismal."

"That was its superficial appearance." He let down the hood and climbed to his seat beside her, taking the reins from her hand. He had completely laid aside his sedate demeanour, and, though self-contained still, had a light in his eyes that made her tremble. "On your conscience," he said, looking at her, "can you say that the first of October was a dismal day? We may as well begin as we mean to go on," he added, as she did not answer; "and we will make a bargain, in the first place, never to say a word that we don't mean, nor to keep back one that we do mean from each other. You will agree to that, won't you, Elizabeth?"--his disengaged arm was round her shoulder and he had drawn her face up to his. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth,"--repeating the syllables fondly--"what a sweet and honest name it is! Kiss me, Elizabeth."

Instead of kissing him she began to sob. "Oh, don't, don't!" she cried, making a movement to free herself--at which he instantly released her. "Let us go on--they will be wondering where we are. I am very foolish--I can't help it--I will tell you presently!"

She took out her handkerchief, and tried to calm herself as she sat back in the buggy; and he, without speaking, touched his horses with his whip and drove slowly out of the shady dell into the clear sunshine. For a mile or more of up-and-down tracking, where the wheels of the leading vehicle had left devious ruts in sand and grass to guide them, they sat side by side in silence--she fighting with and gradually overcoming her excitement, and he gravely waiting, with a not less strong emotion, until she had recovered herself. And then he turned to her, and laid his powerful hand on hers that had dropped dejectedly into her lap, and said gently, though with decision--"Now tell me, dear. What is the matter? I _must_ know. It is not--it is _not_"--contracting his fingers sharply--"that you don't mean what you have been telling me, after all? For though not in words, you _have_ been telling me, have you not?"

"No," she sighed; "it is not that."

"I knew it. I was sure it could not be. Then what else can matter?--what else should trouble you? Is it about your sisters? You _know_ they will be all right. They will not lose you--they will gain me. I flatter myself they will be all the better for gaining me, Elizabeth. I hoped you would think so?"

"I do think so."

"What then? Tell me."

"Mr. Yelverton, it is so hard to tell you--I don't know how to do it. But I am afraid--I am afraid--"

"Of what? Of _me?_"

"Oh, no! But I want to do what is right. And it seems to me that to let myself be happy like this would be wrong--"

"Wrong to let yourself be happy? Good heavens! Who has been teaching you such blasphemy as that?"

"No one has taught me anything, except my mother. But she was so good, and she had so many troubles, and she said that she would never have been able to bear them--to have borne life--had she not been stayed up by her religious faith. She told us, when it seemed to her that we might some day be cast upon the world to shift for ourselves, never to let go of that--to suffer and renounce everything rather than be tempted to give up that."

"Who has asked you to give it up?" he responded, with grave and gentle earnestness. "Not I. I would be the last man to dream of such a thing."

"But you--_you_ have given up religion!" she broke forth, despairingly.

"Have I? I don't think so. Tell me what you mean by religion?"

"I mean what we have been brought up to believe."

"By the churches?"

"By the Church--the English Church--which I have always held to be the true Church."

"My dear child, every Church holds itself to be the true Church, and all the others to be false ones. Why should yours be right any more than other people's?"

"My mother taught us so," said Elizabeth.

"Yes. Your mother made it true, as she would have made any other true, by the religious spirit that she brought into it. They are _all_ true--not only those we know of, but Buddhism and Mohammedanism, and even the queer faiths and superstitions of barbarian races, for they all have the same origin and object; and at the same time they are all so adulterated with human errors and vices, according to the sort of people who have had the charge of them, that you can't say any one of them is pure. No more pure than we are, and no less. For you to say that the rest are mistaken is just the pot calling the kettle black, Elizabeth. You may be a few degrees nearer the truth than those are who are less educated and civilised, but even that at present does not look so certain that you are justified in boasting about it--I mean your Church, you know, not you."

"But we go by our Bible--we trust, not in ourselves, but in _that_."

"So do the 'Dissenters,' as you call them."

"Yes, I am speaking of all of us--all who are Christian people. What guide should we have if we let our Bible go?"

"Why should you let it go? I have not let it go. If you read it intelligently it is truly a Holy Scripture--far more so than when you make a sort of charm and fetish of it. You should study its origin and history, and try to get at its meaning as you would at that of any other book. It has a very wonderful history, which in its turn is derived from other wonderful histories, which people will perversely shut their eyes to; and because of this undiscriminating ignorance, which is the blindness of those who won't see or who are afraid to see, it remains to this day the least understood of all ancient records. Some parts of it, you know, are a collection of myths and legends, which you will find in the same shape in older writings--the first dim forms of human thought about God and man and the mysteries of creation; and a great many good people read _these_ as gospel truth, in spite of the evidence of all their senses to the contrary, and take them as being of the same value and importance as the beautiful books of the later time. And there are other Bibles in the world besides ours, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not."

Elizabeth listened with terror. "And do you say it is _not_ the light of the world after all?" she cried in a shaken voice.

"There should be no preaching to the heathen, and spreading the good tidings over all lands?"

"Yes, there should," he replied; "oh, yes, certainly there should. But it should be done as it was by Christ, to whom all were with Him who were not against Him, and with a feeling that we should share all we know, and help each other to find out the best way. Not by rudely wrenching from the heathen, as we call him, all his immemorial moral standards, which, if you study them closely, are often found, rough as they are, to be thoroughly effective and serviceable, and giving him nothing in their places except outworn myths, and senseless hymns, and a patter of Scripture phrases that he can't possibly make head or tail of. That, I often think, is beginning the work of salvation by turning him from a religious man into an irreligious one. Your Church creed," he went on, "is just the garment of religion, and you wear finely-woven stuffs while the blacks wear blankets and 'possum-skins; they are all little systems that have their day and cease to be--that change and change as the fashion of the world changes. But the spirit of man--the indestructible intelligence that makes him apprehend the mystery of his existence and of the great Power that surrounds it--which in the early stages makes him cringe and fear, and later on to love and trust--that is the _body_. That is religion, as I take it. It is in the nature of man, and not to be given or taken away. Only the more freely we let that inner voice speak and guide us, the better we are, and the better we make the world and help things on. That's my creed, Elizabeth. You confuse things," he went on, after a pause, during which she kept an attentive silence, "when you confound religion and churchism together, as if they were identical. I have given up churchism, in your sense, because, though I have hunted the churches through and through, one after another, I have found in them no adequate equipment for the work of my life. The world has gone on, and they have not gone on. The world has discovered breechloaders, so to speak, and they go to the field with the old blunderbusses of centuries ago. Centuries!--of the prehistoric ages, it seems, now. My dear, I have lived over forty years--did you know I was so old as that?--seeking and striving to get hold of what I could in the way of a light and a guide to help me to make the best of my life and to do what little I might to better the world and brighten the hard lot of the poor and miserable. Is that giving up religion? I am not a churchman--I would be if I could, it is not my fault--but if I can't accept those tests, which revolt the reason and consciousness of a thinking man, am I therefore irreligious? _Am_ I, Elizabeth?"

"You bewilder me," she said; "I have never made these distinctions. I have been taught in the Church--I have found comfort there and help. I am afraid to begin to question the things that I have been taught--I should get lost altogether, trying to find a new way."

"Then don't begin," he said. "_I_ will not meddle with your faith--God forbid! Keep it while you can, and get all possible help and comfort out of it."

"But you have meddled with it already," she said, sighing. "The little that you have said has shaken it like an earthquake."

"If it is worth anything," he responded, "it is not shaken so easily."

"And _you_ may be able to do good in your own strength," she went on, "but how could I?--a woman, so weak, so ignorant as I?"

"Do you want a policeman to keep you straight? I have a better opinion of you. Oh, you will be all right, my darling; don't fear. If you only honestly believe what you _do_ believe, and follow the truth as it reveals itself to you, no matter in what shape, and no matter where it leads you, you will be all right. Be only sincere with yourself, and don't pretend--don't, whatever you do, pretend to _anything_. Surely that is the best religion, whether it enables you to keep within church walls or drives you out into the wilderness. Doesn't it stand to reason? We can only do our best, Elizabeth, and leave it." He put his arm round her again, and drew her head down to his shoulder. They were driving through a lone, unpeopled land, and the leading buggy was but a speck on the horizon.

"Oh!" she sighed, closing her eyes wearily, "if I only knew _what_ was best!"

"Well," he said, "I will not ask you to trust me since you don't seem equal to it. You must decide for yourself. But, Elizabeth, if you _knew_ what a life it was that I had planned! We were to be married at once--within a few weeks--and I was to take you home to _my_ home. Patty and Nelly were to follow us later on, with Mrs. Duff-Scott, who wants to come over to see my London work, which she thinks will help her to do something here when she returns. You and I were to go away alone--wouldn't you have liked that, my love?--to be always with me, and taken care of and kept from harm and trouble, as I kept you to-day and on that Exhibition morning. Yes, and we were to take up that fortune that has been accumulating so long, and take Yelverton, and make our home and head-quarters there; and we were to live a great deal in London, and go backwards and forwards and all about amongst those unhappy ones, brightening up their lives because our own were so bright and sweet. You were to help me, as only a woman like you--the woman I have been looking for all my life--could help; but I was not going to let you work too hard--you were to be cared for and made happy, first of all--before all the world. And I _could_ make you happy--I could, I could--if you would let me try." He was carried away for the moment with the rush of his passionate desire for that life that he was contemplating, and held her and kissed her as if he would compel her to come to him. Then with a strong effort he controlled himself, and went on quietly, though in a rather unsteady voice: "Don't you think we can be together without harming each other? We shall both have the same aims--to live the best life and do the most good that we can--what will the details matter? We could not thwart each other really--it would be impossible. The same spirit would be in us; it is only the letter we should differ about."

"If we were together," she said, "we should not differ about anything. Spirit or letter, I should grow to think as you did."

"I believe you would, Elizabeth--I believe you would. And I should grow to think as you did. No doubt we should influence each other--it would not be all on one side. Can't you trust me, my dear? Can't we trust each other? You will have temptations, wherever you go, and with me, at least, you will always know where you are. If your faith is a true faith it will stand all that I shall do to it, and if your love for me is a true love--"

He paused, and she looked up at him with a look in her swimming eyes that settled that doubt promptly.

"Then you will do it, Elizabeth?"

"Oh," she said, "you know you can _make_ me do it, whether it is right or wrong!"

It was a confession of her love, and of its power over her that appealed to every sentiment of duty and chivalry in him. "No," he said, very gravely and with a great effort, "I will not make you do anything wrong. You shall feel that it is not wrong before you do it."

An hour later they had reached the shore again, and were in sight of the headland and the smoke from the kitchen chimney of Seaview Villa, and in sight of their companions dismounting at Mr. Brion's garden gate. They had not lost themselves, though they had taken so little heed of the way. The sun was setting as they climbed the cliff, and flamed gloriously in their faces and across the bay. Sea and sky were bathed in indescribable colour and beauty. Checking their tired horses to gaze upon the scene, on the eve of an indefinite separation, the lovers realised to the full the sweetness of being together and what it would be to part.