CHAPTER XLIV

THE GATE OF THORNS

Jack had worked diligently in the office all day. He had been late in arriving, but he apologised, told the truth about his adventure, and promised to work overtime so as to make up for his default. His heart was light. Whilst engaged over his books the figures danced before his eyes, and the lines in the ledger became music staves from which his heart read a joyous melody.

He had loved Winefred for so long a time, and had done so in anticipation of nothing but rebuff; and now, all at once, he found his love returned.

Verily he was the happiest of boys.

In the evening he walked through Seaton. The night was still and starlit. There was frost in the air, but he did not feel it; the sea grumbled as it chewed the flints on the Chesil Bank, but he regarded it not. His pulses leaped and his heart sang.

He arrived at the ferry and was put across.

Olver marvelled to find him in such buoyant humour, and asked the reason.

'I have had a good day,' said Jack, but entered into no explanation.

'Had a rise in your salary?' observed Dench.

Then Jack ascended the combe, and took his way over the common to the cottage on the Undercliff. A light was burning in the kitchen. No other window was illumined. He could look in, and he saw Mrs. Marley only, engaged in some domestic employment.

Then Jack turned in the direction of Bindon. If Winefred were not at home, she could be nowhere else.

Nor was he out in his reckoning.

The relations between mother and daughter had been strained. Throughout the day each had felt uneasy, and conscious of the barrier that divided them, and shy of being in each other's presence and society.

The situation had become unendurable, and for their mutual relief Winefred had gone in the afternoon to Bindon, to see Mrs. Jose and have tea with her. She did not herself feel in a humour for a visit. She would have preferred to remain alone in her chamber with her thoughts, but as matters stood she considered that it would be best for her to be away from the cottage, and as she owed Mrs. Jose a visit and a talk, she went to her. She could at all events freely speak with her of Jack's daring feat in getting the choughs, and she carried with her the cage to show the birds to the farmer's wife. She further harboured the hope that, when by herself, her mother might reconsider her determination.

Night had fallen when Winefred left Bindon to return to the Undercliff, and she went up the lane to the gate that opened on to the down.

And there, in the starlight, she saw some one. She knew who it must be thus awaiting her, standing there where she had formerly menaced him with a bush.

'Winefred,' said he, and threw open the gate, 'see, I have plucked away briars and thorns. Pass through to me on the down.'

'O Jack, why have you come?'

'Because I could not stay away. I felt that I must once more see you, hear you――kiss you.'

'Jack, I am returning home, and am late. I have stayed too long at Bindon.'

'You shall not go home yet. Your time belongs now to me.'

'No; have you forgotten what I said to you?'

'I have no memory but for bright and pleasant things. I can recall but one thing distinctly――that you love me.'

She heaved a sigh and laid her brow on his shoulder.

'My dear one,' said he, 'why are you so down-hearted? I love no one in the world but you, never have loved another, not even with a boy's fancy, and never can love any one else.'

'It is sweet to me to hear this, Jack; it is like the singing of larks in early spring, and yet it troubles my heart. A thick fog is about me. I can see no way.'

'But I have your hand, and can lead you.'

'We can never go hand in hand together.'

'Why not? I want no other companion. I will have no other; and if you can put up with such an one as I――――'

'I!――oh, how I would it could be so! But it cannot be. Indeed, indeed, believe me, it cannot be.'

'Why not?'

She was unable to answer him, at least openly. She could not tell him her reason.

As for Jack, if, in the morning a suspicion had traversed his mind that he really had been robbed by Mrs. Marley, and that Winefred was aware of it, in his overwhelming happiness at knowing that he was beloved, he had forgotten this wholly.

'I am hanged if I see any just cause or impediment, dear Winnie. I am not rich; indeed that is my disadvantage. Otherwise I venture to think I am not an undesirable party.' He laughed good-naturedly. 'I have robust health, strong arms, as you saw this morning; commonplace wits, and a very firm, dogged resolution that I will have you and no one else. I am earning something already; I get on famously with Captain Ford, Mrs. Jose's brother, and see no reason why I should not in a little while be sufficiently comfortably off to keep two――with moderate requirements.'

'Consider my mother, Jack.'

'She wishes to make a lady of you, and will not give consent. But, Winnie, what if you plant your feet, put up your lip and say that you are disinclined to be made into manufactured goods? Any man can take a horse to water, but ten cannot make him drink.'

He was in jubilant spirits.

'Winnie,' said he, 'a caravan came to Colyton last summer with wild beasts. They went in procession through the town; there was a zebra, striped like a tiger. But a thunder shower came on just as the procession moved, and after it all the stripes had been washed from the beast, and out of the rain stepped a plain Neddy. I object to painted donkeys.'

Winefred laughed――she could not help it. She said, 'You are very uncivil, Jack.'

'I don't care whether it be a donkey or a gazelle, let us have the real thing――――'

'Jack, I am altogether with you. Let us have the real thing.'

'That is a kiss,' said he. 'No sham there.'

Jack was in excellent spirits. He could see no cloud in the sky. Winefred's love for him had broken like dawn upon his soul, and within him all was light, and twitter, and bloom.

'I must go back to Bath,' she said.

'What――to have the stripes painted on?'

'There are the choughs.'

'I will take them.'

'No――my father is there.'

Jack became grave.

'You fear that he will not give consent?'

'I know that he will not, any more than will my mother.'

'Winnie, my dear. Parents have had to undergo this sort of thing before, but children can bring them to reason. The inevitable is the most convincing of arguments. You do not suppose that cattle in pastures eat only buttercups? They nip up sorrel leaves as well. But presently they lie down and chew the cud――and it all gets chewed up together and turns into sweet milk. This little opposition to dad and mam is but sorrel leaves.'

'No, Jack, it is in vain. I cannot go against both. You do not know what my mother has been to me. But that is not all. O Jack, I do indeed love you, love you with every scrap of my heart. I would do anything for you that was possible. But do you not see that there are other impossibilities than those which can be beat down by brute force? I do not want to be a lady, to have stripes painted on me': she laughed and cried at once. 'Heaven be my witness, I would go down on my knees and scrub the floor, and whiten the doorstep of our house, and be happy, and warble for joy of heart, and keep, as I worked, an eye on the look-out to see you coming home from the office to me――to my heart.'

He clasped her to him.

'But it cannot be,' she said, disengaging herself.

'Why not――I ask again?'

'I am not able to tell you. I am not, indeed. It concerns others beside me.'

'You are full of secrets,' said he, somewhat peevishly. 'Look here. I have torn down all the thorns that stood in your way, and now you are wilfully setting them up again. Winnie, it is just the old stupid story over again. You whisk thorns in my face, and will not let me draw near to you. If you really love me, tell me everything.'

She burst into tears.

'I cannot do so. There are things I dare not say. I have had my tongue tied.'

He became graver, for he recalled now for the first time that ugly suspicion which had occurred to him in the morning.

'Winefred,' said he leisurely, 'perhaps your father or mother may say that I cannot have you, because I have inherited nothing from my father, who was supposed to have laid by a good deal of money. Believe me when I tell you this. Look up at those glittering stars overhead. I assure you solemnly, before those eyes of heaven, that if my father had accumulated a fortune, and had left it to me, I would not touch one penny of it, no, not one penny, for I know how it was got, by ways that I do not think straightforward, and perhaps even dishonest――by smuggling. I do not know whether there is any right or wrong in the matter――it was an underhand business, and that is enough. I will earn my livelihood honestly and openly, with my hands and head, and on that alone will I live, so help me God. If my father ever did lay by a store――I do not say that he did――and if by some accident it has gone astray so that I have not had the fingering of it――then, Winefred, mark my words――to that person into whose hands it has fallen I freely, cheerfully surrender it all. From this moment I give up all claim to it. I look upon it as though I have not, and never had, any right to it. I will bear no grudge against any such person as may have got hold of it by accident, and have hesitated about surrendering it. Winnie, if at any time you should chance to hear that it had been found and retained, then tell whomsoever it concerns to throw it into the sea, or give it to a hospital, or do what he likes with it. I will ask no questions, and not trouble my head about it――here is my real treasure, and I ask for none more.'

He would have clasped Winefred, but she forestalled him by catching his hand, and kissing it, and as she did so, a tear fell upon it.

'You are good,' she said, 'nevertheless, it remains the same――it cannot be.'

'But then――what is to become of us both?'

'I do not know.'

They walked side by side on the open down for a while. The stars glinted overhead. Below, the flints that had been fractured reflected the glint. The sea murmured unintelligible things below, and their minds were as that sea, fretting, chafing, uttering unintelligible murmurs.

At last Jack burst forth with:

'Is there no way out of this hobble?'

'There is none,' said she in a low voice.

'Bah!' exclaimed Jack. 'There is no tangle that cannot be unravelled with patience. We are both young. We must not set our noses against a wall and say that is the world's end.'

Thus they parted.

And thenceforth every evening he was at the gate, and every evening she was there also.

In vain did she torture her mind to find a way out of the difficulties that obstructed her. Sometimes she was tempted to confess everything――she knew that he suspected the worst. He was so generous that he would forgive her mother, and the story would never become public. Everything would be arranged between them. But the secret was not her own. She had promised her mother to be silent, and she could not endure to admit the fault of a mother who had loved her so dearly, and who had sinned only out of love for her. It was at the same time intolerable to her to know that Jack suspected the truth, and to be unable to speak in extenuation of her mother's conduct.

Moreover, she felt that some of her mother's guilt adhered to her. She was so far a participator in the wrong done that she profited by it. To what extent her expenses at Bath were defrayed by her father, and to what extent they were paid for out of Captain Rattenbury's savings, she did not know, but she could not free herself from the consciousness that some of this stolen money had been expended on herself.

The hopelessness of their love weighed on both their hearts. Love was sweet, and yet was bitter, like the little book which the prophet ate.

Of the two Winefred was the more unhappy, for she did not possess the sanguine temperament of Jack. She felt an unutterable joy at having his love, and yet it was a joy that turned to despair.

How was this to end?

This was what they asked each other and themselves, and never received an answer.

'It shall end for a while, now,' said Winefred, 'for to-morrow I return to Bath.'

'How is this? I thought you would not go back till your father came to fetch you away.'

'That was my first intention. But I have been obliged to give way. Things are not ripe for that yet. I take the choughs with me. I shall see my father again.'

'And how long will you be away?'

'That I cannot tell.'

'Winefred,' said Jack, 'we are at the gate of thorns. If you will set your hands along with me to unweave them and pluck them out, we shall make an opening in time. Never mind your fingers. We shall get the gap large enough in time for both of us to pass through to freedom.'