Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the station and seated herself upon a bench. The endless, empty moorlands stretched before her, entirely unenclosed, and with no boundary but the horizon. Two lines of rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the sunshine.
Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform.
Then, in two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost with a sob.
'Esther,' he said, 'have pity on me. What have I done? Can you not forgive me? Esther, you loved me once - can you not love me still?'
'How can I tell you? How am I to know?' she answered. 'You are all a lie to me - all a lie from first to last. You were laughing at my folly, playing with me like a child, at the very time when you declared you loved me. Which was true?
was any of it true? or was it all, all a mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And you say I loved you; I loved my father's friend. I never loved, I never heard of, you, until that man came home and I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my father, be what you were before, and you may talk of love indeed!'
'Then you cannot forgive me - cannot?' he asked.
'I have nothing to forgive,' she answered. 'You do not understand.'
'Is that your last word, Esther?' said he, very white, and biting his lip to keep it still.
'Yes, that is my last word,' replied she.
'Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer,' he said. 'Had you still loved me, right or wrong, Ishould have taken you away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is - I must speak plainly - what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your father may be this or that, but you should use him like a fellow-creature.'
'What do you mean?' she flashed. 'I leave him my house and all my money; it is more than he deserves. I wonder you dare speak to me about that man. And besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me never hear from him again.'
'I thought you romantic about fathers,' he said.
'Is that a taunt?' she demanded.
'No,' he replied, 'it is an argument. No one can make you like him, but don't disgrace him in his own eyes. He is old, Esther, old and broken down. Even I am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared for. Write to your aunt;when I see her answer you can leave quietly and naturally, and I will take you to your aunt's door. But in the meantime you must go home. You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your good, and your good only, so God help me.'
She had put her hand into her pocket and withdrawn it empty.
'I counted upon you,' she wailed.
'You counted rightly then,' he retorted. 'I will not, to please you for a moment, make both of us unhappy for our lives; and since I cannot marry you, we have only been too long away, and must go home at once.'
'Dick,' she cried suddenly, 'perhaps I might - perhaps in time - perhaps - '
'There is no perhaps about the matter,' interrupted Dick. 'Imust go and bring the phaeton.' And with that he strode from the station, all in a glow of passion and virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks flushed during these last words, relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She remained without motion during his absence, and when he returned suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton, and driven off on the return journey like an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she was now, her condition of the morning seemed positively natural. She sat white and cold and silent, and there was no speculation in her eyes. Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and once tried to whistle, but his courage was going down; huge clouds of despair gathered together in his soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided by a piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his love - he had lost his love for good.
The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and the air sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to fail entirely. It seemed as if this miserable drive would never be done, as if poor Dick would never be able to go away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all his desire was to escape from her presence and the reproach of her averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought - he had lost his love for good.
They were already not far from the cottage, when his heart again faltered and he appealed to her once more, speaking low and eagerly in broken phrases.
'I cannot live without your love,' he concluded.
'I do not understand what you mean,' she replied, and Ibelieve with perfect truth.
'Then,' said he, wounded to the quick, 'your aunt might come and fetch you herself. Of course you can command me as you please. But I think it would be better so.'
'Oh yes,' she said wearily, 'better so.'
This was the only exchange of words between them till about four o'clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane, 'opened out'
the cottage between the leafy banks. Thin smoke went straight up from the chimney; the flowers in the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by the sound of hoofs. For right before the gate a livery servant rode slowly up and down, leading a saddle horse. And in this last Dick shuddered to identify his father's chestnut.
Alas! poor Richard, what should this portend?
The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his keeping; yet Dick thought he touched his hat to him with something of a grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her, heard from within the cottage his father's voice upraised in an anathema, and the shriller tones of the Admiral responding in the key of war.