George Gissing
Thyrza
'A long one, surely. I am waiting for Mrs. Ormonde. She is with the carriage below. I chose to wait here, to feast my eyes.'
Both turned again to the picture. The two did not sort ill together. Annabel was very womanly, of fair, thoughtful countenance, and she stood with no less grace, though maturer, than by the ripples of Ullswater, four years ago. She had the visage of a woman whose intellect is highly trained, a face sensitive to every note of the soul's music, yet impressed with the sober consciousness which comes of self-study and experience. A woman, one would have said, who could act as nobly as she could speak, yet who would prefer both to live and to express herself in a minor key. And Egremont was not unlike her in some essential points. The turn for irony was more pronounced on his features, yet he had the eyes of an idealist. He, too, would choose restraint in preference to outbreak of emotion: he too could be forcible if occasion of sufficient pressure lay upon him. And the probability remained, that both one and the other would choose a path of life where there was small risk of their stronger faculties being demanded.
They talked of the landscape, of that exclusively, until Mrs. Ormonde's carriage was seen reascending the hill. Then they became silent, and stood so as their common friend drew near. Her astonishment was not slight, but she gave it only momentary expression, then passed on to general talk.
'I always regard you as reasonably emancipated, Annabel,' she said, 'but none the less I felt a certain surprise in noticing you intimately conversing with a chance wayfarer. Mr. Egremont, be good enough to seat yourself opposite to us.'
They drove back to Eastbourne. All conversed on the way with as much ease as if they had this afternoon set forth in company from The Chestnuts.
'This is what, at school, we used to call a 'lift,'' said Egremont.
'A welcome one, too, I should think,' Mrs. Ormonde replied. 'But you always calculated distances by 'walks,' I remember, when others measure by the carriage or the railway. Annabel, you too are an excellent walker; you have often brought me to extremities in the lakes, though I wouldn't confess it. And pray, Mr. Egremont, for whom was your visit intended? Shall I put you down at Mr. Newthorpe's door, or had you my humble house in view?'
'It is natural to me to count upon The Chestnuts as a place of rest, at all events,' Walter replied. 'I should not have ventured to disturb Mr. Newthorpe this evening.'
'We will wait at the door, Mrs. Ormonde,' put in Annabel. 'Father will come out as he always does.'
Accordingly the carriage was stopped at the Newthorpes' house, and, as Annabel had predicted, her father sauntered forth.
'Ah, how do you do, Egremont?' he said, after a scarcely appreciable hesitation, giving his hand with perfect self-possession. 'Turned up on the road, have you?'
The ladies laughed. Annabel left the carriage, and the other two drove on to The Chestnuts.
Egremont dined and spent the evening with Mrs. Ormonde. Their conversation was long and intimate, yet it was some time before reference was made to the subject both had most distinctly in mind.
'I went to see Grail as soon as I got to London,' Egremont said at length.
'I am glad of that. But how did you know where to find him?'
'They gave me his address at the old house. He seems comfortably lodged with his friend Ackroyd. Mrs. Ackroyd opened the door to me; of course I didn't know her, and she wouldn't know me; Grail told me who it was afterwards. I could recall no likeness to her sister.'
'There is very little. The poor girl is in calm water at last, I hope. She was to have been married on Midsummer Day, and, the night before, Mrs. Grail died; so they put it off. And what of Mr. Grail?'
'He behaved admirably to me; he did not let me feel for a moment that I excited any trouble in his memory.'
'But does his life seem bitter to him—his employment, I mean?'
'I can't think he finds it so. He spoke very frankly, and assured me that he has all the leisure time he cared to use. He says he is not so eager after knowledge as formerly; it is enough for him to read the books he likes. I went with the intention of asking him to let me be of some use, if I could. But it was a delicate matter, in any case, and I found that he understood me without plain speech: he conveyed his answer distinctly enough. No, I sincerely think that he has reached that point of resignation at which a man dreads to be disturbed. He spoke with emotion of Mrs. Ackroyd; she is invaluable to him, I saw.'
'She is a true-hearted woman.'
Egremont let a minute pass, then said:
'You will show me the portrait?'
'Certainly. It hangs in my bedroom; I will fetch it.'
She went and returned quickly, carrying a red crayon drawing framed in plain oak. In the corner was a well-known signature, that of one of the few living artists to whom one would appeal with confidence for the execution of a task such as this, a man whom success has not vulgarised, and who is still of opinion that the true artist will oftener find his inspiration in a London garret than amid the banality of the plutocrat's drawing-room. The work was of course masterly in execution; it was no less admirable as a portrait. In those few lines of chalk, Thyrza lived. He had divined the secret of the girl's soul, that gift of passionate imagination which in her early years sunk her in hour-long reverie, and later burned her life away. The mood embodied was one so characteristic of Thyrza that one marvelled at the insight which had evoked it from a dead face; she was not happy, she was net downcast; her eyes saw something, something which stirred her being, something for which she yearned, passionately, yet with knowledge that it was for ever forbidden to her. A face of infinite pathos, which drew tears to the eyes, yet was unutterably sweet to gaze upon.
Holding the picture, Egremont turned to his companion, and said in a subdued voice,
'This was Thyrza?'
'Her very self.'
'He knew her story?'
'The bare facts, of course without names, without details. He would take nothing for the original drawing—Lydia has it—and nothing for this copy which he made me. He said I had done him a great kindness.'
'Oh, if one could be a man like that!'
The words answered to his thoughts, yet implied something more than their plain meaning. They uttered more than one regret, more than one aspiration.
'Let me take it, Walter.'
'One moment!—This was Thyrza?'
'Let me take it.'
'Tell me—has Miss Newthorpe seen it?'
'Yes.'
Mrs. Ormonde bore the picture away. In a few minutes Egremont took his leave, and went to the hotel to which he had sent his travelling-bag from Brighton. It was long before he slept. He was thinking of a night a little more than a year ago, when he had walked by the shore and held debate with himself....
On the following evening, shortly before sunset, Annabel and he walked on the short dry grass of the Down that rises to Beachy Head. There had been another day of supreme tranquillity, of blurred sunshine, of soothing autumnal warmth. And this was the crowning hour. The mist had drifted from the land and the sea; as the two continued their ascent, the view became lovelier. They regarded it, but spoke of other things.
'I have no wish to go back to America,' Egremont was saying, 'but, if I do, I shall very likely settle there for good. I don't think I am ideally adapted to a pursuit of that kind, but habit makes it quite tolerable.'
'What should you do if you remained in England?' Annabel asked, her voice implying no more than friendly interest.
'I might say that I don't know, but it wouldn't be true. I know well enough I should live the life of a student, and of a man who looks on contemporary things with an artistic interest, though he lacks the artistic power to use his observations. In time I should marry. I should have pleasure in my house, should make it as beautiful as might be, should gather a very few friends about me. I should not become morbid; the danger of that is over. Every opportunity I saw of helping those less fortunate than myself I should gladly seize; it is not impossible that I might seek opportunities, that I might found some institution—of quite commonplace aims, be assured. For instance, I should like to see other Homes like Mrs. Ormonde's; many women could conduct them, if the means were supplied. And so on.'
'Yes, that is all very reasonable. It lies with yourself to decide whether you might not have a breezier existence in America.'
'True. But not with myself to decide whether I remain here or go back again. I ask you to help me in determining that.'
Annabel stood as one who reflects gravely yet collectedly. Egremont fixed his eyes upon her, until she looked at him then his gaze questioned silently.
'Let us understand each other,' said Annabel. 'Do you say this because of anything that has been in the past?'
'Not because of it; in continuance of it.'
'Yet we are both very different from what we were when that happened.'
'Both, I think. I do not speak now as I did then, yet the wish I have is far more real.'
They were more than half-way up the ascent; it was after sunset, and the mood of the season was changing.
The plain of Pevensey lay like a vision of fairyland, the colouring indescribably delicate, unreal; bands of dark green alternated with the palest and most translucent emeralds. The long stretch of the coast was a faint outline, yet so clear that every tongue of sand, every smallest headland was distinguishable. The sky that rested on the eastern semicircle of horizon was rather neutral tint than blue, and in it hung long clouds of the colour of faded daffodils. A glance overhead gave the reason of this wondrous effect of light; there, and away to the west, brooded a vast black storm-cloud, ragged at the edge, yet seeming motionless; the western sea was very night, its gloom intensified by one slip of silver shimmer, wherein a sail was revealed. The hillside immediately in front of those who stood here was so deeply shadowed that its contrast threw the vision of unearthly light into distance immeasurable. A wind was rising, but, though its low whistling sound was very audible, it seemed to be in the upper air; here scarcely a breath was felt.
Annabel said:
'Have you seen Thyrza's portrait?
'Yes.'
She raised her eyes; they were sad, compassionate, yet smiled.
'She could not have lived. But you are conscious now of what that face means?'
'I know nothing of her history from the day when I last saw her, except the mere outward circumstances.'
'Nor do I. But I saw her once, here, and I have seen her portrait. The crisis of your life was there. There was your one great opportunity, and you let it pass. She could not have lived; but that is no matter. You were tried, Mr. Egremont, and found Wanting.'
'Her love for me did not continue. It was already too late at the end of those two years.
'Was it?'
'What secret knowledge have you?'
'None whatever, as you mean it. But it was not too late.'
They were silent. And as they stood thus the sky was again transformed. A steady yet soft wind from the northwest was propelling the great black cloud seaward, over to France; it moved in a solid mass, its ragged edges little by little broken off, its bulk detached from the night which lay behind it. And in the sky which it disclosed rose as it were a pale dawn, the restored twilight. Thereamid glimmered the pole-star.
Eastward on the coast, at the far end of Pevensey Bay, the lights of Hastings began to twinkle; out at sea was visible a single gleam, appearing and disappearing, the lightship on the Sovereign Shoals.
Annabel continued speaking:
'We have both missed something, something that will never again he offered us. When you asked me to be your wife, four years ago at Ullswater, I did not love you. I admired you; I liked you; it would have been very possible to me to marry you. But I had my ideal of love, and I hoped to give my husband something more than I felt for you at that time. A year after, I loved you. I suffered when you were suffering. I was envious of the love you gave to another woman, and I said to myself that the moment I hoped for had come only in vain. Since then I have changed more than I changed in those twelve months. I am not in love with you now; I can talk of these things without a flutter of the pulse. Is it not true?'
She held her hand to him, baring the wrist. Egremont retained the hand in both his own.
'I can tell you, you see,' she went on, 'what I know to be the truth, that you missed the great opportunity of your life when you abandoned Thyrza. Her love would have made of you what mine never could, even though she herself had been taken from you very soon. I can tell you the mere truth, you see. Dare you still ask for me?'
'I don't ask, Annabel. I have your hand and I keep it.'
'You may. I don't think I should ever give it to any other man.'
The night was thickening about them.
'Shall we go up to the Head?' Egremont asked.
'No higher.'
She said it with a significant look, and he understood her.
