Diogenes of London (collection)/The Thing in the Copse

MELANCHOLY silence held the nether wastes as I came down upon the back of the village. I had no thought of horror or remorse; no revulsion turned me from the sober contemplation of that still, stiff figure in the copse, its eyes open upon the dusk unmeaningly. It was true the thing bobbed in and out of my mind persistently, as though that fell moment of fury had stamped an indelible picture on my brain; but its motions had come to be well-nigh mechanical, and it was only at intervals I was aware that it was dancing there. Flitting as a speck in the eyesight, it was no distress to me; I had no care lest it should come a permanent visual sensation. Of the dread itself I recked nothing; there was no relic of hatred in me for the strewn and helpless body, nor any fear of its particular vengeance. I had put from her for ever (it seemed to me) the material object of her shame and madness; and though my soul now should keep the earth until the crack of doom, it should have the solace of her desolate company. In vain, after all, had she turned from me; the empty world gaped for her now as it had done for me since that terrible hour two nights gone. The horrid glee of this reflection ran through my veins, but no malignity for the dead or for the living had part in my peculiar joy. Indeed, now he had withdrawn from the possibility of her touch, and there was no longer the mocking picture of her delicate caress, I seemed to myself clean rid of animosity against him; and that last thought of admiration which had flashed so strangely upon me at the supreme moment of his fall recurred to my newly dispassionate mind. I would not deny him a fine courage and a rude air of distinction; he had made no craven struggle in his end, but dropped softly in the long ferns without a word, gone to his shameful account unwincingly.

The steep thin track, banked and over-arched with the gloom of deep thickets, widened upon a sudden in a place of heaving yews. The winds brushing round a corner in the downs swept past me upon the deep valley, raising a dismal singing in the pines. Against the low lights of heaven the still, black body with its open eyes tossed and swayed, and low noises were growing in the long corn, when from the darkness of the lower reaches she fluttered into my sight. She came as a white shadow of skirts out of the heart of the rustling thicket, but I knew her on the instant in that blackness, as I have ever known her by her mere proximity. I was acquainted with her errand, too; for he had thrust a gibe at my frenzy; and where he had waited for the tryst, there had he perished. Standing in the centre of the way, I watched her draw near; she came with a start and a slight cry; shrank into the shadows; moved as to pass me swiftly; then, pausing, she raised one arm across her face and bowed her head upon her moving bosom. I could not discern her features; but the lithe grace of her familiar body leapt into possession of my soul. The black Thing dangled in my eyes upon the trees—I took a step to her and saw her face, the face that had touched mine so often, aghast with fear and shame. Could sorrow turn that laughing face to this pallid spectre of loveliness? I had not seen her since that hour when I had all but thrown her from the Hall into the windy night.

'You!' said I tensely. 'You!'

She put out her hands, as it were in a gesture of despair, still bowed and mute. I looked upon her in the falling dusk as mute as she, and the memory- of her invisible beauty made a chasm in my thoughts.

'It is no use to speak of pardon,' she whispered at last, the dear, tremulous whisper that had been wont to murmur at my ears; 'I have come too low for pardon. It is only pity that I ask.'

'Pity!' I echoed, blinking at the black Thing that tossed about her head.

'There were some excuses for me had I the shamelessness to name them. I was mistaken in myself. My mother—I had seen little of you, save that you were great and noble. A girl's fancy—a girl's blunder—and my mother'

'Twelve months married,' I murmured; 'but twelve months.'

'I fought for you against myself and him,' she said. 'God knows I fought—but in a little'

'Twelve months,' I murmured; 'but twelve months.'

'I was too weak for my own passions. God knows, who made us, why such passions are poured into weak vessels.'

'Some for dishonour,' I said: 'some for dishonour.'

'You were too high for me. I never knew you. You had stern moods. I could not reach them. Love turned to fear of you. I was afraid, and betrayed you in my fear. Yours was not the heart of a lover.'

'Your breath was the spirit of my body,' I murmured. 'Your trembling heart was my life. Fire ran in my veins at the touch of your soft fingers. Your eyes mirrored my heaven. Soul and body, body and soul, you stood between me and the night.' My voice sank smothered between my lips, and I knew I muttered to myself. It seemed as if I watched her pale, pitiful face and slight body from a great distance. Her soft tones ran murmurously on; but now the trees buzzed in my ears, and the air, thick with flitting Things, shut out the sight of her. The narrow way fled reeling from my vision into the deep valley below.

'I ask no pardon,' I heard her cry, 'but one thing only.'

She lifted her head, and her white face fronted mine with a wild entreaty.

'I have dishonoured you and yours,' she said. 'I have no hope or future in this world. There is one thing only left me. Give me that,' she said, raising her clasped hands to me. 'Give me that, you who are so strong and merciful.'

'Is it pity?' I asked, staring at her beseeching eyes.

'Yes, pity,' she implored. 'Give me pity and all that flows from pity. Stand to me now in the place of God, who has forsaken me, and give me this one thing. They said you were taken with the fury of devils; they said you were relentless, mad with hate and the desire of vengeance. But you are not. They have spoken false of you,' she cried. 'You are calm and still. You look down upon this thing and despise it—you are so far above it—but you have no grudge against it. You will deal nobly by it. There are no petty passions in your nature. They told me you were sworn to withhold from me freedom, to keep me in the dust. But you will not refuse this thing. I have put away from life all that is best and wisest, all that is most gracious and worthiest; I have thrown immortality to the winds. I am shipwrecked of all save this one thing—the piteous pleasure of a wretched crawling worm. Give me this out of your nobility. I pray to you as to God, come not between us: give me my freedom, and let me take up my miserable life with him.'

'You put me in God's place,' I said.

'Yes, yes,' she said eagerly, 'in God's place. You shall dispense mercy. You shall pity. I want no pardon. I am in the mire before you; let me live my lowly life. I have but one passion, but one thought, but one desire, but one hope, and that is in him. Do not keep me in chains. Set me free that I may go to my bonds with him and keep my paltry happiness secure. See, I tell you this, because you are my God. You are not upon my world; you breathe a loftier air. You have never loved me, a creature of such vain clay. Nothing could re-unite us two; you have no need of a dog at your heels to kick. Let me go out of your life. You have no need of me. Even had you loved me, you would not, you dare not, have me back.'

She gasped her wild sentences in my ears, a figure of forlorn entreaty; and her face of beauty, shining into mine, drove the black flecks from my sight, so that I beheld her suddenly the one being my of constant thoughts and prayers this twelvemonth.

'As God is my witness,' I cried to Heaven, 'I would take you out of Hell, though your soul were in black ashes.'

Her outstretched hands dropped a little; her wide eyes lowered; and she shrank and shuddered from me in her fear. And by her drifted that Thing in the waving ferns. She fell upon her knees in the rough pathway and clasped my hand.

'You are my God,' she whispered. 'Give me this man.'

I shook her from me, and turned down the slope toward the black thicket.

'Vengeance,' said I, 'belongeth unto God.' I laughed. 'Go,' said I, 'I will give you this man.'

I could see her eyes gleam for a moment, as with a vivid joy; she made as though to follow me, but I moved to the very portals of the dark yews, and in a little she turned and went up the track. Pausing on the threshold of my downward way, I watched her white skirts creeping into the gloom; and then I too turned and climbed down upon the village, leaving her to mount upwards to the downs, where lay that dread Thing waiting for her in the copse.