XIII

About three months after this explanation and the repudiation of the engagement, it happened one day that Martial was following the harriers on the hills, when, to his surprise, he observed a lady running on foot with such speed that she kept pace with the horsemen. He could not help noticing her grace, and admiring the swiftness with which she ran. He saw her quite close several times during the day.

As he rode homewards, he stopped to speak with a friend, who asked him to take some refreshment (a collation had been on the table all day for passing sportsmen), and it so happened that a lady whom Felise had met in the field had brought her there for the same purpose. By accident Martial sat opposite Felise, and her face from that hour was painted irremovably in the chamber of his mind.

He did not see her again in the field, for Felise fancied that she had attracted undue attention. Bold as she was in her own love’s cause, she was sensitive to observation at other times, and she did not run again after the harriers.

But in the winter it happened that a little matter of business arose between Barnard and Mr. Goring about a watercourse in which both were interested, and in order to settle it amicably a personal interview was desirable. Barnard rode over, and for the second time met Felise. On this occasion the interview was even shorter and more formal, but it was long enough to confirm Martial’s first impression.

Week after week, as he sat by Rosa, he saw the face of Felise. He did not feel the least emotion of love for Felise, but he saw her face before him. Day by day his weariness increased, till his position towards Rosa became intolerable. He could not endure her; it was a misery to him to spend even the short time now permitted in her presence. It was not hatred, it was worse⁠—it was utter ennui and dislike. The more this grew upon him, so much the more, according to his code, he was bound to conscientiously attend her.

No fresh-sprung passion for Felise mingled with this revulsion. All his ideas of Felise were simply admiration, the admiration given to a picture. The singular loveliness of her features and the grace of her form took a deep hold of his artistic nature, but his heart did not throb. Her influence was negative. She had not inspired him with passion, but she had thrown up the object of his previous admiration into unpleasant relief.

He now saw only too plainly that Rosa was only pretty; pretty, because she was young. He did not like a low forehead overhung by a quantity of dark hair. Her figure was not full; her shape looked flat to him now; her walk was clumsy; and he observed that she brought down the toe of her boot after the heel, making a second stump distinctly. These two clumping noises irritated him. Somehow her dresses never suited her, though they were expensive; her conversation was insufferably insipid. In fact, he was forever unconsciously comparing her with Felise, and continually finding out additional defects.

All he wanted was to be free; he did not want Felise, but he wished to be free of Rosa.

He looked back upon his extravagances with such disgust as to feel ready to kill himself for having committed them. The quotations, for instance, from his favourite poems, which he had applied to Rosa⁠—he put the very books away out of sight, that they might not remind him. Unless it was necessary, he carefully avoided entering the town, simply because she lived there; yet he called every week, and paid her the same attentions.

The disgust with which he looked back upon his own former sentiments was much stronger than the dislike he felt towards Rosa herself. Though he now saw her defects so distinctly, he could not help owning that she had committed no fault. His anger was with himself.

Despite his efforts to forget, and despite the putting away of his books, every now and then he caught himself applying the old quotations to Felise, to whom they fitted exactly.

This rendered him still more irritable; nothing on earth should ever induce him to commit such fooleries again. He did not love Felise, and he did not want to love her. Had he not read about love he should never have loved at all, nor understood what it meant. Such reading ought to be destroyed, placing, as it did, stilted and unreal ideas into young people’s heads.

A man did not need anything of the kind; a man ought to be quite independent of such fancies; a man should be quite free and independent, and walk about, and whistle, and think of nothing. Fellows who were always paying court to women became effeminate and contemptible. A woman’s servitor, such as he had been⁠—and still was⁠—was despicable. He despised himself thoroughly. He easily found examples in history to support his new views, such as that of Alexander the Great, who conquered the world, and was reported indifferent to women. But Mark Antony quitted the stage at the end of a petticoat. Ignominious!

At the same time, he was always thinking about the beautiful face of the woman he had seen but twice. Several times he rode towards Mr. Goring’s house, thinking that he might see her in the garden as he passed, but on approaching turned back, accusing himself of disloyalty to Rosa. After these rides he had fits of contempt, despising himself for even thinking of a woman.

Still, he reasoned that it was quite possible to admire beauty, and yet to be perfectly heart-whole, and to avoid the absurdities of which he had been guilty. Artists employed the most handsome models they could find, but did not fall in love with them. His admiration of Felise was purely artistic. Any other woman⁠—if as beautiful⁠—would have suited him as well to look at.

Currents of thought or emotion go on for a long time in the mind before a step is taken. The step came at last; Barnard began to omit his weekly call upon Rosa. First, he missed a week, then a fortnight, then three weeks. The commonplace woman for a time was perfectly satisfied with his explanations⁠—the pressure of work in the spring season, and so on. It was quite right he should attend to the farm, since, if not, he could not marry her. The intervals between his visits were tedious, still they passed.

But when Barnard did not call for an entire month, an uneasy feeling came over her. She began to think about him in a different strain, and soon recollected numberless trifling circumstances which increased her anxiety. Rosa had never encouraged his extravagances, but she missed them. Certainly Barnard was not so attentive as he had been.

At last she determined to go over and see him, and did so. He accompanied her home, and, so far as outward manner was concerned, she found him unchanged. Her subtler instincts being aroused, she was all the same confirmed in her dread that Barnard was beginning not to care for her. As he did not call again, nor write, she was sure that he had ceased to love her.

This commonplace woman, accordingly, after weeping silently out of sight at night for a little while, composed herself, and addressed a short letter to her former lover. In a few simple sentences she told him that she saw plainly enough he was tired of her; and that being so, she wished him to consider himself perfectly free. She loved him with her whole heart, and she should always be his. That was all; there was no passion in the letter, but it was strictly true⁠—she would always be his,

Barnard was deeply hurt⁠—not at her conduct⁠—but at his own. He felt a most pitiful coward to have won a woman’s heart and then to have left her like this. He was utterly ashamed of himself⁠—this bitterness was the punishment of his romantic follies. Without the least trace of conceit on his part, he was aware that Rosa really loved him. Wherever he went, or whatever he did, here was a woman always thinking of him, and always adhering to him. Easy to absent himself from her presence, impossible to turn her mental gaze away.

The question may be asked, whether it was not better for him to have broken with her, than to have remained at her side always wishing to be away.

If anyone is disposed to greatly blame Barnard, two things must be borne in mind: firstly, that there had been no viciousness in his conduct; secondly, his youth. Even now he was but five-and-twenty. Not for an instant had he foreseen the result of his folly, and he now sincerely regretted it. Still, there the result was.

The cruelty to Rosa was very great. No fault, no frivolity, an earnest quiet girl, and suddenly cast down from the position of sedate happiness she reasonably expected. The circumstances were very hard upon her. Suppose, for a moment, we exonerate Martial from all blame, how cruel it was to Rosa that Felise should possess so beautiful a face!

The mere fact of Felise’s existence was a cruelty to her. The existence of one woman is incompatible with the happiness of another. But for Felise’s existence Barnard was in no degree responsible; fate had prepared this thing for Rosa to “thole,” that fine old English word which conveys the sense of enduring at the hands of something irresistible.

Martial saw the cruelty of it all to her, and that pity made him feel tenderer towards her than he had done for a long, long time. Forgetting her commonplaceness and his weariness, he thought of her in a sorrowful, far-off way, which, if Rosa could have known and understood, would have burnt her heart like molten iron. But for all his tenderness he did not go to her.

The bitterness of his extravagances recoiled on his own head. Memory constantly brought back to him some sentiment he had uttered, or fancied he experienced, and which now mocked at him.

There is nothing more terrible while it lasts than for a man to despise himself.

After several days spent in this way. Martial said to himself that he must do one of two things⁠—either he must go back to Rosa and honourably carry out his promise, no matter at what cost to himself, or he must sell off the stock and emigrate. In the backwoods of America he could hide himself, and perhaps in time forget.

Though he was the tenant of fifteen hundred acres, his finances were in such a critical condition that to sell off and quit would be perhaps the wisest thing to do while yet fifty pounds remained to his credit. He should not see any beautiful faces in the backwoods. His rifle would console him; he took it down and looked at it⁠—it was one of Lancaster’s small oval bores.