CHAPTER XVII. A BROKEN FETTER
Eric went home with a white, haggard face. He had never thought it waspossible for a man to suffer as he suffered then. What was he to do?It seemed impossible to go on with life--there was NO life apart fromKilmeny. Anguish wrung his soul until his strength went from him andyouth and hope turned to gall and bitterness in his heart.
He never afterwards could tell how he lived through the following Sundayor how he taught school as usual on Monday. He found out how much a manmay suffer and yet go on living and working. His body seemed to him anautomaton that moved and spoke mechanically, while his tortured spirit,pent-up within, endured pain that left its impress on him for ever. Outof that fiery furnace of agony Eric Marshall was to go forth a man whohad put boyhood behind him for ever and looked out on life with eyesthat saw into it and beyond.
On Tuesday afternoon there was a funeral in the district and, accordingto custom, the school was closed. Eric went again to the old orchard.He had no expectation of seeing Kilmeny there, for he thought she wouldavoid the spot lest she might meet him. But he could not keep away fromit, although the thought of it was an added torment, and he vibratedbetween a wild wish that he might never see it again, and a sick wonderhow he could possibly go away and leave it--that strange old orchardwhere he had met and wooed his sweetheart, watching her develop andblossom under his eyes, like some rare flower, until in the space ofthree short months she had passed from exquisite childhood into stillmore exquisite womanhood.
As he crossed the pasture field before the spruce wood he came upon NeilGordon, building a longer fence. Neil did not look up as Eric passed,but sullenly went on driving poles. Before this Eric had pitied Neil;now he was conscious of feeling sympathy with him. Had Neil sufferedas he was suffering? Eric had entered into a new fellowship whereof thepassport was pain.
The orchard was very silent and dreamy in the thick, deep tintedsunshine of the September afternoon, a sunshine which seemed to possessthe power of extracting the very essence of all the odours which summerhas stored up in wood and field. There were few flowers now; most ofthe lilies, which had queened it so bravely along the central path afew days before, were withered. The grass had become ragged and sere andunkempt. But in the corners the torches of the goldenrod were kindlingand a few misty purple asters nodded here and there. The orchard keptits own strange attractiveness, as some women with youth longpassed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate,indestructible charm.
Eric walked drearily and carelessly about it, and finally sat down on ahalf fallen fence panel in the shadow of the overhanging spruce boughs.There he gave himself up to a reverie, poignant and bitter sweet, inwhich he lived over again everything that had passed in the orchardsince his first meeting there with Kilmeny.
So deep was his abstraction that he was conscious of nothing around him.He did not hear stealthy footsteps behind him in the dim spruce wood. Hedid not even see Kilmeny as she came slowly around the curve of the wildcherry lane.
Kilmeny had sought the old orchard for the healing of her heartbreak,if healing were possible for her. She had no fear of encountering Ericthere at that time of day, for she did not know that it was the districtcustom to close the school for a funeral. She would never have goneto it in the evening, but she longed for it continually; it, and hermemories, were all that was left her now.
Years seemed to have passed over the girl in those few days. She haddrunk of pain and broken bread with sorrow. Her face was pale andstrained, with bluish, transparent shadows under her large wistful eyes,out of which the dream and laughter of girlhood had gone, but intowhich had come the potent charm of grief and patience. Thomas Gordon hadshaken his head bodingly when he had looked at her that morning at thebreakfast table.
"She won't stand it," he thought. "She isn't long for this world. Maybeit is all for the best, poor lass. But I wish that young Master hadnever set foot in the Connors orchard, or in this house. Margaret,Margaret, it's hard that your child should have to be paying thereckoning of a sin that was sinned before her birth."
Kilmeny walked through the lane slowly and absently like a woman in adream. When she came to the gap in the fence where the lane ran into theorchard she lifted her wan, drooping face and saw Eric, sitting in theshadow of the wood at the other side of the orchard with his bowed headin his hands. She stopped quickly and the blood rushed wildly over herface.
The next moment it ebbed, leaving her white as marble. Horror filled hereyes,--blank, deadly horror, as the livid shadow of a cloud might filltwo blue pools.
Behind Eric Neil Gordon was standing tense, crouched, murderous. Even atthat distance Kilmeny saw the look on his face, saw what he held in hishand, and realized in one agonized flash of comprehension what it meant.
All this photographed itself in her brain in an instant. She knew thatby the time she could run across the orchard to warn Eric by a touch itwould be too late. Yet she must warn him--she MUST--she MUST! A mightysurge of desire seemed to rise up within her and overwhelm her likea wave of the sea,--a surge that swept everything before it in anirresistible flood. As Neil Gordon swiftly and vindictively, with theface of a demon, lifted the axe he held in his hand, Kilmeny sprangforward through the gap.
"ERIC, ERIC, LOOK BEHIND YOU--LOOK BEHIND YOU!"
Eric started up, confused, bewildered, as the voice came shriekingacross the orchard. He did not in the least realize that it was Kilmenywho had called to him, but he instinctively obeyed the command.
He wheeled around and saw Neil Gordon, who was looking, not at him, butpast him at Kilmeny. The Italian boy's face was ashen and his eyes werefilled with terror and incredulity, as if he had been checked in hismurderous purpose by some supernatural interposition. The axe, lyingat his feet where he had dropped it in his unutterable consternation onhearing Kilmeny's cry told the whole tale. But before Eric could uttera word Neil turned, with a cry more like that of an animal than a humanbeing, and fled like a hunted creature into the shadow of the sprucewood.
A moment later Kilmeny, her lovely face dewed with tears and sunned overwith smiles, flung herself on Eric's breast.
"Oh, Eric, I can speak,--I can speak! Oh, it is so wonderful! Eric, Ilove you--I love you!"