The long lines of red and gold in the sky, and the
glorious track of the descending sun, were all divinely calm. Upon the
purple tree-tops far away, and on the green height near at hand up which
the shades were slowly creeping, there was an equal hush. Between the
real landscape and its shadow in the water, there was no division; both
were so untroubled and clear, and, while so fraught with solemn mystery
of life and death, so hopefully reassuring to the gazer's soothed heart,
because so tenderly and mercifully beautiful.
Clennam had stopped, not for the first time by many times, to look about
him and suffer what he saw to sink into his soul, as the shadows, looked
at, seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the water. He was slowly
resuming his way, when he saw a figure in the path before him which he
had, perhaps, already associated with the evening and its impressions.
Minnie was there, alone. She had some roses in her hand, and seemed to
have stood still on seeing him, waiting for him. Her face was towards
him, and she appeared to have been coming from the opposite direction.
There was a flutter in her manner, which Clennam had never seen in it
before; and as he came near her, it entered his mind all at once that
she was there of a set purpose to speak to him.
She gave him her hand, and said, 'You wonder to see me here by myself?
But the evening is so lovely, I have strolled further than I meant
at first. I thought it likely I might meet you, and that made me more
confident. You always come this way, do you not?'
As Clennam said that it was his favourite way, he felt her hand falter
on his arm, and saw the roses shake.
'Will you let me give you one, Mr Clennam? I gathered them as I came out
of the garden. Indeed, I almost gathered them for you, thinking it so
likely I might meet you. Mr Doyce arrived more than an hour ago, and
told us you were walking down.'
His own hand shook, as he accepted a rose or two from hers and thanked
her. They were now by an avenue of trees. Whether they turned into it on
his movement or on hers matters little. He never knew how that was.
'It is very grave here,' said Clennam, 'but very pleasant at this hour.
Passing along this deep shade, and out at that arch of light at the
other end, we come upon the ferry and the cottage by the best approach,
I think.' In her simple garden-hat and her light summer dress, with her
rich brown hair naturally clustering about her, and her wonderful eyes
raised to his for a moment with a look in which regard for him and
trustfulness in him were strikingly blended with a kind of timid sorrow
for him, she was so beautiful that it was well for his peace--or ill for
his peace, he did not quite know which--that he had made that vigorous
resolution he had so often thought about.
She broke a momentary silence by inquiring if he knew that papa had been
thinking of another tour abroad? He said he had heard it mentioned. She
broke another momentary silence by adding, with some hesitation, that
papa had abandoned the idea.
At this, he thought directly, 'they are to be married.'
'Mr Clennam,' she said, hesitating more timidly yet, and speaking so low
that he bent his head to hear her. 'I should very much like to give you
my confidence, if you would not mind having the goodness to receive
it. I should have very much liked to have given it to you long ago,
because--I felt that you were becoming so much our friend.'
'How can I be otherwise than proud of it at any time! Pray give it to
me. Pray trust me.'
'I could never have been afraid of trusting you,' she returned, raising
her eyes frankly to his face. 'I think I would have done so some time
ago, if I had known how. But I scarcely know how, even now.'
'Mr Gowan,' said Arthur Clennam, 'has reason to be very happy. God bless
his wife and him!'
She wept, as she tried to thank him. He reassured her, took her hand
as it lay with the trembling roses in it on his arm, took the remaining
roses from it, and put it to his lips. At that time, it seemed to him,
he first finally resigned the dying hope that had flickered in nobody's
heart so much to its pain and trouble; and from that time he became in
his own eyes, as to any similar hope or prospect, a very much older man
who had done with that part of life.
He put the roses in his breast and they walked on for a little while,
slowly and silently, under the umbrageous trees. Then he asked her, in
a voice of cheerful kindness, was there anything else that she would
say to him as her friend and her father's friend, many years older than
herself; was there any trust she would repose in him, any service she
would ask of him, any little aid to her happiness that she could give
him the lasting gratification of believing it was in his power to
render?
She was going to answer, when she was so touched by some little hidden
sorrow or sympathy--what could it have been?--that she said, bursting
into tears again: 'O Mr Clennam! Good, generous, Mr Clennam, pray tell
me you do not blame me.'
'I blame you?' said Clennam. 'My dearest girl! I blame you? No!'
After clasping both her hands upon his arm, and looking confidentially
up into his face, with some hurried words to the effect that she thanked
him from her heart (as she did, if it be the source of earnestness), she
gradually composed herself, with now and then a word of encouragement
from him, as they walked on slowly and almost silently under the
darkening trees.
'And, now, Minnie Gowan,' at length said Clennam, smiling; 'will you ask
me nothing?'
'Oh! I have very much to ask of you.'
'That's well! I hope so; I am not disappointed.'
'You know how I am loved at home, and how I love home. You can hardly
think it perhaps, dear Mr Clennam,' she spoke with great agitation,
'seeing me going from it of my own free will and choice, but I do so
dearly love it!'
'I am sure of that,' said Clennam. 'Can you suppose I doubt it?'
'No, no. But it is strange, even to me, that loving it so much and
being so much beloved in it, I can bear to cast it away. It seems so
neglectful of it, so unthankful.'
'My dear girl,' said Clennam, 'it is in the natural progress and change
of time. All homes are left so.'
'Yes, I know; but all homes are not left with such a blank in them as
there will be in mine when I am gone. Not that there is any scarcity of
far better and more endearing and more accomplished girls than I am; not
that I am much, but that they have made so much of me!'
Pet's affectionate heart was overcharged, and she sobbed while she
pictured what would happen.
'I know what a change papa will feel at first, and I know that at first
I cannot be to him anything like what I have been these many years.
And it is then, Mr Clennam, then more than at any time, that I beg and
entreat you to remember him, and sometimes to keep him company when you
can spare a little while; and to tell him that you know I was fonder
of him when I left him, than I ever was in all my life. For there is
nobody--he told me so himself when he talked to me this very day--there
is nobody he likes so well as you, or trusts so much.'
A clue to what had passed between the father and daughter dropped like
a heavy stone into the well of Clennam's heart, and swelled the water
to his eyes. He said, cheerily, but not quite so cheerily as he tried to
say, that it should be done--that he gave her his faithful promise.
'If I do not speak of mama,' said Pet, more moved by, and more pretty
in, her innocent grief, than Clennam could trust himself even to
consider--for which reason he counted the trees between them and the
fading light as they slowly diminished in number--'it is because mama
will understand me better in this action, and will feel my loss in a
different way, and will look forward in a different manner. But you know
what a dear, devoted mother she is, and you will remember her too; will
you not?'
Let Minnie trust him, Clennam said, let Minnie trust him to do all she
wished.
'And, dear Mr Clennam,' said Minnie, 'because papa and one whom I need
not name, do not fully appreciate and understand one another yet, as
they will by-and-by; and because it will be the duty, and the pride,
and pleasure of my new life, to draw them to a better knowledge of one
another, and to be a happiness to one another, and to be proud of one
another, and to love one another, both loving me so dearly; oh, as you
are a kind, true man! when I am first separated from home (I am going a
long distance away), try to reconcile papa to him a little more, and use
your great influence to keep him before papa's mind free from
prejudice and in his real form. Will you do this for me, as you are a
noble-hearted friend?'
Poor Pet! Self-deceived, mistaken child! When were such changes
ever made in men's natural relations to one another: when was such
reconcilement of ingrain differences ever effected! It has been tried
many times by other daughters, Minnie; it has never succeeded; nothing
has ever come of it but failure.
So Clennam thought. So he did not say; it was too late. He bound himself
to do all she asked, and she knew full well that he would do it.
They were now at the last tree in the avenue. She stopped, and withdrew
her arm. Speaking to him with her eyes lifted up to his, and with the
hand that had lately rested on his sleeve trembling by touching one of
the roses in his breast as an additional appeal to him, she said:
'Dear Mr Clennam, in my happiness--for I am happy, though you have seen
me crying--I cannot bear to leave any cloud between us. If you have
anything to forgive me (not anything that I have wilfully done, but any
trouble I may have caused you without meaning it, or having it in my
power to help it), forgive me to-night out of your noble heart!'
He stooped to meet the guileless face that met his without shrinking. He
kissed it, and answered, Heaven knew that he had nothing to forgive.
As he stooped to meet the innocent face once again, she whispered,
'Good-bye!' and he repeated it. It was taking leave of all his old
hopes--all nobody's old restless doubts. They came out of the avenue
next moment, arm-in-arm as they had entered it: and the trees seemed to
close up behind them in the darkness, like their own perspective of the
past.
The voices of Mr and Mrs Meagles and Doyce were audible directly,
speaking near the garden gate. Hearing Pet's name among them, Clennam
called out, 'She is here, with me.' There was some little wondering and
laughing until they came up; but as soon as they had all come together,
it ceased, and Pet glided away.
Mr Meagles, Doyce, and Clennam, without speaking, walked up and down
on the brink of the river, in the light of the rising moon, for a few
minutes; and then Doyce lingered behind, and went into the house. Mr
Meagles and Clennam walked up and down together for a few minutes more
without speaking, until at length the former broke silence.
'Arthur,' said he, using that familiar address for the first time in
their communication, 'do you remember my telling you, as we walked up
and down one hot morning, looking over the harbour at Marseilles, that
Pet's baby sister who was dead seemed to Mother and me to have grown as
she had grown, and changed as she had changed?'
'Very well.'
'You remember my saying that our thoughts had never been able to
separate those twin sisters, and that, in our fancy, whatever Pet was,
the other was?'
'Yes, very well.'
'Arthur,' said Mr Meagles, much subdued, 'I carry that fancy further
to-night. I feel to-night, my dear fellow, as if you had loved my dead
child very tenderly, and had lost her when she was like what Pet is
now.'
'Thank you!' murmured Clennam, 'thank you!' And pressed his hand.
'Will you come in?' said Mr Meagles, presently.
'In a little while.'
Mr Meagles fell away, and he was left alone. When he had walked on the
river's brink in the peaceful moonlight for some half an hour, he put
his hand in his breast and tenderly took out the handful of roses.
Perhaps he put them to his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but
certainly he bent down on the shore and gently launched them on the
flowing river. Pale and unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them
away. The lights were bright within doors when he entered, and the
faces on which they shone, his own face not excepted, were soon quietly
cheerful. They talked of many subjects (his partner never had had such a
ready store to draw upon for the beguiling of the time), and so to
bed, and to sleep. While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight,
floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were
in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas.