Where these minds are low and gross, the area of that "appearance" is proportionately widened.
Perhaps he was in danger of acting from obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb.
Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course; and to recede was always painful to Dr. Kenn.
He made up his mind that he must advise Maggie to go away from St. Ogg's for a time; and he performed that difficult task with as much delicacy as he could, only stating in vague terms that he found his attempt to countenance her stay was a source of discord between himself and his parishioners, that was likely to obstruct his usefulness as a clergyman.
He begged her to allow him to write to a clerical friend of his, who might possibly take her into his own family as governess; and, if not, would probably know of some other available position for a young woman in whose welfare Dr. Kenn felt a strong interest.
Poor Maggie listened with a trembling lip; she could say nothing but a faint
"Thank you, I shall be grateful"; and she walked back to her lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation.
She must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among fresh faces, that would look at her wonderingly, because the days did not seem joyful to her; she must begin a new life, in which she would have to rouse herself to receive new impressions; and she was so unspeakably, sickeningly weary!
There was no home, no help for the erring; even those who pitied were constrained to hardness.
But ought she to complain?
Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love?
All the next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for what repose could poor Maggie ever win except by wrestling?
And on the third day–this day of which she had just sat out the close–the letter had come which was lying on the table before her.
The letter was from Stephen.
He was come back from Holland; he was at Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends, and had written to her from that place, enclosing the letter to a person whom he trusted in St. Ogg's.
From beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach; an appeal against her useless sacrifice of him, of herself, against that perverted notion of right which led her to crush all his hopes, for the sake of a mere idea, and not any substantial good,–his hopes, whom she loved, and who loved her with that single overpowering passion, that worship, which a man never gives to a woman more than once in his life.
"They have written to me that you are to marry Kenn.
As if I should believe that!
Perhaps they have told you some such fables about me.
Perhaps they tell you I've been 'travelling.'
My body has been dragged about somewhere; but I have never travelled from the hideous place where you left me; where I started up from the stupor of helpless rage to find you gone.
"Maggie! whose pain can have been like mine?
Whose injury is like mine?
Who besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt itself into my soul, so that no other image can come there?
Maggie, call me back to you! Call me back to life and goodness!
I am banished from both now.
I have no motives; I am indifferent to everything.
Two months have only deepened the certainty that I can never care for life without you.
Write me one word; say 'Come!' In two days I should be with you.
Maggie, have you forgotten what it was to be together,–to be within reach of a look, to be within hearing of each other's voice?"
When Maggie first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation had only just begun.
At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to the life-nourishing day?
The leap of natural longing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, that all less immediate motives are likely to be forgotten–till the pain has been escaped from.
For hours Maggie felt as if her struggle had been in vain.
For hours every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the image of Stephen waiting for the single word that would bring him to her.
She did not read the letter: she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old strange power.
All the day before she had been filled with the vision of a lonely future through which she must carry the burthen of regret, upheld only by clinging faith.
And here, close within her reach, urging itself upon her even as a claim, was another future, in which hard endurance and effort were to be exchanged for easy, delicious leaning on another's loving strength!
And yet that promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force of the temptation to Maggie.
It was Stephen's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write
"Come!"
But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious degradation.
No, she must wait; she must pray; the light that had forsaken her would come again; she should feel again what she had felt when she had fled away, under an inspiration strong enough to conquer agony,–to conquer love; she should feel again what she had felt when Lucy stood by her, when Philip's letter had stirred all the fibres that bound her to the calmer past.
She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse to change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer; only waiting for the light that would surely come again.
It came with the memories that no passion could long quench; the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve.
The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the window and the loud moan and roar of the wind.
"I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me."
But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob,–"Forgive me, Stephen!
It will pass away.
You will come back to her."