with a melancholy expression. The face was thin and extremely pale; but what chiefly struck one was that she seemed so utterly weary. Her features remained singularly immobile, and there was in her eyes an apathy that was very painful. Her eyes said that she had loved and found love wanting, that she had been a mother and that her child had died, and that now she desired nothing very strongly but to be left in peace.
Bertha was indeed tired out, in body and mind, tired of love and hate, tired with friendship and knowledge, tired with the passing years. Her thought wandered to the future and she decided to leave Blackstable, and let Court Leys, so that in no moment of weakness might she be tempted to return. And first she intended to travel, wishing to live in places where she was unknown, so as more easily to forget the past. Bertha’s memory brought back Italy, the land of those who suffer in unfulfilled desire, the lotus land. She would go there and she would go farther, ever towards the sun; for now she had no ties on earth, and at last, at last she was free.
The melancholy day closed in the great clouds hanging overhead darkened with approaching night. Bertha remembered how ready in her girlhood she had been to pour herself out to the world. Feeling intense fellowship with all human beings, she wished to throw herself into their arms, thinking that they would be outstretched to receive her. Her life seemed to overflow into the lives of others, becoming one with theirs as the water of rivers becomes one with the sea. But very soon the power she had felt of doing all this departed; she recognised a barrier between herself and human kind, and felt that they were strangers. Hardly understanding the impossibility of what she desired, she placed all her love, all her faculty of expansion, on one person, on Edward, making a final effort, as it were, to break the barrier of consciousness and unite her soul with his. She drew him towards her with all her might, Edward the man, seeking to know him in the depths of his heart, yearning to lose herself in him. But at last she saw that what she had striven for was unattainable. I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Not even the most devoted lovers know the essentials of one another’s selves. However ardent their passion, however intimate their union, they are always strangers; scarcely more to one another than chance acquaintance.
And when she discovered this, with many tears and after bitter heartache, Bertha retired into herself. But soon she found solace. In her silence she built a world of her own, and kept it from the eyes of every living soul, knowing that none could understand it. And then all ties were irksome, all earthly attachments unnecessary.
Confusedly thinking these things, Bertha’s thoughts reverted to Edward.
“If I had been keeping a diary of my emotions, I should close it to-day, with the words, ‘My husband has broken his neck.’”
But she was pained at her own callousness.
“Poor fellow,” she murmured. “He was honest and kind and forbearing. He did all he could, and tried always to act like a gentleman. He was very useful in the world, and, in his own way, he was fond of me. His only fault was that I loved him—and ceased to love him.”
By her side lay the book she had read while waiting for Edward when he was hunting. Bertha had put it on the table open, face-downwards, when she rose from the sofa to receive the expected visitor; and it had remained as she left it. She was tired of thinking; and taking it now, began to read quietly.
THE END
The Merry-go-round
PART I
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
CHAPTER I
All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number of impecunious cousins, using her bank-balance like the scorpions of Rehoboam to chastise them, and, like many another pious creature, for their soul’s good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured in the evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her connections should seek salvation according to her own lights; and, with harsh tongue and with bitter gibe, made it her constant business to persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but even the inner thought of those about her: the Last Judgment could have no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She invited to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed on a distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons, more imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed with fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future would meet due testamentary reward.
Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits—for, in a way, the old lady was very hospitable—she made it her especial object to break the spirit of her guests; and it entertained her hugely to see the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the humility with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious pleasure in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful pride, or in obliging them to do things which they particularly disliked. With a singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were most sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blind invective till the sufferer writhed before her, raw and bleeding: no defect, physical or mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as little an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet, with all her heart, she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently their mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to such a pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard, with unconcealed hilarity, their unwilling and confused suggestions.
With one of her relations only, Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe a certain restraint, for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had, besides, a far keener wit whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit; she looked upon her in fact with a certain degree of affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious: it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller claims than others to the coveted inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to find some one to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason
