The Well-Beloved | Page 5

before to-day, he had
escaped a good deal of ugly self-reproach. It was simply that she who
always attracted him, and led him whither she would as by a silken
thread, had not remained the occupant of the same fleshly tabernacle in
her career so far. Whether she would ultimately settle down to one he
could not say.
Had he felt that she was becoming manifest in Avice, he would have
tried to believe that this was the terminal spot of her migrations, and
have been content to abide by his words. But did he see the Well-
Beloved in Avice at all? The question was somewhat disturbing.
He had reached the brow of the hill, and descended towards the village,
where in the long straight Roman street he soon found the lighted hall.
The performance was not yet over; and by going round to the side of
the building and standing on a mound he could see the interior as far
down as the platform level. Avice's turn, or second turn, came on
almost immediately. Her pretty embarrassment on facing the audience
rather won him away from his doubts. She was, in truth, what is called
a 'nice' girl; attractive, certainly, but above all things nice--one of the
class with whom the risks of matrimony approximate most nearly to
zero. Her intelligent eyes, her broad forehead, her thoughtful carriage,
ensured one thing, that of all the girls he had known he had never met
one with more charming and solid qualities than Avice Caro's. This was
not a mere conjecture--he had known her long and thoroughly; her
every mood and temper.
A heavy wagon passing without drowned her small soft voice for him;
but the audience were pleased, and she blushed at their applause. He
now took his station at the door, and when the people had done pouring
out he found her within awaiting him.
They climbed homeward slowly by the Old Road, Pierston dragging

himself up the steep by the wayside hand-rail and pulling Avice after
him upon his arm. At the top they turned and stood still. To the left of
them the sky was streaked like a fan with the lighthouse rays, and under
their front, at periods of a quarter of a minute, there arose a deep,
hollow stroke like the single beat of a drum, the intervals being filled
with a long-drawn rattling, as of bones between huge canine jaws. It
came from the vast concave of Deadman's Bay, rising and falling
against the pebble dyke.
The evening and night winds here were, to Pierston's mind, charged
with a something that did not burden them elsewhere. They brought it
up from that sinister Bay to the west, whose movement she and he were
hearing now. It was a presence--an imaginary shape or essence from
the human multitude lying below: those who had gone down in vessels
of war, East Indiamen, barges, brigs, and ships of the Armada--select
people, common, and debased, whose interests and hopes had been as
wide asunder as the poles, but who had rolled each other to oneness on
that restless sea-bed. There could almost be felt the brush of their huge
composite ghost as it ran a shapeless figure over the isle, shrieking for
some good god who would disunite it again.
The twain wandered a long way that night amid these influences--so far
as to the old Hope Churchyard, which lay in a ravine formed by a
landslip ages ago. The church had slipped down with the rest of the
cliff, and had long been a ruin. It seemed to say that in this last local
stronghold of the Pagan divinities, where Pagan customs lingered yet,
Christianity had established itself precariously at best. In that solemn
spot Pierston kissed her.
The kiss was by no means on Avice's initiative this time. Her former
demonstrativeness seemed to have increased her present reserve.
* * *
That day was the beginning of a pleasant month passed mainly in each
other's society. He found that she could not only recite poetry at
intellectual gatherings, but play the piano fairly, and sing to her own
accompaniment.

He observed that every aim of those who had brought her up had been
to get her away mentally as far as possible from her natural and
individual life as an inhabitant of a peculiar island: to make her an
exact copy of tens of thousands of other people, in whose
circumstances there was nothing special, distinctive, or picturesque; to
teach her to forget all the experiences of her ancestors; to drown the
local ballads by songs purchased at the Budmouth fashionable
music-sellers', and the local vocabulary by a governess-tongue of no
country at all. She lived in a house that would have been the fortune of
an