PAGE 5
The Failure
by
The whole place was ablaze with hyacinths. Far as one could see along the deep cliff, where the murmuring stream had carved itself a bed, the flowers spread like sheets of blue fire. In the more distant hollows the delicate masses of colour lay like clouds of gorgeous mist. Shooting straight up from the beds of hyacinths, tall elms met overhead, and the rooks kept up a clamour that dulled the senses without causing anything like irritation. The girl stepped down the path, and the light from the green leaves floated around her and touched her face and figure with delicate shadows and flickering brightness. She looked a joyous and beautiful creature, and the slim young man who met her by accident thought that he had never seen any picture so full of youth and delight.
The meeting was a pure coincidence.
The days passed on, and again and again Miss Blanchflower walked in the Dene amid the flame of the hyacinths. Her mother trusted her greatly, and Desborough was too simple to have any afterthought when he found that his morning visits were discouraged. He was grateful for every moment of her company, and he placidly looked forward to the time when his quiet life should be crowned. Sometimes he chatted quite contentedly with Mrs. Blanchflower until Marion returned. Several people in the town could have told him things that would have surprised him, but he held so much aloof from all company that nobody ventured on familiar talk with him. The one man who had his confidence was the Wesleyan local preacher; but Musgrave lived a long way from the town, and Desborough saw him seldom.
One morning Desborough went down by the end of the stream. The water was low, and underneath the roots of a great tree there was a deep hollow that had been scooped out by the torrents of winter. An odd fancy made Desborough climb down and creep into this cavity under the network of roots. From the place where he was seated he could not only see the clear water running away seaward, but he could look right up the path that ran among the tall elms.
He was gazing mechanically on the ripples, and had allowed his mind to be hushed into complete vacuity by the delicate babble of the water over the pebbles, when suddenly a flash of colour seemed to grow upon his consciousness, and he saw a man and woman walking together down the very path that led to the cave where he had been dreaming. He placed his hand to his forehead and tried to think. It seemed as though his heart had been touched with ice. He would have called out, but he was stupefied. After a few long minutes he saw Miss Blanchflower make a sudden movement and give both her hands to her companion. The two stood face to face, and seemed to be speaking passionately. Desborough covered his eyes, and would see no more.
How long he sat he never knew; but when he was able to realize his place and to realize the fact of existence, he was alone. He moaned, and then by one of those revolutions of feeling common to men of his temperament, he broke into laughter.
As he climbed out from his retreat his sense of the tragic turn of things left him, and he laughed still more.
“And I am an eaves-dropper, am I? Mr. Hamlet Desborough. And Ophelia’s not talking to her father this time. What a nice young Polonius we have got–ambrosial curls Polonius has–And Ophelia! Oh! Ophelia’s very fair–chaste as an icicle, and pure as snow.”
He walked towards a deep pool that lay further down towards the sea. The pool was very sullen and cool under the dank shadow of the hanging trees. Desborough looked a minute into the dark depths.
“Now, Hamlet, let us finish up. Let me see. What are the puzzles that I have to solve? Death? That’s soon done. Three minutes, they say, it takes under water. And that other country where the travellers go and never return? Well, I don’t see particularly why I should return, and oh! Ophelia, Ophelia.”