The Half-Hearted

by John Buchan

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE BRIDGE OF BROKEN HEARTS

  Listless leaves were tossing in the light wind or borne downward in theswirl of the flooded Midburn, to the weary shallows where they lay,beached high and sodden, till the frost nipped and shrivelled theirrottenness into dust. A bleak, thin wind it was, like a fine sour wine,searching the marrow and bringing no bloom to the cheek. A light snowpowdered the earth, the grey forerunner of storms.

  Alice stood back in the shelter of the broken parapet. The highway withits modern crossing-place was some hundreds of yards up stream, buthere, at the burn mouth, where the turbid current joined with the cold,glittering Avelin, there was a grass-grown track, and an ancient,broken-backed bridge. There were few passers on the high-road, none onthis deserted way; but the girl in all her loneliness shrank back intothe shadow. In these minutes she endured the bitter mistrust, the sorehesitancy, of awaiting on a certain but unknown grief.

  She had not long to wait, for Lewis came down the Avelin side by abypath from Etterick village. His alert gait covered his very realconfusion, but to the girl he seemed one who belonged to an alien worldof cheerfulness. He could not know her grief, and she regretted hercoming.

  His manners were the same courteous formalities. The man was torn withemotion, and yet he greeted her with a conventional ease.

  "It was so good of you, Miss Wishart, to give me a chance to come andsay good-bye. My going is such a sudden affair, that I might have hadno time to come to Glenavelin, but I could not have left without seeingyou."

  The girl murmured some indistinct words. "I hope you will have a goodtime and come back safely," she said, and then she was tongue-tied.

  The two stood before each other, awkward and silent--two between whom noword of love had ever been spoken, but whose hearts were clamouring atthe iron gates of speech.

  Alice's face and neck were dyed crimson, as the impossible positiondawned on her mind. No word could break down the palisade, of form.Lewis, his soul a volcano, struggled for the most calm and inept words.He spoke of the weather, of her father, of his aunt's messages.

  Then the girl held out her hand.

  "Good-bye," she said, looking away from him.

  He held it for a second. "Good-bye, Miss Wishart," he said hoarsely.Was this the consummation of his brief ecstasy, the end of months oflonging? The steel hand of fate was on him and he turned to leave.

  He turned when he had gone three paces and came back. The girl wasstill standing by the parapet, but she had averted her face towards thewintry waters. His step seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he stoodbeside her before she looked towards him.

  Passion had broken down his awkwardness. He asked the old question witha shaking voice. "Alice," he said, "have I vexed you?"

  She turned to him a pale, distraught face, her eyes brimming over withthe sorrow of love, the passionate adventurous longing which claims truehearts for ever.

  He caught her in his arms, his heart in a glory of joy.

  "Oh, Alice, darling," he cried. "What has happened to us? I love you,I love you, and you have never given me a chance to say it."

  She lay passive in his arms for one brief minute and then feebly drewback.

  "Sweetheart," he cried. "Sweetheart! For I will call you sweetheart,though we never meet again. You are mine, Alice. We cannot helpourselves."

  The girl stood as in a trance, her eyes caught and held by his face.

  "Oh, the misery of things," she said half-sobbing. "I have given mysoul to another, and I knew it was not mine to give. Why, oh why, didyou not speak to me sooner? I have been hungering for you and you nevercame."

  A sense of his folly choked him.

  "And I have made you suffer, poor darling! And the whole world is outof joint for us!"

  The hopeless feeling of loss, forgotten for a moment, came back to him.The girl was gone from him for ever, though a bridge of hearts shouldalways cross the chasm of their severance.

  "I am going away," he said, "to make reparation. I have my repentanceto work out, and it will be bitterer than yours, little woman. Oursmust be an austere love."

  She looked at him till her pale face flushed and a sad exultation wokein her eyes.

  "You will never forget?" she asked wistfully, confident of the answer.

  "Forget!" he cried. "It is my only happiness to remember. I am goingaway to be knocked about, dear. Wild, rough work, but with a man'schances!"

  For a moment she let another thought find harbour in her mind. Was thepast irretrievable, the future predetermined? A woman's word had an oldright to be broken. If she went to him, would not he welcome hergladly, and the future might yet be a heritage for both?

  The thought endured but a moment, for she saw how little simple was thecrux of her destiny. The two of them had been set apart by the fates;each had salvation to work out alone; no facile union would ever jointhem. For him there was the shaping of a man's path; for her theillumination which only sorrows and parting can bring. And with thethought she thought kindly of the man to whom she had pledged her word.It was but a little corner of her heart he could ever possess; butdoubtless in such matters he was not ambitious.

  Lewis walked by her side down the by-path towards Glenavelin. Tragedymuffled in the garments of convention was there, not the old picturesqueTragic with sword and cloak and steel for the enemy, but the silentTragic which pulls at the heart-strings.

  "The summer is over," she said. "It has been a cruel summer, but verybright."

  "Romance with the jarring modern note which haunts us all to-day," hesaid. "This upland country is confused with bustling politics, andpastoral has been worried to death by sickness of heart. You cannotfind the old peaceful life without."

  "And within?" she asked.

  "That is for you and me to determine, dear. God grant it. I have foundmy princess, like the man in the fairy-tale, but I may not enter thekingdom."

  "And the poor princess must sit and mope in her high stone tower? It isa hard world for princesses."

  "Hard for the knights, too, for they cannot come back and carry offtheir ladies. In the old days it used to be so, but then simplicity hasgone out of life."

  "And the princess waits and watches and cries herself to sleep?"

  "And the knight goes off to the World's End and never forgets."

  They were at Glenavelin gates now, and stood silent against the momentof parting. She flew to his arms, for a second his kisses were on herlips, and then came the sundering. A storm of tears was in her heart,but with dry eyes she said the words of good-bye. Meanwhile from thehills came a drift of snow, and a dreary wind sang in the pines thedirge of the dead summer, the plaint of long farewells.

  PART II