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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18834-0.txt b/18834-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e09bf6 --- /dev/null +++ b/18834-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11002 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Prisoners + Fast Bound In Misery And Iron + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18834] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE IT +CONTAINED ... THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"] + + + + +PRISONERS + +FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON + +By + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY + +_Author of_ + +"Red Pottage" + + +"But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail." + +--JULIAN OF NORWICH. + + +DODD, MEAD & COMPANY +NEW YORK MCMVI + +Copyright, 1905, 1906, by + +COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY + +Copyright, 1906, by + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY + +_Published, September, 1906_ + + + + +To +My Brother +Reginald + + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"Her eyes turned towards it mechanically +because it contained ... the man of +whom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_ + +"A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ +words" _Page_ 36 + +"'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden +passion" " 46 + +"'You are all blinder one than the other, that +it's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80 + +"If Fay had come in then he would have killed +her, done her to death with the chains he +had worn so patiently for her sake" " 146 + +"Fay noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders +were" " 184 + + + + +CHAPTER I + + Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you, + And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; + You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due, + Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth. + + --ARTHUR C. LEGGE. + + +Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at +Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little +compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome. + +How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to be +represented by so stupendous a name! + +She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards it +mechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precincts +the man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking. + +It was easy to see that Fay--the Duchess of Colle Alto--was an +Englishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name. + +She had the look of perfect though not robust health, the reflection +over her whole being of a childhood spent much in the open air. She was +twenty-three, but her sweet fair face, with its delicate irregular +features, was immature, childish. It gave no impression of experience, +or thought, or of having met life. She was obviously not of those who +criticise or judge themselves. In how many faces we see the conflict, or +the remains of conflict with a dual nature. Fay, as she was called by +her family, seemed all of a piece with herself. Her unharassed +countenance showed it, especially when, as at this moment, she looked +harassed. Anxiety was evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon her +smooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyes +were her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid, +limpid gaze, in which no guile existed, any more than steadfastness, any +more than unselfishness, any more than courage. + +Fay had come into the world anxious to please. She had never shown any +particular wish to give pleasure. If she had been missed out of her +somewhat oppressed and struggling home when she married, it is probable +that the sense of her absence was tinged by relief. + +She had never intended to marry the Duke of Colle Alto. It is difficult +to say why that sedate distinguished personage married her. + +Fay's face had a very sweet and endearing promise in it which drew men's +eyes after her. I don't know what it meant, and they did not know +either, but they instinctively lessened the distance between themselves +and it. A very thin string will tow a very heavy body if there is no +resistance, and the pace is slow. The duke looked at Fay, who was at +that moment being taken out for her first season by her grandmother, +Lady Bellairs. Fay tried to please him, as was her wont with all except +men with beards. She liked to have him in attendance. Her violet eyes +lighted up with genuine pleasure when he came to see her. + +It is perhaps difficult for the legions of women who do not please +easily, and for the handful whose interests lie outside themselves, and +who are not desirous of pleasing indiscriminately, it is difficult for +either to realise the passionate desire to please which possesses and +saps the life of some of their sisters. Admiration with them is not a +luxury, any more than a hot-water bottle is a luxury to the aged, or a +foot rest to a gouty foot. It is a necessity of life. After a becoming +interval, the interstices of which had been filled with flowers, the +duke proposed to Lady Bellairs for Fay's hand. Fay did not wish to marry +him. He was not in the least her ideal. Neither did she wish to remain +unmarried, neither did she wish to part with her grave, distinguished +suitor who was an ornament to herself. And she was distinctly averse to +living any longer in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in a +Hampshire down. Poor women have only too frequently to deal with these +complicated situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds are +seldom in perfect sympathy. + +Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared for +her, and some had cared much. These last had as a rule torn themselves +away from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind, +and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her little +gilt-edged notes. But the duke did not break away. He had selected her, +she pleased him, he desired to marry an Englishwoman. He had the +approval of Lady Bellairs. + +The day came when Fay was suddenly and adroitly confronted with the fact +that she must marry him, or lose him. + +Many confirmed bachelors who openly regret that they have never come +across a woman to whom they cared to tie themselves for life might be +in a position to descant on the inability of wives to enter into their +husbands' inmost feelings, if only they--the bachelors--had known on a +past occasion how to act with sudden promptitude on the top of patience. + +The duke played the waiting game, and then hit hard. He had coolly +allowed himself to be trifled with, until the moment arrived when it did +not suit him to be trifled with any longer. + +The marriage had not proved a marked success, nor an entire failure. The +duke was an irreproachable husband, but, like many men who marry when +they are no longer young, he aged suddenly after marriage. He quickly +became bald and stout. His tact except in these two particulars remained +flawless. He never allowed his deep chagrin to appear when, three years +after his marriage, he still remained without a son to continue his +historic name. + +He was polite to his wife at all times, mildly sarcastic as to her +extravagance. Fay was not exorbitantly extravagant; but then the duke +was not exorbitantly rich. One of Fay's arts, as unconscious as that of +a kitten, was to imply past unhappiness, spoken of with a cheerful +resignation which greatly endeared her to others--and to herself. The +duke had understood that she had not had a very happy home, and he had +honestly endeavoured to make her new home happy. In the early days of +his marriage he made many small experiments in the hope of pleasing the +pretty creature who had thrown in her lot with his. Possibly also there +may have been other subtle, patient attempts to win somewhat from her of +another nature. Possibly there may have been veiled disappointments, +and noiseless retreats under cover of night. + +However these things may have been, after the first year Fay made the +discovery that she was unhappily married. The duke was kind, in kindness +he never failed; but he was easily jealous--at least she thought so; and +he appeared quite unable to see in their true light her amicable little +flirtations with his delightful compatriots. After one or two annoying +incidents, in which the compatriots had shown several distinctly +un-English characteristics, the duke became, in his wife's eyes, +tiresome, strict, a burden. Perhaps, also, she felt the Englishwoman's +surprise at the inadequate belief in a woman's power of guarding her own +virtue, which remains in some nations an hereditary masculine instinct. +She felt that she could take care of herself, which was, in reality, +just what she could not do, as her imperturbable, watchful husband was +well aware. + +But was he aware of the subject of her thoughts at this moment? It was +more than probable that he was. But Fay had not the faintest suspicion +that he had guessed anything. + +One of her many charms was a certain youthful innocence of mind, which +imputed no evil to others, which never suspected that others would +impute it to her. Her husband was wearisome. He looked coldly on her if +she smiled on young men, and she had to smile at them when they smiled +at her. But, she reasoned, of course all the time he really knew that he +could trust her entirely. There was no harm in Fay's nature, no venom, +there were no dark places, no strong passions, with their awful +possibilities for good and evil. She had already given much pain in her +short life, but inadvertently. She was of that large class of whom it +may truly be said when evil comes, that they are more sinned against +than sinning. They always somehow gravitate into the places where people +_are_ sinned against, just as some people never attend a cricket-match +without receiving a ball on their persons. + +And now trouble had come upon her. She had at last fallen in love. I +would not venture to assert that she had fallen in very deep, that the +"breakers of the boundless deep" had engulfed her. Some of us make +shipwreck in a teacup tempest, and when our serenity is restored--there +is nothing calmer than a teacup after its storm--our experience serves, +after a decent interval, as an agreeable fringe to our confidential +conversation. + +Anyhow, Fay had fallen in love. I feel bound to add that for some time +before that event happened life had become intolerably dull. The advent +to Rome of her distant connection, Michael Carstairs, had been at this +juncture a source of delight to her. She had, before her marriage, +flirted with him a very little--not as much as she could have wished; +but Lady Bellairs, who was fond of him, had promptly intervened, and the +young man had disappeared into his examinations. That was four years +ago. + +In reality Fay had half-forgotten him; but when she saw him suddenly, +pale, handsome, distinguished, across a ballroom in Rome, and, after a +moment's uncertainty, realised who he was, she felt the same pleasurable +surprise, soft as the fall of dew, which pervades the feminine heart +when, in looking into an unused drawer, it inadvertently haps upon a +length of new ribbon, bought, carefully put away, and forgotten. + +Fay went gently up to Michael, conscious of her beauty and her wonderful +jewels, and held out her hand with a little deprecating smile. + +"And so we meet again at last," she said. + +He turned red and white. + +"At last," he said with difficulty. + +She looked more closely at him. The dreamy, poetic face had changed +during those four years. She became dimly aware that he had not only +grown from a youth into a man, but that some other transformation had +been painfully wrought in him. + +Instinctively her beaming face became grave to match his. She was slow +to see what others were feeling, but quick to reflect their mood. She +sighed gently, vaguely stirred, in spite of herself, by something--she +knew not what--in her companion's face. + +"It is four years since I saw you," she said. + +And from her lowered voice it seemed as if her life were rooted in +memory alone. + +"Four years," said Michael, who, promising young diplomat as he was, +appeared only able to repeat parrot-wise her last words after her. + +A pause. + +"Do you know my husband?" + +"I do not." + +"May I introduce him to you?" + +Fay made a little sign, and the duke approached, superb, decorated, +dignified, with the polished pallor as if the skin were a little too +tight, which is the Charybdis of many who have avoided the Scylla of +wrinkles. + +The elder Italian and the grave, fair, young Englishman bowed to each +other, were made known to each other. + +That night as the duke drove home with his wife he said to her in his +admirable English: + +"Your young cousin is an enthusiast, a dreamer, a sensitive, what your +Tennyson calls a Sir Galahad. In Italy we make of such men a priest, a +cardinal. He is not an _homme d'affaires_. It was not well to put him +into diplomacy. One may make a religion of art. One may even for a time +make a religion of a woman. But of the English diplomacy one does not +make a religion." + +Fay lay awake that night. From a disused pigeon-hole in her mind she +drew out and unfolded to its short length that attractive remnant, that +half-forgotten episode of her teens. She remembered everything--I mean +everything she wished to remember. Michael's face had recalled it all, +those exquisite days which he had taken so much more seriously than she +had, the sudden ruthless intervention of Lady Bellairs, the end of the +daydream. Fay, whose attention had been adroitly diverted to other +channels, had never wondered how he took their separation at the time. +Now that she saw him again she was aware that he had taken it--to heart. + +During that sleepless night Fay persuaded herself that Michael had not +been alone in his suffering. She also had felt the parting with equal +poignancy. + +They met again a few days later by chance in an old cloistered, deserted +garden. How often she had walked in that garden as she was doing now +with English friends! His presence gave the place its true significance. +They met as those who have between them the bond of a common sorrow. + +"And what have you been doing all these four years?" she asked him, as +they wandered somewhat apart. + +"I have been working." + +"You never came to say good-bye before you went to that place in Germany +to study." + +"I was told I had better not come." + +"I suppose grandmamma told you that." + +"She did, most kindly and wisely." + +A pause. + +She was leaning in the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb of +carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced +inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying +death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to +wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept +its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white +gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than in memory. +She seemed at one with this wonderful, passionate southern spring, which +trembled between rapture and anguish. The red roses and the white irises +were everywhere. Even the unkept grass in which her light feet were set +was wild with white daisies. + +"Do you remember our last walk on the down that day in spring?" she said +suddenly. + +She had forgotten it until last night. + +"I remember it." + +"It was May then. It is May again now." + +He did not answer. The roses left off calling to the dead, and suddenly +enfolded the two young grave creatures leaning against the tomb, in a +gust of hot perfume. + +"Do you remember," Fay's voice was tremulous, "how you gave me a bit of +pink may?" + +"I remember." + +"I was looking at it yesterday. It is not very pink now." + +It was true. In all shallow meanings, and when she had not had time to +get her mind into a tangle, Fay was perfectly truthful. She had +yesterday been turning over the contents of a little cedar box in which +she kept her childish possessions, and she had found in an envelope a +brown unsightly ghost of what had once been a may-blossom on a Hampshire +down. She had remembered the vivid sunshine, the wheeling seagull, the +soft south wind blowing in from the sea. Michael had kissed her under +the thin dappled shade of the flowering tree, and she had kissed him +back. + +Michael's eyes turned for a long moment to the yellow weather-stained +arches of the cloister, and then he looked full at Fay with a certain +peculiar detached glance which had first made her endeavour to attract +him. There is a look in a man's face which women like Fay cannot endure, +because it means independence of them. + +"I thought," he said, with the grave simplicity which apparently was +unchangeable in him whatever else might change, "that it was only I who +remembered. It has always been a comfort to me that any unhappiness +which my want of forethought, my--my culpable selfishness may have +caused, was borne by myself alone." + +"I was unhappy too," she said, speaking as simply as he. She looked up +at him suddenly as she said it. There was a wet glint in her deep violet +eyes. She believed absolutely at that moment that she had been as +unhappy as he for four years. There was no suspicion in her mind that +she was not genuine. Only the sincere ever doubt their sincerity. Fay +never doubted hers. She felt what she said, and the sweet eyes turned on +Michael had the transparent fixity of a child's. + +They walked unsteadily back to the others and spoke no more to each +other that day. Conscience pricked Fay that night. + +"Leave him alone," it said. "You have both suffered. Let the dead past +bury its dead." + +Fay's conscience was a wonderfully adaptable one with a tendency to +poetic quotation. It showed considerable tact in adopting her point of +view. Nevertheless from that generally fallacious standpoint it often +gave her quite respectable advice. "Leave him alone," said the +hoodwinked monitor. "You are married and Andrea is easily jealous. +Michael is sensitive, and has been deeply in love with you. Don't stir +him up to fall in love with you again. _Leave him alone._" + +The young British matron waxed indignant. Was she, Fay, the kind of +woman to forget her duty to her husband? Was Michael the kind of man to +make love to a married woman? Such an idea was preposterous, unjust to +both of them. And people would begin to talk at once if she and her +cousin (Michael was only a distant connection) were studiously to avoid +each other, if they could not exchange a few words simply like old +friends. No one had suggested an attitude of rigid avoidance; but +throughout life Fay had always convinced herself of the advisability of +a certain wished-for course by conjuring up, only to discard it, the +extreme and most obviously senseless opposite of that course--as the +only alternative. + +She imagined her husband saying: "Why won't you ask Mr. Carstairs to +dinner? He is your cousin and he is charming. What can the reason be +that you so earnestly refuse to meet him?" And then Andrea, who always +"got ideas into his head," would begin to suspect that there had been +"something" between them. + +_No. No._ It would be far wiser to meet naturally now and then, and to +treat Michael like an old friend. Fay had a somewhat muffled conception +of what an old friend might be. After deep thought she came to the +conclusion that it was her duty to ask Michael frequently to the house. +When Fay once recognised a duty she performed it without delay. + +She met with an unexpected obstacle in the way of its adequate +performance. The obstacle was Michael. + +The young man came once, and then again after an interval of several +months, but apparently nothing would induce him to frequent the house. + +Fay did not recognise her boyish eager lover in the grave sedate man, +old of his age, who had replaced him. His dignified and quite +unobtrusive resistance, which had not indifference at its core, added an +intense, a feverish, interest to Fay's life. She saw that he still cared +for her, and that he did not intend to wound himself a second time. He +had had enough. She put out all her little transparent arts during the +months that followed. The duke watched. + +She had implied to her husband with a smile that she had not been very +happy at home. She implied to Michael with a smile that it was not the +duke's fault, but that she was not very happy in her married life, that +he did not care much about her, and that they had but few tastes in +common. Each lived their own life on amicable terms, but somewhat apart +from each other. She owned that she had hoped for something rather +different in marriage. She had, it seemed, started life with a very +exalted ideal of married life, which the duke's + + coarse thumb + And finger failed to plumb. + +Michael remained outwardly obdurate, but inwardly he weakened. His +tender adoration and respect for Fay, wounded and mutilated though they +had been, had nevertheless survived what in many minds must have proved +their death-blow. He still believed implicitly all she said. + +But to him her marriage was the impassable barrier, a barrier as +enfranchisable as the brown earth on a coffin lid. + +After many months Fay at last vaguely realised his attitude towards her. +She told herself that she respected it, that it was just what she +wished, was in fact the result of her own tactfully expressed wishes. +She seemed to remember things she had said which would have led him to +behave just as he had done. And then she turned heaven and earth to +regain her personal ascendency over him. She never would have regained +it if an accident had not befallen her. She fell in love with him during +the process. + +The day came, an evil day for Michael, when he could no longer doubt it, +when he was not permitted to remain in doubt. Who shall say what waves +of boundless devotion, what passionate impulses of protection, of +compassion, of intense longing to shield her from the fire which had +devastated his own youth, passed in succession over him as he looked at +the delicate little creature who was to him the only real woman in the +world--all the rest were counterfeits--and who now, as he believed, +loved him as he had long loved her. + +Michael was one of the few men who bear through life the common +masculine burden of a profound ignorance of women, coupled with an +undeviating loyalty towards them. He supposed she was suffering as he +had suffered, that it was with her now beside the fountain, under the +ilexes of her Italian garden, as it had been with him during these five +intolerable years. + +How Fay wept! What a passion of tears, till her small flower-like face +was bereft of all beauty, of everything except a hideous contraction of +grief! + +He stood near her, not touching her, in anguish far deeper than hers. At +last he took her clenched hand in his. + +"Do not grieve so," he said brokenly. "It is not our fault. It is +greater than either of us. It has come upon us against our wills. We +have both struggled. You don't know how I have struggled, Fay, day and +night since I came to Rome. But I have been in fault. I ought never to +have come, for I knew you were living near Rome. But I did not know it +had touched you, and for myself I had hoped--I thought--that it was +past--in as far as it could pass--that I was accustomed to it. Listen, +Fay, and do not cry so bitterly. I will leave Rome at once. I will not +see you again. My poor darling, we have come to a hard place in life, +but we can do the only thing left to us--our duty." + +Fay's heart contracted, and she suddenly ceased sobbing. She had never +thought of this horrible possibility that he would leave her. + +She drew the hand that clasped hers to her lips and held it tightly +against her breast. + +"Don't leave me," she stammered, trembling from head to foot, from sheer +terror at the thought; "I will be good. I will do what is right. We are +not like other people. We can trust each other. But I can't live without +seeing you sometimes, I could not bear it." + +He withdrew his hand. They looked wildly into each other's eyes. His +convulsed face paled and paled. Even as he stood before her she knew she +was losing him, that something was tearing him from her. It was as +certain that he was going from her as if she were standing by his +deathbed. + +He kissed her suddenly. + +"I shall not come back," he said. And the next moment he was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + Nous passons notre vie à nous forger des chaînes, et à + nous plaindre de les porter.--VALTOUR. + + +For a long time Fay had stood on her balcony looking out towards Rome, +while the remembrance of the last few months pressed in upon her. + +It was a week since she had seen Michael, since he had said, "I shall +not come back." + +And in the meanwhile she had heard that he had resigned his appointment, +and was leaving Rome at once. She had never imagined that he would act +so quickly, with such determination. She had vaguely supposed that he +would send in his resignation, and then remain on. In novels in a +situation like theirs the man never really went away, or if he did he +came back. Fay knew very little of Michael, but nevertheless she +instinctively felt and quailed before the conviction that he really was +leaving her for ever, that he would reconstruct a life for himself +somewhere in which she could not reach him, in which she would have no +part or lot. He might suffer during the process, but he would do it. His +yea was yea, and his nay, nay. She should see him no more. Some day, not +for a long time perhaps, but some day, she should hear of his marriage. + +Suddenly, without a moment's warning, her own life rose up before her, +distorted, horrible, unendurable. The ilexes, solemn in the sunset, +showed like foul shapes of disgust and nausea. The quiet Campagna with +its distant faintly outlined Sabine hills was rotten to the core. + +The duke passed across a glade at a little distance, and, looking up, +smiled gravely at her, with a slight courteous gesture of his brown +hand. + +She smiled mechanically in response and shrank back into her room. Her +husband had suddenly become a thing to shudder at, repulsive as a +reptile, intolerable. Her life with him, without Michael, stretched +before her like a loathsome disease, a leprosy, which in the +interminable years would gradually eat her away, a death by inches. + +The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probably +seldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws which +light the faggots round it. + +The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowing +whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough. + +"I cannot live without him," she sobbed to herself. "This is not just a +common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life! +It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have +been! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on. What is reputation +worth, the world's opinion of me?--_nothing_." + +It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worth +to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed with +love. + +To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and to +the worldly as the only real life, the only path. But if we disbelieve +in it, and framing our lives on other lines become voluntarily +bedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we--when that in which we +have not believed comes to pass--can we suddenly rise and follow Love up +his mountain passes? We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds. +We even go feverishly a little way with him. But unless we have learnt +the beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seem +to turn giddy, and lose our footing. Certain precipices there are where +only the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are the +piled bones of many passionate pilgrims. + +Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh, +to be added to that putrefying heap? But can we blame anyone, be they +who they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergo +a real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it? + +Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt to +meet it. It was not to be expected that the attempt would be quite wise +or quite sincere either. Still it was the best she could do. She would +sacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one would +ever speak to her again, but she did not care. + +Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat which +the duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She should +never wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was a +unique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now! They had served to +pass the time in the sort of waking dream in which she had lived till +Michael came. But she was awake now. She looked at herself in the glass +long and fixedly. Yes, she was beautiful. How dreadful it must be for +plain women when they loved! They must know that men could not really +care for them. They might, of course, respect and esteem them, and wish +in a lukewarm way to marry them, but they could never really love them. +She, Fay, carried with her the talisman. + +A horrible doubt seized her, just when she was becoming calm. Supposing +Michael would not! Oh! but he _would_ if he cared as she did. The +sacrifice was all on the woman's side. No one thought much the worse of +men when they did these things. And Michael was so good, so honourable +that he would certainly never desert her. They would become legal +husband and wife directly Andrea divorced her. + +From underneath these matted commonplaces, Fay's muffled conscience +strove to reach her with its weak voice. + +"Stop, stop!" it said. "You will injure him. You will tie a noose round +his neck. You will spoil his life. And Andrea! He has been kind in a +way. And your marriage vows! And your own people at home! And Magdalen, +the sister who loves you. Remember her! Stop, stop! Let Michael go. You +were obliged to relinquish him once. Let him go again now." + +Fay believed she went through a second conflict. Perhaps there lurked at +the back of her mind the image of Michael's set face--set away from her; +and that image helped her at last to say to herself, "Yes. It is right. +I will let him go." + +But did she really mean it? For while she said over and over again, +"Yes, yes; we must part," she decided that it was necessary to see him +just once again, to bid him a last farewell, to strengthen him to live +without her. She could not reason it out, but she knew that it was +absolutely essential to the welfare of both that they should see each +other just once more before they parted--_for ever_. The parting no +longer loomed so awful in her mind if there was to be a meeting before +it took place. She almost forgot it directly her mind could find a +staying point on the thought of that one last sacred interview, of all +she should say, of all they would both feel. + +But how to see him! He had said he would not come back. He left Rome in +a few days. She should see him officially on Thursday, when he was in +attendance on his chief. But what was the use of that? He would hardly +exchange a word with her. She might decide to see _him_ alone; but what +if he refused to see _her_? Instinctively Fay knew that he would so +refuse. + +"We must part." Just so. But how to hold him? How to draw him to her +just once more? That was the crux. + +In novels if a woman needs the help of the chivalrous man ever kneeling +in the background, she sends him a ring. Fay looked earnestly at her +rings. But Michael might not understand if she sent him one, and if the +duke intercepted it he would certainly entirely misconstrue the +situation. + +Fay sat down at her writing-table, and got out her note-paper. Truth +compels me to state that it was of blue linen, that it had a little gilt +coronet on it, and that it was scented. + +She thought a long time. At least she bit the little silver owl at the +end of her pen for a long time. She tore up several sheets. At last she +wrote in her large, slanting, dashing handwriting: + + "_I know that we must part. You are right and I wish it too. It is + all like a terrible dream, and what will the awakening be?_" (Fay + did not quite know what she meant by this, but it impressed her + deeply as she wrote it, and a tear dropped on "the awakening" and + made it look like "reckoning." She was not of those, however, who + having once written one word ever think it can be mistaken for + another; and really reckoning did quite as well as awakening.) + "_But I must see you once before you go. I have something of urgent + importance to say to you._" (It was not clear to Fay what the + matter of importance was. But has not everyone in love laboured + daily under a burden as big as Christian's, of subjects which + demand instant discussion, or the bearer may fall into a state of + melancholia? Fay was convinced as she wrote that there was + something she ached to say to him: and also the point was to say + something that would bring him.) "_Don't fail me. You have never + failed me yet. You left me before when it was right we should part. + Did I try to keep you then? Did I say one word to hold you back?_" + (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a + new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She + realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not + faltered then.) "_I did not falter then. I will not do so now, + though this time is harder than the first._" (It certainly was.) + "_You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. + I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others_ + _have gone come back through the gardens. The door by the fountain + will be unlocked, and come up the balcony steps to my sitting-room. + The balcony window will be open. You know that I should not ask you + to do this unless it was urgent. Will you fail me at the last? For + we shall never meet again, Michael!_" + +Fay closed the note, directed it, pinned it into the lace of her inmost +vest--the wife of an Italian distrusts pockets and postal +arrangements--and then wept her heart out, her vain, selfish little +heart, which for the first time in her life was not wholly vain, nor +wholly selfish. Perhaps it was not her fault if she was cruel. It takes +many steadfast years, many prayers, many acts of humble service before +we may hope to reach the place where we are content to bear alone the +brunt of that pang, and to guard the one we love even from ourselves. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + There will no man do for your sake, I think, + What I would have done for the least word said. + I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, + Broken it up for your daily bread. + + --A. C. SWINBURNE. + + +A witty bishop was once heard to remark that one of the difficulties of +his social life lay in the fact that all women of forty were exactly +alike, and it was impossible to recall their individual label, to which +archdeacon, or canon, or form of spinster good works, they belonged. It +would be dangerous, irreverent, to pry further into the recesses of the +episcopal, or even of the suffragan, mind. There are snowy peaks where +we lay helpers should fear to tread. But it may be stated, without +laying ourselves open to a suspicion of wishing to undermine the Church, +that when the woman of forty in her turn acidly announces, as she not +infrequently does, that all young men seem to her exactly alike, she is +in a parlous condition. + +Yet many women had said that Michael was exactly like every other young +man. And to all except the very few who knew him well he certainly did +appear to be--not an individual at all--but only an indistinguished unit +of a vast army. + +His obvious good looks were like the good looks of others. He looked +well bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class as it is +rare in another. He had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, +square in the shoulders, and thin in the flank; he had the clear +weather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and the +self-effacing manner, which we associate with myriads of well-born, +machine-trained, perfectly groomed, expensively educated, uneducated +Englishmen. Our public schools turn them out by the thousand. The "lost +legion" is made up of them. The unburied bones of the pioneers of new +colonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never never +country," under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; they +fall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen and +craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. +They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from +them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which +they never showed in the business of cricket and football. + +They are essentially not of the stuff of which those dull persons, the +thinkers, the politicians, the educationalists, are made. No profession +knows them except the army. They have no opinions worth hearing. Only +the women who are to marry them listen to them. They are sometimes +squeezed into Parliament and are borne with there like children. About +one in a hundred of them can earn his own living, and then it is as a +land agent. + +They make adorable country squires, and picturesque, simple-minded, +painstaking men of rank. They know by a sort of hereditary instinct how +to deal with a labouring man, and a horse, and how to break in a dog. +They give themselves no airs. We have _millions_ of men like this, and +it is doubtful whether the nation finds much use for them, except at +coronations, where they look beautiful; or on county councils, where +they can hold an opinion without the preliminary fatigue of forming it; +and on the bloodstained fringes of our empire, where they serenely meet +their dreadful deaths. + +In the ranks of that vast army I descry Michael, and I wonder what it is +in him that makes me able to descry him at all. He is like thousands of +other men. In what is he unlike? + +I think it must be something in his expression. Of many ugly men it has +been said with truth that one never observes their ugliness. Something +in the character redeems it. With Michael's undeniable good looks it was +the same. One did not notice them. They were not admired, except, +possibly, for the first moment, or across a room. His rather +insignificant grey eyes were the only thing one remembered him by, the +only part of him which seemed to represent him. + +It was as if out of the narrow window of a fortress _our friend_ for a +moment looked out; that "friend of our infinite dreams" who in dreams, +but, alas! never by day, comes softly to us across the white fields of +youth; who, later on, in dreams but never by day, overtakes us with +unbearable happiness in his hand in which to steep our exhaustion on the +hillside; who when our hair is grey comes to us still in dreams but +never by day, down the darkening valley, to tell us that our worn out +romantic hopes are but the alphabet of his language. + +Such a look there was in Michael's eyes, and what it meant who shall +say? Once and again at long intervals we pass in the thoroughfare of +life young faces which have the same expression, as if they saw beyond, +as if they looked past their own youth across to an immortal youth, from +their own life to an unquenchable, upwelling spring of life. When +Michael spoke, which was little, his words verged on the commonplace. He +explained the obvious with modest directness. He had thought out and +made his own a small selection of platitudes. It is at first a shock to +some of us when we discover that a beautiful spiritual nature is linked +with a tranquil commonplace mind and narrow abilities. + +When Michael's eyes rested on anything his still glance seemed to pass +through it, into its essence. An inscrutable Fate had willed that his +eyes should not rest on any woman save Fay. + +Was her little hand to rend his illusions from him; or did he perhaps +see her as she was, as her husband, her shrewd old grandmother, her +sister even, had never seen her? Fay had revealed to Michael that of +which many men who write glibly of passion die in ignorance, the wonder +and awe of love, clothed in a woman's form, walking the earth. And in a +reverent and grateful loyalty Michael would have laid down his life for +her, as gladly as Dante would have done for "his lady." But Michael +would have laid down his in silence, as one casts off a glove. He had +never read the "New Life." It is improbable that it would have made any +impression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or books +or poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He was +unconsciously by nature that which others of the artistic temperament +consciously are in a lesser degree, and are doomed to try to express. +Michael never wanted to express anything, had no impulse of +self-revelation, no interest in his own mental experiences. + +While Fay was turning over her little _bric-a-brac_ assortment of +feelings, her toy renunciations, her imitation convictions, Michael was +slowly making the great renunciation without even taking himself into +his confidence. To go away. To see her no more. This was death by +inches. As he sat hour after hour in his little room behind the Embassy +it seemed to him as if, by some frightful exertion of his will, he were +wading with incredible slowness out to sea, over endless flats in +inch-deep water, which after an interminable journey would be deep +enough to drown him at last. + +The nausea and horror of this slow death were upon him. Nevertheless, he +meant to move towards it. And where Michael's eye was fixed there his +foot followed. He was not of those who rend themselves by violent +conflict. If he had ever been asked to give his reason for any action of +his life, from the greatest to the smallest, he would have looked at the +questioner in mild surprise, and would have said: "It was the only thing +to do." + +To him vacillation and doubt were unknown. A certain wisdom could never +be his, for he saw no alternatives. He never balanced two courses of +action against each other. + +"There were no two ways about it," he said to his godfather, the Bishop +of Lostford, respecting a decision where there were several +alternatives, which he had endeavoured to set before Michael with +impartiality. But Michael saw only one course, and took it. + +And now again he only saw one course, and he meant to take it. He +sickened under it, but his mind was made up. Fay's letter which duly +reached him only made him suffer. It did not alter his determination to +go. Certainly, he would see her again, if she desired it so intensely, +and had something vitally important to tell him, though he disliked the +suggestion of a clandestine meeting. Still it was Fay's suggestion, and +Fay could do no wrong. But he knew that nothing she could do or say, +nothing new that she could spring upon him would have power to shake his +decision to leave Rome on Friday. _It was the only thing to do._ + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + L'on fait plus souvent des trahisons par faiblesse que + par un dessein formé de trahir.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. + + +Fay's evening-party was a success. Her parties generally were. It was a +small gathering, for as it was May but few of the residents had come +down to the villas. Some of the guests had motored out from Rome. My +impression is that Fay enjoyed the evening. She certainly enjoyed the +brilliancy which excitement had momentarily added to her beauty. + +All the time she was saying to herself, "If people only knew. What a +contrast between what these people think and what I really am. Perhaps +this is the last time I shall have a party here. Perhaps I shall not be +here to-morrow. Perhaps Michael will insist on taking me away with him, +from this death in life, this hell on earth." + +What large imposing words! How well they sounded! Yes, in a way Fay was +enjoying herself. + +Often during the evening she saw the grave, kindly eyes of the duke upon +her. Once he came up to her, and paid her a little exquisite compliment. +Her disgust and hatred of him were immediately forgotten. She smiled +back at him. She did not love him of course. A man like that did not +know what love was. But Fay had never yet felt harshly towards any man +who admired her. The husband who did not understand her watched her with +something of the indulgent, protecting expression which we see on the +face of the owner of an enchanting puppy, which is ready to gallop on +india rubber legs after any pair of boots which appears on its low +horizon. + + * * * * * + +The guests had ebbed away by degrees. Lord John Alington, a tall, bald, +boring Englishman, and one or two others, remained behind, arranging +some expedition with the duke. + +Michael's chief had long since gone. Michael did not depart with him, +but took his leave a few moments later. Michael's departure from Rome +the following day on urgent affairs was generally known. The duke had +watched him bid Fay a mechanical farewell, and had then expressed an +urbane regret at his departure. The thin, pinched face of the young man +appealed to the elder one. The duke had liked him from the first. + +"It is time he went," he said to himself as he watched Michael leave the +room. As Michael left it Fay's excitement dropped from her, and she +became conscious of an enormous fatigue. A few minutes later she dragged +herself up the great pictured staircase to her little boudoir +overlooking the garden, and sank down exhausted on a couch. Her pretty +Italian maid was waiting for her in the adjoining bedroom, and came to +her, and began to unfasten her jewels. + +Fay dismissed her for the night, saying she was not going to bed yet. +She often stayed up late reading. She was of those who say that they +have no time for reading in the day, and who like to look up (or rather, +to say afterwards they looked up) to find the solemn moon peering in at +them. + +To-night there was no solemn or otherwise disposed moon. + +Fay's heart suddenly began to beat so wildly that it seemed as if she +would suffocate. What violent emotion was this which was flooding her, +sweeping away all landmarks, covering, as by one great inrolling tidal +wave, all the familiar country of her heart? Whither was she being swept +in the midst of this overwhelming roaring torrent? Out to sea? To some +swift destruction? Where? Where? + +She clutched the arm of the sofa and trembled. She had known so many +small emotions. What was this? And like a second wave on the top of the +first a sea of recklessness broke over and engulfed her. _What next?_ +She did not know. She did not care. Michael, his face and hand. These +were the only realities. In another moment she should see him, feel him, +hold him, never, never let him go again. + +In the intense stillness a whisper came up through the orange blossom +below her balcony: + +"Fay." + +She was on the balcony in a moment. The scent of the orange blossom had +become alive and confused everything. + +"Come up," she said almost inaudibly. + +"I cannot." + +"You must. I must speak to you." + +"Come down here then. I am not coming up." + +She ran down, and felt rather than saw Michael's presence at the foot of +the little stair. + +He was breathing hard. He did not move towards her. + +"You sent for me, so I came," he said. "Tell me quickly what I can do +for you, how I can serve you. I cannot remain here more than a moment. I +endanger your safety as it is." + +It was all so different from what she had expected, from what she had +pictured to herself. He was so determined and stern; and it had never +struck her as possible that he would not come up to her room, that the +interview would be so short. + +"I can't speak here," she said, angry tears smarting in her eyes. + +"You can and must. Tell me quickly, dearest, why you sent for me. You +said it was all-important. I am here, I will do your bidding, if you +will only say what it is." + +"Take me with you," she gasped inaudibly. + +She had not meant to say that. She was merely the mouthpiece of +something vast, of some blind destructive force that was rending her. +She swayed against the railings, clinging to them with both hands. + +Even as she spoke her voiceless whisper was drowned in a sound but very +little louder. There was a distant stir, a movement as of waking bees in +the house. + +He had not heard her. He was listening intently. + +"Go back instantly and shut the window," he said, and in a moment she +felt he was gone. + +She crept feebly up the stairs to her room and sank down again on the +couch, broken, half dead. + +"I shall see him no more. I shall see him no more," she said to herself, +twisting her hands. What a travesty, what a mockery that one hurried +moment had been! What a parting that was no parting! He had no heart. +He did not really love her. + +Through her stupor she felt rather than heard a movement in the house. +She stole out of her room to the head of the grand staircase. Nearly all +the lights had been put out. Close to a lamp in the saloon below, the +duke and Lord John were standing, looking at a map. "The Grotta Ferrata +road is the best," the duke was saying. And as he spoke a servant came +in quickly, and whispered to the duke, who left the saloon with him. + +Fay fled back to her own room. Something was happening. But what? Could +it have any connection with herself and Michael? No, that seemed +impossible. And Michael must by now have left the gardens, by the +unlocked door by which he had come in. + +Fay drew the reading lamp nearer to her, and opened the book of +devotions which Magdalen, her far off sister in England, had sent her. +Her eyes wandered over the page, her mind taking no heed. + +"_For it is the most pain that the soul may have, to turn from God any +time by sin._" + +There certainly was a sort of subdued stir in the house. A nameless fear +was invading Fay's heart. The book shook in her hand. What _could_ be +happening? And if it was, as it must be, something quite apart from her +and Michael, what did it matter, why be afraid? + +"_For sin is vile, and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to +no pain which is not sin. And to me was showed no harder hell than +sin._" + +A low tap came at the window. Fay started violently, and the book +dropped on the floor. + +The tap was repeated. She went to the window, and saw Michael's face +through the glass. + +She opened the glass door, and he came in. His clothes were smeared and +torn, and there was blood upon his hand. + +"Something has happened," he said. "I don't know what it is, but the +garden is surrounded, and there is someone watching at the door I came +in at. I have tried all the other ways. I have tried to climb the wall, +but there was glass at the top. I can't get out. And they are searching +the gardens with lanterns." + +Even as he spoke they saw lights moving among the ilexes. + +"They can't know," she said faintly. + +"It does not seem possible. They are probably looking for someone else, +but I can't be found here at this hour without raising suspicion. Is +there any way out through the house from here?" + +"Only down the grand staircase." + +"I must risk it. Show me the way." + +They went together down the almost dark corridor. Fay's heart sickened +at the thought that a belated servant might see them. But all was quiet. +At the head of the staircase they both peered over the balustrade. At +its foot in a narrow circle of light stood the duke and Lord John, and a +man with a tri-coloured sash. Even as they looked, the three turned and +began slowly to mount the staircase. + +Fay and Michael were back in her boudoir in a moment. + +"There is a way out here," he said, indicating the door into her +bedroom. + +"It leads into my bedroom, and then through to Andrea's rooms. There is +no passage, and he has a dog in his room. It would bark." + +"I must go back to the garden again," he said, and instantly moved to +the window. Both saw two _carabinieri_ standing with a lantern at the +foot of the balcony steps. + +"If you go down now," said Fay hoarsely, "my reputation goes with you." + +He looked at her. + +It was as if his whole life were focussed on one burning point; how to +save her from suspicion. If he could have shrivelled into ashes at her +feet he would have done it. She saw her frightful predicament, and +almost hated him. + +The animal panic of being trapped caught them both simultaneously. He +overcame it instantly, while she shook helplessly as in a palsy. + +He went swiftly back to the door leading to the staircase, and glanced +through it. + +"They are coming along the corridor," he said. "They will certainly come +in here." + +"Stand behind the screen," she gasped. "I will say no one has been here, +and they will pass through into the other room. As soon as they have +left the room go quickly out by the staircase." + +He looked round him once, and then walked behind a tall screen of +Italian leather which stood at the head of a divan. + +Fay took up her book from the floor, but her numb fingers refused to +hold it. She put it on the edge of the table near her, under the lamp, +hid her shaking hands in the folds of her long white chiffon gown, and +fixed her eyes upon the page. + +The words of the dead saint swam before her eyes: + +"_Yea, He loveth us now as well while we are here, as He shall do while +we are there afore His blessed face. But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail._" + +There were subdued footsteps outside, a tap, the duke's voice. + +"May I come in?" + +"Come in," she said, but she heard no words. + +She made a superhuman effort. + +"Come in," she said again, and this time to her relief she heard the +words distinctly. + +The duke entered and held the door half closed. + +"I feared to disturb you, my child," he said, "but it is unavoidable +that I disturb you. It is a relief to find that you are not yet in bed +and asleep. A very grave, a very sad event has happened which +necessitates the presence of the police commissioner. Calm yourself, my +Francesca, and my good friend the _delegato_ will explain." + +The official in the sash came in. Lord John stood in the doorway. + +"Duchess," said the official, "I grieve to say that one of your guests +of this evening, the Marchese di Maltagliala, has been assassinated in +the garden, or possibly in the road, and his dead body was dragged into +the garden afterwards. He was found just inside the east garden door, +which by some mischance had been left unlocked." + +A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ words. + +[Illustration: "A DEATHLIKE SILENCE FOLLOWED THE DELEGATO'S WORDS"] + +Fay turned her bloodless face towards him, and her eyes never left +him. She felt Michael listening behind the screen. + +"There was hardly an instant," continued the official, with a touch of +professional pride, "before the alarm was given. By a fortunate chance I +myself happened to be near. The garden was instantly surrounded. It is +being searched now. It seems hardly possible that the assassin can have +escaped. I entreat your pardon for intruding this painful subject on the +sensitive mind of a lady, and breaking in on your privacy." + +"I should think he has escaped by now," said Fay hoarsely. + +"It is possible, but improbable," said the official. Then he turned to +the duke. "This is, I understand from you, the only way into the house +from the garden?" + +"The only way that might possibly still be open," said the duke. "The +doors on the ground floor are both locked, as we have seen." + +"We greatly feared," continued the duke, turning to his wife, "that the +murderer if he were still in the garden, finding it was being searched, +might terrify you by rushing in here." + +"No one has been in here," said Fay automatically. + +"Have you been in this room ever since you left the saloon?" said her +husband. + +"Yes. I have been reading here ever since." + +"Then it is impossible that anyone should have escaped into the house +through this room," said the duke. "The duchess must have seen him. It +is no longer necessary to search the house." + +The _delegato_ hesitated. He opened the glass door and spoke to the men +with the lantern. + +"They are convinced that it is not possible he is concealed in the +garden," he said. "Perhaps if the duchess were deeply engaged in study +he might have serpentinely glided through into the next room without her +perceiving him. It is, I understand, the duchess's private apartment. It +might be as well--where does the duchess's apartment lead into?" + +"Into my rooms," said the duke, "and my dog is there. He would have +given the alarm long ago if any stranger had passed through my room. If +he is silent no one has been near him." + +There was a pause. + +Fay learned what suspense means. + +The _delegato_ twirled his moustaches. + +He was evidently reluctant to give up the remotest chance, and yet +reluctant to inconvenience the duke further. + +"It is just possible," he said, "that the assassin may have taken refuge +in here before the duchess came back to her apartment. My duties are +grave, duchess. Have I your permission?" + +Fay bowed. + +The duke, still urbane, but evidently finding the situation unduly +prolonged, led the way into Fay's bedroom. + +This story would never have been written if Lord John had not remained +standing in the doorway. + +Did Michael know he was there? He had not so far spoken, or given any +sign of his presence. + +"Won't you go into my room, Lord John, and help in the capture," she +said distinctly; and as she spoke she was aware that she was only just +in time. + +But Lord John would not go in, thanks. Lord John preferred to advance +heavily in her direction, and to sit down by her on the couch, telling +her not to look so terrified, that he would take care of her. + +She stared wildly at him, livid and helpless. + +A door was softly opened, and was instantly followed by the furious +barking of a dog. + +"Go and help them," said Fay to Lord John. + +But Lord John did not move. Like all bores he was conscious of his own +attractive personality. He only settled his eyeglass more firmly in his +pale eye. + +"You never spoke to me all evening," he said, with jocular emphasis. +"What have I done to deserve such severity?" + +In another moment the duke and the official returned, followed by +Sancho, a large Bridlington terrier, still bristling and snarling at the +official. + +Fay called the dog to her, and held it forcibly, pretending to caress +it. + +"No one has gone by that way," said the _delegato_ to the duke. "The dog +proves that." + +"Sancho proves it," said the duke gravely. + +As he spoke he paused as if suddenly arrested. His eyes were fixed on a +small Florentine mirror which hung over Fay's writing-table in the angle +of the wall. The duke's face changed, as a man's face might change, who, +conscious of no enemy, feels himself stabbed from behind in the dark. +Then he came forward, and said with a firm voice: + +"We will now go once more into the gardens. Lord John, you will +accompany us." + +Lord John got heavily to his feet. + +"Take Sancho with you," said Fay, holding the dog with difficulty, who +was obviously excited and suspicious, its mobile nostrils working, its +eyes glued to the screen. + +The duke opened the glass door, and Sancho, his attention turned, rushed +out into the night, barking furiously. + +"You need have no further fear," said the duke to Fay, looking into her +eyes. "The assassin has certainly escaped." + +"No doubt," said Fay. + +"Unless he is hiding behind the screen all the time," said Lord John, +with his customary facetiousness. "It is about the only place in the +room he could hide in, except of course the wastepaper basket." + +The _delegato_, who was not apparently a man who quickly seized the +humorous side of a remark, at once stepped back from the window, and +glanced at the wastepaper basket. + +"I may as well look behind the screen," he said, and went towards it. + +But before he could reach it the screen moved, and Michael came out from +behind it. + +The four people in the room gazed at him spell-bound, speechless; Lord +John reeled against the wall. The duke alone retained his +self-possession. + +Michael advanced into the middle of the room, and for a moment his eyes +met Fay's. Who shall say what he read in their terror-stricken depths? + +Then he turned to the duke and said: + +"I ask pardon of you, duke, and of the duchess, my cousin, for the +inconvenience I have caused you. I confess to the murder of the Marchese +di Maltagliala, and sought refuge in the garden. When the garden was +surrounded I sought refuge here. I did not tell the duchess what I had +done, but I implored her to let me take shelter here, and to promise not +to give me up. She ought at once to have given me up. She yielded to the +dictates of humanity and suffered me to hide in this room. Duchess, I +thank you for your noble, your self-sacrificing but unavailing desire to +shield a guilty man." + +Michael went up to her, took her cold hand and kissed it. Then he turned +again to the duke. + +"I offer you my apologies for this intrusion," he said, and the two men +bowed to each other. + +"And now, signor," he said in Italian to the amazed official, "I am at +your service." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser.--VAUVENARGUES. + + +Michael was imprisoned for the night in a cell attached to the Court of +Mandamento, and the next day was sent to Rome to await his trial at the +_assise_. + +Early on the second day after he reached Rome the duke came to him. The +two men looked fixedly at each other. They exchanged no form of +greeting. + +The duke made a little sign with his hand, and the warder withdrew +outside the cell door, which he left ajar. + +Then the duke sat down by Michael. + +"I should have come yesterday," he said in English, "but it took time to +gain permission, and also"--he nodded towards the door--"to arrange." + +"For God's sake give me details," said Michael. + +The duke gave them in a low voice. He described in a careful sequence +the exact position of the dead body, the wound, caused by stabbing in +the back, the strong inference that the murdered man had been attacked +in the road, and then dragged just inside the Colle Alto garden door. + +"I don't see any reason why he should have gone outside the garden," +said Michael. + +"Neither do I. But the garden door was unlocked. It had been locked as +usual, my gardener swears, and the key left in the lock on the inside. +Who then opened it, if for some reason the marchese did not open it +himself?" + +Michael did not answer. + +"I saw the body before it was moved," continued the duke. "It was still +warm. I incline to think the marchese was murdered actually inside the +garden, and that he fell on his face where he stood, and was dragged +behind the hydrangeas. But the _delegato_ thought differently. You will +remember, Carstairs, that the dead man had been dragged by the feet." + +"Did I put him on the right side or the left of the door as you go in?" + +"On the left." + +"On his face?" + +"Yes." + +There was a pause. + +"You had no quarrel with the marchese, I presume?" said the duke +significantly. + +"On the contrary," said Michael; "it is not known, but I had." + +"Just so. Just so. About a woman?" + +Michael winced. + +"About a horse," he said. + +"No," said the duke, with decision. "Think again. Your memory does not +serve you. It was about a woman. Was it not a dancing-girl?" + +"I am not like that," said Michael, colouring. + +"It is of no account what you are like, or what you are not like. What +matters is that which is quickly believed. A quarrel about a woman is +always believed, especially by women who think all turns on them. Were +you not in Paris at Easter?" + +"I was." + +"Was not the marchese in Paris at Easter?" + +"He was. I saw him once at the Opera with the old Duke of Castelfranco." + +"Just so. A quarrel about a dancing-girl at Paris at Easter. That was +how it was." + +"You are right," said Michael, regaining his composure with an effort. +"I owed him a grudge. You will be careful to mention this to no one?" + +"I will mention it only to one or two women on whom I can rely," said +the duke; "and to them only in the strictest confidence." + +Michael nodded. + +Silence fell between them, and he wondered why the duke did not go. The +warder shifted his feet in the passage. + +Presently the duke began to speak in a low, even voice. + +"I owe you an apology," he said. "I saw you standing behind the screen, +reflected in a little mirror, and for one moment I thought you had done +me a great injury. It was only for a moment. I regained myself quickly. +I would have saved you if I could. But I owe you an apology for a +suspicion unworthy of either of us." + +"It was natural," said Michael. He was greatly drawn to this man. + +"I may in some matters be deceived," continued the duke, "for in my time +I have deceived others, and have not been found out. I don't know why +you were in my wife's rooms that night. Nevertheless, I clearly know two +things: one, that you did not murder the marchese, and the other, that +there was nothing wrong between you and my wife. With you her honour was +safe. You and I are combining now to guard only her reputation before +the world." + +Michael did not answer. He nodded again. + +"At the price," continued the duke, "probably of your best years." + +"I am content to pay the price," said Michael. "It was the only thing to +do." Then he coloured like a girl, and raised his eyes to the duke's. "I +went to her that night to say good-bye," he said. "That was why the +garden door was unlocked. I love her. I have loved her for years." + +It seemed as if everything between the two men had become transparent. + +"I know it," said the duke. "She also, the duchess, is in love with +you." + +Michael drew back perceptibly. His manner changed. + +"A little--not much," continued the duke. "I watched her, when you gave +up yourself. She could have saved you. She could save you still--by a +word. But she will not speak it. She appeared to love me a little once. +I was not deceived. I knew. She loves you a little now. Why do you +deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has a +permanent and deep affection--for her very charming self." + +The words fell into the silence of the bare room. Michael's thin hands, +tightly clenched, shook a little. + +The duke bent towards him. + +"Is she worth it?" he said, with sudden passion. + +No answer. Michael hid his face in his hands. + +"Is she worth it?" said the duke again. + +Michael looked up suddenly at the duke, and the elder man winced at the +expression in his face. He looked through the duke, through his veiled +despair and disillusion, beyond him. + +"Yes, she is worth it," he said. "You do not understand her because you +only love her in part. I meant to serve her by leaving Rome, but now I +can't leave it. What I can do for her I will. It is no sacrifice--I am +glad to do it--to have the chance. I have always wished--to serve +her--to put my hands under her feet." + +The sudden radiance in Michael's face passed. He looked down +embarrassed, annoyed with himself. + +"There remains then but one other person to be considered," said the +duke, looking closely at him. "The beautiful heroine, the young lover, +these are now accommodated. All is _en régle_. But that dull elderly +person who takes the _rôle_ of husband on these occasions! Is there not +a husband somewhere? What of him? Will he indeed fold his arms as on the +stage? Will he indeed stand by as serenely as you suppose and suffer an +innocent man to make this sacrifice for the sake of his--honour?" + +"He will, only because he must," said Michael, catching his breath. "I +had thought of that. He can do nothing. Have I not accused myself? And +his honour is also hers. They stand and fall together." + +[Illustration: "'IS SHE WORTH IT?' HE SAID WITH SUDDEN PASSION"] + +"They stand and fall together," said the duke slowly. "Yes, that is +true. And he is old. He is finished. He is the head of a great house. +His honour is perhaps the only thing that still means anything to +him. Nevertheless, it is strange to me that you think he would consent +to keep it at so great a cost, the cost perhaps of twenty years. That +were impossible.... He could not permit _that_. But--one little year--at +most. That perhaps his conscience might permit. One little year! You are +young. Supposing he has within him," he laid his hand on his heart, +"that of which his wife does not know, which means that his release is +_sure_. Do you understand? Supposing it must come soon--very soon--her +release--and yours. Perhaps then----" There was a long pause. "Perhaps +then his conscience might suffer him to keep silence." + +Michael's hand made a slight movement. The duke took it in his, and held +it firmly. + +"Listen," he said at last. "Once when I was young, twenty years ago, I +loved. I too would fain have served a woman, would have put my hands +under her feet. There is always one such a woman in life, but only one. +She was to me the world. But I could only trouble her life. She was +married. She had children. I knew I ought to go. I meant to go. She +prayed me to go. I promised her to go--nevertheless I stayed. And at +last--inasmuch as she loved me very much--I broke up her home, her life, +her honour, she was separated from her children. She lost all, and then +when all was gone she died. The only thing which I could keep from her +was poverty, which would have been nothing to her. She never reproached +me. There is no reproach in love. But--she died in disgrace, and alone. +From the first to the last it was her white hands under my feet. That +was how I served the one woman I have deeply loved, the one creature +who deeply loved me." The duke's voice had become almost inaudible. "You +have done better than I," he said. + +Then he kissed Michael on the forehead, and went out. + +They never met again. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + The year slid like a corpse afloat.--D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +And how did it fare with Fay during the days that followed Michael's +arrest? + +Much sympathy was felt for her. Lord John, wallowing in the delicious +novelty of finding eager listeners, went about extolling her courage and +unselfishness to the skies. Her conduct was considered perfectly natural +and womanly. No man condemned her for trying to shield her cousin from +the consequences of his crime. Women said they would have done the same, +and envied her her romantic situation. + +And Fay, shut up in her darkened room in her romantic situation--she who +adored romantic situations--what were Fay's thoughts? + +There is a travail of soul which toils with hard crying up the dark +valley of decision, and brings forth in anguish the life entrusted to +it. Perhaps it is the great renunciation. Perhaps it is only the loyal +inevitable deed which is struggling to come forth, to be allowed to live +for our healing and comfort. + +But there is another travail of soul, barren, unavailing, which flings +itself down, and tosses in impotent misery from side to side, from mood +to mood, as in a sickly trance. + +Such was Fay's. + +Her decision not to speak had been made in the moment when she had let +Michael accuse himself, and she kept silence. But that she did not know. +She thought it was still to make. + +"I must speak. I must speak," she said to herself all through the +endless day after Michael's arrest, all through the endless night, until +the dawn came up behind the ilexes, the tranquil dawn that knew all, and +found her shuddering and wild-eyed. + +"I must speak. I cannot let Michael suffer for me, even to save my +reputation." + +_Her reputation!_ How little she had cared for it twenty-four hours ago, +when passion clutched the reins! + +But now---- The public shame of it--the divorce which in her eyes must +ensue--Andrea! Her courteous, sedate, inexorable husband, whose will she +could not bend, whom she could not cajole, whose mind was a closed book +to her; a book which had lain by her hand for three years, which she had +never had the curiosity to open!--Fay feared her husband, as we all fear +what we do not understand. He would divorce her--and then---- And +Magdalen at home--and---- + +A flood of suffocating emotion swept over her, full of ugly swimming and +crawling reptiles, and invertebrate horrors, the inevitable scavengers +of the sea of selfish passion. + +Fay shrank back for very life. She could not pass through that flood and +live. Nevertheless she felt herself pushed towards it. + +"But I have no choice. I _must_ speak. He is innocent. He is doing this +to shield me because he loves me. But I also love him, far, far more +than he loves me, and I will prove it." + +Fay went in imagination through a fearful and melodramatic scene, in +which she revealed everything before a public tribunal. She saw her +husband's face darken against her, her lover's lighten as she saved him. +She saw her slender figure standing alone, bearing the whole shock, +serene, unshaken. The vision moved her to tears. + +Was it a prophetic vision? + +It was quite light now, and she crept to her husband's room. She had not +seen him during the previous day. He had been out the whole of it. She +felt drawn towards him by calamity, by the loneliness of her misery. + +The duke was not asleep. He was lying in bed with his hands clasped +behind his head. His sallow face, worn by a sleepless night, and perhaps +by a wounding memory, was turned towards the light, and the new day +dealt harshly with it. There were heavy lines under the eyes. The eyes +looked steadily in front of him, plunged deep in a past which had +something of the irrevocable tenderness of the dawn in it, the holy +reflection of an inalienable love. + +He did not stir as his wife came in. His eyes only moved, resting upon +her for a moment, focussing her with difficulty, as if withdrawn from +something at a great distance, and then they turned once more to the +window. + +A pale primrose light had risen above the blue tangled mist of ilexes +and olives. The cypresses stood half-veiled in mist, half-sharply clear +against the stainless pallor of the upper sky. + +"I am so miserable, Andrea." + +He did not speak. + +"I cannot sleep." + +Still no answer. + +"I am convinced that Michael is innocent." + +"It goes without saying." + +"Then they can't convict him, can they?" + +"They will convict him," said the duke, and for a moment he bent his +eyes upon her. "Has he not accused himself?" + +"They won't--hang him?" + +The duke shrugged his shoulders. He did not think fit to enlighten his +wife's ignorance of the fact that in Italy there is no capital +punishment. + +"But if he has not done it, and we know he has not," faltered Fay. + +"He is perhaps shielding someone," said the duke, "the real murderer." + +"I don't see how that could be." + +"He may have his reasons. The real murderer is perhaps a friend--or +a--woman. Your cousin is a romantic. It is always better for a romantic +if he had not been born. But generally a female millstone is in +readiness to tie itself round him, and cast him into the sea. The world +is not fitted to him. It is to egotistic persons like you and me, my +Francesca, to whom the world is most admirably adapted." + +"I don't see how the murderer could be a woman. Women don't murder men +on the high road." + +"No, not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty is +the high road! But I have known, not once nor twice, women to murder men +very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die. I am much +older than you, but you will perhaps also live to see a woman do this, +Francesca. And now retire to your room, and let me counsel you to take +some rest. Your beauty needs it." + +She burst into tears. + +"How little you care!" she said between her sobs, "how heartless you +are! I will never believe they will convict him. He is innocent, and his +innocence will come to light." + +"I think the light will not be suffered to fall upon it," said the duke. + +Afterwards, years afterwards, Fay remembered that conversation with +wonder that its significance had escaped her. But at the time she could +see nothing, feel nothing except her own anguish. + +She left her husband's room. There was no help or sympathy in him. She +went back to her own room and flung herself face downwards on her bed. +Let no one think she did not suffer. + +A faint ray of comfort presently came to her at the thought that +Michael's innocence might after all come to light. It might be proved in +spite of himself. + +She would pray incessantly that the real murderer might give himself up, +or that suspicion should fall on him, and he should be dragged to +justice. And then, if--_after all_--Michael were convicted and his life +endangered, then she _must_ speak. But--not till then. Not now when all +might yet go well without her confession.... And it was not as if she +were guilty of unfaithfulness. She had not done anything wrong beyond +imprudence. Yes, she had certainly been imprudent; that she saw. But she +had done nothing _wrong_. It could not be right to confess to what in +public opinion amounted to unfaithfulness on her part, and dishonourable +conduct on his, when it was not so. They were both innocent. It would be +telling a lie to let anyone think either of them could be guilty of such +a sordid crime. It looked sordid now. Why should she drag down his name +with hers into the mud--unless it were absolutely necessary.... And she +must remember how distressed Michael would be if she said a word, if she +flung her good name from her, which he had risked all to save. Some +semblance of calm returned to her, as she thus reached the only +conclusion which the bias of her mind would permit. The stream ran +docilely in the little groove cut out for it. + +During the days and weeks that followed Fay shut herself up, and prayed +incessantly for Michael. + +She prayed all through the interminable interval before the trial. + +"If it goes against him, I will speak," she said. + +Yet all the time Michael who loved her knew that she would not speak. +Her husband who could have loved her, and who watched her struggle with +compassion, knew that she would not speak. Only Fay who did not know +herself believed that she would speak. + + * * * * * + +The day came when the duke gravely informed her that Michael was found +guilty of murder. + +Fay's prayers it seemed had not availed. She prayed no more. There was +no help in God. Probably there was no God to pray to. Her sister +Magdalen seemed to think there was. But how could she tell? Besides, +Magdalen had such a calm temperament, and nothing had ever happened to +make her unhappy, or to shake her faith. It was different for Magdalen. + +Evidently there was no justice anywhere, only a blind chance. "The truth +will out," Fay had said to herself over and over again. She had tried to +have faith. But the truth had not come out. She was being pushed, pushed +over the edge of the precipice. Oh, why had Michael fallen in love with +her when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgust +those early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time of +primroses. It had brought her to _this_--to this horrible place of tears +and shame and shuddering--to these wretched days and hideous nights. Oh, +why, why, had he loved her! Why had she let herself love him! + +Suddenly she said to herself, "They may reprieve him yet. If his +sentence is not commuted to imprisonment I will speak, so help me God I +will." + +It could never be known whether she would have kept that oath, for the +next day she heard that Michael had been sentenced to fifteen years' +imprisonment. Why had Andrea been so cruel as to let her imagine for a +whole horrible night that Michael's would be a death sentence, when in +Italy it seemed there was no capital punishment as in England? It was +just like Andrea to torture her needlessly! When the sentence reached +her Fay drew breath. The horrible catastrophe had been averted. To a man +of Michael's temperament the living grave to which he was consigned was +infinitely worse than death. But what was Michael's temperament to Fay? +She shut her eyes to the cell of an Italian prison. Michael would live, +and in time the truth would come to light, and he would be released. + +She impressed this conviction with tears on his half-brother Wentworth +Maine, the kind, silent elder brother, Michael's greatest friend, who +had come out to Italy to be near him, and who heard sentence given +against him with a set face, and an unshaken belief in his innocence. +Even to Wentworth Michael had said nothing, could be induced to say no +word. He confessed to the murder. That was all. + +Wentworth, who had never seen Fay before, as she had married just before +he came to live at his uncle's place in Hampshire near Fay's home, saw +the marks of grief in her lovely face, and was unconsciously drawn +towards her. He was shy as only men can be; but he almost forgot it in +her sympathetic presence. She came into his isolated, secluded life at +the moment when the barriers of his instinctive timidity and apathy were +broken down by his first real trouble. And he was grateful to her for +having done her best to save Michael. + +"I shall never forget that," he said, when he came to bid her good-bye. +"There are very few women who would have had the courage and +unselfishness to act as you did." + +Fay winced and paled, and he took his leave, bearing away with him a +grave admiration for this delicate, sensitive creature, so full of +tender compassion for him and Michael. + +He made no attempt to see her again when he returned to Italy some +months later to visit Michael in prison. To visit Fay on that occasion +would have taken him somewhat out of his way, and Wentworth never went +out of his way, not out of principle, but because such a course never +occurred to him. He would have liked to see her, in order to tell her +about Michael's condition, and also to deliver in person a message which +Michael had sent to Fay by him. But when he realised that a detour would +be necessary in order to accomplish this, he wrote to Fay to tell her +with deep regret that it was impossible for him to see her, gave her +Michael's message, and returned to England by the way he came. +Nevertheless, he often thought of her, for she was inextricably +associated with the unspeakable trouble of his life, his brother's +living death. + +When all was over, and the last sod had--so to speak--been cast upon +that living grave, Fay tried to take up her life again. But she could +not. She had lost heart. She dared not be alone. She shunned society. At +her earnest request her sister Magdalen came out to her for a time, from +the home in England, into which she was wedged so tightly. But even +Magdalen's calm presence brought no calm with it, and the deepening +friendship between her sister and her husband only irritated Fay. +Everything irritated Fay. She was ill at ease, restless, feebly +sarcastic, impatient. + +There is a peace which passes understanding, and there is an unpeace +which passes understanding also. Fay did not know, would not know, why +she was so troubled, so weary of life, so destitute of comfort. + +Had she met the great opportunity of her life, the turning point, and +missed it? I do not think so. It was not for her. + + * * * * * + +A year later the duke died. + +He made a dignified exit. An attack of vertigo to which he was liable +came on when he was on horseback. He was thrown and dragged, and only +survived a few days as by a miracle. His wife, who had seen little of +him during the last year, saw still less of him during the days of his +short illness. But when the end was close at hand he sent for her, and +asked her to remain in a distant recess of his room during the painful +hours. + +"It will be a happier memory for you," he said gently to her between the +paroxysms of suffering, "to think that you were there." + +And so propped high in a great carved bedstead in the octagonal room +where the Colle Altos were born, and where, when they could choose, they +died, the duke lay awaiting the end. + +He had received extreme unction. The chanting choir had gone. The priest +had closed his pale fingers upon the crucifix, when he desired to be +left alone with his wife. + +She drew near timidly and stood beside his bed. + +He bent his tranquil, kindly eyes upon her. + +"Good-bye, my Francesca," he said. "May God and his angels protect you, +and give you peace." + +A belated compunction seized her. + +"I wish I had been a better wife to you, Andrea," she said brokenly, +laying her hand on his. + +He made the ghost of a courteous, deprecating gesture, and raised her +hand to his lips. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes and his +hand fell out of hers. + +Through the open window came a sudden waft of hot carnations, a long +drawn breath of the rapturous Italian spring. + +It reached the duke. He stirred slightly, and opened his eyes once more. +Once more they fell on Fay, and it seemed to her as if with the last +touch of his cold lips upon her hand their relation of husband and wife +had ceased. Even at that moment she realised with a sinking sense of +impotence how slight her hold on him from first to last had been. +Clearly he had already forgotten it, passed beyond it, would never +remember it again. + +"It is spring," he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and for +a moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sun +shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year +he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you keep your +cousin Michael in prison?" + +And thereupon the duke closed his eyes on this world, and went upon his +way. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + A bachelor's an unfinished thing ... He wants somebody to listen to + his talk.--EDEN PHILLPOTTS. + + +Reader, do you know Barford, in Hampshire? If you don't, I can tell you +how to get to it. You take train from Victoria, and you get out at +Saundersfoot. There is nothing at Saundersfoot, except a wilderness of +lodgings and a tin station and a high wind. It need not detain an active +mind beyond the necessary moment of enquiring by which road it may be +most quickly left. I cannot tell you who Saunders was, nor why the +watering-place was called after his foot. But if you walk steadily away +from it for five miles inland, along the white chalky road between the +downs, you will arrive at the little village of Barford. + +There is only one road, so you cannot miss your way. Little twisty lanes +fretted with sheep-tracks drop down into it now and then from the +broad-shouldered downs on either side, but take no notice of them. If +you persevere, you will in due course see the village of Barford lying +in front of you, which, at a little distance, looks as if it had been +carelessly swept into a crease between the downs, while a few cottages +and houses on the hillside seem to have adhered to the ground, and +remained stuck where they were when the sweeping took place. + +After you have passed the pond and the post office, and before you reach +the school, you will see a lodge, and an old Italian iron gateway, +flanked by a set of white wooden knobs planted in the ground on either +side, held together by chains. The white knobs are apparently there in +order to upset carriages as they drive in or out. But very few carriages +have driven in or out during the last two years, except those of the +owner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine. Wentworth, since he inherited +the place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhat +secluded life. But during the last two years, ever since his +half-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy, +Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of his +neighbours. He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as a +magistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin, +refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of long +tracts of solitary unhappiness. And the habit of solitude was growing on +him. + +The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny low +rooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of +ancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of the +place as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon its +surface. The patch, however, adroitly copied, is seen to be an +innovation. + +The old house, which had known so much, had sheltered so much, had kept +counsel so long, seemed to resent the artificial peace that its present +owner had somewhat laboriously constructed round himself, within its +mellow, ivied walls. + +There is a fictitious tranquillity which is always on the verge of being +broken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential, +velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of +the inharmonious or jarring elements which pervade daily life. + +Such an imitation peace, coy as a fickle mistress, Wentworth cherished. +Was it worth all the trouble he took to preserve it, when the real thing +lay at his very door? + +On this February morning, as he sat looking out across the down, white +in the pale sunshine, the current of his life ran low. He had returned +the night before from one of his periodical journeys to Italy to visit +Michael in his cell. He was tired with the clang and hurry of the long +journey, depressed almost to despair by the renewed realisation of his +brother's fate. Two years--close on two years, had Michael been in +prison. + +In Wentworth's faithful heart that wound never healed. To-day it bled +afresh. He bit his lip, and his face quivered. + + * * * * * + +Wentworth was not as handsome as Michael, but, nevertheless, he was +distinctly good to look at, and the half-brothers, in spite of the +fifteen years' difference between their ages, bore a certain superficial +resemblance to each other. Wentworth was of middle height, lightly and +leanly built, with a high bridge on a rather thin nose, and with narrow, +clean grey eyes under light eyelashes. He looked as if he had been made +up of different shades of one colour. His light brown hair had a little +grey in it, his delicately cut face and nervous hands were both tanned, +by persistent exposure to all kinds of weather, to nearly the same +shade of indeterminate brown as his hair. + +You could not look at Wentworth without seeing that he was a man who had +never even glanced at the ignoble side of life, for whose fastidious, +sensitive nature sensual lures had no attraction, a man who could not +lie, who could not stoop, whose mind was as clean as his hand, and, for +an Englishman, that is saying a good deal. He was manly in a physical +sense. He rode straight, he shot well. He could endure bodily strain +with indifference, though he was not robustly built. He was sane, +even-tempered, liable to petty resentments, mildly and resolutely +selfish, except where Michael was concerned, a conscientious and just +master--at least, just in intention--a patient and respectful son where +patience and respect had not been easy. + +The strain of scholar and student in him was about evenly mixed with +that of the country gentleman. The result was a certain innate sense of +superiority which he was not in the least aware that he showed. He had +no idea that he was considered "fine," and "thinking a good deal of +himself," by the more bucolic of his country neighbours. No one could +say that Wentworth was childlike, but perhaps he was a little childish. +He certainly had a _naïf_ and unshakable belief that the impressions he +had formed as to his own character were shared by others. He supposed it +was recognised by his neighbours that they had a thinker in their midst, +and always tacitly occupied the ground which he imagined had been +conceded to him on that account. + +His mother, a beautiful, foolish, whimsical, hard-riding heiress, the +last of a long line, had married the youngest son--the one brilliant, +cultivated member--of a family as ancient, as uneducated, and as prosaic +as her own. Wentworth was the result of that union. His father had died +before his talents were fully recognised: that is to say, just when it +was beginning to be perceived that he was a genius only in his own +class, and that there were hordes of educated men in the middle classes +who could beat him at every point on his own ground, except in carriage +and appearance, and whom no one regarded as specially gifted. Still, in +his own county, among his own friends, and in a society where education +and culture eke out a precarious, interloping existence, and are +regarded with distrustful curiosity, Lord Wilfrid Maine lived and died, +and was mourned as a genius. + +After many years of uneasy, imprudent widowhood, the widow of the great +man had made a disastrous second marriage, and had died at Michael's +birth. + +No one had disputed with Wentworth over the possession of Michael. +Wentworth, a sedate, self-centred young man of three-and-twenty, of +independent means, mainly occupied in transcribing the nullity of his +days in a voluminous diary, had taken charge of him virtually from his +first holidays, during which Michael's father had achieved the somewhat +tedious task of drinking himself to death. Michael's father had +appointed Wentworth as his son's guardian. If it had been a jealous +affection on Wentworth's part, it had also been a deep one. And it had +been returned with a single-hearted devotion on Michael's part which had +gradually knit together the hearts of the older and the younger man, as +it seemed indissolubly. No one had come between them. Once or twice +Wentworth had become uneasy, suspicious of Michael's affection for his +tutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys, +and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few of +these incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case, +judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships he +had not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number was +Michael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael's +boyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. It had come about +during the last year of his great uncle's life at Barford, which was +within a few miles of Priesthope, Fay's home. Michael had spent many +weeks at Barford with the old man, who was devoted to him. Everyone had +expected that he would make Michael his heir, but when he died soon +afterwards, it was found he had left the place, in a will dated many +years back, to Wentworth. If Michael had never mentioned his first +painful contact with life to Wentworth, it was perhaps partly because he +instinctively felt that the confidence would be coldly received, partly +also because Michael was a man of few words, to whom speech had never +taken the shape of relief. + +There had no doubt been wretched moments in Wentworth's devotion to +Michael, but nevertheless it had been the best thing so far in his +somewhat colourless existence, with its hesitating essays in other +directions, its half-hearted withdrawals, its pigeon-holed emotions. He +had not been half-hearted about Michael. It is perhaps natural that we +should love very deeply those who have had the power to release us +momentarily from the airless prison of our own egotism. How often it is +a child's hand which first opens that iron door, and draws us forth into +the sunshine! With Wentworth it had been so. The pure air of the +moorland, the scent of the heather and the sea seem indissolubly mingled +with the remembrance of those whom we have loved. For did we not in +their company walk abroad into a new world, breathe a new air, while +Self, the dingy turnkey, for once slept at his post? + +One of the reasons of his devotion to Michael was that Michael's +character did not apparently or perceptibly alter. He was very much the +same person in his striped convict's blouse as he had been in his Eton +jacket. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had ever realised of what +materials that character consisted. Wentworth was of those who never get +the best out of men and women, who never divine and meet, but only come +into surprised uncomfortable contact with their deeper emotions. +Michael's passion of service for Fay would have been a great shock to +Wentworth had he suspected it. It remained for the duke to perceive the +latent power in Michael, and to be taken instantly into his confidence +on the matter, while Wentworth, unwitting, had remained for life outside +his brother's mind. + +Some men and women are half conscious that they are thus left out, are +companions only of "the outer court" of the lives of others. But +Wentworth never suspected this, partly because he regarded as friendship +a degree of intimacy which most men and all women regard as +acquaintanceship. He did not know there was anything more. Those from +whom others need much, learn perforce, whether they will or no, to what +heights, to what depths human nature can climb and--fall. But Wentworth +was not a person on whom others made large demands. But if his love for +Michael had been his one tangible happiness, it had become now his one +real pain. + +Contrary to all his habits, he sat on, hour after hour, motionless, +inert, watching the cloud shadows pass across the down. He tried to +rouse himself. He told himself that he must settle back into his old +occupations. He must get forward with his history of Sussex, and write +up his diary. He must come to some decision about the allotment scheme +on his property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help Colonel +Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way +across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel +Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as +a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch +business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and +inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere +presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with +himself struggling in the middle. + +Wentworth must save the old autocrat from putting himself in the wrong, +when he was so plainly in the right. Wentworth must at any rate, if he +could do nothing else this morning, read his letters, which had +accumulated during his short absence. + +Without moving from his chair he turned over, with a groan, the pile of +envelopes waiting for him at his elbow. Invitations, bills, tenants' +complaints, an unexpected dividend. It was all one to him. The Bishop +of Lostford--so his secretary wrote--accepted Wentworth's invitation to +dine and sleep at Barford that night, after holding a confirmation at +Saundersfoot. Wentworth had forgotten he had asked him. Very well, he +must remember to order a room to be got ready. That was all. A +subscription earnestly solicited by the daughter of a neighbouring +clergyman for a parish library. Why could he not be left in peace? Oh! +what was the use of anything--of life, health, money, intellect, if +existence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this, +only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful of +bricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and sense +of being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form of +dissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as you +liked, _if you did not like it?_ Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He +forgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michael +had been free and happy. Not quite, but nearly. Now he attributed the +whole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, to +his distress about his brother's fate. + +That wound, never healed, bled afresh. Who felt for him in his trouble? +Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood? No one. That was the +way of the world. + +Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rose +suddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had met +her walking in the woods near her father's house. She had gone back to +her old home after the duke's death. She, at least, had grieved for him +and Michael with an intensity which he had never forgotten. Even in her +widowed desolation she had remembered Michael, and always asked after +him when Wentworth went over to Priesthope. And Wentworth was often +there, for one reason or another. Michael, too, had asked after her, and +had sent her a message by his brother. Should he go over to-day and +deliver it in person? Among his letters was a scrawling, illegible note, +already several days old, from Colonel Bellairs, Fay's father, about the +right of way. The matter, it seemed, was more urgent than Wentworth had +realised. Any matter pertaining to Colonel Bellairs was always, in the +opinion of the latter, of momentous urgency. + +Colonel Bellairs asked Wentworth to come over to luncheon the first day +he could, and to walk over the debatable ground with him. + +Wentworth looked at his watch, started up and rang the bell, and ordered +his cob Conrad to be brought round at once. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + Le plus grand élément des mauvaises actions secrètes, des lâchetés + inconnues, est peut-être un honheur incomplet. + + --BALZAC. + + +When Fay, in her panic-stricken widowhood, had fled back to her old home +in Hampshire, she found all very much as she had left it, except that +her father's hair was damply dyed, her sister Magdalen's frankly grey, +and the pigtail of Bessie, the youngest daughter, was now an imposing +bronze coil in the nape of her neck. + +But if little else was radically changed in the old home except the hair +of the family, nevertheless, the whole place had somehow declined and +shrunk in Fay's eyes during the three years of her marriage. The dear +old gabled Tudor house, with its twisted chimneys, looked much the same +from the outside, but within, in spite of its wealth of old pictures and +cabinets and china, it had contracted the dim, melancholy aspect which +is the result of prolonged scarcity of money. Nothing had been spent on +the place for years. Magdalen seemed to have faded together with the +curtains, and the darned carpets, and the bleached chintzes. + +Colonel Bellairs alone, a handsome man of sixty, had remained remarkably +young for his age. The balance, however, was made even by the fact that +those who lived with him grew old before their time. It had been so +with his wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men as +superficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, +as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. But +Colonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapable +of even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy of +all decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggested +arrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "spring +cleaning" could never be mentioned in his presence. The thing itself +could only be achieved by stealth. A month at the seaside for the sake +of the children was a subject that could not be approached. All small +feminine social arrangements, dependent for their accomplishment on the +use of the horses, were mown down like grass. Colonel Bellairs hated +what he called "living by clockwork." + +You may read, if you care to do so, in the faces of many gentle-tempered +and apparently prosperous married women, an enormous fatigue. Wicked, +blood-curdling husbands do not bring this look into women's faces. It is +men like Colonel Bellairs who hold the recipe for calling it into +existence. + +Mrs. Bellairs, a beautiful woman, with high spirits, but not +high-spirited, became more and more silent and apathetic year by year, +yielded more and more and more, yielded at last without expostulation +equally at every point, when she should have yielded and when she should +have stood firm, yielded at last even where her children's health and +well-being were concerned. + +Apathy and health are seldom housemates for long together. Mrs. Bellairs +gradually declined from her chair to her sofa. She made no effort to +live after her youngest daughter was born. She could have done so if she +had wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on any +other subject. There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in it +all the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs. Bellairs exemplified it. "It +is better to sit than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit. It is +better to sleep than to lie. It is better to die than to sleep." + +Fay had been glad enough, as we have seen, to escape from home by +marriage. No such way of escape had apparently presented itself for the +elder sister. As Magdalen and Fay sat together on the terrace in front +of the house, the contrast between the sisters was more marked than the +ten years' difference of age seemed to warrant. + +Magdalen was a tall, thin woman of thirty-five, who looked older than +her age. She had evidently been extremely pretty once. Perhaps she might +even have been young once. But it must have been a long time ago. She +was a faded, distinguished-looking person, with a slight stoop, and a +worn, delicately-featured face, and humorous, tranquil eyes. Her thick +hair was grey. She looked as if she had borne for many years the brunt +of continued ill health, or the ill health of others, as if she had been +obliged to lift heavy weights too young. Perhaps she had. Everything +about her personality seemed fragile except her peace of mind. You could +not look at Magdalen without seeing that she was a happy creature. + +But very few did look at her when Fay was beside her. Fay's beauty had +increased in some ways and diminished in others during the year of her +widowhood. She had become slightly thinner and paler, but not to the +extent when beauty suffers wrong. A very young face can bear a worn +look, and even have its charm enhanced thereby. The mark of suffering on +Fay's childlike face and in her deep violet eyes had brought with it an +expression which might easily be mistaken for spirituality, especially +by those--and they are very many--to whom a pallid and attenuated aspect +are the outward signs of spirituality. + +That she was miserable was obvious. _But why was she so restless?_ +Magdalen had often silently asked herself that question during the past +year. Even Bessie, the youngest sister, had noticed Fay's continual +restlessness and had commented on it, had advised her sister to embark +on a course of reading, and to endeavour to interest herself in work for +others. + +She had also, with the untempered candour of eighteen, suggested to Fay +that she should cease to make a slave of Magdalen. It is hardly +necessary to add that Fay and Bessie did not materially increase the sum +of each other's happiness. + +As Magdalen and Fay were sitting together in the sun the door into the +garden opened, and Bessie stalked slowly towards them across the grass, +in a short cycling skirt. + +"It surely is not necessary to be quite so badly dressed as Bessie," +said Fay with instant irritation. "If she must wear one of those hideous +short skirts, it might at any rate be well cut. I have told her so often +enough." + +Since Bessie had been guilty of the enormity of suggesting a course of +reading, Fay had made many sarcastic comments on Bessie's direful +clothes. + +"I must advise her to take dress more seriously," said Magdalen +absently. She was depressed by a faint misgiving about Bessie. Bessie +was to have lunched to-day with congenial archæological friends, +intelligent owners of interesting fossils. Nevertheless, when +Wentworth's cob Conrad was seen courteously allowing himself to be +conducted to the stable she instantly decided to lunch at home, and to +visit her friends when they were not expecting her, in the afternoon. +_It could make no difference to them_, she had told Magdalen, who shook +her head over that well-known phrase, which Colonel Bellairs had long +since established as "a household word." Bessie was not to be moved by +Magdalen's disapproval, however. She retired to her chamber, donned a +certain enamel brooch which she only wore on Sundays, and appeared at +luncheon. + +It was not a particularly cheerful meal. Wentworth was silent and +depressed. Colonel Bellairs did not for an instant cease to speak about +the right of way during the whole of luncheon, even when his back was +turned while he was bending over a ham on the sideboard. And the moment +luncheon was over he had marched Wentworth off to the scene of the +dispute. + +Magdalen was vaguely uneasy at the tiny incident of Bessie's change of +plan, and was glad it had escaped Fay's notice. Most things about Bessie +did escape Fay's notice except her clothes. Bessie was not at eighteen +an ingratiating person. No one had ever called her the sunbeam of the +home. She had preserved throughout her solemn childhood and flinty +youth a sort of resentful protest against the attitude of her family at +her advent, namely, that she was not wanted. Her mother had died at her +birth, and for several years afterwards her father had studiously +ignored her presence in the house, not without a sense of melancholy +satisfaction at this proof of his devotion to her mother. + +"No, no. It may be unreasonable. It may be foolish," he was wont to say +to friends who had not accused him of unreasonableness, "but don't ask +me to be fond of that child. I can't look at her without remembering +what her birth cost me." + +Bessie was a fine, strong young woman, with a perfectly impassive +handsome face--no Bellairs could achieve plainness--and the manner of +one who moves among fellow creatures who do not come up to the standard +of conduct which she has selected as the lowest permissible to herself +and others. Bessie had not so far evinced a preference for anyone in her +own family circle, or outside it. Her affections consisted so far of a +distinct dislike of and contempt for her father. She had accorded to Fay +a solemn compassion when first the latter returned to Priesthope. +Indeed, the estrangement between the sisters, brought about by the +suggested course of reading, had been the unfortunate result of a +cogitating pity on Bessie's part for the lamentable want of regulation +of Fay's mind. + +Bessie liked Magdalen, though she disapproved of her manner of life as +weak and illogical. You could not love Bessie any more than you could +love an ironclad. She bore the same resemblance to a woman that an iron +building does to a house. She was not in reality harder than tin or +granite or asphalt, or her father; but it would not be an over-statement +to suggest that she lacked softness. + +She advanced with precision to the bench on which her sisters were +sitting. + +"I am now going to cycle to the Carters'," she said to Magdalen. "I +forgot to mention till this moment that I met Aunt Mary this morning at +the Wind Farm, and that she gave me a letter for father, and said that +she and Aunt Aggie were lunching with the Copes." + +"Poor Copes!" ejaculated Fay. + +"And would both come on here afterwards to an early tea," continued +Bessie, taking no notice of the interruption. "Aunt Mary desired that +you would not have hot scones for tea, as Aunt Aggie is always depressed +after them. She said there was no objection to them cold, and buttered, +but not hot." + +"I shall have tea in my own room then," once more broke in Fay. "I can't +stand Aunt Mary. She is always preaching at me." + +"It is a pity that Fay is disinclined to share the undoubted burden of +entertaining our relatives," said Bessie, addressing herself exclusively +to Magdalen, "as I do not feel able to defer my visit to the Carters any +longer." + +Magdalen struggled hard against a smile, and kept it under. + +"Possibly the aunts are coming over to consult father about a private +matter," she said. "The letter beforehand to prepare his mind looks like +it. So it would be best if you and Fay were not there. The aunts' +affairs generally require the deepest secrecy." + +"And then father lets it all out at dinner before the servants," said +Bessie over her shoulder as she departed. + +When she was out of hearing Fay said with exasperation, "You are not +wise to give way so much to Bessie, Magdalen. She is selfishness itself. +Why did not you insist on her staying and helping with the aunts? She +never considers you." + +Magdalen was silent. + +"I hate sitting here with the house staring at me," said Fay. "I can't +think why you are so fond of this bench. Let us go into the beech +avenue." + +For a long time past Magdalen had noticed that Fay always wanted to be +somewhere she was not. + +They went in silence through the little wood that bounded the gardens, +and passed into the great, bare, grey aisle of the beech avenue. + +In a past generation a wide drive had led through this avenue to the +house. It had been the south approach to Priesthope. But in these +impoverished days, the road, with its sweep of turf on either side, had +been neglected, and was now little more than a mossy cart-rut, with a +fallen tree across it. + +The two sisters sat down on a crooked arm of the fallen tree. + +It was a soft, tranquil afternoon, flooded with meek February sunshine. +Far away between the green-grey trunks of the trees, the sea glinted +like a silver ribbon. Everything was very still, with the stillness set +deep in peace of one who loves and awaits in awe love's next word. The +earth lay in the sunshine, and listened for the whisper of spring. Faint +birdnotes threaded the high windless spaces near the tree-tops. + +"Look!" said Magdalen, "the first crocus." + +What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peering +against the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like a +child's "soft absolving touch," the inflamed, aching, unrest of the +spirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reach +through with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy, +and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us? + +Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner, +absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two large +tears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. She shivered, +and crept a little closer to her sister. She felt alienated from she +knew not what, dreadfully cold and alone in the sunshine, with her cheek +against her sister's shoulder. Though she did not realise it, something +long frost-bound in her mind was yielding, shifting, breaking up. The +first miserable shudder of the thaw was upon her. + +She glanced up at Magdalen, who was looking into the heart of the +crocus, and a sudden anger seized her at the still rapture of her +sister's face. The contrast between her own gnawing misery and +Magdalen's serenity cut her like a knife. What right had Magdalen to be +so happy? Why should she have been exempted from all trouble? What had +she done that anguish could never reach her? Fay's love for Magdalen, +and at this time Magdalen was the only person for whom she had any +affection--had all the violent recoils, the mutinous anger, the sudden +desire to wound on the one side, all the tender patience and grieved +understanding on the other which are the outcome of a real attachment +between a bond woman and a free one. + +The one craved, the other relinquished; the one was consumed with +unrest, the other had reached some inner stronghold of peace. The one +was imprisoned in self, the other was freed, released. The one made +demands, the other was willing to serve. It seems as if only the free +can serve. + +"I am very miserable," said Fay suddenly. She was pushed once more by +the same blind impulse that had taken her to her husband's room the +night after Michael's arrest. + +She used almost the same words. And as the duke had made no answer then, +so Magdalen made none now. She had not lived in the same house with Fay +for nearly a year for nothing. + +Magdalen's silence acted as a goad. + +"You think, and father thinks," continued Fay, her voice shaking, "you +are all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for. +It's not." + +"I know that," said Magdalen. "You never cared much about him. I have +often wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply." + +Fay winced. Magdalen had noticed something, after all. + +"I have sometimes feared,"--continued Magdalen with the deliberation of +one who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the opening +comes, and not to be silent when it does come--"I have sometimes feared +that your heart was locked up in an Italian prison." + +"My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not very +astonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen. "My heart!" she laughed +bitterly. "Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gone +through, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or out +of it? I suppose you mean poor dear Michael. I hate men, and their +selfish, stupid, blundering ways." + +Fay had often alluded to the larger sex _en bloc_ as blunderers since +the night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen. + +"There are two blunderers coming towards us now," said Magdalen, as the +distant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beech +avenue. + +Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief. + +Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind of +forcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family. +He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as a +pruning hook to their selfishness. But he had one great compensating +quality as a father. He never for one moment thought that any man, +however young, visited the house except for the refreshment and solace +of his own society. He never encouraged anyone to come with a view to +becoming acquainted with his daughters. His own problematic re-marriage, +often discussed in all its pros and cons with Magdalen, was the only +possible alliance that ever occupied his thoughts. In this respect he +was an ideal parent in his daughters' eyes, an inhumanly selfish one +according to his two sisters, Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs, at this +moment stepping out towards Priesthope from the north lodge. + +[Illustration: "'YOU ARE ALL BLINDER ONE THAN THE OTHER, THAT IT'S +ANDREA I'M GRIEVING FOR'"] + +Wentworth had almost given up hope of a word with Fay until he saw her +sitting with Magdalen in the avenue. The world would be a much harder +place than it already is for women to live in if men concealed their +feelings. A reverent and assiduous study of the nobler sex leads the +student to believe that they imagine they conceal them. But it is women +who early in life are taught to acquire this art, at any rate when they +are bored. Half the happy married women of our acquaintance would be the +widows of determined suicides if women allowed it to appear when they +were bored as quickly as men do. + +Wentworth had no idea that he was not an impassable barrier of reserve. +He often said of himself: "I am a very reserved man, I know. It is a +fault of character. I regret it, but I can't help it. I have not the art +of chatting about my deepest feelings at five o'clock tea as a man must +do who lays himself out to be popular with women. What I feel it is my +nature to conceal." + +His reserve on this occasion was concentrated in his face, which +remained unmoved. But the lofty impassiveness on which he prided himself +did not reach down to his legs. Those members, which had been dragging +themselves in a sort of feeble semi-paralysis in the wake of the +ruthless Colonel Bellairs, now straightened themselves, and gave signs +of returning energy. Magdalen from a distance noted the change. +Wentworth for the first time was interested in what Colonel Bellairs +was saying. His own voice, which had become almost extinct, revived. +There was also a hint of spring in the air. Not being a person of much +self-knowledge, he mentioned that fact to Colonel Bellairs. + +Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to be +the one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore. + +"I said so half an hour ago," he remarked severely, "when we were +inspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it." + +"You were right all the same," said the younger man. + +What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertain +how many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limply +assured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is that +they are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know how +many infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we should +devour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt with +matters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, the +decadent poet, had said he was "a child of nature," how often, if ever, +the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate at +Salvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it was +true that an Archbishop had ever really said "I am sorry" without an +"if" after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelist +exists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticism +is a lost art. + +"Is the right-of-way dispute progressing?" said Magdalen to her father +as the two men came up and stopped in front of them. + +Colonel Bellairs implied that it would shortly be arranged, as his +intellect was being applied to the subject. + +Wentworth said emphatically, for about the thirtieth time, that the +right of a footpath, or church path across the domain was well +established and could not be set aside; but that whether it was also a +bridle path was the moot point; and whether Colonel Bellairs was +justified in his recent erection of a five-barred stile. + +(I may as well add here, for fear the subject should escape my mind +later on, that at the time of these pages going to press the dispute, +often on the verge of a settlement, had reached a further and acuter +stage, being complicated by Colonel Bellairs' sudden denial even of a +church path, to the legal existence of which he had previously agreed in +writing.) + +Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home. + +"We will walk back to the house with you," said Magdalen, and she led +the way with her father. + +"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary," he said to Magdalen as they +walked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood. +Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that +accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand +it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you." + +"I will tell her." + +Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. She +was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. _On ne peut +s'appuyer que contre ce qui résiste._ Though Colonel Bellairs did not +know it, he was always wanting to _s'appuyer_. He had found in his +daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in +his wife, who had not resisted him. + +"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this +morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is +coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a +moment's peace?" + +Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, +upright hand, marked _Private_, at the top. + +"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage +mine," he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen. + +"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'" + +"Read it. Read it," said Colonel Bellairs irritably. + +Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as +she and her father walked slowly back to the house. + +It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with +Colonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalen +had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two +deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom. + +"Well! well!" said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested than +he wished to appear. "What do you think of it? We noticed in the papers +a week ago that he had succeeded his cousin." + +"Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections." + +"How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch as +light as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor old +Blore." + +"Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen's +joyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service.' That is very well +put, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him that +you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to +invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn +you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you +stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next. +Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leave +the Almighty in charge." + +"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat +surprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I +don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no +visible means of subsistence." + +"And no intention of making any." + +"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by"--(it +had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost +none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall +shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in +introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on +my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house." + +"After forbidding him to come to it?" + +Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper. + +"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this +house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away." + +"Ask him, in that case." + +"You agree that on the whole that would be best." + +"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that it +is a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by her +judgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till she +tried to coerce you into it." + +"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man in +petticoats," said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be here +directly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I _don't_ ask him?... +She will be here directly." + +They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavily +in his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrug +near him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, he +nodded, and she dropped it in. + +"Perhaps, Magdalen," said her father with dignity, "it would be just as +well if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these little +things best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anything +on that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would come +best from _you_, eh?" + +"I think so, father." + +Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye of +one about to drop off into an habitual nap. + +The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where a window is never +opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where +years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its +occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual +soporific charm. + +"Took Mary a long time to write," he said, with a sleepy chuckle, as the +last vestige disappeared of the laboriously constructed missive which +Lady Blore had sat up half the previous night, with gold-rimmed +pince-nez on Roman nose to copy out by her bedroom candle, and had sent +to pave the way before her strong destructive feet. + +The footman came in. + +"Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs are in the drawing-room." + +"Just pull the blinds half-way down before you go," said Colonel +Bellairs to Magdalen, "and remember other people have got letters to +write as well as her, and I'm not to be disturbed on any account." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en prend point de + second.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. + + +The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room. + +When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been +brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small +square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated +oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the +Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what +they called supports to their brother's motherless children. + +They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of those +who lean on them. + +No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might +perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to +push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed +to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune +to be the object of their good offices. + +She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance--it +could hardly be called a marriage--with a general, distinguished in +India and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "The +Towers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place after +years of half-gratified reluctance on his part and indomitable crude +persistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a long +attachment," and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to the +hilt, that the sterner sex prefer to have their affairs of the heart +arranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once let +loose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour to +escape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputation +of all external interests will detain them within the sacred precincts +of THE HOME. + +Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was no +tactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had only +been the first of the crushing defeats which she had inflicted upon him. +Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severely +tried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up his +sword. + +His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she considered +suitable amusements and occupations. He was told that he took an +interest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province rather +larger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out, +tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, and +hanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes. + +In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly the +same, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman, +with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariably +dressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The Towers +Aunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majestic +gardening the sun was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satin +parasol. + +There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were +children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever +laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, +like the phÅ“nix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or a +bugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes. + +Aunt Mary was no doubt one of these. + +Near her, on the edge of her chair, perhaps not so entirely on the edge +of it as at first appeared, sat Aunt Aggie. Aunt Aggie looked as if she +had been coloured by some mistake from a palette prepared to depict a +London fog. + +Her eyes were greyish yellow, like her eyelashes, like her hair,--at +least her front hair,--like her eyebrows, and her complexion. She was +short and stout. She called slender people skeletons. Her gown, which +was invariably of some greyish, drabbish, neutral-tinted material, +always cocked up a little in front to show two large, flat, soft-looking +feet. + +Aunt Aggie began quite narrow at the top. Her forehead was the thin edge +of the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first +indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her +cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave +the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part +of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a +religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back +seat, in the Divine consciousness. + +It would not be fair to Aunt Aggie to omit to mention, especially as she +continually made veiled allusions to the subject herself, that she also +had known the tender passion. There had been an entanglement in her +youth with a High Church archdeacon. But we all know how indefinite, how +inconclusive, how meagre in practical results archidiaconal conferences +are apt to be! After one of them it was discovered that the entanglement +was all on Aunt Aggie's side. The archdeacon remained unenmeshed. Under +severe pressure from Lady Blore, then an indomitable bride of forty, +flushed by recent victory, he even went so far as to say that his only +bride was the Church. It was after this disheartening statement that +Aunt Aggie found herself drawn towards an evangelical and purer form of +religion. The Archdeacon subsequently married, or rather became guilty +of ecclesiastical bigamy. But Aunt Aggie throughout life retained +pessimistic views respecting the celibacy of the clergy. + + * * * * * + +Aunt Mary bestowed a strong businesslike peck, emphasized by contact +with the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggie +greeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Have +you ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to salute +Aunt Aggie's cheek. + +"Where are Fay and Bessie?" enquired Aunt Mary instantly. When the aunts +announced their coming, which was invariably at an hour's notice, they +always expected to find the whole family, including Colonel Bellairs, +waiting indoors to receive them. This expectation was never realised, +but the annoyance that invariably followed had retained through many +years the dew of its youth. + +"Bessie and Fay are out. I am expecting them back every moment." + +"They will probably be later than usual to-day," said Aunt Mary grimly, +with the half-conscious intuition of those whom others avoid. Did she +know that with the exception of Sir John, whose vanity had led him to +take refuge in a _cul-de-sac_, her fellow creatures rushed out by back +doors, threw themselves out of windows, hid behind haystacks, had +letters to write, were ordered by their doctors to rest, whenever she +appeared? Did she know? One thing was certain. Magdalen was one of the +very few persons who had never avoided her, who at times openly sought +her society. And Aunt Mary, though she would have been ashamed to own +it, loved Magdalen. She intended that Magdalen should live with her some +day at the Towers, as an unpaid companion, when Sir John and Aunt Aggie +had entered into peace. + +"And your father," continued Aunt Mary. "Did he get my letter? I intend +to have a serious conversation with him after tea." + +"Father has this moment come in, and he asked me to tell you that he had +business letters which he is obliged to write." + +"I know what _that_ means." + +"Oh! Mary!" interpolated Aunt Aggie eagerly. "You forget that Algernon +always, from the time he was a young man, left his letters to the last +moment. All the Bellairs do." + +The Bellairs had other unique family characteristics, as peculiar to +themselves as their choice of time for grappling with their +correspondence, which Aunt Aggie was never tired of quoting. "Bellairs +are always late for breakfast. It is no kind of use finding fault with +Bessie about it. I was just the same at her age." + +Aunt Aggie went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, +which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner +small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of +existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between +contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could +not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not +appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, +of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird. + +"I intend to see your father after tea," repeated Aunt Mary, taking no +notice of her sister's remark. + +"Father is much worried about the right of way," continued Magdalen. "He +showed me your most kind letter about myself, and----" + +"Showed it to _you_!" said Aunt Mary, becoming purple. "It was not +intended for any eye except your father's." + +"Confidence between a father and his child," began Aunt Aggie, clasping +her stout little hands, and looking eagerly from her sister to her +niece. + +Magdalen went on tranquilly. "It only told me what I knew before, Aunt +Mary, that you have my welfare at heart. Father said that he thought it +would be best if you and I talked the matter over. I agreed with him. +It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be for +the first time." + +It would not indeed! + +"Aggie," said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your way +here to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom and +investigate them." + +"I think they are kept locked," said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed to +stay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a love +affair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach the +subject. + +"They are unlocked," said Aunt Mary with decision. + +Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bitten +bun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed her +sister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage at +Saundersfoot to relations in need of sea air. + +An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's fine +countenance. + +"Magdalen," she said at once, "in the presence of that weak +sentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as it +is your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myself +whether anything has transpired about Everard Constable--Lord +Lossiemouth, as I suppose he now is." + +"Nothing," said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. If +she was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power of +concealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She +seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that +animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their +environment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its +head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there +than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental +features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had +adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obvious +that she had almost nothing in common except her name. + +Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her the +discussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violently +mismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affection +had a little scent, but it was set round with thorns. + +"He has behaved disgracefully," she said, looking with anger and +disappointment at her niece's faded face. + +"We have discussed that before," said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as you +know, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and better +forgotten." + +"He was poor then. No one ever thought he would succeed with two lives +between. But it is different now that he is wealthy and in a position to +marry." + +"He has never been in a position to marry me," said Magdalen, "because +he never cared enough for me to make an effort on my behalf. That was +not his fault. He mistook a romantic admiration for love, and naturally +found it would not work. How could it? It was not necessary to turn +heaven and earth to gain me. But it _was_ necessary to turn a few small +stones. He could not turn them." + +"Well, at any rate, he asked you, and you accepted him." + +"A hundred years ago." + +"And you have waited for him ever since." + +"Not at all. I am not waiting for him or for anyone." + +"You would have married Mr. Grenfell if it had not been for Everard." + +"Perhaps I should have married Everard if it had not been for Everard," +said Magdalen. + +It seemed as if nothing could shake her dispassionate view of the +matter. + +"Your feelings were certainly engaged, Magdalen. There is no use in +denying that." + +"Have I ever denied it?" + +Aunt Mary was silent for a moment, but her under lip was ominously +thrust out. She was not thinking of what Magdalen had said. If she had +ever listened to the remarks of others when they differed from her, she +would not have become Lady Blore. She was only silent because she was +rallying her forces. + +"A woman's hands become talons when they try to hold on to a man when he +wants to get away," said Magdalen gently. + +Aunt Mary turned on her niece an opaque eye that saw nothing beyond the +owner's views. + +"Something ought to be done," she said with emphasis. "After all, your +father dismissed him. I shall advise your father to write to him, and if +he does not--I shall write to him myself." + +"I hope you will not do that," said Magdalen. "Do you remember what a +subject for gossip it was at the time? When father became angry with +Everard he told everyone, and it became a sort of loud turmoil. The +servants knew, the parish knew, the whole county knew that I had had a +disappointment. I have remained ever since in the eyes of the neighbours +a sort of blighted creature, a victim of the heartlessness of man. A new +edition of that old story now that my hair is grey would be, I think, a +little out of place. I had hoped----" + +The door was suddenly thrown open, and Bessie marched into the room with +Aunt Aggie hanging nervously at her heels. + +"I came back as quickly as I could from the Carters' in order not to +miss you," said Bessie to Aunt Mary in her stentorian voice, and she +presented a glowing rose cheek to be kissed. + +Magdalen shot a grateful glance at her sister, and the conversation +became general. + +After the aunts had departed, Bessie said to Magdalen on their way +upstairs to dress, "I found when I reached the Carters' that they had +gone out with Professor Ridgway to see the Roman camp. Only old Mrs. +Carter was at home, and she was rather chilly, and said they had +expected me to luncheon. They had had a little party to meet the +Professor. I saw that my conduct called for an apology. I made one." + +"I am glad of that." + +"I see now that it would have been wiser to have gone over for luncheon +as arranged. I also thought how selfish it was of Fay not to help you +with the aunts. And then I perceived that there were not two pins to +choose between us, as I had been just as bad myself, so I hurried back +as quickly as I could." + +"I was most grateful to you when I saw you come in. And Aunt Mary was +pleased too. She never shows it much; but she was." + +"It is of secondary importance whether she was pleased or not. My object +in returning was twofold: to help you, and also for the sake of my own +character. I begin to see that unless I am careful I shall become as +selfish as father." + +Magdalen did not answer. + +"The aunts never do things like other people," continued Bessie. "I +found Aunt Aggie standing, eating a bun, just outside the drawing-room +door. She was quite flurried when I came up, and said she wanted to see +my fossils, but would rather look at them another day." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + La vie est un instrument dont on commence toujours par jouer faux. + + +Wentworth and Fay did not follow Colonel Bellairs and Magdalen back to +the house. When they reached the end of the avenue they turned back +silently by mutual consent, and retraced their steps down it. + +Presently they reached the trunk of the tree where Fay had been sitting +with Magdalen. + +Fay sank down upon it once more, white and exhausted. He sat down at a +little distance from her. + +"How is Michael?" she said at last, twisting her ungloved hands +together. + +"I came to tell you about him; I only got back last night. I knew you +would wish to hear." + +"How is he?" + +"He has been ill. He has had double pneumonia. It started with +hæmorrhage, and some of the blood got into the lungs, and caused +pneumonia. He is better now, nearly well, in fact. The prison doctor +seemed a sensible man, and he spoke as if he were interested in Michael. +From what he said I gathered that he did not think Michael would survive +another winter there. The prison[1] stands in a sort of marsh. It is a +very good place to prevent prisoners escaping, but not a good place for +them to keep alive in. The doctor is pressing to have Michael moved. He +thinks he might do better at the 'colonia agricola,' where the labour is +more agricultural; or that even work in the iron mines of Portoferriao +would try his constitution less than the swamp where he now is." + +[Footnote 1: The prison described has no counterpart in real life.] + +"Was he still in chains?" + +"No. And the doctor said there was some talk of abolishing them +altogether. If not, he will be obliged to go back to them now he is +better. He is looking forward to the sea lavender coming out. He says +the place is beautiful beyond words when it is in flower: whole tracts +and tracts of grey lilac blossom in the shallows, and hordes of wild +birds. He asked me to tell you that you were to think of him as living +in fairyland." + +Fay winced as if struck. + +"You gave him my message?" she stammered. + +"Of course I did. And he said I was to tell you not to grieve for him, +for he was well and happy." + +"Happy!" echoed Fay. + +"Yes, happy. He said he had committed a great sin, but that he hoped and +believed that he was now expiating it, and that it would be forgiven." + +"I am absolutely certain," said Fay in a suffocated voice, "that Michael +did not murder the Marchese di Maltagliala." + +"That is impossible," said Wentworth. + +"Then what great sin can he be expiating?" + +Even as Fay asked the question she knew the answer. Michael believed he +was expiating the sin of loving another man's wife. In his mind that was +probably on a par with the murder he had not committed. + +"I asked him that," said Wentworth, "but he would not say. He would only +repeat that his punishment was just." + +Two large tears ran down Fay's cheeks. + +"It is unjust, unjust, unjust!" she gasped. "Why does God allow these +dreadful things?" + +There was a long silence. + +For a time Wentworth had forgotten Fay. He saw again the great yellow +building standing in a waste of waters. He saw again the thin, +prematurely aged face of his brother, the shaved head, the coarse, +striped convict dress, the arid light from the narrow barred window. He +saw again Michael's grave smile, and heard the tranquil voice, "This +place is beautiful in autumn. Mind you come next when the sea lavender +is out." + +The remembrance of that meeting cut sharper than the actual pain of it +at the moment. He had gone through with it with a sort of stolid +endurance, letting Michael see but a tithe of what he felt. But the +remembrance was anguish unalloyed. For a time he could neither speak nor +see. + +A yellow butterfly that had waked too soon floated towards them on a +wavering trial trip. Close at hand a snowdrop drooped "its serious +head." The butterfly knew its own, and lit on the meek, nunlike flower, +opening and shutting its new wings in the pallid sunshine. It had +perhaps dreamed, as it lay in its chrysalis, "that life had been more +sweet." Was this chill sunshine that could not quicken his wings, was +this grim desert that held no goal for butterfly feet, was this one +snowdrop--_all_? Was this indeed the summer of his dreams, in the sure +and certain hope of which he had spun his cocoon, and laid him down in +faith? + +Fay looked at it in anguish not less than Wentworth's, whose dimmed eyes +saw it not at all. She never watched a poised butterfly open and shut +its wings without thinking of Michael. The flight of a seagull across +the down cut her like a lash. He had been free once. He who so loved the +down, the sea, the floating cloud, had been free once. + +When Wentworth had winked his steady grey eyes back to their normal +state, he looked furtively at Fay. She was weeping silently. He had seen +Fay in tears before, but never without emotion. With a somewhat halting +utterance he told her of certain small alleviations of Michael's lot. +The permission, urgently asked, had at last been granted that English +books might be sent him from time to time. The lonely, aching smart of +Wentworth's morning hours was vaguely soothed and comforted by Fay's +gentle presence. + +She appeared to listen to him, but in reality she heard nothing. She sat +looking straight in front of her, a tear slipping from time to time down +her white cheek. Except on one or two occasions Fay had that rarest +charm of looking beautiful in tears. She became paler than ever, never +red and disfigured and convulsed, with the prosaic cold in the head that +accompanies the emotions of less fortunate women. + +"How old is Michael?" she asked suddenly in the midst of a painstaking +account of certain leniencies as to diet, certain macaronis and soups +which the doctor had insisted on for Michael. + +"He is twenty-seven." + +"And how long has he been in prison?" + +"Nearly two years." + +"And he has thirteen more," said Fay, looking at Wentworth with wide +eyes blank with horror. + +"No," said Wentworth, his voice shaking a little. "No, Michael will not +live long in that swamp, not many years, I think." + +"But they will move him to a better climate." + +"He does not want to be moved. I should not, either, in his case." + +Fay's hands fell to her sides. + +"When my mother died," said Wentworth, "I promised her to be good to +Michael. There was no need for me to promise to be good to him. I always +liked him better than anyone else. I taught him to ride and to shoot. He +got his gun up sharp from the first. It's easy to do things for anyone +you like. But what is hard is when the time comes"--Wentworth stopped, +and then went on--"when the time comes that you can't do anything more +for the person you care for most." + +Silence. + +The yellow butterfly was still feebly trying to open and shut his wings. +The low sun had abandoned him to the encroaching frost, and was touching +the bare overarching branches to palest gold, "so subtly fair, so +gorgeous dim"; so far beyond the reach of tiny wings. + +"I don't think," said Wentworth, "I would stick at anything. I don't +know of anything I would not do, anything I would not give up, to get +him back his freedom. But it's no use, I can do nothing for him." + +"Oh! Why does not the real murderer confess?" said Fay with a sob, +wringing her hands. "How can he go on, year after year, letting an +innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his +horrible crime?" + +That mysterious murderer occupied a large place in Fay's thoughts. She +hated him with a deadly hatred. He was responsible for everything. That +one crooked channel of thought that persistently turned aside all blame +onto an unknown offender, had at last given a certain crookedness, a +sort of twist, to the whole subject in Fay's mind. + +"I begged Michael again for the twentieth time to tell me anything that +could act as a clue to discovering the real criminal," said Wentworth. +"I told him I would spend my last shilling in bringing him to justice, +but he only shook his head. I told him that some of his friends felt +certain that he knew who the murderer was, and was shielding him. He +shook his head again. He would not tell me anything the first day I went +to him after he was arrested. And still, after two years in prison, he +will not speak. Michael will never say anything." + +The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waning +afternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frosty +breath was stirring the dead leaves. The butterfly had closed his wings +for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. A +tiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death. + +Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her. + +"I must go in," she said. + +They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods +from the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them +above the gathering sea mist. + +They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the +consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which +had drawn them together. + +"I will come again soon, if I may," he said diffidently, "unless seeing +me reminds you of painful things." His voice had lowered itself +involuntarily. + +"I like to see you," said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from +him like a shadow among the shadows. + +The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any +possible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, +which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them. + +He pondered over them as he rode home. + +How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been +a happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss +was still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had shown +towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to +shield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her +sorrowing compassion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she had +shown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds! + +Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women he +was aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, +mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest +owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and +treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by +sudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow. + +But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above the +ordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level of +pettiness and vanity, by her simplicity and nobility and capacity for +devotion--_could such a woman love a second time?_ + +The thirst to be loved, to be the object of an exquisite tenderness, +what man has not, consciously or unconsciously longed for that? What +woman has not had her dream of giving that and more, full measure, +running over? + +To find favour in a woman's eyes a man need only do his stupid bungling +best. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had a best of any kind in him +to do. + +At twenty-five he would not have risked as much for love as even +cautious men of robuster fibre will still ruefully but determinedly risk +in the forties. And now at forty he would risk almost nothing. + +Where Michael was concerned Wentworth's love had reached the strength +where it could act, indefatigably, if need be. Michael had been so far +the only creature who could move his brother's egotism beyond the +refinements of bedridden sentiment. + +It was as well for Fay that she did not realise, and absolutely +essential for Wentworth that he did not realise either, that in spite of +an undoubted natural attraction towards her he would have seen no more +of her unless she had come within easy reach. + +A common trouble had drawn them towards each other. A common interest, a +common joy or sorrow, a house within easy distance--these are some of +the match makers between the invalids of life, who are not strong enough +to want anything very much, or to work for what they want. For them +favourable circumstance is everything. + +Wentworth could ride four and a half miles down a picturesque lane to +see Fay. But he could not have taken a journey by rail. + +A few years before Wentworth met Fay he had been tepidly interested in +the youthful sister of one of his college friends and contemporaries, an +Oxford Don at whose house he stayed every year. The sister kept house +for her brother. It was the usual easy commonplace combination of +circumstances that has towed lazy men into marriage since the +institution was first formed. He saw her without any effort on his part. +He arrived at a kind of knowledge of her. He found her to be what he +liked. She was sympathetic, refined, shy, cultivated, unselfish, and of +a wild rose prettiness. After a time he kept up, mainly on her account, +a regular intercourse with the brother, who was becoming rather prosy, +as was Wentworth himself. Presently the brother married, and the sister +ceased to live with him. + +Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure. He +found his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, the +friend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizures +of increasing frequency. The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund. But +it never entered his mind to enquire into the whereabouts of the sister, +and to continue his acquaintance with her independently. If he had +continued to meet her regularly he would almost certainly have married +her. She on her side seemed well disposed towards him. As it was he +never saw her again. He gradually ceased to think of her, except on +summer evenings, as a charming possibility which Fate had sternly +removed, as one lost to him for ever. He wrote a little poem about her, +beginning, "Where are you now?" (She was at Kensington all the time.) +Wentworth never published his verses. He said there was no room for a +new poet who did not advertise himself. There had been room for one of +his college friends, but that had been a case of log rolling. + +I do not know whether it was a fortunate or an unfortunate fate that had +prevented the gay little lady of the pink cheeks from being at that +moment installed at Barford as the wife of a poet who scorned publicity. + +If Wentworth had been riding home to his wife on that February evening +he would not have taken unconsciously another of the many steps which +entailed so many more, by saying to himself, thinking of Fay: + +"Could a woman like that love a second time?" + +Then he hastened his speed as he remembered that his old friend the +Bishop of Lostford had by this time arrived at Barford. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + If you feel no love, sit still; occupy yourself with things, + with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. + + --TOLSTOY. + + +In Wentworth's youth he had been attracted towards many, besides the +Bishop, among the bolder and less conventional of his contemporaries. +Their fire, their energies, their enthusiasm, warmed his somewhat +under-vitalized nature. He regarded himself as one of them, and his +refinement and distinction drew the robuster spirits towards himself. +But gradually, as time went on, these energies and enthusiasm took form, +and, alas! took forms which he had not expected--he never expected +anything--and from which his mind instinctively recoiled. He had +supposed that energy was energy. He had not realised that it was life in +embryo, that might develop, not always on lines of beauty, into a new +policy, or a great discovery, or a passion, or a vocation. He hated +transformations, new births, all change. His friends at first rallied +him unmercifully, then lost patience, and finally fell from him, one by +one. Some openly left him, the more good-natured among them forgot him, +and if by chance they found themselves in his society, hurried back with +affectionate cordiality to reminiscences of school and college life, +long-passed milestones before the parting of the ways. + +The Bishop when he plunged into his work also for a time lost sight of +Wentworth, but when he was appointed to the See of Lostford, within +five miles of Barford, the two men resumed, at first with alacrity, +something of the old intercourse. + +Wentworth had an element of faithfulness in him which enabled him to +take up a friendship after a long interval, but it was on one condition, +namely that the friend had remained _planté là _ where he had been left. +If in the meanwhile the friend had moved, the friendship flagged. + +It was soon apparent that the Bishop had not by any means remained +_planté là _, and the friendship quickly drooped. It would long since +have died a natural death if it had not been kept alive by the Bishop +himself, a man of robust affections and strong compassions, without a +moment to spend on small resentments. After Michael's imprisonment he +had redoubled his efforts to keep in touch with Wentworth, and the great +grief of the latter, silently and nobly endured, had been a bond between +the two men which even a miserable incident which must have severed most +friendships had served to loosen, not to break. + +The Bishop had in truth arrived at Barford, and was now sitting +apparently unoccupied by the library fire. To be unoccupied even for an +instant except during recuperative sleep was so unusual with the Bishop, +so unprecedented, that his daughter would have been terrified could she +have seen him at that moment. He had only parted from her and her +husband at mid-day, yet it was a sudden thought suggested by his visit +to them which was now holding him motionless by the fire, his lean +person bulging with unanswered letters. + +The Bishop was a small ugly man of fifty, unconventional to the core, +the younger son of a duke, and a clergyman by personal conviction. He +had been born in a hurry, and had remained in a hurry ever since. He had +neither great administrative capacities, nor profound scholarship, but +what powers he had were eked out by a stupendous energy. His Archbishop +said that he believed that the Bishop's chaplains died like flies, and +that he merely threw their dead bodies into the Loss, which flowed +beneath his palace windows, without even a burial service. His chaplains +and secretaries certainly worked themselves to the bone for him. They +could have told tales against him, but they never did. For it was a +strain to serve the Bishop, to get his robes thrown over him at the +right--I mean the last--second, to thrust him ruthlessly into his +carriage just in time to catch the tail ends of departing trains--he +generally travelled with the guard. His admirable life had been spent in +a ceaseless whirl. He had never had time to marry. He had hurried to the +altar when he was an eager curate with a pretty young bride who was a +stranger to him, whom his mother had chosen for him. During the years +that followed what little he saw of her at odd moments he liked. After +ten years of what he believed to be married life she died, leaving one +child; tactful to the last, pretty to the last, having made no claim +from first to last, kissing his hand, and thanking him for his love, and +for the beautiful years they had spent together. + +His friends said that he bore her loss with heroism, but in reality he +missed her but little. Her death occurred just after he had become an +ardent suffragan. His daughter grew up in a few minutes, and quickly +took her mother's place. She was her mother over again in character and +appearance. His wife had lived in his house for ten years, his daughter +for twenty. By dint of time he learned to know her as he had never known +her mother. At twenty she married his chaplain. + +The chaplain was a tall, stooping, fleckless, flawless, mannerless, +joyless personage, middle-aged at twenty-eight, with a voice like a +gong, with a metallic mind constructed of thought-tight compartments, +devoted body and soul to the Church, an able and indefatigable worker, +smelted from the choice ore of that great middle class from which, as we +know, all good things come. That he was a future ornament, or at any +rate an iron girder of the Church was sufficiently obvious. + +The Bishop saw his worth, and ruefully endured him until the chaplain, +in the most suitable language, desired to become his son-in-law, and +that at the most inconceivably awkward moment, namely, just when the +Bishop had presented him with a living. The marriage had to be. The +daughter wished it with an intensity that amazed her father. And +gradually the Bishop discovered that he detested his paragon of a +son-in-law. But why? It was not jealousy. He really was a paragon, not a +sham. To the Bishop it seemed, and with truth, that any other woman +would have done as well as his daughter, that her husband neither +understood her nor wished to understand her, that he accepted ruthlessly +without knowing that he accepted it, her selfless devotion, that he used +her as a cushion to make his rare moments of leisure more restful, that +her love was not even a source of happiness to him, only a solace. And +she, extraordinary to behold, was radiantly content. + +"_Just like her mother over again_," the Bishop had wrathfully said to +himself as he drove away from his daughter's door. And at that moment a +slide was drawn back from his mind, and he saw that the marriage was a +replica of his own, except in so far that his son-in-law, greatly +assisted by circumstances, had actually taken a little trouble to +arrange his marriage for himself, while the Bishop's--what there was of +it--had been done for him by his mother. + +Till this morning he had believed his marriage to have been an ideally +happy one, that he had felt all that man can feel; and he had been +inclined to treat as womanish the desperate desolation of men who had +after all only suffered the same bereavement as he had himself, and +which he had quickly overcome. He saw now that he had missed happiness +exactly as his son-in-law was missing it. The same thing had befallen +them both. Love could do there no mighty works because of their +unbelief. When he remembered his wife's face he realised that her joy +had been something beyond his ken. He had not shared it. He had not +known love, even when it had drawn very nigh unto him. + +As he waited motionless for Wentworth to come in, his strong, intrepid +mind worked. The Bishop at fifty went to school to a new thought. It was +that power of going to school at fifty to a new thought which had made +his Archbishop, who loved him, give him the See of Lostford, to the +amazement of the demurer clergy who were scandalised by his +unconventionality, and his fearful baldness of speech. They could only +account for the appointment by the fact that he was the son of a duke. +It was that power which made the Bishop seem a much younger man than +Wentworth, who was in reality ten years his junior. The Bishop was still +a learner. He still moved with vigour mentally. Wentworth, on the +contrary, had arrived--not at any place in particular, but at the spot +where he intended to remain. His ideas, and some of them had been rather +good ones at twenty-five, had suffered from their sedentary existence. +They had become rather stout. He called them progressive because in the +course of years he had perceived in them a slight glacier-like movement. +To others they appeared fixed. + +Wentworth's attitude towards life, of which he was so fond of speaking, +was perhaps rather like that of a shrimper who, in ankle-deep water, +watches the heavily freighted whale boats come towering in. He does not +quite know why he, of all men, with his special equipment for the +purpose, and his expert handling of the net, does not also catch whales. +That they seldom swim in two-inch water does not occur to him. At last +he does not think there are any whales. He has exploded that fallacy. +For, in a moment of adventurous enthusiasm, counting not the cost, did +he not once wade recklessly up to his very shoulders in deep water: _and +there were no whales_,--only pinching crabs. Crabs were the one real +danger, the largest denizens of the boundless main, whatever his former +playmates the whalers might affirm. + +When the shrimper and the whaler had dined together, and the Bishop had +heard with affectionate sympathy the little there was to hear +respecting Michael, and the conversation tended towards more general +topics, the radical antagonism between the two friends' minds threatened +every moment to make itself felt. + +The Bishop tried politics somewhat tentatively, on which they had +sympathised in college days, but it seemed they had widely diverged +since. Wentworth, though he frequently asserted that no one enjoyed more +than he "the clashing of opposite opinions," seemed nevertheless only +able to welcome with cordiality a mild disagreement, just sufficiently +defined to prove stimulating to the expression of his own views. A wide +divergence from them he met with a chilly silence. He did so now. The +Bishop looked at his neat ankle, and changed the subject. + +"Have you seen or heard anything of Everard Constable since he came into +his kingdom, such a very unexpected kingdom, too?" + +"No. I fancy he is still abroad. But I can't say that for some time past +I have found Constable's aims in life very sympathetic. His unceasing +struggle after literary fame appears to me somewhat undignified." + +"Oh! come. Give the devil his due. Constable can write." + +"Of course, of course. That is just what I am saying. But he and I +differ too widely in our outlook on life to remain really intimate. He +cares for the big things, ambition, popularity, a prominent position, +luxury. He will enjoy being a personage, and having wealth at his +command. For my part, I am afraid I care infinitely more for the small +things of life, love, friendship, sympathy." + +"The _small_ things! Good Lord!" said the Bishop, and his jaw dropped. +He also dropped the subject. + +"I ran up against Grenfell last week," he continued immediately. "Do you +see _him_ now? You and he used to be inseparable at Cambridge." + +Wentworth became frigid. + +Grenfell had accused him at their last meeting of being an old maid, an +accusation which had wounded Wentworth to the quick, and which he had +never forgotten or forgiven. He had not in the least realised that +Grenfell was not alluding to the fact that he happened to be unmarried. + +"I can't say I care to see him now," he said. "He has become entirely +engrossed in his career. A simple life like mine, the life of thought, +no longer interests him. He is naturally drawn to people who are playing +big parts." + +"What nonsense! He is just the same as ever. A little vehement and +fiery, but not as much as he was. They say he will be the next +Chancellor of the Exchequer to a certainty." + +"I daresay he will. He has the art of keeping himself before the public +eye. Being myself so constituted--it is not any virtue in me, only a +constitutional defect--that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficult +for me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, can +bring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above that +kind of thing." + +"So he is. So he is. A blind man can see Grenfell's unworldliness. It +sticks a yard out of him. My dear Wentworth, if energetic elbows were, +as you imply, the key to success, how do you account for the fact that +hundreds of painful persons have triumphantly passed that preliminary +examination who never achieve anything beyond a diploma in the art of +pushing?" + +Wentworth did not answer. + +He firmly believed that in order to attain the things he had not +attained, had never striven for, of which he invariably spoke +disparagingly, but which he secretly and impotently desired, the +co-operation of certain ignoble qualities was essential, sordid allies +whom he would have disdained to use. + +"I don't blame Grenfell," he said at last. "He had his way to make. I +know how blinding the glamour of ambition is, how insidious and +insistent the claims of the world may become. I don't pretend to be +superior to certain temptations if they came in my way. But I happen to +have kept out of their way. That is all." + +"You have certainly kept out of the way of--nearly everything." + +"For my part, I daresay I am hopelessly out of date, but I value beauty +and peace and simplicity higher than a noisy success. But a noisy +success is the one thing that counts nowadays." + +"Does it?" + +"And Grenfell has taken the right steps to gain it. If a man craves for +popularity, if he really thinks the bubble worth striving for, he must +lay himself out for it. If he wants a place he must jostle for it. If he +wants power he must discard scruples. If he wants social success it can +be got--we see it every day--by pandering to the susceptibilities and +seeking the favour of influential persons. Everything has its price. I +don't say that everyone obtains these things who is ready to bid for +them. But some do. Grenfell is among those who have. I don't blame him. +I am not sure that I don't rather envy him." + +The Bishop could respect a conviction. + +"Are you not forgetting Grenfell's character?" he said gently, as one +speaks to a sick man. "Think of him, his nobility, his integrity, his +enthusiasm, his transparent unworldliness which so often in the old days +put us all to shame!" + +"That is just what makes it all so painful to me," said Wentworth, and +there was no possibility of doubting his sincerity. "That contact with +the world can taint even beautiful natures like his. He was my ideal at +one time. I almost worshipped him at Cambridge." + +"I love him still," said the Bishop. "A cat may look at a king, so I +suppose a poor crawler of a bishop may look at a man like Grenfell. +Don't you think, Wentworth, that sometimes a man who succeeds may have +worked as nobly as a man who fails--you always speak so feelingly of +failure, it is one of the many things I like about you. Don't you think +that perhaps sometimes success may be--I don't say it always is--as +high-minded as failure, that a hard-won victory may be as honourable as +defeat, that achievement may _sometimes_ be the result not of chance or +interest, but of unremitting toil? Don't you think you may be +unconsciously cutting yourself adrift from Grenfell's friendship by +attributing his success to unworthy means which a man like him could +never have stooped to?" + +"It is he who has cut himself adrift from me," said Wentworth icily. "I +have not changed." + +"That is just it. A slight change, shall we say expansion on your part, +might have enabled you to"--the Bishop chose his words as carefully as a +doctor counts drops into a medicine glass--"to keep pace with him?" + +"I do not regard friendship as a race or a combat of wits," said +Wentworth. "Friendship is to my mind something sacred. I hope I can +remain Grenfell's friend without believing him to be absolutely +faultless. If he is so unreasonable as to expect that of me, which I +should not for a moment expect of him, why then----" Wentworth shrugged +his shoulders. + +One of the few friends who had not drifted from him looked at him with +somewhat pained affection. + +Why does a life dwelt apart from others tend to destroy first generosity +and then tenderness in man and woman? Why does one so often find a +certain hardness and inhumanity encrusting those who have withdrawn +themselves behind the shutters of their own convenience, or is it, after +all, their own impotence? + +"Has he always been hard and cold by nature?" said the Bishop to +himself, "and is the real man showing himself in middle age, or is his +meagre life starving him?" + +He tried again. + +"You nearly lost my friendship a year ago by attributing a sordid motive +to me, Wentworth." + +Wentworth understood instantly. + +"That is all past and forgotten," he said quickly. "I never think of it. +Have I ever allowed it to make the slightest difference?" + +"No," said the Bishop, looking hard at him, "and for that matter neither +have I. We have never talked the matter out. Let us do so now. I don't +suppose you have forgotten the odium I incurred over the living of +Rambury. It had been held for generations by old men. It had become a +kind of clerical almshouse. When it fell vacant there was of course yet +another elderly cleric----" + +"My uncle," said Wentworth, "a most excellent man." + +"Just so, but in failing health. Rightly or wrongly I was convinced that +it was my duty to give the place a chance by putting there a younger +man, of energy and capacity for hard work. I gave it to my future +son-in-law as you know." + +Wentworth nodded. "Everyone said at the time he was an excellent man," +he said with evident desire to be fair. + +"I daresay, but that is not the point. The point is that I had no idea +that iron traction engine wanted to marry my daughter or anybody's +daughter. The tactless beast got up steam and proposed for her the day +after I had offered him the living. He had never given so much as a +preliminary screech on the subject, never blown a horn to show what his +horrid intentions were--I only hope that if I had known I should still +have had the moral courage to appoint him. The Archbishop assures me I +should--but I doubt it. I was loudly accused of nepotism, of course. +Your uncle, who died soon afterwards, forgave me in the worst of taste +on his deathbed. I had no means of justifying myself. The Archbishop and +Grenfell and a few other old friends believed. _Why were you not among +those old friends, Wentworth?_" + +"I _was_ among them," said Wentworth, meeting the Bishop's sombre eyes. +"You never answered it, so I suppose you never received it, but at the +time I wrote you a long letter assuring you that I for one had not +joined in the cry against you, even though my uncle did. I frankly owned +that, while I regarded the appointment as an ill-considered one, I took +for granted that Mr. Rawlings was suited for the place. I said that I +knew you far too well to suppose even for a moment that you would have +given the post to a man, even if he were your son-in-law, unless he had +been competent to fill it. You never answered the letter, so I suppose +it failed to reach you." + +"I received it," said the Bishop slowly. "I felt it to be an +illuminating document, but it did not seem to call for an answer. It was +in itself a response to a tacit appeal." + +There was a pause, and then he continued cheerfully. "Rawlings has +proved himself dreadfully competent as you prophesied, and Lucy is very +happy in her new home. I came on from there this morning. My son-in-law, +with the admirable promptitude and economy of time which endeared him to +me as my chaplain, had arranged that every moment of my visit should be +utilised; that I should christen their first child, dedicate a +thank-offering in the shape of a lectern, consecrate the new portion of +the churchyard, open a reading-room, and say a few cordial words at a +drawing-room meeting before I left at mid-day. I told him if he went on +like this he would certainly come to grief and be made a bishop some +day. But he only remarked that he was not solicitous of high +preferment. I think you would like Rawlings if you knew him better. You +and he have a certain amount in common. I must own that I am glad that +it is Lucy who has to put up with him and not I. I should think even God +Almighty must find him rather difficult to live with at times. And now, +Wentworth, if I am to be up and away at cock-crow, I must go to bed." + +But the Bishop did not go to bed at once when Wentworth had escorted him +to his room. + +"It was no use," he said to himself. "It was worth trying, but it was no +use. He never saw that he had misjudged me. He met my eye. He has a +straight, clean eye. He is sincere as far as he goes, but how far _does_ +he go? He has never made that first step towards sincerity of doubting +his own sincerity. He mistakes his moods for convictions. He has never +suspected his own motives, or turned them inside out. He suspects those +of others instead. He is like a crab. He moves sideways by nature, and +he thinks that everyone else who moves otherwise is not straightforward, +and that he must make allowances for them. According to his lights he +has behaved generously by me. Has he! Damn him! God forgive me. Well, I +must stick to him, for I believe I am almost the only friend he has left +in the world." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?--D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +Fay did not sleep that night. + +For a long time past, she seemed to have been gradually, inevitably +approaching, dragging reluctant feet towards something horrible, +unendurable. She could not look this veiled horror in the face. She +never attempted to define it to herself. Her one object was to get away +from it. + +It had not sprung into life full grown. It had gradually taken form +after Michael's imprisonment. At first it had been only an uneasy ghost +that could be laid, a spectre across her path that could be avoided; but +since she had come home it had slowly attained gigantic and terrifying +proportions. It loomed before her now as a vague but insistent menace, +from which she could no longer turn away. + +A great change was coming over Fay, but she tacitly resisted it. She did +not understand it, nor realise that the menace came from within her +gates, was of the nature of an insurrection in the citadel of self. We +do not always recognise the voice of the rebel soul when first it begins +to speak hoarsely, unintelligibly, urgently from the dark cell to which +we have relegated it. + +Some of us are so constituted that we can look back at our past and see +it as a gradation of steps, a sort of sequence, and can thus gain a +kind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are even +now striking our feet. + +But poor Fay saw her life only as shattered, meaningless fragments, +confused, mutilated masses without coherence. The masses and the gaps +between them were of the same substance in her eyes. She wandered into +her past as a child might wander among the rubbish heaps of its old home +in ruins. She was vaguely conscious that there had been a design once in +those unsightly mounds, that she had once lived in them. On that remnant +of crazy wall clung a strip of wall-paper which she recognised as the +paper in her own nursery; here a vestige of a staircase that had led to +her mother's room. And as a child will gather up a little frockful of +sticks and fallen remnants, and then drop them when they prove heavy, so +Fay picked up out of her past tiny disjointed odds and ends of ideas and +disquieting recollections, only to cast them aside again as burdensome +and useless. + +The point to which she wandered back most frequently--to stare blankly +at it without comprehension--was her husband's appeal to her on his +deathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. +She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures and +twisted memories towards that particular place. + +She saw again the duke's dying face, and the tender fixity of his eyes. +She could almost hear his difficult waning voice saying: + +"The sun shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. +Since a year he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you +keep your Cousin Michael in prison?" + +_Since a year he does not see them._ + +It was two years now. + +The shock to Fay at the moment those words were spoken had been that her +husband had known all the time. That revelation blotted out all other +thoughts for the time being. It even blotted out all considerations of +her own conduct towards Michael, which it might conceivably have +rendered acute. It made her mind incapable of receiving the impression +that the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make on +it; that surely she would not, after his death, still keep Michael in +his cell. Throughout the early weeks of her widowhood Fay remained as +one stunned. Even Magdalen, who hurried out to her, supposed at first +that she was stunned by grief. + +"Then Andrea knew all the time." That was the constant refrain of her +bewildered, half-paralysed mind. + +Gradually in the quiet monotonous life at Priesthope the question made +itself felt. "_How did he know?_" + +That question was never answered by Fay, deeply though she pondered over +it. It remained a mystery to her all of her life. She recalled little +scraps of his conversation, tiny incidents which might have shown her +that he knew. But she had noticed nothing at the time. Her cheek burned +when she recalled his tranquil, sarcastic voice. + +"Not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty, is +the high road! But I have known, not once, nor twice, women to murder +men very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die." + +When first she remembered those words of her dead husband, a horrible +revulsion of feeling against him seized her. She had been vaguely +miserable and remorseful at his death until those words, so tranquilly +spoken in a primrose dawn, came back to her. + +Then she was suddenly glad he was dead, gone for ever. She almost hated +him once more. It was dreadful to live with people whom she did not +understand, who knew things they kept secret, whose minds and thoughts +and motives were incomprehensible to her, who believed horrible untrue +things of her. It had been a fixed idea with Fay during her husband's +lifetime that he believed horrible untrue things about her. But what +they were she would have found it difficult to say. + +Fay's was not a suspicious nature in its normal state, but most persons +of feeble judgment become suspicious when life becomes difficult. They +cannot judge, and consequently cannot trust. Fay had never learnt even +so much of her husband as that she might have trusted him entirely. Now +that he was gone without betraying her, the knowledge that he had known +her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a +flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal +he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear +and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of +the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when +it has been generously and humanely dealt with. + +When Fay had somewhat recovered from the shock of her husband's dying +speech she had turned with all her might to Magdalen, had cast herself +upon her, clung to her in a sort of desperation. Magdalen at any rate +believed in her. + +For many months after she came to Priesthope, her mind remained in a +kind of stupor, and it seemed at first as if she were regaining a sort +of calm, caught as it were from Magdalen's presence. + +But gradually miserable brooding memories returned, and it seemed at +last as if something in Magdalen's gentle serenity irritated instead of +soothing Fay as heretofore. Was Magdalen a sort of unconscious ally of +that fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words of +Magdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any rate +something stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrink +from Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moody +intervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at the +housekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later she +would be humbly and hysterically affectionate once more, asking to be +forgiven for her waywardness. She could not live without the comfort of +Magdalen's tenderness. And at times she could not live with it. Magdalen +preserved an unmoved front. She ignored her sister's petulance and +spasmodic fault-finding. She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill, +but what that ill was she did not know. She kept the way open for Fay's +sudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited. + +Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow +to take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a +rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up +the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led +her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should +touch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that +she lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the natural +instincts of animals. + +Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months at +Priesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to her +life by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent. +His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partially +blurred, persistently pushed aside--the memory of Michael in prison. The +figure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other figure in its +cell. + +But now the remembrance of Michael, continually stirred up by poor +Wentworth, with his set, bereaved face, was never suffered to sleep. +With every week of her life it seemed to Fay some new pain came. + +Magdalen could not comfort her. Magdalen, who was so fond of Michael. + +_If Magdalen knew!_ + +_Magdalen must never, never know._ She could not live without Magdalen. +Magdalen was not like Andrea in that. She at any rate was concealing +nothing, could know nothing. Now that Andrea was dead, only one living +person beside herself _knew_--Michael. Fay was unconsciously growing to +hate the thought of that one other person, to turn with horror from the +remembrance of Michael: his sufferings, his patient life in death +filled her with nausea, disgust. Her vehement selfish passion for him +had been smothered by the hideous débris which had been cast upon it. + +She had never loved him, as the duke well knew, and now the shivering +remembrance of him, constantly renewed by Wentworth, had become like a +poignard in a wound that would not heal. Wentworth had to-day yet again +unconsciously turned the dagger in the wound, and her whole being +sickened and shuddered. Oh! if she could only tear out that sharp-bladed +remembrance and cast it from her, then in time the aching wound in her +life might heal, and she might become happy and well and at peace once +more;--at peace like Magdalen. An envious anger flared up in her mind +against Magdalen's calm and happy face. + +Oh, if poor Michael could only die! He wanted to die. If only he could +die and release her. _Release her from what?_ + +From her duty to speak and set him free? Those were the words which she +never permitted the rebel voice within to say. Still, they were there, +silenced for the time, but always waiting to be said. Their gagged +whisper reached her in spite of herself. + +Oh! if only Michael were dead and out of his suffering, then she would +never be tortured by them any more. Then, too, her husband's words would +lose their poisoned point, and she could thrust them forth from her mind +for ever. + +"Francesca, how much longer will you keep your cousin Michael in +prison?" + +Oh! Cruel, cruel Andrea, vindictive to the very gates of death. + +Down the empty, whispering gallery of ghostly fears in which her life +crouched, Michael's voice spoke to her also. She could hear his grave, +low tones. "Think of me as in fairy-land." + +That tender, compassionate message had a barbed point which pierced +deeper even than the duke's words. + +Her lover and her husband seemed to have conspired together to revenge +themselves upon her. + +Fay leaned her pretty head against the window-sill and sobbed +convulsively. + +Poor little soul in prison, weeping behind the bars of her cell, that +only her own hands could open! + +Were not Fay and Michael both prisoners, fast bound: she in misery, he +only in iron. + +The door opened gently and Magdalen came in in a long white wrapper, +with a candle in her hand. + +She put down the candle and came towards Fay. She did not speak. Her +face quivered a little. She bent over the huddled figure in the window +seat, and with a great tenderness drew it into her arms. For a moment +Fay yielded to the comfort of the close encircling arms, and leaned her +head against Magdalen's breast. + +Then she wrenched herself free, and pushed her sister violently from +her. + +"Why do you come creeping in like that?" she said fiercely. "You only +come to spy upon me." + +Magdalen did not speak. She had withdrawn a pace, and stood looking at +her sister, her face as white as her night-gown. + +Fay turned her tear-drenched face to the window and looked fixedly out. +There was a faint movement in the room. When she looked round Magdalen +was gone. + +Fay, worn with two years of partially eluded suffering, restless with +pain, often sick at heart, was at last nearing the last ditch:--but she +had not reached it yet. + +Many more useless tears, many more nights of anguish, many more days of +sullen despair still lay between her and that last refuge. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + Il n'y a point de passé vide ou pauvre, il n'y a point + d'événements misérables, il n'y a que des événements + misérablement accueillis.--MAETERLINCK. + + +Magdalen went back to her own room, and set down her candle on the +dressing-table with a hand that trembled a little. + +"I ought not to have gone," she said half aloud, "and yet--I knew she +was awake and in trouble. And she nearly spoke to me to-day. I +thought--perhaps at last--the time had come like it did with Mother. But +I was wrong. I ought not to have gone." + +The large room which had been her mother's, the elder Fay's, seemed +to-night crowded with ghostly memories: awakened by the thought of the +younger Fay sobbing in the room at the end of the passage. + +In this room, in that bed, the elder Fay had died eighteen years ago. + +How like the mother the child had become who had been named after her. + +Magdalen saw again in memory the poor pretty apathetic mother who had +taken so long to die; a grey-haired Fay, timid as the present Fay, +unwise, inconsequent, blind as Fay, feebly unselfish, as alas! Fay was +not. + +There is in human nature a forlorn impulse, to which Mrs. Bellairs had +yielded, to speak at last when the great silence draws near, of the +things that have long cankered the heart, to lay upon others part of +the unbearable burden of life just when death is about to remove move +it. Mrs. Bellairs had always groped feebly in heavy manacles through +life, in a sort of twilight, but her approaching freedom seemed towards +the last to throw a light, faint and intermittent but still a light, on +much that had lain confused and inexplicable in her mind. Many whispered +confidences were poured into Magdalen's ears during those last weeks, +faltered disjointed revelations, which cut deep into the sensitive +stricken heart of the young girl, cutting possibly also new channels for +all her after life to flow through. + +Did the mother realise the needless anguish she inflicted on the spirit +of the grave, silent girl of seventeen. Perhaps she was too near the +great change to judge any longer--not that she had ever judged--what was +wise or unwise, what was large or small. Trivial poisoned incidents and +the deep wounds of life, petty unreasonable annoyances and acute +memories were all jumbled together. She had never sorted them, and now +she had ceased to know which was which. The feeble departing spirit +wandered aimlessly among them. + +"You must stand up to your father, Magdalen, when I'm gone. I never +could. I was too much in love with him at first, and later on when I +tried he had got the habit of my yielding to him, and it made a +continual wretchedness if I opposed him. He always thought I did not +love him if I did not consent to everything he wished, or if I did not +think him right whatever he did. I did try to stand up about the +children, but at last I gave up that too. I was not fit to have +children, if I sacrificed their wellbeing to his caprice and his whim, +but that was what I did. I have been a poor mother, and an unfaithful +friend, and an unjust mistress. Women like me have no business to +marry.... + +"You don't remember Annie, do you? She was second housemaid, the best +servant I ever had. She was engaged to William, the footman with the +curly hair. He is butler now at Barford. She cared for him dreadfully, +poor soul. But your father could not bear her because she had a squint, +and he never gave me any peace till I parted with her. I did part with +her--and I got her a good place--but--I spoilt her marriage. It did not +take much spoiling perhaps, for after she was gone he soon began to walk +with the kitchen maid, but--she had been kind to me. So good once when I +was ill, and my maid was ill. She did everything for me. I have often +cried about that at night since." + + * * * * * + +"Mother always used to tell me and I never believed it, but it is +true--men are children and it is no good thinking them different. They +never grow up. I don't know if there are any grown up men anywhere. I +suppose there must be--but I have never met one. I don't know any Prime +Ministers or Archbishops, but I expect they are just the same as your +father in home life." + + * * * * * + +"I daresay your father will be sorry when I'm gone. People like your +father are always very fond of someone who is dead, who has no longer +any claim upon them: a mother or a sister, whom they did not take much +trouble about when they were alive. + +"Of course I am going to die first, but I sometimes used to think if +your father died before me and if he were allowed to come back after +death--such things do happen--I had a friend who saw a ghost +once--whether he would be as vexed then at any little change as he is +now. You know, Magdalen, it has always been a cross to me that the +writing-table in my sitting-room is away from the light. My eyes were +never strong. I moved it near the window when I first came here, but +your father was annoyed and had it put back where it is now, because his +mother always had it there. But I really could not see to write there. +And I have often thought if he came back after he was dead whether he +would mind if he found I had moved it nearer the window." + + * * * * * + +"The Bishop of Elvaston married us. I daresay you don't remember him, my +dear. He died a few years later. He had a wart on his chin and he once +shook hands with baby's feet. But he was good. He told me I must +sacrifice all to love. But what has been the use of all my sacrifices, +first of myself and then of others? Your father has not been the happier +or the better for it, but the worse. I have let him do so many cruel +little things for which others have suffered. It was not exactly that he +did not see what he was doing. He would not see. Some people are like +that. They won't look, and they become dreadfully angry if they are +asked to look. I gave it up at last. Oh, my poor husband! I knew I had +failed everybody else, but at any rate not him. But I see now,"--the +weak voice broke--"I see now that I have failed him, too. We ought +never to have married. Love is not any guide to happiness. Remember +that, Magdalen. We were both weak. He was weak and domineering. I was +weak and yielding. I don't know which is the worst." + +As the shadows deepened all the tacit unforgiveness of a weak, +down-trodden nature which has been vanquished by life whispered from the +brink of the grave. + +"I have never been loved. I have given everything, and I have had +nothing back. Nothing. Nothing. Don't marry, Magdalen. Men are all like +that. Lots of women say the same. They take everything and they give +nothing. It is our own fault. We rear them to it from their cradles. +From their schooldays we teach them that everything is to give way to +them, beginning with the sisters. With men it is Take, Take, Take, until +we have nothing left to give. I went bankrupt years ago. There is +nothing left in me. I _have_ nothing and I _am_ nothing. I'm not dying +now. I have been dead for years." + + * * * * * + +"You say I am going to be at peace, Magdalen, but how do you know? I +daresay I'm not. I daresay I am going to hell, but if I do I don't care. +I don't care where I go so long as it is somewhere where there aren't +any more husbands, and housekeeping, and home, weary, weary home, and +complaints about food. I don't want ever to see anything again that I +have known here. I am so tired of everything. I am tired to death." + + * * * * * + +Poor mother and poor daughter. + +Who shall say what Magdalen's thoughts were as she supported her +mother's feeble steps down to the grave. Perhaps she learned at +seventeen what most of us only learn late, so late, when life is half +over. + +Bitterness, humiliation, the passionate despair of the heart which has +given all and has received nothing,--these belong not to the armed band +of Love's pilgrims, though they dog his caravan across the desert. + +These are only the vultures and jackal prowlers in Love's wake, ready to +pounce on the faint hearted pilgrim who through weakness falls into the +rear, where fang and talon lie in wait to swoop down and rend him. + +If we adventure to be one of Love's pilgrims we must needs be long +suffering and meek, if we are to win safe with him across the desert, +and see at last his holy city. + + * * * * * + +Tears welled up into Magdalen's eyes as one piteous scene after another +came back to her, enacted in this very room. + +Poor little mother, who had seemed to Magdalen then so old and forlorn, +who, when she died, had only been a year or two older than Magdalen +herself was now. + +And poor little wavering life sobbing in the room at the end of the +passage over some mysterious trouble. + +The elder Fay lived on in the younger Fay. Was she also to be vanquished +by life, to become gradually embittered and resentful? There seemed to +be nothing in her lot to make her so. What was it, what could it be that +was casting a blight over Fay's life? + +How to help her, how to release her from the self-imposed fetters in +which her mother had lived and--died. + +Just as some persons have the power of making something new out of +refuse--paper out of rags--so Magdalen seemed to have the power of +cherishing and transforming the weaker, meaner elements of the +characters with which she came in contact. Certain qualities in those we +are inclined to love daunt us. Insincerity, callousness, selfishness, +treachery in its more refined aspects, these are apt to arouse at first +incredulity and at last scorn in us. But they aroused neither in +Magdalen. She saw them with clearness, and dealt tenderly with them. + +What others discarded as worthless, she valued. To push aside the feeble +and intermittent affection of a closed and self-centred nature, +believing it is giving its best, what is that but to push aside a poor +man's little offering. Many years ago Magdalen had accepted not without +tears, one such offering from a very poor man indeed. + +Loving-kindness, tenderness, have their warped, stunted shoots as well +as their free-growing, stately blossoms. It is the same marvellous, +fragrant life struggling to come forth through generous or barren soil. +There are some thin, dwarfed, almost scentless flowers of love and +friendship, of which we can discern the faint fragrance only when we are +on our knees. But some of us have conscientious scruples about kneeling +down except at shrines. Magdalen had not. + +She knew that Fay cared but little for her in reality. But she also knew +that she did care a little. Fay had turned to her many times, and had +repulsed and forgotten her not a few times. + +Magdalen had a good memory. + +"When she really wants me she will turn to me again," she said +tranquilly to herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + Toute passion a son chemin de croix. + + +And Michael? + +What of him during these two endless years? + +What did he think about during his first year in prison: what was the +first waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradual +discovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside his +window to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn, +how did he bear them? + +His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. The +egoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his. +He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not +thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did +he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he +accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through +the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against +him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one, +minister to him in his great need? + +Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was suffering +voluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept hold +of the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot what +he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emerged +from behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that moment +in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love. + +Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love for +him was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that +realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before +the trial, that she would not speak. + +Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his +love for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He saw +that she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that she +was not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice which +would have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he saw +that. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she might +make it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had to +be gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she _did_ love him +in her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a _small_ +sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into a +smaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too much +distress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that if +a slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she would +indubitably have made it. + +After a year in prison the news tardily reached Michael through his +friend, the doctor, that the duke was dead. + +The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive. +He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to each +other. + +But now, _now_, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to her +to do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have to +endure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which her +delicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that made +all the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. A +little courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a small +sacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other had +been too much to expect. _But this_---- + +Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, and +sobbed for joy. + +Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. He +knew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength. + +Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death of +his friend had brought him. + +Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy ever +rose and rose afresh within him. + +Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving for +her was no longer a sin. + +It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a +floating gossamer tangle of sound across the water. + +Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him. + +He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of his +narrow window. + +How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice! + +He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each with +its little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boats +from Chioggia, floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in the +pearl haze of the lagoon. + +How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyes +from them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into the +man in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him, +and break him upon its wheel. + +He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at him +like a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air; +free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under a +luminous sky. + +He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleaming +islands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an orange sail. + +For Fay would come to him. The one woman in the world of counterfeits +would come to him, and set him free. She would take him in her arms at +last, and lay her cool healing touch upon his aching life. And he would +lean his forehead against her breast, and his long apprenticeship to +love would be over. It seemed to Michael that she was here already, her +soft cheek against his. + +He pressed his face to the stone wall, and whispered as to her: + +"Fay, have I served you?" + +He almost heard her tremulous whisper, "Yes." + +"Do you still love me?" + +"Yes." + +"We may love each other now." + +Again Fay's voice very low. "Yes." + +It had to be like that. This moment was only a faint foreshadowing of +that unendurable joy, which inevitably had to come. + +A great trembling laid hold on Michael. He could not stand. He fell on +his knees, but he could not kneel. He stretched himself face downwards +on his pallet. But it was not low enough. He flung himself on the floor +of his cell, but it was not low enough. A grave would hardly have been +low enough. The resisting stone floor had to do instead. + +And through the waves of awe and rapture that swept over him came +faintly down to him, as from some dim world left behind, the bells of +Venice, and the thin cry of the sea-mew rejoicing with him. + +Can we call a life sad which has had in it one such blessed hour? + +Luminous day followed luminous day, and the nights also were full of +light. His work was nothing to him. The increasing heat was nothing to +him. His chains were nothing to him. + +But at last when the weeks drew into a month, two months, a chill doubt +took up its abode with him. It was resolutely cast out. But it returned. +It was fought against with desperation. It was scorned as want of faith. +Michael's strength waned with each conflict. But it always returned. At +last it became to him like a mysterious figure, always present with him. + +"Fay," he whispered over and over again through the endless burning +nights of summer. "Dear one, come soon." + +There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn. + +The shadow deepened. + +A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael. + +What could have happened? + +Was she ill? + +Was she dead? + +He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still. + +Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known what +it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn +into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the +unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns +into a forest tree,--for a word which does not come. + + * * * * * + +Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of the +duke--Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall--he received a +letter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year. + +He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all the +time that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust. + +With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each +other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the +retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had +married his chaplain--a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been able +to resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridges +had done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. But +he did not care to shoot without Michael. + +He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence. + +"Your cousin, the Duchess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthope +for good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally. +At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rather +more cheerful as time passes on." + +The letter fell out of Michael's hand. + +"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._" + +Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh. + +Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was he +who had laughed. + +"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._" + +He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behind +him,--during which the time had passed on. He saw them pieced together +into a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in the +midst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him, +under a blinding sun. + +That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. He +had touched the goal. + +She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; not +lately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke's +death, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as the +sick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italy +for good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must have +made up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake. +She had decided to leave him to his fate. + +She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief over +its rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to love +him--he felt still her hands holding his hands against her breast--had +never loved him. She did not know what love was. + +She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last. + +There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at +its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot +love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later +that shudder has to come. + +Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. +We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can +teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. +Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, +tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us +and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking +and faithful God? + +Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us? + +The duke's words came back to Michael. + +"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for +whom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charming +self." + +He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days. + +Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He +broke his teeth against his chains. + +If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with +the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake. + +[Illustration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE +HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"] + +And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild +outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake +a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, +and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilité des + femmes? Qui sait jusq'où peut aller l'inconstance de ce + sable mouvant?--ALFRED DE MUSSET. + + +The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold. + +Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate too +narrow for him? + +After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with the +walls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep or +eat. He was absorbed in one idea. + +Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, +rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive +feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by +reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he +learned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled up +against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage. + +He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind of +pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes he +got up, and pushed them back with his hands. + +The sun had shifted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a few +minutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. He +looked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him. + +He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything. + +The doctor came to see him, and looked closely at him, and spoke kindly +to him. He was interested in the young Englishman, and, like several of +the warders, was convinced of his innocence. + +Michael took no notice of him, barely answered his questions. He was +impatient of any interruption. + +He was absorbed in one thought. + +He had loved Fay for a long time. How long was it? Five years? Ten +years? Owing to his peculiar fate love had usurped in Michael's life too +large a place, the place which it holds in a woman's life, but which is +unnatural in a man's. He did not know it, but he had travelled a long +way on the road towards an entire oblivion of Fay when he came to Rome. +But the one great precaution against her he had not taken. He had not +replaced her, and "Only that which is replaced is destroyed." He had +grown accustomed to loving her. + +In these days he went over, slowly, minutely, every step of his long +acquaintanceship with her, from the first day, when he was nineteen and +she was seventeen, to the last evening six years later, when he had +kissed the cold hand that could have saved him, and did not. + +Old people, wise old learned people, smoke-dried Dons and genial bishops +sitting in their dignified studies, had spoken with guarded frankness to +him in his youth on the temptations of life. They had told him that +love, save when it was sanctified by marriage, was only a physical +passion, a temporary madness, a fever which all men who were men +underwent, but to which a man of principle did not succumb, and which if +vigorously suppressed soon passed away. + +Why had it not been so with him? He had never had to contend with the +coarse forms of temptation of which his elders had spoken, as if they +were an integral part of his youth. + +Why, then, had he loved this pretty, false, selfish woman so long? Why +had he allowed himself to be drawn back into her toils after he had +known she was false? Why was he more weak, more credulous, more +infatuated than other men? + +The duke had actually been her husband, had actually possessed that +wonderful creature, and yet he, under the glamour of her personal +presence, which it made Michael gasp to think of, he, the duke, had not +been deceived. + +Why had he, Michael, been deceived? + +He remembered the exhortations of his tepid-minded, painlessly married +tutor at Oxford, who read the vilest French novels as a duty, and took a +walk with his wife on fine afternoons; and whose cryptic warnings on the +empire of the passions would have made a baboon blush. + +Michael laughed suddenly as he recalled the mild old-maidish face. What +was the old prig talking about? What did he know, dried up and +shrivelled like a bit of seaweed between the leaves of a folio. + +Everyone had told him wrong. + +Why had they decried this awful power, why had they so confused it with +sensual indulgence that he had had to disentangle it for himself? Why +had they not warned him, on the contrary, that the love of woman was a +living death, a pitfall from which there was no escape, from the depths +of which you might stare at the sky till you starved to death, as he was +doing now. + +With all their warnings they had not warned him, these grave men, these +instructors of youth, who had never known any world except their little +world of books, who ranged women into two camps, one in which they held +a docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, +mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of his +demure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgar +temptresses, on a level with the wine cup and the gambling table. + +Why had he allowed himself to be duped and hoodwinked by his elders and +by his own shyness, into chastity? They had entreated him to believe it +was the only happy life. _It was not._ To be faithful to his future +wife. Ha! Ha! That was the beginning of the trap, the white sand neatly +raked over the hidden gin. + +If he had only lived like other men! If he had only listened to the +worst among them, if he had only torn the veil early from every limb of +that draped female figure, that iron maiden, if he had only seen it in +its horror of nudity, with its sharp nails for eyes, and its jagged +knives where the bosom should be, he should not be pressed to death in +its embrace now. + +He had been deceived, betrayed, fooled. That was why he was shut up. He +had believed in a woman, had believed that the cobra's bite was only a +wasp's sting. Good Lord, what an imbecile! He was insane of course, +raving mad. And he had been here eighteen months and only saw the joke +now. + +Michael laughed again, shouted with laughter. + +The sun was setting again. It was always setting now. It set in the +mornings as well. The red thong of light was on the wall again. Blood +red! He rocked to and fro shaking with laughter. + +The doctor and a warder came in. It was just like them. They were always +coming in when they were not wanted. + +He pointed at the bar of light, stumbled to it, and tried to tear it +from the wall. It had been there long enough. Too long. And as he tore +at it with hands dyed crimson, something that was pressing upon him +lightened suddenly, and the blood gushed forth from his mouth, flooding +the sun-stained wall. + +"I have put out that damned sunset at last," he said to himself as he +fell. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + So we must keep apart, + You there, I here, + With just the door ajar + That oceans are, + And prayer, + And that pale sustenance + Despair! + + --EMILY DICKENSON. + + +It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice +of his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness that +Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did +not lavish on him. + +Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and +closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer +together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift +when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was +aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days +passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything. + + * * * * * + +He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor had +been in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made him +drink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. +How clear everything was becoming. He raised his hand to his head. He +had not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at his +wasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these marks +on the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he had +forgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he should +know numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, and +held it close to his eyes. + +These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. And +here over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deep +sore once. + +_When?_ + +If only he could remember! + +The mist in his mind cleared a little. + +_Those bruises were made by chains._ + +A deadly faintness came over him. + + * * * * * + +Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back into +his feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what he +had done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a long +time, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious, +crouching in the back of his mind. + +The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, and +he shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want to +have the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest to +please the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. The +doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the +early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate +grey lilac. + +"I remember," said Michael, whitening. + +It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering +and the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon his +brain. + +"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it +is a purple brown." + +The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, +looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gently +and took it away. + +Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which he +should see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the very +edge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's last +desertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark. + + * * * * * + +A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterflies +this time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind, +and he feared for his brain. He was too weak to read. He might perhaps +like to look at pictures. + +The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immense +butterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay, +but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee. + +Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it had +been looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender. + +Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousands +once in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he had +been abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in the +sunshine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like an +army of fairies. + +How heavy the book was on his knee. + +He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor +would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when +he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf. + +Were there English butterflies here as well? + +Yes. Here was a sheet of them. + +He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common +enough in the south of England. + +He looked idly at it. + +And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal +screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop. + +He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly like +that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening +and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed +how beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards +it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, +and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed +over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its +wings, one by one, because they were so pretty. + +He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and +almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly +thing with struggling legs. + +The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain. + +"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand." + +And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look +into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had +put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had +cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But +nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had done +it on purpose to that other poor creature of God. _She did not +understand._ + +Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came +back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's +face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he +had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with +her pretty hand. + +Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she +would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now +at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more +deeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of grief +came, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted had +been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt. + +An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in all +the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid +heart. + +Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light! + +Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the +death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always +enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place. + +A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It +shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child +against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love +that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, +and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had +strength from her to wander away from her--back into her arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + And no more turn aside and brood + Upon Love's bitter mystery. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + +It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the +embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties +have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is +callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell +in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that +was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in +the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the +ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand. +Old age ceases to understand. + +But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond +youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and +gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their +zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. +Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind +them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the +world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, +call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might +wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they +are looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only +be loved and served. They cannot love--as yet. They exact love and miss +it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, +frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyse +it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is +nothing to be got out of it after all. + +They seem inhuman because they are not human--as yet. They seem +variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's +body and brain must so seem. They are not sane--as yet. + +And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth +and beauty and tenderness may not come forth--as yet. + +We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them +now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like +half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes. + +Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived +unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days +that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was +supported by the illusion--was it an illusion--that it was Fay really +who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her +place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, +unless he helped her through. + +He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well +enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once +more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his, that +they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh? + +When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it +was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go--at +last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's. + +His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its +exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was + a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the + easiest.--EDITH WHARTON. + + +On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awake +listening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distance +away from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorb +her, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for so +many years past. + +Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearing +wind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listen +intently. + +Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the passage +to Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none that +could be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over the +groaning old house. + +She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over the +dim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay. + +Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out her +arms. + +Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly: + +"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?" + +Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms. + +Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost as +much as Fay. + +Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane. +Within, another storm had broken in a passion of tears. + +Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing. + +"I was coming to you, Magdalen,--I was trying to come--and I couldn't--I +had pushed you away when you came before--and I thought perhaps you +would push _me_ away--no--no--I didn't, but I said to myself you would. +I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the same +because--because,"--Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into a +strangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more." + +"Tell me about it." + +But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself face +downwards on the bed. + +"I can't," she gasped. "I must and I can't. I must and I can't." + +Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that the +breaking moment had come and she waited. + +She waited a long time. + +The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself. + +At last Fay sat up. + +Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, she +blew the dim embers to a glow. + +Fay watched her. + +Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes +fixed upon it. + +"I have done something very wicked," said Fay in a hollow voice from the +bed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me +that you will never tell anybody?" + +"I promise," said Magdalen after a moment. + +"Swear it." + +"I swear." + +Fay made several false starts and then said: + +"I was very unhappy with Andrea." + +Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red. + +"He never cared for me," continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and +kneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who +does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too +selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know +anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me." + +Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passage +she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful +weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to +love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in +silence then so she listened in silence now. + +"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully +disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real +confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, +those whom God has joined together. Andrea never seemed to remember +that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to +care for him, and--he brought it on himself--I'm not excusing myself, +Magdalen--I see now that I was to blame too--I ended by caring for +someone else--someone who _did_ love me, who always had since we were +boy and girl together." + +"Not Michael!" + +"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It +never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. +I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared +at last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me." + +Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so +far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her +confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking +the whole truth and nothing but the truth. + +"Of course he found it out at last and--and we agreed to part. We +decided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to say +good-bye. Was it _very_ wrong of me to let him come once,--just once?" + +"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not +he leave Rome?" + +"He was arrested the same night," faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to him +in the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they were +looking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out. +And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hid +behind the screen in my room. And then--you know the rest--the police +came in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to the +murder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing to +do to save my reputation, and he did it." + +"And what did you say?" + +"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak." + +"And later on when you were not too faint?" + +"I never said anything later on either." Fay's voice had become almost +inaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess." + +"But when he did not confess?" + +"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that he +might still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen." + +There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures in +Magdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefully +safeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in the +process. + +At last she said, "Did Andrea _know_ that Michael was innocent of the +murder?" + +"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he said +something cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence for +certain, had known it from the first." + +"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do you +suppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight, +after he had ostensibly left the house?" + +Fay stared at her sister aghast. + +"I never thought of that," she said. + +"What _can_ Andrea have thought of that?" + +"Andrea was very secretive," faltered Fay. "You never could tell what he +was thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. Roman +Catholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of the +wife." + +There was another silence. + +Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given +time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents +that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken +refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, but +they don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse to +weigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quickly +confused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all they +remember that upholds their own view of the situation and--discard the +rest. + +Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could only +restate her own view of her husband's character. + +Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others if +they had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waited +a moment, and then said: + +"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment between +yourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had not +guessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew it +_then_--for certain. _For certain_, Fay. Remember that is settled. There +was no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if you +bar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea is +concerned. Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect for +Michael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which would +have ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did not +understand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me he +acted towards you with great nobility and delicacy." + +Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husband +must not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have any +fixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the whole +tightly wedged fabric in position. + +"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed," she +said. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the least +hint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison." + +"Perhaps he hoped--hoped against hope--that----" Magdalen did not finish +her sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them, +and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, she +went on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without a +word to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I see +now that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italian +hereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such a +height as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicions +he might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael if +he had not followed a very noble instinct, that of entire trust in you +both in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Dear Fay, the +proof was overwhelming." + +Fay was silent. + +"Just as we all believed in Michael's innocence of the murder, so Andrea +believed in your innocence of a crime even greater, never faltered in +his belief, and went to his grave without a word of doubt. Oh! Fay, Fay, +do you suppose there are many men like that?" + +And Magdalen, who so seldom wept, suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps the +thought forced itself through her mind, "If only once long ago I had met +with one little shred of such tender faith!" + +"Andrea was better than I thought," Fay faltered. The admission made her +uneasy. She wished he had not been better, that her previous view of him +had not been disturbed. + +Magdalen's tears passed quickly. She glanced again at Fay through a veil +of them, looking earnestly for something she did not find. + +"And Michael," she went on gently. "Dear, dear Michael. He gave himself +for you, spent in one moment, not counting the cost, his life, his +future, his good name--for your sake. And he goes on day by day, month +by month, year in year out, enduring a living death without a word--for +your sake. How long has Michael been in prison?" + +"Two years." Fay's voice was almost inaudible. + +"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But if +his strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was any +man since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and your +lover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish and +could not love. I have heard many women say the same. But _you_! How can +_you_ say such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love and +serve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever find +anything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material of +men's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to have +stood between two such men who must have crushed you between them if +either of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentary +selfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and--where would +_you_ have been?" + +"No one knows how good Michael is better than I do," said Fay, "but what +you don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been for _me_. +He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. +No, I don't _think_ it, I _know_ it. He can't have suffered as much as I +have." + +Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a +tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always +tender. + +"You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain +things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the +loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years? +What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!" + +Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's +knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone +to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she +loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but +had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a +more prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able +to tell her sister everything. + +The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of +the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, +when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the +rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. +Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about +ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive +anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines +of our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister +ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up +from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one +whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly +for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our +meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the +world what only Love may safely know concerning us? + +Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless +bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. She +heard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much that +Fay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that it +was misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yet +repentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of our +prisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cells +bolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business of +leaving our cells when only misery urges us forth. I think that +Magdalen's heart must have sunk many times, but whenever Fay looked up +she met the same tender, benignant look bent down upon her. + +"Oh! why didn't I tell you before?" she said at last. "I always wanted +to, but I thought--at least I felt--I see I did you an injustice--I +thought you might press me to--to----" + +"_To confess_," said Magdalen, her low voice piercing to Fay's very +soul. + +"Y-yes, at least to say something to a policeman or someone, so that +Michael might be let out. I was afraid if I told you you would never +give me any peace till Michael was released." + +"Have you _had_ any peace since he was put into prison?" + +Fay shook her head. + +"Make your mind easy, Fay, I shall never urge you to"--Magdalen +hesitated--"to go against your conscience." + +"What would you have done in my place?" said Fay hastily. + +"I should have had to speak." + +"You are better than me, Magdalen, more religious. You always have +been." + +"I should have had to speak, not because I am better or worse than you, +but simply because I could not have endured the misery of silence. It +would have broken me in two. And if I had not had the courage to speak +in Andrea's lifetime, I would have spoken directly he was dead, and have +released Michael and married him. You have not told me why you did not +do that." + +"I never thought of it. I somehow regarded it as all finished. And I +have never even _thought_ of marrying Michael or anyone when I was left +a widow. I was much too miserable. I had had enough of being married." + +There was a difficult silence. + +"I should never have a moment's peace if--if I _did_ speak," said Fay at +last. + +"Yes, you would," said Magdalen with sudden intensity. "That is where +peace lies." + +Fay raised herself to her knees and looked into Magdalen's eyes. The +dawn had come up long ago, and in its austere light Magdalen's face +showed very sharp and white in a certain tender fixity and compassion. +She had seen that look once before in her husband's dying eyes. Now that +she was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood it +for the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might be +given peace! + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + There is no wild wind in his soul, + No strength of flood or fire; + He knows no force beyond control, + He feels no deep desire. + + He knows no altitudes above, + No passions elevate; + All is but mockery of love, + And mimicry of hate. + + --EDGAR VINE HALL. + + +The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library at +Barford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down lay +Priesthope, where Fay was. + +He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulated +existence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade him +only in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid his +purpling beeches. + +Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those mornings +sacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagant +surmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards a +thing or person--in what he called his point of view--than in the thing +viewed. + +He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with his +feelings about her than with herself. It was these which were now +engrossing him. + +For some time past he had been working underground--digging out the +foundations--and as a rule invisible as a mole within them--of a tedious +courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is +much more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was not +to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously +diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large +battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon +themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. He +had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance +meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed +by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves +across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine +violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex; +and that when he met the _right_ woman she would set to work like the +others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be +conveniently arrived at. + +But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent +grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain +turn which affairs might one day take. + +At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one +of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further +masculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, +almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings +under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. He +was aware--at least, he told himself that he was aware--that +extraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how he +reconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. The +chance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions, +and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with much _naïf_ +dignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other old +friend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposed +but earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grappling +with the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was of +estrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning and +found he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at the +correct moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by the +comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He +shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with +himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the +meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild +emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a +little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was +delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse. + +I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the verge +of being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails from +the abyss by a certain _naïveté_ and uprightness of character. The +Bishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact that +dolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond of +him. + +Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was still unconsciously +meditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancing +furtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary, +self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman, +however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining him +with her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by looking +back. + +Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he did +propose he would be accepted--she in short must commit herself--and +then--after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still--at any +rate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of Pilgrim +Road. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would be +an entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "short +cut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of his +return journey from Lostford. + +It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down Pilgrim +Road feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth was +breathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking in +the vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossy +track dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on the +boles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze of +myriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. There +was a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself. + +At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on a +fallen tree near the track. + +For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he should +ride past, just taking off his hat. But he had ridden past in life, +just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. He +almost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismounted +and walked up to Fay, bridle in hand. + +"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way." + +This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its +obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet +anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a +foot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and +left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the +actual facts. The moral is--morals cluster like bees round certain +individuals--that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like +Wentworth. + +"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get +some palm." + +She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on +them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he +looked at them with grave attention. + +The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, +suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head +slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut. + +"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us." + +Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig. + +Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in his +strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, +though of doubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfect +rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere +of exquisite manners. + +Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came +back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He +had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something +striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much. + +A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a +choice of subject. + +From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of +mouse talk, intermittent, _affairé_, accompanied by sudden rustlings and +dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and +bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of +life in a new soft silken coat! + +Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time +to time. + +"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in +these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says." + +"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?" + +"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not +our morbid craving for a listener." + +"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking about +themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of +his on the subject would be considered final. + +"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more +like a cavalier than ever. + +Then he actually noticed how pale she was. + +"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you +awake." + +"Yes," she said, and hung her head. + +Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her +more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with +recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than +those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling +new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing +him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality +been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The +elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this +and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day, +toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some +unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night. + +He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never +considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously +about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman +of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart. + +He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no +surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really +nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go +forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything +before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it +passed away again, leaving a great tranquillity behind, together with a +mounting sense of personal power. + +If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did +not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him +through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood +it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking +the reed for music! + +Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain things +exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to +whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we +sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands? + +The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth +had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a +reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might +be ready when the time came. + +"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret. + +"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always assented +to what was said. + +"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I +sit here any longer I shall never get home at all." + +"Let me take you home on Conrad." + +Fay hesitated. + +"I am frightened of horses." + +"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse. +And I will lead him." + +Fay still hesitated. + +He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She +was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope. + +Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for +anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came. + +Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling +foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it. + +She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timidity +was reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking +beside her, with his hand on the rein. + +The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part. + +Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind +wandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them very +often. + +Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his +mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to +indicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point of +view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have +lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with +childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that +he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering +swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own +freedom from ambition, his devotion--unlike other men--to the _small_ +things of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had +been struck by that sentence when he first said it to the Bishop, and +he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more +sympathetic listener than the Bishop. + +I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse +said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his +brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of +vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the _débris_ +of last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired +her. _He_ did not know anything uncomfortable about her--_as Magdalen +did_. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person +who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he +talked! What a wide-minded, generous man! + +The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was +reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, +stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of +Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt +instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. +She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She +was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more +robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they +required assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy +of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well +enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwart +figure warded off from her the sympathy to which her severe cramps +undoubtedly entitled her. + +"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that +the good hour was over. + +Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her +cheek. + +Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a +favourite walk of yours?" + +"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon." + +"I have to pass that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut +to Lostford." + +He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom +used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed +the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with +because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said +the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener +minds had had to fight against in dealing with him. + +For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense of +regret and loss. + +Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen who +was so good, and so safe, such a comforter--_but who knew_. Fay shrank +back instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs to +her own room, and had tea there. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "FAY NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW LIGHTLY WENTWORTH +WALKED, HOW SQUARE HIS SHOULDERS WERE"] + +Wentworth rode home feeling younger that he had done for years. What is +thirty-nine? No age for a thin man. (He was in reality nearly +forty-one.) He was pleased with himself. How quaintly amusing he had +been about the mouse. He regretted, not for the first time, that he +did not write novels, for little incidents like that, which the +conventional mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving, +would intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he had +rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her--he +did not know exactly what--but something larger than to-day. Any fool, +any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. He +would like to do something which another person could _not_ do, +something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time place +him in a magnanimous light. + +We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness to +the one we love. We need not trouble ourselves to seek for such an +occasion, for though many things fail us in this life the opportunity so +to act has never yet failed to arrive, and has never arrived alone, +always hand in hand with some prosaic hideously difficult circumstance, +which, if we are of an artistic temperament, may appear to us too ugly. + +Wentworth had never wished to do anything for the gay little lady who, a +few years ago, had crossed his path. The principal subject of his +cogitations about her had been whether she would be able to adapt +herself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided wayward +nature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on the +contrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag on +his soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelings +for her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind of +compassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in it +the possibility of growth, of some expansion. And what other feeling in +Wentworth's clean, well-regulated, sterilized mind had shown any power +of growth? + +The worst of growth is that a small acorn does not grow into a large +acorn as logical persons expect. It ought to, but it does not. It grows +instead into something quite unrecognisable from its small beginnings, +something for which, perhaps, beyond a certain stage, there is no +room,--not even a manger. + +Those who love must discard much. Wentworth had not yet felt the need of +discarding anything, and he had not the smallest intention of doing so. +He intended instead to make a small ornamental addition, a sort of +portico, to his life. His mind had got itself made up this afternoon, +and he contemplated the proposed addition with some complacency as +already made. + +There is, I believe, a method of planting an acorn in a bottle, +productive of the happiest results--for those who love small results. +You only give the acorn a little water every day,--no soil of course. +The poor thing will push up a thin twig of stem through the bottle neck, +and in time will unfold a few real oak leaves. Men like Wentworth would +always prefer the acorn to remain an acorn, but if it shews signs of +growth, some of them are wise enough, take alarm early enough, to +squeeze it quickly down a bottle neck before it has expanded too much to +resist the passage. + +Had Fate in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or +would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his own +convenience a great possibility? + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + Look through a keyhole, and your eye will be sore. + + +During the weeks which followed Fay's confession Magdalen became aware +that she watched her, and aware also that she avoided her, was never +alone with her if she could help it. + +At this time Fay began to do many small kindnesses, and to talk much of +the importance of work for others, of the duty of taking an interest in +our fellow creatures. This was a new departure. She had not so far +evinced the faintest interest in the dull routine of home duties which +are of the nature of kindnesses, and had often reproached Magdalen for +spending herself in them. To play halma with zest all the evening with a +parent who must always win, to read the papers to him by the hour, not +while he listened, but while he slept--Fay scorned these humble efforts +of Magdalen's. She shewed no disposition to emulate them; but she did +shew a feverish tendency towards isolated acts of benevolence outside +the home life, which precluded any claim upon her by arousing a hope of +their continuance, which tied her to nothing. Fay began to send boxes of +primroses to hospitals, to knit stockings for orphans, to fatigue +herself with enormous walks over the downs with illustrated papers for +the Saundersfoot work-house. + +It was inevitable at this juncture that she should feel some shocked +surprise at the supineness of those around her. Her altruistic efforts +were practically single-handed. She had hoped that when she inaugurated +them, Magdalen at any rate would have followed suit, would have worked +cheerfully under her direction. But Magdalen, whose serene cheerfulness +had flagged of late, fell painfully below her sister's expectation. Fay +came to the conclusion that it was more lack of imagination than +callousness on her sister's part which held her back. + +Many careworn souls besides Fay have discovered that the irritable +exhaustion, the continual ache of egotism can be temporarily relieved by +taking an inexpensive interest in others. The remedy is cheap and +efficacious, and it is a patent. Like Elliman applied to a rheumatic +shoulder it really does do good--I mean to the owner of the shoulder. +And you can stop rubbing the moment you are relieved. Perhaps these +external remedies are indispensable to the comfort of those who dwell by +choice, like Fay, in low-lying swampy districts, and have no thought of +moving to higher ground. + +Magdalen knew these signs, and sometimes her heart sank. + +Was Fay unconsciously turning aside to busy herself over little things +that were not required of her, in order to shut her eyes to the one +thing needful--a great act of reparation? + +If Fay was watching Magdalen, someone else was watching Fay. Bessie's +round, hard, staring eyes were upon her, and if Bessie did anything she +did it to some purpose. + +One afternoon in the middle of April Bessie came into Magdalen's sitting +room and sat down with an air of concentration. + +"I have reason to be deeply ashamed of myself," she said. "I _am_ +ashamed of myself. If I tell you about it it is not in order that you +may weakly condone and gloss over my conduct." + +Magdalen reflected that Bessie had inherited her father's graceful way +of approaching a difficulty by finding a preliminary fault in his +listener. + +Bessie shut her handsome mouth firmly for a moment, and then opened it +with determination. + +"I thought that whatever faults I had I was at any rate a lady, but I +find I am not. I discovered something by the merest chance a short time +ago, and since then, for the last fortnight I have been acting in a +dishonourable and vulgar manner, in short, spying upon another person." + +"That must have made you miserable." + +"It has. I am miserable. But I deserve that. I did not come to talk +about that. The point is this----" + +"Bessie, I don't want to hear what you evidently ought not to know." + +"Yes, you must, because someone else needs your advice." + +"We won't trouble our minds about the someone else." + +Bessie had, however, inherited another characteristic trait of her +father's. She could ignore when she chose. She chose now. + +"I may as well put you in possession of the facts," she continued. "A +few weeks ago I was coming home by Pilgrim Road. I was not hurrying +because I was struck, as I always am struck--I don't suppose I am +peculiar in this--by the first appearance of spring. Pilgrim Road is a +sheltered place. Spring always comes early there." + +"It does." + +"I will even add that I was recalling to myself verses of poetry +connected with the time of year, when I saw a couple in front of me. +They were walking very slowly with their backs towards me, taking +earnestly together. They were Fay and Wentworth." + +Magdalen made no movement, but her face, always pale, became suddenly +ashen grey. + +If Fay were seriously attracted by Wentworth would she ever confess, +ever release Michael! + +"There was no harm in their walking together," she said tremulously. + +"There was one harm in it," retorted Bessie. "It made me so angry that I +did not know how to live. They did not see me, and I struck up into the +wood, and I had to stay an hour by myself holding on to a little tree, +before I could trust myself to come home." + +"It does not help matters to be angry, Bessie. I was angry once for two +years. I said at the time like Jonah that I did well, but I see now that +I might have done better." + +"I don't particularly care what helps matters and what does not. I now +come to my own disgraceful conduct. I have spied upon Fay steadily for +the last fortnight. She is so silly she never even thinks she is +watched. And she meets Wentworth in Pilgrim Road nearly every afternoon. +I once waylaid her as if by accident, on her way home, and asked her +where she had been, and she said she had been on her way to Arleigh +wood, but had not got so far, as she was too tired. Too tired! She had +been walking up and down with Wentworth for over an hour. I timed them. +She never meant to go to Arleigh wood. And when they said Good-bye, +he--he kissed her hand. Since Fay has come back to live here I have +gradually formed the meanest opinion of her. She is not truthful. She is +not sincere. She is absolutely selfish. I was inclined to be sorry for +her at first, but I soon saw through her. She did not really care for +Andrea. She only pretended. Everything she does is a kind of pretty +pretence. She does not really care for Wentworth. She is only leading +him on for her own amusement." + +"I think it is much more likely that she is drifting towards marriage +with him without being fully aware of what she is doing. But women like +you and me are not in the same position towards men as Fay is. +Consequently it is very difficult for us to judge her fairly." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"You and I are not attractive to men. Fay is. You saw Wentworth kiss her +hand. You naturally infer, but you are probably wrong, that Fay had been +leading him on, as you call it." + +"It will take a good deal to disabuse me of that at any rate. I believe +my own eyes." + +"I should not if I were you. If anyone kissed your hand or mine it would +not only be an epoch in our lives, but also the sign manual of some +ponderous attachment which you, my dear, would carefully weigh, and +approximately value. But do you suppose for one moment that Fay +attaches any importance to such an everyday occurrence!" + +"I see what you are driving at, that Fay is not responsible for her +actions. But she is. She must know when she does things or lets them be +done, that will make others suffer." + +"If you could look into Fay's heart, Bessie, you would find that Fay is +suffering herself and attributing her pain to others. As long as we do +that, as long as we hold the stick by the wrong end, we must inflict +pain in some form or other. Fay is not happy. You cannot look at her +without seeing it." + +"I would not mind so much if it were not for Wentworth," said Bessie +with dreadful courage. "I know it is partly jealousy, but it is not only +jealousy. There are a few crumbs of unselfishness in it. I thought at +first--I reasoned it out with myself and it appeared a logical +conclusion--that father was the ostensible but not the real object of +Wentworth's frequent visits. I took a great interest in his +conversation; it is so lucid, so well informed, so illuminative. I do +not read novels as a rule, but I dipped into a few, studying the love +scenes, and the preliminary approaches to love scenes in order to aid my +inexperience at this juncture. I am sorry to say I fell into the error +that he might possibly reciprocate the growing interest I felt in him, +in spite of the great disparity in age. It was a mistake. I have +suffered for it." + +The two roses of Bessie's cheeks bloomed on as unflinchingly as ever. + +Magdalen's eyes were fixed on her own hands. + +"You would not have suited each other if he had cared for you," she said +after a moment, "for you would not have done him justice when you got to +know him better, any more than you do Fay justice now that you _do_ know +her better. Wentworth is made of words, just as other men are made of +flesh and blood. How would you have kept any respect for him when you +had become tired of words? You are too straightforward, too +sledge-hammer to understand a character like his." + +"In that case Fay ought to suit him," said Bessie grimly. "No one, not +even you, can call her straightforward. But I begin to think, Magdalen, +that you actually wish for the marriage." + +"I had never thought of it as possible on her side until a few minutes +ago, when what you said took me by surprise. Of course I had noticed the +attraction on his side, but it appeared to me he was irresolute and +timid, and it is better to ignore the faint emotions of half-hearted +people. They come to no good. If you repel them they are mortally +offended and withdraw, and if you welcome them they are terrified and +withdraw." + +"I don't think Wentworth intends withdrawing." + +"No. These meetings look as if he had unconsciously drifted with the +current till the rowing back would be somewhat arduous." There was a +moment's silence, in which Magdalen recalled certain lofty sentiments +which Wentworth had aired with suspicious frequency of late. She knew +that when he talked of his consciousness of guidance by a Higher Power +in the important decisions of his life he always meant following the +line of least resistance. In this case the line of least resistance +_might_ tend towards marriage. + +"It never struck me as possible till now," she said aloud, "that Fay +would think seriously of him." + +"I don't suppose she is. She is only keeping her hand in. Don't you +remember how cruel she was to that poor Mr. Bell." + +"I am convinced that she is not keeping her hand in." + +"Then you actually favour the idea of a marriage." Bessie got up and +stalked slowly to the door. "You will help it on?" she said over her +shoulder. + +"No." Magdalen's voice shook a little. "I will do nothing to help it, or +to hinder it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul-- + No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, + But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. + + --D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +If Fay's progress through life could have been drawn with a pencil it +would have resembled the ups and downs, like the teeth of a saw, of a +fever chart. + +To Magdalen it appeared as if Fay could undergo the same feelings with +the same impotent results of remorse or depression a hundred times. They +seemed to find her the same and leave her the same. But nevertheless she +did move, imperceptibly, unconsciously--no, not quite unconsciously. The +sense--common to all weak natures--not of being guided, but of being +pushed was upon her. + +Once again she tried to extricate herself from the pressure of some +mysterious current. There seemed no refuge left in Magdalen. There +seemed very few comfortable people left in the world, to whom a +miserable woman might turn. Only Wentworth. _He did not know._ + +Perhaps Fay would never have turned to him if she had not first confided +in and then shrunk from Magdalen. For the second time in her life she +longed feverishly to get away from home, the home to which only a year +ago she had been so glad to hurry back, when she had been so restlessly +anxious to get away from Italy. Wentworth was beginning to look like a +means of escape. The duke had at one time worn that aspect. Later on +Michael had looked extremely like it for a moment. Now Wentworth was +assuming that aspect in a more solid manner than either of his +predecessors. She was slipping into love with him, half unconsciously, +half with _malice prepense_. She told herself continually that she did +not want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea of +marriage. + +But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflection +of these inward communings. And why did she conceal from Magdalen her +now constant meetings with him? + +Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimate +knowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to work +out quite smoothly. + +Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay's +demeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to his +intentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm. (How he had set +her mind at rest on that occasion he knew best.) It seemed this +exquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance to +respond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances. +He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, on +the theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to how +he, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to feminine +charm; how he, the determined celibate--Wentworth always called himself +a celibate--had been taken captive after all. To judge by the letters +which Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially one +to Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellect +that he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex to +have remained a bachelor--a celibate, I mean--so long. + +We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves. In the composition of +these imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy. + + * * * * * + +In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the +postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in +London hospitals. + +Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and over +again. They were a kind of anodyne. + +On a blowing afternoon in the middle of April she made her way across +the down with her basket to a distant hazel coppice to which she had not +been as yet. + +A fever of unrest possessed her. She had thought when she confessed to +Magdalen that her misery had reached its lowest depths. But it had not +been so. Her wretchedness, momentarily relieved, had since gone a step +deeper, that was all. She had endeavoured to allay her thirst with a cup +of salt water, which had only increased it to the point of agony. + +As she walked a bare tree stretched out its naked arms to waylay her. It +was the very tree under which Michael and she had kissed each other, six +spring-tides ago. She recognised it suddenly, and turned her eyes away, +as if a corpse were hanging in chains from one of its branches. Her +averted eyes fell upon a seagull wheeling against the blue, the +incarnation of freedom and the joy of life. She turned away her eyes +again and hurried on, looking neither to right nor left. + +A light wind went with her, drawing her like a "kind constraining hand." + +She stumbled across the bare shoulder of the down to the wood below. + +Magdalen came by the same way soon afterwards, but not to gather +primroses. Magdalen usually so serene was becoming daily more troubled. +The thought of Michael in prison ground her to the earth. Fay's obvious +wayward misery, which yet seemed to bring her no nearer to repentance, +preyed upon her. She was crushed beneath her own promise of secrecy. +Every day as it passed seemed to cast yet another stone on the heap +under which she lay. + +Could she dare to keep that promise? How much longer could she dare to +keep it? And yet if she broke it, what would breaking it avail? +Certainly not Michael's release. No creature would believe her +unsupported word. She had not even been in Italy at the time. She would +only appear to be mad. The utmost she might achieve would be to cast a +malignant shadow over her sister. Even if Fay herself confessed the +difficulties of obtaining Michael's release after this lapse of time +would be very great. Unless the confession came from her they would be +insuperable. + +As Magdalen walked her strong heart quailed within her. Long ago in her +passionate youth she had met anguish and had vanquished it alone. But +how to bear the burden of another's sin without sharing the sin? How to +help Fay and Michael? Fay had indeed cast her burden upon her. She knew +not how to endure it, she who had endured so much. + +She reached the wood, and entered one of the many aimless paths that +wandered through it. The uneven ground sloped downwards to the south, +and through the manifold branches of the undergrowth of budding hazels +the sea lay deeply blue, far away. The primroses were everywhere among +the trees. A winding side path beckoned to her. She walked a few steps +along it, and came suddenly upon a clearing in the coppice. + +She stood still, dazed. + +The primroses had taken it for their own, had laid tender hold upon that +little space, cleared and forgotten in the heart of the wood. + +Young shoots of hazel and ash pricked up here and there from ivy-grown +stumps, moss gleamed where it could, through the flood of primroses. The +wild green of the mercury, holding its strong shield to the sun, the +violets, and the virgin white of the anemones were drowned in the uneven +waves and billows and shallows of that sea of primroses. They who come +in meekness year by year to roadside hedgerow and homely meadow had come +in power. The meek had inherited the earth. + +The light wind impotently came, and vainly went. Overhead a lark sang +and sang in the blue. But none heeded them. The wind and the song were +but a shadow and an echo. They that are the very core of spring hung +forgotten on her garments' fringe. All the passion of the world was +gathered into the still, upturned faces of the primroses, glowing with a +pale light from within. All the love that ever had been, or could be, +all rapture of aspiration and service and self-surrender were mirrored +there. + + * * * * * + +Magdalen wept for Fay, as once in bygone years she had wept for Everard: +as perhaps some woman of Palestine may have wept when Jesus of Nazareth +passed by, speaking as never man spake, and her lover went with him a +little way and then turned back. + + * * * * * + +"There is no sorrow," said the primroses. "There is neither sorrow nor +sin. You are of one blood with us. You have come through into light, as +we have done, and those others are coming, too. There is no sorrow, only +a little pressure through the brown earth. There is no sin, only a +little waking and stirring in the dark. Why then grieve, oh little +faith! They are all waking and coming. For the Hand that made us made +them. The Whisper that waked us, wakes them. The Sun that draws us, +draws them. The Sun will have us come." + + * * * * * + +Fay had already passed by that way, had picked a few primroses, and had +gone on. _Was she never to be at peace again?_ Was she never to know +what it is to lie down in peace at night, never to know what it is to be +without fear. Her whole soul yearned for peace, as the sick man yearns +for sleep. Andrea had prayed that she might find peace. Magdalen had +told her where peace lay. But all that she had found was despair. + +On her way homewards she came again upon the clearing and stopped short. +The place seemed to have undergone some subtle change. A tall figure +was standing motionless in it. The face was turned away, but Fay +recognised it instantly. As she came close Magdalen turned. For a moment +Fay saw that she did not recognise her, that she was withdrawn into a +great peace and light. + +Then recognition dawned in Magdalen's eyes and with it came a look of +tenderness unspeakable. + +"Fay," she said in a great compassion. "How much longer will you torture +yourself and Michael? How much longer will you keep him in prison?" + +Fay was transfixed. + +Those were the same words that Andrea had said on his deathbed. Those +words were alive, though he was dead. Never to any living creature, not +even to Magdalen, had she repeated them. Yet Magdalen was saying them. +She could not withstand them any longer. The very stones would shriek +them out next. + +She fell at Magdalen's feet with a cry. + +"I will speak," she gasped in mortal terror. "I will speak." And she +clung for very life to her sister's knees, and hid her face in her +gown. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + To-day unbind the captive, + So only are ye unbound. + + --EMERSON. + + +The following afternoon saw Magdalen and Fay driving together to +Lostford, to consult the Bishop as to what steps it would be advisable +to take in the matter of Michael's release. Magdalen felt it would be +well-nigh impossible to go direct to Wentworth, even if he had been at +Barford. But he had been summoned to London the day before on urgent +business. And with Fay even a day's delay might mean a change of mind. +It was essential to act at once. + +But to Magdalen's surprise Fay did not try to draw back. When the +carriage came to the door she got into it. She assented to everything, +was ready to do anything Magdalen told her. She was like one stunned. +She had at last closed with the inevitable. She had found it too strong +for her. + +Did Fay realise how frightfully she had complicated her position by her +own folly? She lay back in her corner of the brougham with her eyes +shut, pallid, silent. Magdalen held her hand, and spoke encouragingly +from time to time. + +You had to be constantly holding Fay's hand, or kissing her, or taking +her in your arms if you were to make her feel that you loved her. The +one light austere touch, the long grave look, that between reserved and +sympathetic natures goes deeper than any caress, were nothing to Fay. + +It was a long drive to Lostford, and to-day it seemed interminable. + +The lonely chalk road seemed to stretch forever across the down. Now and +then a few heavily-matted, fatigued-looking sheep, hustled by +able-bodied lambs, got in the way. The postman, horn on shoulder, passed +them on his way to Priesthope with the papers. + +Once a man on a horse cantered past across the grass at some distance. +Magdalen recognised Wentworth on Conrad. She saw him turn into the +bridle path that led to Priesthope. He had then just returned from +London. + +"He is on his way to see Fay," said Magdalen to herself, "and he is +actually in a hurry. How interested he must be in the ardour of his own +emotions at this moment. He will have a delightful ride, and he can +analyse his feelings of disappointment at not seeing her, on his way +home to tea." + +Magdalen glanced at Fay, but she still lay back with closed eyes. She +had not seen that passing figure. + +Magdalen's mind followed Wentworth. + +"Does she realise the complications that must almost certainly ensue +with Wentworth directly her confession is made? + +"Will her first step towards a truer life, her first action of +reparation estrange him from her?" + + * * * * * + +The Bishop was pacing up and down in the library at Lostford, waiting +for Magdalen and Fay, when the servant brought in the day's papers. He +took them up instantly with the alertness of a man who can only make +time for necessary things by seizing every spare moment. + +"Oh! you two wicked women," he said as he opened the _Times_. "Why are +you late? Why are you late?" + +They were only five minutes late. + +His swift eye travelled from column to column. Suddenly his attention +was arrested. He became absorbed. Then he laid down the paper, and said +below his breath "Thank God." + +At that moment Magdalen and Fay were announced. + +For a second it seemed as if the Bishop had forgotten them. Then he +recollected and went forward to meet them. He knew that only a matter of +supreme urgency could have made Magdalen word her telegram as she had +worded it, and when he caught sight of Fay's face he realised that she +was in jeopardy. + +All other preoccupations fell from him instantly. He welcomed them +gravely, almost in silence. + +The sisters sat down close together on a sofa. Fay's trembling hand put +up her long black veil, and then sought Magdalen's hand, which was ready +for it. + +There was a short silence. Magdalen looked earnestly at her sister. + +Fay's face became suddenly convulsed. + +"Fay is in great trouble," said Magdalen. "She has come to tell you +about it. She has suffered very much." + +"I can see that," said the Bishop. + +"I wish to confess," said Fay in a smothered voice. + +"That is a true instinct," said the Bishop. "God puts it into our hearts +to confess when we are unhappy so that we may be comforted. When we come +to see that we have done less well than we might have done--then we need +comfort." + +Fay looked from him to Magdalen with wide, hardly human eyes, like some +tiny trapped animal between two executioners. + +The Bishop's heart contracted. + +Poor, poor little thing! + +"Would you like to see me alone, my child?" he said, seeing a faint +trembling like that of a butterfly beginning in her. "All you say to me +will be under the seal of confession. It will never pass my lips." + +It was Magdalen's turn to become pale. + +"Shall I go?" she said, looking fixedly at her sister. + +"Yes," said Fay, her eyes on the floor. + +Magdalen went slowly to the door, feeling her way as if half blind. + +"Come back," shrieked Fay suddenly. "Magdalen, come back. I shall never +say it all, I shall keep back part unless you are there to hold me to +it. Come back. Come back." + +Magdalen returned and sat down. The Bishop watched them both in silence. + +"I have confessed once, already," said Fay in a low hurried voice, +"under the promise of silence. Magdalen promised not to say, and I told +her everything, weeks ago. I thought I should feel better then, but it +wasn't any good. It only made it worse." + +"It is often like that," said the Bishop. "We try to do something right +but not in the best way, and just the fact of trying shows us there is +a better way--only harder, so hard we don't know how to bring ourselves +to it. Isn't that what you feel?" + +"Yes." + +"But there is no rest, no peace till we come to it." + +"No," whispered Fay. "Never any rest." + +"That is God's Hand drawing you," said the Bishop, his mind seeming to +embrace and support Fay's tottering soul. "There are things He wants +done, which He needs us to do for Him, which perhaps only we can do for +Him. At first we don't understand that, and we are so ignorant and +foolish that we resist the pressure of His Hand. Then we suffer." + +Fay shivered. + +"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, the +only real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. And +it is no manner of use to resist Him, for God is stronger than we are, +and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, +ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don't understand that He can't +do without us, and that we can't do without Him. And at last, when we +feel God's need of us, then it becomes possible"--the Bishop paused--"to +say the difficult word, to do the difficult deed." + +Did she understand? Who shall say! Sometimes it seems as if no actual +word reaches us that Love would fain say to our unrest and misery. But +our troubled hearts are nevertheless conscious by some other channel, +some medium more subtle than thought and speech, that Love and Peace +have drawn very near to us. It is only reflected dimly through dear +human faces that some of us can catch a glimpse of "the light that +lighteth every man that cometh into the world." + +The small tortured face relaxed between the two calm ones. The sunny +room was quite still. Fear shrank to a shadow. + +Suddenly the fire drew itself together with a little encouraging sound. + +Fay started slightly, looked at it, and began to speak rapidly in a low +clear voice. + +As Magdalen listened she prayed with intensity that Fay might really +tell the Bishop the whole story, as she had told it to herself, that +stormy night in March, half a life-time ago. + +The little voice went on and on. It faltered, sank, and then struggled +up again. One point after another was reached in safety, was passed. +Nothing that Fay had already admitted was left out. Gradually, as +Magdalen listened, a faint shame laid hold of her. Her whole life had +for the time centred in one passionate overwhelming desire that Fay +should make to the Bishop as full a confession as she had made to +herself. Now she realised that Fay was saying even more than she had +done on that occasion, was excusing herself less, was blaming others +less. + +Fay herself saw no discrepancy between her first and second account of +the tragedy. But then she never did see discrepancies. Her mind had +shifted a little towards the subject, that was all. This mysterious +unconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who had +felt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm had +had no effect on Fay's mind. She had never seen till now a vestige of +an effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that was +all. + +Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, if +made to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regenerating +repentance is entirely powerless with a different class of mind. But +although an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being, +and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless the +weaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortable +appeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressing +to its _amour propre_ than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay had +retained in her mind Magdalen's vivid description of the love her +husband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon the +remembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weeks +when she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrance +had worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towards +her husband, drawing her towards compassion on Michael. + +Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who had +blamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them no +longer. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the real +murderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so far +aroused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind. + +Fay had passed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen's +anxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardily +seen, only partially realised, had helped her at last. + +The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent forward, his eyes on +the floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fay +reached Michael's arrest, but he quickly recovered himself. + +The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end. +The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison. + +"I have kept him there two years," said Fay, and was silent. + +How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband's dying words. What +passionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them. +Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resist +them, and the sting had gone clean out of them. + +"Two years," said the Bishop. "Two years. Fast bound in misery and iron. +You in misery and he only in iron. You two poor children." + +His strong face worked, and for a moment he shaded it with his hand. + +Then he looked keenly at Fay. + +"And you have come to me to ask me to advise you how to set Michael and +yourself free?" + +"Yes," whispered Fay. + +"It was time to come." + +There was a short silence. + +"And you understand, my dear, dear child, that you can only rescue +Michael by taking heavy blame upon yourself, blame first of all for +having a clandestine meeting with him, and then blame for letting him +sacrifice himself for your good name, and lastly blame for keeping an +innocent man in prison so long." + +Fay shook like a leaf. + +The Bishop took her lifeless hands in his, and held them. He made her +meet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a glint +of tears in them. + +"You are willing to bear the cross, and endure the shame?" he said. + +Two large tears gathered in Fay's wide eyes, and rolled down her +bloodless cheeks. + +You could not look at her, and think that the poor thing was willing to +endure anything, capable of enduring anything. + +The Bishop looked at her, through her. + +"Or would you rather go home and wait in misery a little longer, and +keep him in his cell a little longer: another week--another +month--another _year_! You know best how much longer you can wait." + +Silence. + +"And Michael can wait, too." + +"Michael must come out," said Fay, with a sob. "He was always good to +me." + +"Thank God," said the Bishop, and he rose abruptly and went to the +window. + +Magdalen and Fay did not move. They leaned a little closer together. +Fay's timid eyes sought her sister's like those of a child which has +repeated its lesson, and looks to its teacher to see if it has done +well. + +Magdalen kissed her on the eyes. + +"I have said everything, haven't I?" + +"Everything." + +"I wish I was dead." + +Magdalen had no voice to answer with. + +The Bishop came back, and sat down opposite them. + +"Fay," he said, "as long as you live you will be thankful that you came +to me to-day, that you were willing to make atonement by this great act +of reparation. The comfort of that remembrance will sink deep into your +troubled heart, and will heal its wounds. But the sacrifice is not to be +exacted of you. I had to ask if you were willing to make it. But there +is no longer any necessity for you to make it. Do you understand?" + +The Bishop spoke slowly. The two women looked at him with dilated eyes. + +"Is Michael dead?" said Magdalen. + +"No. Michael is, I believe, well. The murderer of the Marchese di +Maltagliala has confessed. It is in to-day's papers. The Marchese was +murdered by his wife. It was quite sudden and unpremeditated, the work +of an instant of terror. She has made a full confession on her deathbed. +It exonerates Michael entirely. She implores his forgiveness for her +long silence." + +The Bishop's last words reached Fay from a great distance. The room with +its many books, and the tall mullioned window with the bare elm branches +across it, were all turning gently together in a spreading dimness. The +only thing that remained fixed was Magdalen's shoulder, and even that +shook a little. Fay leaned her face against it, and let all the rest go. +The window with its tree quivered for a moment across the dark and then +flickered out. The consciousness of tender hands and voices lingered a +moment longer and then vanished too. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + All the heavy days are over.--W. B. YEATS. + + +It was very late when Magdalen and Fay reached home. + +Bessie was on the lookout for them, and met them in the hall. + +"Wentworth has been here," she said. "He arrived about an hour after you +had started. As you were both out he asked to see me. He was greatly +excited. He had come to tell us that Michael's innocence has suddenly +been proved. He goes to Italy to-morrow. He said he would call here on +his way to the station a little before eleven, to tell you both about +it." + +And punctually at a few minutes to eleven Wentworth appeared, and was +ushered into the little white morning-room where Fay was waiting for +him. + +The room was full of sunshine. The soft air came gently in, bringing +with it a breath of primroses. + +Delight was in the room, tremulous, shining in Fay's eyes. Delight was +in the whole atmosphere. An enormous boundless relief overflowed +everything. + +Wentworth was excited, softened, swept out of himself. + +He held her soft hand in his. He tried to speak, but he could not. His +eyes filled with tears. He was ashamed. + +And when he looked up he saw Fay's eyes were wet, too. His heart went +out to her. She was rejoicing with him. He pulled himself together, and +told her what little he knew; not much more than the bare facts +contained in the papers. It was now known by the Marchesa's confession +that the murder took place inside the Colle Alto gardens. Everyone, +including the police, had believed that the murder took place in the +road, and that the assassin took advantage of the accident of the garden +door being unlocked to drag the body into the garden, and hide it there. +But the Marchesa stated that she stabbed her husband in the garden +suddenly without premeditation, but with intent to kill him, because of +his determination to marry their seventeen year old daughter to a friend +of his, a _roué_, the old Duke of Castelfranco, who drank himself to +death soon afterwards. + +The Marchesa stated that she dragged the body behind a shrub, walked +back through the garden to the house with the front of her gown covered +with blood without being noticed, found no attendant in the cloak room, +wrapped herself in a long cloak not belonging to her, told her servants +that the Marchese would follow later, and drove home, partially burned +her gown and the cloak as if by accident, and then awaited events. The +first news she received of her husband's death next morning was +accompanied by the amazing information that Michael had confessed to the +murder. + +The Marchesa in her tardy confession stated that she believed Michael, +who had always shown her great sympathy, must have actually witnessed +the crime, and out of a chivalrous impulse towards her, had immediately +taken the guilt of it upon himself. + +"That accounts for his extraordinary silence," said Wentworth, "not +only to others, but to myself. He never would say a word pro or con, +even when I told him it was no use trying to persuade me he was guilty. +The mystery is cleared up at last. I shall reach Milan to-night, and I +shall see him to-morrow. And I suppose we may be able to start home the +following day. I say these things, but I don't believe them. I can't +believe them. It all seems to me like some wonderful dream. And you are +like a person in a dream, too, as if a fairy wand had passed over you?" + +As he spoke Wentworth suddenly realised that this marvellous, radiant +transformation which he beheld in Fay, which seemed to flow even to the +edges of her lilac gown, was happiness, and that he had never seen her +happy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful, +listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released from +some great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Her +beauty had taken on a new magic. + +There is no joy so rapturous, so perfect as the moment of relief from +pain. There was, perhaps, no creature in the world on this particular +April morning whose happiness approached Fay's. She raised her white +eyelids and smiled at Wentworth. + +His well-conducted heart nudged him suddenly like a vulgar, jocular +friend. + +"Is all your gladness for Michael?" he said boldly. "Have you none to +spare for me?" + +He was in for it. + +"You must forgive me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate," he said, +"but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go." He rose and came +towards her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felt +himself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You have +known for a long time that I love you," he said. "Won't you tell me that +you love me a little, too?" + +A delightful sense of liberty and newness of life were flowing in +regenerating waves over Fay's spirit. + +Wentworth seemed a part of this all-pervading joyousness and freedom. +She made a little half unconscious movement towards him, and in a +moment, that intrepid man, that dauntless athlete of the emotions had +taken her in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the + rest no longer in his power.--JEAN PAUL. + + +The Marchesa's confession made a great and immediate sensation +throughout Italy. Everyone who had known Michael, and a great many who +had not, proclaimed with one consent that his innocence was no news to +them. The possibility that he might be shielding someone had been +discussed at the time of the trial, but had found no shred of +confirmation. + +And now the mystery was solved at last, and in the most romantic manner. +Michael had come out with flying colours. + +To many minds the romance was enhanced by the fact that the Marchesa was +a gentle, middle-aged, grey-haired woman in no way attractive, whose +whole interest in life centred in her daughter. Michael's transcendent +act of chivalry towards the Marchesa, dramatically acknowledged by her +at last upon her deathbed, appealed even to the most unimaginative +natures. He became the hero of the hour. Telegrams of congratulation +poured in from every quarter. Letters snowed in on him. Even before +Wentworth could reach him enthusiastic strangers had tried to force +their way into his cell. Determined young reporters came out in +gondolas, and it was all the warders and the doctor could do to protect +Michael from invasion. + +He sat apparently stunned in his cell, the only person unmoved. Every +servant and warder in that dreary establishment had come to offer him +their congratulations. The other convicts had sent messages. The man in +the next cell, slowly dying of gangrene, had crawled from his pallet to +beat a tattoo on the wall. The doctor was beside himself with joy. + +"You must keep calm," he kept saying in wild excitement. "Your brother +will be here to-morrow morning. I implore you to be calm." + +And he brought Michael his best pipe, and some of his most cherished +tobacco, and a weird suit of black clothes, and urged him to spend the +evening with him in his own sitting-room. + +But Michael shook his head. He had no hatred of his striped blouse. He +was accustomed to it. He said he would prefer to await his brother's +arrival in his cell. He was accustomed to that, too. He felt as if he +could not bear to have everything torn from him at once, as if he should +be lost if all his landmarks were changed. He sat hour by hour, smoking, +and every now and then reading Wentworth's telegram. + +He tried to realise it. He said to himself over and over again: "I am +free. I am going away. Wentworth is coming to take me home." But it was +no good. His mind would not take hold. + +He looked for the twentieth time at Wentworth's telegram. Wentworth was +hurrying towards him at this moment, would be travelling all night, +would reach him in the morning. Dear, dear Wenty, he would be happy +again now. + +Michael groaned. + +"It's no kind of use. I _can't_ believe it." + +He tried to think of Fay. He should see _her_ soon, touch her hand, hear +her voice. Poor little darling! She had not the courage of a mouse. +Perhaps she was a little glad at his release. Yes. No doubt she had been +pleased to hear it. He hoped she would not feel shy of him at seeing him +again. He hoped she would not thank him. + +The door, no longer locked, was suddenly opened, and the head warder +deferentially ushered in a visitor. + +A tall, dark man in a tri-coloured sash came in, and the warder +withdrew. + +The man bowed and looked with fixity at Michael, who stared back at him, +dazed and confused. Where had he seen that face before? + +Ah! _He remembered!_ + +"I perceive that you have not forgotten me," said the Delegato. "It was +I who arrested you. It was to me that you confessed to the murder of the +Marchese di Maltagliala." + +"I remember." + +"I never was able to reach any certainty that you were really guilty," +continued the Delegato. "I was not even convinced that you had had a +quarrel with the Marchese." + +"I had no quarrel with him." + +"I knew that. That you might be shielding someone occurred forcibly to +my mind. _But who?_" + +Michael looked steadily at the official. + +"And there was blood upon your hand and sleeve when you confessed." + +"There was." + +"It was not the Marchese's blood," said the Delegato, drawing a sallow +finger across a blue chin. "It remained a mystery. I will own that it +had not crossed my mind that that fragile and timid lady had killed her +husband, and that as she at last confesses you were shielding her." The +Delegato looked piercingly at Michael. + +Michael was silent. + +"You have always been silent. Is not the moment come to speak?" + +Michael shook his head. + +The Delegato bowed. + +"I came to ask you to discuss the affair openly," he said, "to relieve +my perplexity as a matter of courtesy. But you will not speak. Then I +will speak instead. When first I read the Marchesa's confession it came +into my mind that the Marchesa, who I believe was your friend, might for +some reason, possibly the sentimental devotion of an older woman for a +young man--such things have been--that she _might_ have confessed on her +deathbed to a crime which she had not committed in order to save you +from--_this_"--he touched the wall of the cell. "I doubted that she +really murdered her husband. _But she did._ I sought out the maid who +had been with her when the Marchese died, and she, before the confession +was published, informed me that she had not undressed the Marchesa on +her return from the Colle Alto party. And that next morning part of the +cloak which was not hers, and part of her gown were found to be burnt as +stated in her confession. It was indeed necessary to burn them. The +Marchesa murdered the Marchese." + +There was a long silence. + +"I cannot tell whether you witnessed the crime or not. At first I +thought the blood on your hands and clothes might have come from helping +her to drag the body into the garden. But it was not so. At the time I +attached a great importance to the garden door being unlocked. Too +great. It led me astray. The gardener, in spite of his oath that he had +locked it, had probably left it unlocked. We now know from the Marchesa +that the murder took place within the garden, and the locking and +unlocking of the door was an accident which looked like a clue.... But, +if you witnessed the murder, and wished to retire without raising an +alarm, or denouncing that unhappy lady, I ask myself why did you not +open the garden door from within--the key was in the lock, I saw it--and +pass out on to the high road. Why did you, instead, try so hard to +escape over the wall behind the ilexes that you tore your hands on the +cut glass on the top? I found the place next day. There was blood on it. +When you were struggling to escape over that wall you were not anxious +to take the Marchesa's guilt upon yourself. When you were hiding behind +the screen in the Duchess' apartment you were not--_at that +moment_--very determined to shield the Marchesa from the consequences of +her deed. All Italy is ringing with your quixotic, your chivalrous, your +superb action. _Nevertheless_, if I had quitted the Duchess' apartment, +if my natural and trained acuteness had not made one last effort +respecting the screen, _I do not think you would have followed me into +the garden to denounce yourself_." + +The Delegato paused. + +Michael was quite unmoved. Everything reached him dimly as through a +mist. He partly saw the difficulty in the official's mind, but it did +not interest him. He was cleared. That was enough. + +"In two years much is forgotten," said the Delegato, sententiously, "and +it is, perhaps, I alone who recall the more minute details of the case, +because I was present and my interest was overwhelming. I have not +spoken of this to anyone but yourself. I shall not speak of it again. I +have taken a journey to discuss it with you because I had hoped you +would understand my professional interest in unravelling that which +remains still obscure, a mystery, which is daily becoming to me a +greater mystery than before the Marchesa's confession. You have it in +your power to gratify my natural desire for elucidation by an +explanation which can no longer injure you in any way. You are innocent. +It is proved. But even now you will not speak. You prefer to preserve +your attitude of silence to the end. Good! I will intrude on you no +longer. I offer you my congratulations. I deplore your inevitable +imprisonment. I withdraw." + +The Delegato bowed yet again and went to the door. + +"That of which you will not speak was known to your friend the Duke of +Colle Alto," he said. "_The Duke knew._" + +"The Duke is dead," said Michael. + +"I am aware of that," said the Delegato, frigidly. He bowed for the last +time, and left the cell, gently closing the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + Est-ce donc une monnaie que votre amour, pour qu'il + puisse passer ainsi de main en main jusqu'à la mort? Non, + ce n'est pas même une monnaie; car la plus mince pièce d'or + vaut mieux que vous, et dans quelques mains qu'elle passe + elle garde son effigée.--A. DE MUSSET. + + +Wentworth came in the morning, tremulous, eager, holding Michael by the +shoulders, as he used to do when Michael was a small boy, as he had +never done since. + +The brothers looked long at each other with locked hands, water in their +eyes. + +"Wenty," said Michael at last, with his grave smile. + +And that was all. + +They sat down together in silence on the little bed. Wentworth tried to +speak once or twice, but it was no use. + +"Fay cried with joy at the news," he said at last, looking with shy +hungry love at his brother. "If you could have seen her radiant face. I +never saw any creature so changed, so transfigured." + +A faint flush rose to Michael's face. + +"I know how she grieved over your imprisonment. She is the most +tender-hearted woman in the world. I never knew anyone so sympathetic." +Wentworth hesitated. Then he added tremulously. "My great grief has been +her grief, too. She helped me to bear it." + +"I did not know she had--minded so much," said Michael, almost +inaudibly. + +"You might have guessed it," said Wentworth, "knowing her to be what she +is. She has always been so pale and sad, as if bowed down by trouble. +But directly the news came that you were cleared--I went to see her at +once--if you could only have seen her face, her tears of joy, her +delight." + +"Did she send a message, or a note? Just a line. Perhaps you have a +letter with you." + +"No, she did not write," said Wentworth, self conscious, but beaming. +"There was not time. There was time for nothing. It was all such a rush. +I only saw her on my way to the station. But I know she won't mind my +telling you, Michael--you ought to know first of anyone--it all seems so +wonderful. But I daresay--no, I see you have guessed it--I daresay I +have said things in my letters that showed you it was coming--it was the +grief about you that first drew us together. Fay and I are going to be +married." + +Michael put his hand to his head. + +"Everything has come at once," said Wentworth. "I have you again. And I +have her. I've nothing left to wish for." + + * * * * * + +Michael did not leave the prison in the gondola which had brought +Wentworth, and which was waiting to take them both away. The excitement +of his brother's arrival had proved too great, and he fell from one +fainting fit into another. Wentworth was greatly alarmed, but the doctor +was reassuring and cheerful. He said that Michael had borne the news +with almost unnatural calmness, but that the shock must have been great, +and a breakdown was to be expected. He laughed at Wentworth's anxiety +even while he ministered to Michael, and assured him that no one in his +experience had died of joy. + +But later in the evening when Wentworth, somewhat pacified, had returned +to Venice for the night, the doctor felt yet again for the twentieth +time that the young Englishman baffled him. + +It seemed to him that he was actually relieved when the kind, awkward, +tender elder brother had reluctantly taken his departure, promising to +come back early in the morning. + +"Do not distress yourself, you will be quite well enough to leave +to-morrow," the doctor said to him many times. "I expected this +momentary collapse. It is nothing." + +Michael's eyes dwelt on the kind face and then closed. There was that in +them which the doctor could not fathom. + +He took the food that was pressed on him, and then turned his face to +the wall, and made as if he slept. + +And the walls bent over him, and whispered to him, "Stay with us. We are +not so cruel as the world outside." + +And that night the dying convict in the next cell, nearly as close on +freedom as Michael, heard all through the night a low sound of strangled +anguish that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth +anew, from dark to dawn. + +The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm and +wan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately at +him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + Les caractères faibles ne montrent de la décision que + quand il s'agit de faire un sottise.--DANIEL DARC. + + +A week or two after the news of Michael's proved innocence had convulsed +Hampshire, and before Michael and Wentworth had returned to Barford, +Aunt Aggie might have been seen on a fine May afternoon walking slowly +towards "The Towers." She had let her cottage at Saundersfoot for an +unusually long period, and was marking time with the Blores. Whatever +Aunt Mary's faults might be she was always ready to help her sister in +this practical manner, when Aunt Aggie was anxious to add to the small, +feebly frittered away income, on which her muddled, impecunious +existence depended. + +In spite of the most pertinent remarks to the contrary from her sister, +Aunt Aggie believed herself to be an unsurpassed manager of restricted +means. She constantly advised young married couples as to the judicious +expenditure of money, and pressed on Magdalen the necessity of +retrenching in exasperating directions, namely, where a minute economy +entailed a colossal inconvenience. + +In her imagination she saw herself continually consulted, depended on, +strenuously implored to give her opinion on matters of the utmost +delicacy, fervently blessed for her powerful spiritual assistance of +souls in jeopardy, and always gracefully attributing the marvellous +results of her intervention to a Higher Power of which she was but the +unworthy channel. + +These imaginary scenes were the unfailing solace of Aunt Aggie's +somewhat colourless life, and the consciousness of them in the +background gave her a certain meek and even patient self-importance, the +basis of which was hidden from Lady Blore. + +Aunt Aggie had also another perennial source of chastened happiness in +recalling the romance of her youth, those halcyon days before the +Archdeacon had been unsuccessfully harpooned and put to flight by Lady +Blore. + +Her clerical love affair perfumed her conversation, as a knife which has +once associated with an onion inevitably reveals, even in estrangement, +that bygone intimacy. + +No one could breathe the word Margate without Aunt Aggie remarking that +she had had a dear friend who had evinced a great partiality for +Margate. Were the clergy mentioned in her presence with the scant +respect with which the ministry and other secular bodies have to put up, +Aunt Aggie vibrated with indignation. _She_ had known men of the highest +talents holding preferment in the Church. + +But in her imagination her affair of the heart had passed beyond +reminiscence. Far from being buried in the past it remained the chief +factor in her life, colouring and shaping the whole of her future. + +Aunt Aggie could at any moment dip into a kind of sequel to that early +history. In the sequel the Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to die; +but, owing to circumstances which Aunt Aggie had not yet thoroughly +worked out, that unhappy lady was first to undergo tortures in some +remote locality, nursed devotedly--poor thing--by Aunt Aggie. The result +of her ministrations was never in doubt from the first. The Archdeacon's +wife was, of course, to succumb, calling down blessings on the devoted +stranger at her bedside, with the enigmatical smile which spoke of some +sacred sorrow. + +Aunt Aggie had shed many delicious tears over that deathbed scene, and +the chastened grief of the saintly Archdeacon, quite overshadowed by his +boundless gratitude to herself. At this crisis his overwhelming +desolation wrung from him--with gross disloyalty to the newly dead--a +few disjointed sentences which revealed only too clearly how unsuited to +him his wife had been, how little she had understood him, how lonely his +wedded life had been. She had evidently been one of those tall thin +maypoles of women who have but little tenderness in them. + +Aunt Aggie, after giving the children a sample of what a real mother +could be, was to retire to her little home at Saundersfoot. Here the +real joy of the situation was to begin. + +After a decent interval the Archdeacon was to be constantly visiting +Saundersfoot, was to be observed visiting Aunt Aggie at Saundersfoot, +singling her out from among the numerous spinsters of that +watering-place to make her the object of reverent attentions. Others +younger and better looking than Aunt Aggie--especially Miss Barnett, the +doctor's sister, who, it was whispered, wore an artificial cushion from +Douglas's under her hair--were to set their caps or cushions at the +dignified Archdeacon, seen pacing the sands. But it was all of no avail. +He had eyes for no one but the gentle, retiring Miss Bellairs. Aunt +Aggie was to become the object of burning jealousy and detraction on the +part of the female--that is to say almost the whole--population of +Saundersfoot. But she herself, while envious calumny raged round her, +went on her way calm and grave as ever. + +But the proposal long warded off could not be parried forever. The +frenzied passion of the Archdeacon was at last not to be restrained. +Aunt Aggie had in her mind a set of proposals, all good, out of which it +became harder and harder as time went on to select one. But her answer +was ever the same, a pained but firm refusal. She was happy in her lot. +She was greatly needed where she was. She did not wish to marry. She was +no longer young. This last reason was an enormous concession to realism +on Aunt Aggie's part. + +Then came the cream of the whole story. The Archdeacon was to pine +secretly. His work was to be neglected. He was to be threatened with a +nervous breakdown. He was to confide his sorrow to the paternal bosom of +his Bishop. When Aunt Aggie was in her normal state it was the Bishop in +whom the Archdeacon was to confide. But sometimes in the evenings after +a glass of cowslip wine, her imagination took a bolder flight. The +Archbishop himself was to be the confidant of the distracted cleric. +This presented no real difficulty after the first moment, for the +Archbishop was in the flower of his age--the Archdeacon's age--and +might easily have been at school with him. Aunt Aggie had once seen +Lambeth from a cab window as she passed over Westminster Bridge. Under +that historic tower she heard the first subject of the King urge his +brother prelate to take heart, promising assistance. + +We will pass over Aunt Aggie's amazed reception of a cordial invitation +to stay at Lambeth, her hesitating acceptance, her arrival, the +magnificent banquet, crowded with ministers and bishops, the fact that +the Archbishop himself singled her out as the object of courtly though +somewhat anxious attentions. And then after dinner Aunt Aggie, in her +plum-coloured satin, was to be unconsciously but skilfully withdrawn +from the glittering throng by the Archbishop. And in his study he was to +make a great, a fervent appeal to her. Aunt Aggie had bought a +photograph of him in order to deaden the shock of this moment. But +nevertheless whenever she reached this point she was always really +frightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask her +with tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify the +labours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfish +predilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powers +of a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowing +colours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spite +of her marvellous self-control to course down her cheek. The eye of an +Archbishop misses nothing. With an ejaculation of profound relief he +beckons to a distant figure which appears in a doorway. The Archdeacon +in his evening gaiters rushes in. Aunt Aggie gives way! + +After this final feat of the imagination Aunt Aggie generally felt so +worn out by emotion that food was absolutely necessary to her. + +On this occasion she sat down quivering on a heap of stones by the +roadside, and drew forth a biscuit which she had secreted at luncheon at +the Vicarage an hour before. It must be owned that she was fond of food, +though not in the same way that most of us are addicted to it. She liked +eating buns out of paper bags at odd moments in the open air, and +nibbling a sponge cake half forgotten and suddenly found in a drawer +with her handkerchiefs. But in justice to her it ought to be added that +she seemed only to care for the kind of provender which yielded the +largest increment in the way of crumbs. + +As she sat and nibbled an uneasy recollection stole across her mind. + +This recollection was becoming more disconcerting day by day. And yet +she had acted for the best. That fact did not insure to her immunity +from blame on the part of that awful personage, her sister Mary. Good +intentions had never yet received their due as extenuating circumstances +in Lady Blore's sweeping judgments. + +If a certain secret chivalrous action of Aunt Aggie's "turned out +wrong," she knew well the intonation in which Lady Blore would ask her +why she had been such a fool. Nevertheless she, Aunt Aggie, had only +done with consummate tact what Mary herself had contemplated doing in +her rough way, and had been persuaded not to do. + +Some weeks ago Aunt Aggie had concocted in secret, recopied about twenty +times, and had finally despatched a letter to Lord Lossiemouth anent +Magdalen. It had been the boldest action of her life. At first, even +after she had seen that she was the only person able to deal adequately +with so delicate a matter, she had feared that she would not have the +strength to perform her mission. But strength had apparently been lent +to her for the occasion. The letter had actually been posted. + +The moment it was irrevocably gone Aunt Aggie fell into a panic. +Supposing it failed in its object, and that Algernon or Mary discovered +what she had done. She could not even face such a possibility. But then, +supposing on the other hand that her missive united two loving, +estranged hearts, and that dear Magdalen owed her happiness--and a +titled happiness--to her. Then Algernon and Mary would be forced to +admit that she had shown a courage and devotion greater than theirs. "We +only talked, you acted," they would both say, and she would thenceforth +be recognised in her true light, as an incomparable counsellor, and a +judicious, far-seeing friend. + +But three weeks had elapsed since Aunt Aggie, stealing out alone, had +dropped that momentous letter into the village post-box. Nothing had +happened. She had not even received an answer. She was becoming +frightened and anxious. _Was he secretly married?_ She wished she had +thought of that possibility before she posted the letter. + +Many simple-minded men of disengaged affections, cheerfully pursuing +their virtuous avocations, would be thunderstruck if they knew the dark +suspicions harboured against them in spinster bosoms, that they are +concealing some discreditable matrimonial secret, which alone can +account for their--well--their _extraordinary_ behaviour in not coming +forward! + +It has actually been said that real life is not always like a novel. +This feebly false assertion was disproved forever in Aunt Aggie's mind +by the sight of a dog-cart coming rapidly toward her from the direction +of Lostford. She glanced indifferently at it as it approached, and then +her pale eyes became glued to it. In the dog-cart sat Everard Constable, +now Lord Lossiemouth. She had not seen him for fifteen years, but +nevertheless she recognised him instantly. There was no doubt it was he: +thickened and coarsened, but still he. He whirled past leaning back in +his seat, looking neither to right nor left. + +Aunt Aggie's heart gave a thump that nearly upset her equilibrium. The +biscuit dropped onto the road, with a general upheaval of crumbs from +all parts of her agitated person. + +Lord Lossiemouth! + +Going in the direction of Priesthope! + +Her letter! + +She nearly swooned with joy and pride. + +Now Mary and Algernon, now everyone would believe in her. + +She raised herself from the heap of stones and with trembling legs +hurried towards "The Towers." She must tell Mary at once. + +She found Lady Blore seated at her writing-table in the drawing-room, +which was choked by the eastern and Japanese impedimenta, the draperies, +the krises, the metal bowls, the ivory boxes, which an Indian career +seems so inevitably to entail. Sir John had brought back crates of the +kind of foreign _bric-à -brac_ cheap imitations of which throng London +shop windows. The little entrance hall was stuffy with skins. Horned +skulls garnished the walls, pleading silently for decent burial. Even +the rugs had once been bears. + +Aunt Mary was bored with her drawing-room, which looked like a stall at +a bazaar, but, to her credit be it said, that she had never made any +change in it, except to remove a brass idol from the writing-table, at +which she was at this moment sitting. + +By one of those sudden instincts which make people like Aunt Aggie the +despair of those with whom they live, she instantaneously conceived the +idea (for no reason except that she was thinking of her own letter) that +her sister was at that moment writing to Lord Lossiemouth. + +She "had a feeling" that this was the case. The feeling became in a +second a rooted conviction. The butler came in, arranged an +uncomfortable Indian table, placed a brass tray with tea things on it +before Lady Blore, and asked if there were any more letters for the +post. Aunt Mary was in the act of giving him one when Aunt Aggie +intervened. + +"Don't," she said in wild agitation, clasping her hands. "Mary, I beg of +you, I conjure you not to post that letter." + +"Why not? I have resolved to give him another chance." + +"Keep it back one post, I implore you. I have a reason." + +Aunt Mary looked attentively at her sister, and took back the letter. +It was not like her to give way. She seemed less overbearing than usual. + +"Well? Why not employ him again?" she said wearily. "The Irish butter is +the cheapest after all. Why do you make such a point of my leaving him." + +Aunt Aggie was entirely nonplussed. A thousand similar experiences had +never lessened the shock of the discrepancy between what she expected +her sister to say, and what she actually said. + +"I thought, I thought," she stammered, "I felt sure that, I see now I +was wrong, but I had a conviction that that letter--you see I knew you +were thinking of writing--was to, was in short to Lord Lossiemouth." + +Aunt Mary's face became magenta colour. + +"To Lord Lossiemouth! Why should you think I was writing to him?" + +"Well, I could not help knowing--don't you remember how you discussed +the subject with me and dear Magdalen some weeks ago?--that the subject +of a judicious and dignified letter was in your mind." + +"I was careful not to mention the subject to Magdalen in your presence. +I see now that you must have listened outside the door." + +Aunt Aggie experienced a second shock. How did Mary always spy out these +things? + +"I can't think," continued Lady Blore, "how you can lower yourself to +eavesdrop in the way you do; and if you must do these underhand actions, +why you don't conceal them better. When you read a private letter of +mine the other day, because I inadvertently left it for a moment on my +writing-table----" + +"You always say you lock up your private letters, you do, indeed, Mary. +_Be_ fair. I could not _tell_ it was private." + +"You would have been wiser not to have alluded next day to its contents. +If you had not done so I might not have known you had read it." + +Aunt Aggie burst into tears. + +"The truth is I am not secretive like you, Mary," she said between her +sobs. "It is as natural to me to be open and trustful with those I love +as it is for you to be the reverse. Whatever I do you think wrong. But +perhaps some day--and that before long--you will be forced to admit----" + +At this moment the drawing-room door opened and Colonel Bellairs came +in. He often came to tea at "The Towers," though the meeting seldom +passed off without a sharp brush with Lady Blore. + +"Draw up that chair, Algernon," said that lady, with grim but instant +cordiality. "The tea will be ready in a moment." + +Colonel Bellairs looked more floridly handsome than usual. He was +evidently in a state of supreme self-satisfaction. + +"Fine day," he said, "for the time of year." + +At this moment a small parchment face, and bent figure leaning on a +stick, might have been seen peering in through the closed windows. Sir +John looked dispassionately at the family group, and shook his head. +Then he hobbled back to his chair under the cedar. Tea was evidently a +meal to be dispensed with this afternoon. + +"I have news for you," said Colonel Bellairs, expanding his chest. + +Lady Blore held the tea-pot suspended. + +"Everard Constable--Lossiemouth, I should say--is at this moment sitting +in the drawing-room at Priesthope, alone with Magdalen." + +Colonel Bellairs was not disappointed in the effect of his words on his +audience. + +Aunt Aggie trembled and looked proudly guilty. Lady Blore put down the +tea-pot suddenly, and said, "Thank God!" + +Aunt Aggie, her mouth open to speak, began to choke. She looked +piteously from her brother to her sister, struggling in vain to +articulate. It was too cruel that she should be bereft of speech at this +supreme moment. + +Lady Blore turned putty pale and magenta colour alternately. A great +relief softened her hard face. There were actually tears in her eyes. +Then she said majestically, but with a tremor in her metallic voice: + +"I am not surprised." + +"It is my doing," shrieked Aunt Aggie, in the strangled squeak in which +we always explain that it is "only a crumb" gone wrong. And she relapsed +into a fresh spasm. + +Lady Blore sternly bade her be silent. Colonel Bellairs was slightly +annoyed. + +"It is no use, Mary, your saying you are not surprised, for you are," he +said judicially, "and really," relapsing into complacency, "so am I in a +way. It is fifteen years since I forbade Everard the house. I fear that +I was unduly harsh. I dismissed him, so it was for me to recall him. Now +that the cat is out of the bag I don't mind telling you that I wrote to +him a few weeks ago." + +"You--wrote--to--him!" said Aunt Mary in great agitation. "Algernon, you +sent me word by Magdalen that you refused to meddle in the matter." + +"I daresay I did. I may not have liked the tone you took about it, Mary. +You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you that +I was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after mature +consideration--I turned the matter over in my mind--I was not the least +influenced by your long-winded epistle--that in fact rather put me off +than otherwise--still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforward +letter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if his +feelings were unchanged--mark that--as I had reason to believe +Magdalen's were--he was at liberty to come to Priesthope and resume +cordial relations with us all. You observe that I only asked him to come +if his feelings were unchanged. _He is there now._" + +It would be impossible to describe the varying emotions which devastated +Lady Blore, as her brother made his announcement. Her hands trembled so +much that she was obliged to give up any pretence of holding her cup. It +chattered against its saucer. + +"When did you write?" she asked at last. + +"About three weeks ago." + +Aunt Mary seemed to make a mental calculation. + +"It is my doing. I wrote a month ago," gasped Aunt Aggie. "Algernon, you +must not take the credit of it. I waited till you and Mary had decided +not to write--you know, Mary, you told Magdalen you would not--and +then--and then--I could not stand by and see that dear child's happiness +slip away for want of one bold word, one brave friend to say for her +what she could not say for herself,--I have seen so many lives wrecked +for want of a sympathetic hand to draw two severed hearts +together,--that I wrote. I wrote a month ago. A week before you did." + +"I might have known you would do some folly," said Colonel Bellairs with +contempt. "I am glad this did not come to my ears earlier, or I should +have been very angry. It was most unsuitable, most undignified, that you +and I should both write. But," it was evidently impossible for him to be +seriously annoyed by anything on this particular afternoon, "all's well +that ends well. We will say no more about it, Aggie. Don't cry. You +can't help being a fool. But don't do anything of that kind, or of any +kind again. I might not be so easy going next time." + +Lady Blore drank down a large cup of tea. Her black silk bosom heaved. +Contrary to all precedent she did not turn on her quaking sister. + +"Where are Fay and Bessie?" she asked. + +"Fay is spending the afternoon with the Carters, and Bessie is out +somewhere, I don't know where. But I saw her start after luncheon." + +"How fortunate! Then you knew he was coming?" + +"Yes. I had a telegram from him this morning saying he was in the +neighbourhood, and would come over this afternoon." + +"Of course you warned Magdalen?" + +"Not I. I knew better than that. She has a cold, so I knew she could not +go out. So directly I had seen him drive up I came off here. I did not +think I was particularly wanted at home. Two is company and three's +none." + +"Oh, Algernon, what tact! Most men would never have thought of that," +said Aunt Aggie. + +"Have another cup, Algernon," said Lady Blore graciously. + +Colonel Bellairs stroked his moustache. He had another cause, a secret +one, for self-complacency. At last, after many rebuffs from charming +women, thirty years his junior, he was engaged to be married. Should he +mention it? Was not this a most propitious moment? Yes? No. Perhaps +better not. Another time! The lady had accepted him some weeks ago, but +had expressed altruistic doubts as to whether she could play a mother's +part to daughters as old as herself, whether in short, much as she +craved for their society, _they_ might not feel happier, more +independent in a separate establishment, however modest. It was on a +sudden impulse of what he called "providing for the girls," that Colonel +Bellairs had written to Lord Lossiemouth. + +The renewal of his engagement to Magdalen would pave the way to Colonel +Bellairs's marriage. He had already decided that Bessie would live with +Magdalen, who would take her out. Fay had her jointure. But he had a not +unfounded fear that his second nuptials would be regarded with profound +disapproval, even with execration, by his sisters. + +Magdalen alone knew about it as yet. She had taken the news, which her +father had feared would crush her to the earth, very tranquilly. She was +a person of more frigid affections than he had supposed. He had already +asked her to break the news to Fay and Bessie. Perhaps it would be +better to let her break it to his sisters too. If he did it himself they +might, at the first moment, say things they might afterwards regret. +Yes, he would leave the announcement to Magdalen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + Our chain on silence clanks. + Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs. + + --GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +Lord Lossiemouth had come into his kingdom. He was rich, but not +vulgarly so. He had a great position, and what his artistic nature +valued even more, the possession of one of the most beautiful places in +England. The Lossiemouth pictures and heirlooms, the historic house with +its wonderful gardens--all these were his. + +He had at first been quite dazed by the magnitude of his good fortune. +When it came to him it found him somewhat sore and angry at a recent +rebuff which had wounded his vanity not a little. But the excitement of +his great change of fortune soon healed what little smart remained. + +A few months before he succeeded, he had fallen in love, not for the +first time by many times, with a woman who seemed to meet his +requirements. She was gentle, submissive, pretty, easily led, refined, +not an heiress, but by no means penniless. + +To his surprise and indignation she had refused him, evidently not +without a certain tepid regret. He discovered that the mother had other +views for her daughter, and that the daughter, though she inclined +towards him, was quite incapable or even desirous of opposing her +mother. She was gentleness and pliability itself. These qualities, so +admirable in domestic life, have a tendency of which he had not thought +before to make their charming owner, if a hitch occurs, subside into +becoming another man's wife. If only women could be adamant until they +reach the altar, and like wax afterwards. + +When everything bitter that could be said at the expense of women had +been ably expressed, Lord Lossiemouth withdrew. A month later, when he +was making an angry walking tour in Hungary, he learned from an English +paper, already many days old, of the two deaths which effected his great +change of fortune. He communicated with his lawyer, arranged to return +by a certain date, and continued his tour for another month. + +On his return he had gone at once to Lossiemouth, which he had visited +occasionally as a poor and peppery and not greatly respected relation. +Business of all kinds instantly engulfed him. He was impatient, +difficult, _distrait_, slightly pleased with himself at showing so +little gratification at his magnificent inheritance. + +On the third day he sorted out the letters which looked like personal +ones, from among a heap of correspondence, the accumulation of many +weeks. + +Quantities of envelopes were torn open, and the contents thrown aside, +begging letters, decently veiled congratulations from "old friends" who +had not so far shown any particular desire to make their friendship a +joy to him. + +Presently he came upon a long, closely written letter of several sheets, +in a slanting hand, which he was about to dismiss as another begging +letter when his eye fell on the signature. Bellows? Bulteel? Buller? +_Bellairs?_ + +Aunt Aggie's signature was quite illegible. It was an arranged squiggle +painfully acquired in youth, which through life had resulted in all +kinds of difficulties with tradespeople, and in continual annoyance and +inconvenience to herself. Letters and parcels were frequently directed +to her as A. Buller, Esq. She could only account for this mistake by the +business-like nature of her style and handwriting. She often told her +friends that, unless people knew her personally, her letters were +generally believed to be a man's. + +It had never struck Aunt Aggie that Lord Lossiemouth might possibly, in +an interval of fifteen years, have forgotten who _A._ Bellows might be. + +But the words "my beloved niece Magdalen" strongly underlined, and the +postmark on the envelope, showed him who A. Bellairs was. He thought he +remembered an old aunt who lived near Priesthope. + +He read the long sentimental effusion and bit his lip. + +Ah, me! Was that half-forgotten, dim-in-the-distance boyish love of his +to be raked up again now! + +He sighed impatiently. Why had Fate parted him and Magdalen? He still +regretted her in a way, when he was depressed or harassed, or disgusted +with the world in general; and he was often depressed and harassed and +disgusted. + +More letters. What business had people to give him the trouble of +reading them? The floor was becoming strewn with his correspondence. The +empty fireplace had become a target for crumpled balls of paper. + +A short one in a large, scrambling, illiterate hand with a signature +that might mean anything. That tall capital, shaped like a ham, was +perhaps a B. + +The letter was written on Priesthope notepaper. "_My daughter +Magdalen._" + +This, then, was from Colonel Bellairs. + +It was not such a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. +When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made his +precarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that Lord +Lossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it in +his mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not had +time. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that sentence he had felt, not +without pride, that it covered the ground of his fifteen years' silence, +and also showed that Lord Lossiemouth's wealth had nothing to do with +his recall. For the letter was a recall. + +"Blundering old idiot," said Lord Lossiemouth, but he had become very +red. + +All kinds of memories were surging up in him; Magdalen's crystal love +for him, her indefinable charm, her gaiety, her humility, her shyness, +her exquisite beauty. + +Life had never brought him anything so marvellous, so enchanting, as +that first draught of April passion. And he had quenched his thirst at +many other cups since then. His lips had been blistered and stained at +poisoned brims. Why had that furious old turkey-cock parted him and +Magdalen! His heart sank for a moment at the remembrance of his first +love. + +But what was the use! The Magdalen he had loved had ceased to exist. The +wand-like figure with its apple-blossom face faded, faded, and in its +place rose up the image of the thin, distinguished-looking grey-haired +woman who had supplanted that marvel. He had met Magdalen accidentally +once or twice in London of late years, and had felt dismayed anger at +the change in her, an offended anger not wholly unlike that with which +he surveyed himself at his tailors', and inspected at unbecoming angles, +through painfully frank mirrors, a thick back and a stout neck and jaw +which cruelly misrepresented his fastidious artistic personality. + +He returned to his letters. + +Three sheets in a firm, upright hand. + +"I do not suppose you remember me," it began, "but I intend to recall +myself to your memory, which I believe to be none of the best. I am the +wife of Sir John Blore, and aunt to Magdalen Bellairs." + +He flung the letter down. But this was intolerable, a persecution. And +what fools they were _all_ to write. Had Magdalen set them on? + +He groaned with sudden self-disgust. What unworthy thought would come to +him next? Of course she knew nothing of this. + +He looked at the date of each letter carefully. Aunt Aggie's according +to her wont had only the day of the week on it, just Tuesday, or it +might be Thursday--but Colonel Bellairs's and Lady Blore's were fully +dated, and about a fortnight apart. Colonel Bellairs had written last. + +Lord Lossiemouth divined that each of the three believed him or herself +to be the only one to tackle the subject. + +How ghastly! What a cruelly good short story it would make for a +magazine! + +Then he read Lady Blore's letter. Apparently it was not pleasant +reading. It seemed to prick somewhat sharply. He winced once or twice, +and spoke angrily to it. + +"My good woman, as if I did not _know_ that! Men are always behaving +heartlessly to women in their opinion. It is the normal male state. It +is an established fact that we are all brutes. Why do you want me to +marry your paragon if you have such a low opinion of me?" + +Still he could not put the letter down. + +"It is possible though improbable," wrote that dauntless woman, "that +your vacillating and selfish character may have improved sufficiently in +the course of years for you to have become aware that you have behaved +disgracefully to a woman, who, if she had had any sense, ought never to +have given you a second thought, who was and still is deeply attached to +you; probably the only person on this earth who has the misfortune to +care two pins about you." + +Lord Lossiemouth tried to feel sarcastic. He tried to laugh. But it was +no use. Lady Blore's arrow had penetrated a joint in his harness. + +After all he need take no notice of any of these monstrous effusions. + +He was disgusted with opening letters. Nevertheless he hurried on. +Perhaps he should find others less intolerable. + +A somewhat formal letter from his cousin the Bishop of Lostford, who had +never been cordial to him since his engagement to Magdalen had been +broken off. The Bishop pointed out certain grave abuses connected with +house property at Lostford, at which the late Lord Lossiemouth had +persistently connived, but which he hoped his successor might enquire +into personally and redress. + +Quantities of other letters were torn open and aimed in balls at the +empty grate. But at last he came to a long one which he read +breathlessly. + +It was from the mother of the girl who had so recently refused him, an +involved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriously +attached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again he +would not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, +nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. +The mother had evidently made her write. + +A very venomous expression settled on Lord Lossiemouth's heavy face. He +suddenly took up a Bradshaw and looked out the trains for Lostford. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + Tard oublie qui bien aime. + + +On this momentous afternoon Magdalen was sitting alone in the +morning-room at Priesthope somewhat oppressed by an oncoming cold. It +had not yet reached the violent and weeping stage. That was for +to-morrow. She, who was generally sympathetically dressed, was +reluctantly enveloped in a wiry red crochet-work shawl which Bessie had +made for her, and had laid resolutely upon her shoulders before she went +out. + +She tried to read, but her eyes ached, and after a time she laid down +her book, and her mind went back, as it had a way of doing--to Fay. + +Fay had told her as "a great secret" that she had accepted Wentworth. +She was so transfigured by happiness, so radiant, so absolutely unlike +her former listless, colourless, carping self that Magdalen could only +suppose that two shocks of joy had come simultaneously, the discovery +that she loved her prim suitor, and the overwhelming relief to her +tortured conscience of Michael's release. + +Wentworth and Michael were still at Venice. Michael, it seemed, had been +prostrated by excitement, and had been too weak to travel immediately. +But they would be at Barford in a few days' time. + +When Magdalen saw Fay entirely absorbed in trying on a succession of new +summer hats, sent for from London in preparation for Wentworth's +return, she asked herself for the twentieth time whether Fay had +entirely forgotten her previous attraction for Michael, or that there +might be some awkwardness in meeting her faithful lover and servant +again, especially as the future wife of his brother. + +Two years had certainly elapsed since that sudden flare-up of disastrous +passion, and in two years much can be forgotten. But after two years +everything may still be remembered, as Magdalen knew well. And she +feared that Michael was among those who remember. + +Magdalen had that day told Fay of her father's intention of marrying +again, but she took almost no notice of the announcement. To use one of +Aunt Aggie's metaphors, the news "seemed to slide off her back like a +duck." + +She only said, "Really! How silly of him!" + +As Magdalen thought of Fay the door opened and Bessie, who was supposed +to have gone for a walk, came in. + +She had a spray of crab-apple blossom in her hand. She held it towards +Magdalen as if it were a bill demanding instant payment. These little +amenities were a new departure on Bessie's part. + +Magdalen's pleasure in the apple blossom seemed to her somewhat +exaggerated, but she made allowances for her, as she had a cold. + +"Are you going out again?" asked Magdalen. + +"No." + +"Then I should like to have a little talk with you. I have something to +tell you." + +Bessie sat down. + +"I am prepared for the announcement you have to make. I have seen it +coming. It is about Fay." + +"No, it is about Father. He has asked me to tell you that he is engaged +to be married." + +"Father!" + +"Yes, it is not given out yet." + +"Father!" + +"It is to a Miss Barnett. You may have seen her. The doctor's sister at +Saundersfoot." + +"I know her by sight, a tall, showy-looking woman of nearly forty, with +amber hair and a powdered nose." + +"Yes." + +"Father has sunk very low," said Bessie, judicially. "He must have been +refused by a lot of others, younger and better-looking, and ladies, to +be reduced to taking her. And fancy anyone in their senses being willing +to take Father, with his gout, and his tendency to drink, and his total +disregard of hygiene. Well, she looks a vulgar pushing woman, but I am +sorry for her. And I must own that I am disappointed that if there was +to be an engagement in our family it should be Father. There is not +likely to be more than one going for a home like ours. It is just like +him to grab it." + +Magdalen tried not to laugh. + +"I've looked round," continued Bessie. "I don't say that at present I +could entertain the thought of marriage myself. I can't just yet, but I +mean to in the future. It's merely a question of time. Marriage is the +higher life. Besides, if one remains unmarried people are apt to think +it is because one can't help it. It would certainly be so in my case. +And I have looked round. There is not a soul in the neighbourhood for +any of us to marry that I can see except Wentworth, who is of course +extremely elderly. Hampshire seems absolutely bare of young men. And if +there are a few sons in some of the houses, they are never accessible. +And the really superior ones like Lord Alresford's only son would never +look at me. It would be waste of time to try. There is positively no +opening in Hampshire unless I marry the curate." + +"That reminds me that he is to call this afternoon about the +boot-and-shoe club. I wish, my dear, in the intervals between your +aspirations towards the higher life, you would go through the accounts +with him. My head is so confused with this cold." + +"I will. And where on earth are you going to live when Father marries +again? Of course, I shall graduate at Cambridge. He won't oppose that +now. Magdalen, why don't you marry, too?" + +"I can't, dear Bessie. No one wants me." + +"May I go on?" + +"No. Please don't." + +"I think I will all the same. Why not marry Lord Lossiemouth after all? +Don't speak. I want to place the situation dispassionately before you. I +have thought it carefully over. You are an extremely attractive woman, +Magdalen. I don't know what it is about you, I fail to analyse it, but +one becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if a +man once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care just +because you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact that +there certainly has been a mutual attachment. I then ask myself----" + +At this moment the door opened and the footman announced "Lord +Lossiemouth." + +The shock to both women was for the moment overwhelming. + +Magdalen recovered herself almost instantaneously and welcomed him with +grave courtesy, but she was unable to articulate. + +He had seen the amazement in the four eyes turned on him as he came in, +and cursed Colonel Bellairs in his heart. Why had not the old idiot +warned Magdalen of his coming? + +He had felt doubtful of his reception. A simulated coldness on +Magdalen's part was, perhaps, to be expected. But for her blank +astonishment he was not prepared. + +"This is Bessie," she said in a shaking voice. + +Bessie! This tall, splendid young woman. Could this be the tiny child of +three who used to sit on his knee, and blow his watch open. + +"I cannot be expected to remember you," said Bessie, advancing a limp +hand. She fixed a round dispassionate eye on his heavy, irritable face, +and found him unpleasant looking. + +He instantly thought her odious. + +And they all three sat down simultaneously as if by a preconcerted +signal. + +"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" asked Magdalen, as a paralysed +silence became imminent. A faint hectic colour burnt in her cheeks. + +Lord Lossiemouth pulled himself together, and came to her assistance. +Together they held back the silence at arm's length. + +Yes, he was staying in the neighbourhood--at Lostford in fact. House +property near the river. Liable to floods. + +Did he mention the word floods? + +Yes. Floods at certain seasons of the year. Time to take measures now +before the autumn, etc. + +Magdalen was glad to hear of some measures being taken. Long needed. + +Yes, culpable neglect. + +A wall? + +Yes, a wall. Certainly a wall. + +Bessie rose, marched to the door, opened it, hit her body against it, +and went out. + +A certain degree of constraint went with her. + +"I had your Father's leave to come," he said after a moment. "I should +not have ventured to do so otherwise." + +"I wish Father had warned me," she said. + +They looked away from each other. Here in this room fifteen years ago +they had parted. Both shivered at the remembrance. + +Then they looked long at each other. + +Magdalen became very pale. She saw as in a glass what was passing +through his mind; and for a moment her heart cried out against those +treacherous deserters, her beauty and her youth, that they should have +fled and left her thus, defenceless and unarmed to endure his cruel +eyes. But she remembered that he had left her before they did. They had +not availed to stay him. They had only slipped away from her in his +wake. And at the time she had hardly noticed their departure, as he was +no longer there to miss them. + +Lord Lossiemouth had come determined to propose to Magdalen, his +determination screwed "to the sticking point" by a deliberately recalled +remembrance of the change the years had wrought in her. He had told +himself he was prepared for that. Nevertheless, now that he was actually +face to face with her, in spite of his regard and respect for her, a +horrid chasm seemed to yawn between them, which only one primitive +emotion can span, an emotion which, like a disused bridge, had fallen +into the gulf years ago. + +And yet how marvellously strong, how immortal it had seemed once--in +this same room with this same woman. It had seemed then as if it could +not break, or fall, or fade. + +It had broken, it had fallen, it had faded. + +As he looked earnestly at her he became aware that though she had been +momentarily distressed a great serenity was habitual to her. The eyes +which now met his had regained their calm. It seemed as if her life had +been steeped in tranquil sunshine, as if the free air of heaven had +penetrated her whole delicate being, and had left its clear fragrance +with her. + +Oh! if only they had been married fifteen years ago! What happiness they +might have given each other. How perfect to have owed it all to each +other. How fond he would still be of her. How tender their mutual regard +would still be. Then his present feeling for her would not be amiss. +They ought to be sitting peacefully together at this moment, not in this +intolerably embarrassing personal relation towards each other, but at +ease with each other, talking over their boy at Eton, and the new pony +for their little daughters. He did not want to _begin_ being married to +her now. + +She knew what he felt. + +"Magdalen," he said, "I am distressed that I have taken you by surprise. +I had hoped that you were prepared to see me. But my coming is not, I +trust, painful to you." + +A pulse fluttered in her cheek. + +"I am glad to see you," she said. "If I did not seem so the first moment +it was only because I was taken aback." + +"A great change has come over my fortunes," he continued, anxious to +give her time, and yet aware that no conversation except on the object +of his visit was really possible. "I am at last in a position to marry." + +"When I heard the news I thought that you would probably marry soon." + +"Our engagement was broken off solely for lack of means," he continued. +Her eyes dropped. "Now that that obstacle is removed I have come to ask +you, to beg you most earnestly to renew it." + +"It is very good of you," she said almost inaudibly. "I appreciate +your--kindness." + +He saw that she was going to refuse him. But he was prepared for that +contingency. It was a natural feminine method of readjusting the balance +between them. He would certainly give her the opportunity. He owed it to +her. Besides, the refusal would not be final. He knew from her relations +that she still loved him. + +"If your feeling towards me is unchanged will you marry me?" + +The door opened, and the footman announced "Mr. Thomson." + +The new curate came slowly into the room, his short-sighted eyes peering +about him, a little faggot of papers girdled by an elastic band, clasped +in his careful hand against his breast. + +Magdalen started violently, and Lord Lossiemouth experienced a furious +exasperation. + +Magdalen mechanically introduced the two men to each other, and they all +three sat down, with the same sudden automatic precision as when Bessie +had been present. + +"The days are beginning to lengthen already," said Mr. Thomson. "I have +noticed it, especially the last few days, and the rooks are +clamourous--very clamourous." + +"It was to be expected," faltered Magdalen. + +"The accounts are, I am glad to say, in perfect order. I am proud to +add, though I fear a statement so unusual may lay me open to a charge of +romancing, that we have a small balance in hand." + +How he had looked forward to saying these words. With what a flash of +surprised delight he had expected this astounding, this gratifying +announcement would be received. + +He paused a moment to let his words sink in--evidently Miss Bellairs had +not heard. + +"Three pounds five and nine," he said. + +"It is wonderful," said Magdalen emphatically. + +"Quite wonderful. I never heard of a boot-and-shoe club which was not +in debt. Have you?" And she turned to Lord Lossiemouth. + +But Lord Lossiemouth's temper was absent. He found the situation +intolerable. He only answered, "Never." + +"Bessie is waiting to hear all about it in the schoolroom," continued +Magdalen. "I have asked her to go over the papers with you. She will be +as surprised and delighted as I am. Shall we go and tell her?" + +And without waiting for an answer she rose and led the way to the +schoolroom, followed by Mr. Thomson. Bessie was sitting alone there, +staring in front of her, paralysed by Lord Lossiemouth's arrival, and +indignant at the possibility that Magdalen might marry that "horrid old +thing," who was not the least like the charming photograph of him in her +sister's album. However, she grasped the situation, and after an +imploring glance from Magdalen, grappled with all her might with the +boot-and-shoe club. + +Magdalen hurriedly tore off the little red shawl and returned to the +morning-room, and closed the door. It was a considerable effort to her +to close it, and by doing so to invite a renewal of Lord Lossiemouth's +offer. But it could not be left open. + +"It was not poor Mr. Thomson's fault," she said, "but I wish I could +have saved you this annoyance." + +He struggled to recover his temper. Her quivering face shewed him that +she was suffering from the miserable accident of the interruption even +more than he was. + +"I was asking you to marry me," he said with courage, but with visible +irritation. "Will you?" + +"I am afraid I cannot." + +"I knew you would say that. I expected it. But I beg you to reconsider +it, that is if--if your feeling for me is still unchanged." + +"It is unchanged." + +"Then why not marry me?" + +"Because you do not care for me." + +"I felt certain you would say that. But I _do_ care for you. Should I be +here if I did not? We are two middle-aged people, Magdalen. The old +raptures and roses would be out of place, but I have always cared for +you. Surely you know that. Have you forgotten the old days?" + +"No." + +"Neither have I. All we have to do is to forget the years between." As +he spoke he felt that the thing could hardly have been better put. + +"I have no wish to forget them." + +He had made a great effort to control his temper, but he found her +unreasonable. His anger got the upper hand. + +"It is one of two things that makes you refuse me. Either you can't +forgive me, and I daresay I don't deserve that you should, I am not +posing as a faultless character--or you have ceased to love me. Which is +it?" + +"I have not ceased to love you," she replied. "Have I not just told you +so? But you would find yourself miserable in the--lop-sided kind of +marriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to make bricks +without straw." + +"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me, +why was I sent for?" he stammered, white with anger. He struck the +table with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if I +was to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately planned +rebuff directly I set foot in the house!" + +"Why were you _sent for_?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your own +accord. _Sent for!_ _Who_ sent for you?" + +She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint. + +"_Who_ sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?" + +He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands. +Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, the +desire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated. +Others could be humiliated as well as himself. + +"Read them," he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood by +the window with his back to her. + +Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's, +Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped the +sweat from her forehead. + +Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw them +creep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring, +their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they to +rend her again? + +She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away. +They could not reach her. They could not touch her. + +She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seen +him stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind his +back, looking out to the sea. + +She went softly to him, and stood beside him. + +"I am more grieved that I can say about these," she said, touching the +letters. "I did not know the poor dears had written. It was good of you +to come back at the call of these unhappy letters. Will you not burn +them, Everard, and forget them? There is a fire waiting for them." + +She put them into his hand. She had not spoken to him by his Christian +name before. His anger sank suddenly. He took them in a shamed silence, +and dropped them into the fire. Magdalen sat down by the hearth, and he +sat down near her. Together they watched them burn. + +"I ought to have burnt them yesterday," he said remorsefully. + +"I am glad you did not. I am so thankful to see you again, and that +these foolish letters brought you. I have often longed to have a talk +with you. + +"It seems unreasonable," continued Magdalen, her clear eyes meeting his, +"but the fact of your asking me to marry you makes it possible for me to +tell you what I have long wished to tell you. I have often thought of +writing it. I did write it once, but I tore it up. It seems as if a +woman _can't_ say certain things to a man till he has said, 'Will you +marry me?' Then it is easy, because then nothing she may say can rouse a +suspicion in his mind that she wants to make him say it." + +"I have proposed to you twice, Magdalen. Is not that enough?" His voice +was very bitter. "I venture to prophesy that you will be safe from my +pestering you with a third offer." + +"I am sure of it. I never dreamed that you would ask me this second +time. I never thought we should meet again except by chance, as we did a +year ago. But I have had you in my mind, and I have often +feared--often--that I was a painful remembrance to you; that when you +thought of me it was with regret that you had perhaps--it is not so easy +to say after all--that you had spoilt my life." + +"I did reproach myself bitterly with having made love to you when you +were so very young and inexperienced, and when I ought to have +remembered that I was not in a position to marry. Your father did rub +that in. As if I could help my poverty." + +"Father is not a reasonable person. You were nearly as young as I was. +Looking back now it seems as if we had both been almost children." + +"It was a great misfortune for both of us," he said, colouring. He had +not felt it great after the first. + +"Not for me," she said. "That is what I have long wished to tell you. It +has been my great good fortune. Not at first--but after a time. I should +never have known love--of that I am sure--unless it had been for you. +You were the only person who could waken it in me. The power to love is +the great gift; to be permitted to know that marvel, to be allowed once +in one's life to touch the infinite. Love opens all the doors. Some +opened in pain, but they did open. I never knew, I never guessed until +long after you had come into my life, and gone away again, how much I +owed to you. Then I began to see, first in gleams, and then plainly. +Your momentary attraction towards me was a tiny spark of the Divine +love, a sort of little lantern leading me home through the dark." + +He stared at her amazed. Her transparency transfixed him. What is +superficial is also often deep in clear natures such as Magdalen's, like +a water lily whose stem goes down a long way. + +"Love releases us from ourselves, our hard proud selves, and makes +everything possible to flow in to us, happiness, peace, joy, gratitude. +I thank God for having let me know you, for having made me love you. I +might have missed it. I see others miss it. I might have gone through +life not knowing. I might have had to bear the burden of life, without +the one thing that makes it easy. I see other people toiling and +moiling, and getting hopeless and miserable and exhausted till my heart +aches for them. After the first I have never toiled, never grieved, +never despaired. I have been sustained always. For there are not two +kinds of love, Everard, but only one. The love of you is the cup of +water, and the love of God is the well it is taken from.... You had +better go now before anyone else comes in, but I want you to remember +when you think of me that I bless and thank you, and am grateful to you. +I have been grateful for years." + +She took his leaden hand in both of hers, and held it for a moment to +her lips. + +Lord Lossiemouth's face was pinched and aged. His hand fell out of +hers. + +Then his face became suddenly convulsed, frightful to behold, like that +of a man being squeezed to death. + +"I never loved you," he said in a fierce, suffocated voice. "I was a +little in love with you, that was all, and that was not much. I soon got +over it." + +"I know," she said. + +"I felt pain for a time. You were very beautiful, and you were the +first. I was the same as you then. But I found other beautiful women. I +took what I could get out of life, and out of women. I rubbed out my +pain that way. It was not your father who parted us, it was myself. I +would not own it, I was always bitter against him, but it was my fault. +I did not mean to work, and tie myself to an office stool: I had the +chance, but I wanted to travel and see the world. It was not lack of +means that parted us. I said a few minutes ago that it had been the only +obstacle to our marriage, and your eyes dropped. You have known better +all the time, but you wouldn't say. All these years I have put it down +to that. But it was _not_. We were parted by lack of love." + +"I know," she said again. + +"On my side." + +"It was not your fault. We can't love to order, or by our own will. It +is a gift." + +"Some of us can't love at all," he said fiercely. "That is about it. We +have not got any room for it if--if it _is_ given us. It could not get a +foothold. It was crowded out. I was often glad afterwards that I did not +tie myself to you. _Glad!_ Do you hear, Magdalen? It left me free to--it +did give me pain when I thought of you. I knew what I had done to you. +I used to tell myself that you gave me up very easily, that you did not +really want me. But I knew in my heart that you did. But it only made me +bitter, and I put the thought away. That time, it is ten years ago; good +God! it is all so long ago, when you nearly died of scarlet fever in +London, I heard of it by chance when you were at your worst, I was +shocked, but I did not really care, for I had long ceased to want you. I +used to visit a certain woman every day in that street, and I once asked +her who the straw was down for, and she said it was for a 'Miss Magdalen +Bellairs.' I was in love with her at the moment, if you can call it +love. I have dragged myself through all kinds of sordid passions +since--we parted." + +Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He looked at her through them. It +seemed as if no wounding word under heaven would be left to say by the +time he had finished. + +"And I did not come back in order to make amends," he went on. "You know +me very little if you think that. I came back solely out of pique. It +was not those absurd letters which brought me, or held me back. It was +another woman. I wanted to pay her out." + +"I thought perhaps it was something like that," said Magdalen. + +"It was a virtuous attachment this time. I am nearly forty. I am getting +grey and stout. Young women have a difficulty in perceiving my +existence. It was high time to settle, and to live on some attractive +woman's money. There are thousands of women who must marry someone. So +why not me? I found the attractive woman. I walked into love with her," +he stammered with anger. "I regarded it as a constitutional. But the +attractive woman, though she liked me a little, weighed the pros and +cons exactly as I had done, and decided not to take her constitutional +in my impecunious company. She refused me when I was poor, and +_now_--now that I am rich--she is willing." + +The harsh voice ceased suddenly. Magdalen looked for a moment at the +savage, self-tortured face, and her heart bled. + +"That is how I have treated you," he said, choking with passion. "Now +you know the truth of me--for the first time. That is the kind of man I +am, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you have +idealised, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years." + +"I have known always the kind of man you were," she said steadily. "I +never idealised you, as you call it. I loved you knowing the worst of +you. Otherwise my love could not have endured through. A foolish +idealism would have perished long ago." + +"And then I come down here, on a sudden despicable impulse, intending to +use you as a weapon to strike her with, not that she is worth striking, +poor feeble pretty toy. And I encouraged myself in a thin streak of +patronising sentiment for you. I wrote a little cursed sonnet in the +train how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets blooming +in autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temper +is aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enough +to try to humiliate you by shewing you those letters, to try to revenge +myself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! On you!" + +She did not speak nor move. Her face was awed, as the face of one who +watches beside the pangs of death or--birth. + +Outside in the amber sunset a thrush piped. + +"Magdalen," he said almost inarticulately, "you have never repulsed me. +Don't repulse me now, for I am very miserable. Don't pour your love into +the sand any more. Give it me instead. I am dying of thirst. Give me to +drink. You can live without me, but I can't live without you. I have +tried--I have tried everything. I am not thinking of you, only of +myself. I am only asking for myself, only impelled towards you by my own +needs. Does not that prove to you that I am at last speaking the truth? +Does not that force you to believe me when I tell you that I want you +more than anything in the world. I have wanted you all my life without +knowing it. I don't want to make amends to you for the past. I want you +yourself, for myself, as my wife. I swear to God if you won't marry me I +will marry no one. You are the only woman I can speak to, the only one +who does not fail, who holds on through thick and thin, the only one who +has ever really wanted me. I daresay I shan't make you happy. I daresay +I shall break your heart. God help me, I daresay I shall put my +convenience before your happiness, my selfish whims before your health. +I have always put myself first. But risk it. Risk it, Magdalen. Take me +back. Love me. For God's sake marry me." + +Each looked into the other's bared soul. + +Something in his desperate face which she had always sought for, which +had always been missing from it--she found. + +"I will," she said. + +They made no movement towards each other. They had reached a spiritual +nearness, a passion of surrender each to each, which touch of hand or +lip could only at that moment have served to lessen. + +"You are not taking me out of pity? You are sure you can still love me a +little?" + +"More than in the early days," she said. "For you have not only come to +me, Everard. You have come to yourself." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + Me, too, with mastering charm + From husks of dead days freeing, + The sun draws up to be warm + And to bloom in this sweet hour. + The stem of all my being + Waited to bear this flower. + + --LAURENCE BINYON. + + +It would be hardly possible to describe the unholy, the unmeasured +rejoicing to which Magdalen's engagement gave rise in her family. It is, +perhaps, enough to say that the twenty years of her cheerful, selfless +devotion to the domestic hearth had never won from her father and her +two aunts anything like the admiring approval which her engagement at +once elicited. The neighbourhood was interested. Lord Lossiemouth was a +brilliant match for anyone (if you left out the man himself). The +announcement read impressively in the _Morning Post_. The neighbours +remembered that there had been a youthful attachment, an early +engagement broken off owing to lack of means. And now it seemed the +moment he was rich he had come flying back to cast his faithful heart +once more at her feet. It was a real romance. Magdalen was considered an +extraordinarily fortunate woman by the whole countryside, but Lord +Lossiemouth was placed on a pedestal. What touching constancy. What +beautiful fidelity. What a contrast to "most men." "Not one man in a +hundred would have acted in that chivalrous manner," was the feminine +verdict of Hampshire. + +A wave of cheap sentiment overflowed the Bellairs family, in which +Colonel Bellairs floated complacently like a piece of loose seaweed, and +in which even Aunt Mary underwent a dignified undulation. + +Bessie alone was unmoved. + +"You said, 'Yes' too soon," she remarked to Magdalen in private. "I +should never have thought you would be so lacking in true dignity. He +goes away for fifteen years and I should not wonder a bit if he had +thought of someone else in the interim for all you know to the +contrary--men are like that--and then he just lounges in and says 'Marry +me,' and you agree in a second. You might at any rate have made him wait +for his answer till after tea. In my opinion you have made yourself +cheap by such precipitate action. He thinks he has only got to ask, and +he can have." + +Magdalen did not answer. + +"I don't understand you," continued the pained monitor. "I have always +had a certain respect for you, Magdalen, and when he came back I +supposed you would give in to him in time if he pressed you without +intermission, and was constant for a considerable period--say a couple +of years; but I never thought it possible you would collapse like this. +I fear you have not taken his character sufficiently into consideration. +If I were in your place I should be afraid that Everard would not allow +my nature free scope, or take an interest in my mental development, and +that the sacrifices which make domestic life tolerable might have to be +all on my side. He is absolutely unworthy of you, and his nose is quite +thick. I daresay you have not remarked it, but I did at once. And in my +opinion he ought for his own good to have been made to _realise_ it. +Even Aunt Mary, though she says she entirely approves of the marriage, +admits that you have shown too much eagerness." + +Fortunately for Magdalen the interest of the neighbours, and even of her +own family, was speedily diverted to another channel by the return of +Wentworth and Michael to Barford. The enthusiastic welcome which Michael +received from all classes, and from distant families who had never +evinced much cordiality to his elder brother, astonished Wentworth, +touched him to the quick. + +"I had no idea we had so many friends," he said repeatedly. + +Michael smiled vaguely and took everything for granted. Wentworth was so +anxious to shield him from fatigue and excitement that at first he was +only too thankful that Michael took everything so quietly. But after a +few days he became uneasy at his brother's inertness of mind and body. A +great doctor, however, explained Michael's state very much as the +Italian doctor had done. He was in an exhausted condition. What was +essential to him was rest. He must not be made to see anyone or do +anything he did not like. + +"Your brother will regain his health entirely," the great man had said, +"if he is left in peace, and nothing happens to overexcite him. He is +worn to a shadow by that accursed prison. Many men in his condition +can't rest. Then they die. He can. He has the temperament that +acquiesces. He will cure himself if he is left alone. Let him lie in +the sun, and give nature a chance." + +In spite of his anxiety Wentworth saw that Michael's bodily strength was +slowly returning. Every afternoon he left him half asleep in the sun, +and rode over to see Fay. Since she had accepted him it had become a +necessity to him to see her every day. + +Wentworth had long been bent to the dust under the pain of Michael's +imprisonment. Fay had been bent with anguish to the dust by the weight +of her own silence which had kept him there. + +And now in the twinkling of an eye they both stood erect, freed. Life +was transfigured for both at the same instant. + +This marvellous moment found them both just when they were deciding +mildly to love each other. It took them and flung them together in a +common overwhelming joy. It almost seemed as if the shock might make a +man of Wentworth. + +Did he half know (he was certainly always tacitly guarding himself +against the assumption of such an idea in the minds of others) that he +had so far been left out, not only from the whirl of life--he had +deliberately withdrawn from that--but from the weft of life itself. The +great loom had not swept him in. It had not appeared to need him. Some +of us seem to hang on the fringe of life, of thought, of love, of +everything. We are not for good or ill interwoven into the stuff, part +of the pattern. + +Wentworth felt young for the first time in his life, happy for the first +time in his life, really energetic for the first time. A certain languid +fatigue which had been with him from boyhood, which had always lain +mournfully on its back waving its legs in the air like a reversed +Battle, had now been jolted right side upper-most, and was using those +legs, not as proofs of the emptiness of the world, but as a means of +locomotion. + +He had at first been enormously raised in his own self-esteem by his +engagement to a young and beautiful woman. He was permanently relieved +from the necessity of accounting to his friends for the fact that he was +still unmarried, reminding them that it was his own fault. Perhaps at +the bottom of his heart a fear lurked, implanted by the brutal Grenfell, +that he was going to be an old maid. That fear was now dispelled. It was +mercifully hidden from Wentworth that Grenfell and the Bishop and most +of his so-called friends would still so regard him even if he were +married. + +But gradually and insensibly the many petty reasons for satisfaction +which his engagement to Fay had given him, and even the delight in being +loved, were overshadowed by a greater presence. + +At first they had never been silent together. Wentworth liked to hear +his own voice, and prosed stolidly on for hours with exquisite enjoyment +and an eye to Fay's education at the same time, about his plans, his +aspirations, his past life (not that he had had one), the hollowness of +society (not that he knew anything about it), a man's need of solitude, +and the solace of a woman's devotion, its softening effect on a life +devoted hitherto, perhaps, too entirely to intellectual pursuits. + +Fay did not listen to him very closely. She felt that his mind soared +beyond her ken. But she was greatly impressed, and repeated little bits +of what he had said to Magdalen afterwards. And she looked at him with +rapt adoration. + +"Wentworth says that consideration in little things is what makes the +happiness of married life," she would announce pontifically. + +"How true!" + +"And he says social life ought to be simplified." + +"Indeed! Does he happen to mention how it is to be done?" + +"He says it ought to be regulated, and that everyone ought to be at +liberty to lead their own life, and not to be expected to attend cricket +matches and garden parties, if you are so constituted that you don't +find pleasure in them. I used to think I liked garden parties, Magdalen, +but I see I don't now. I care more for the big things of life now. Does +Everard ever talk to you like that when you and he are alone?" + +"Never. Never." + +"And Andrea never did, either. Wentworth is simply wonderful. You should +hear him speak about fame being shallow, and how the quiet mind looking +at things truly is everything, and peace not being to be found in the +market place, but in a walk by a stream, and how in his eyes a woman's +love outweighs the idle glitter of a social success. Oh! Magdalen, I'm +beginning to feel I'm not worthy of Wentworth. I've always liked being +admired, so different from him. I did not know there were men so +high-minded as he. He makes me feel very petty beside him. And he is so +humble. He says I must not idealise him, that he does not _wish_ it, for +though he may not be worse or better than I think he is only too +conscious of his many deficiencies. But I can't help it. Who could?" + +And Fay let fall a tear. + +"We needs must love the highest when we see it." + +But the highest some of us can see is the nearest molehill. + +What Michael and the Duke had failed to do for Fay Wentworth was +accomplishing. + +"You are made for each other," said Magdalen, with conviction. "Every +day shows me that you and Wentworth bring out the best in each other. +Perhaps, gradually, you will keep nothing back from each other, tell +each other everything." + +"He tells me everything now," said Fay. "He trusts me entirely." + +"And you?" said Magdalen. "Do you tell him everything?" + + * * * * * + +Wentworth, too, had reached the conviction that he and Fay were made for +each other. He might have starved out the deeper love, the truth and +tenderness of a sincerer nature, if it had been drawn towards him. He +had often imagined himself as being the recipient of the lavished +devotion of a woman beautiful, humble, exquisite and noble, whose truth +was truth itself, and had vaguely wondered why she had not come into his +life. But perhaps if he had met such a woman, and if she had loved him +as he pined to be loved, he would have become suspicious of her, and +would have left her after many vacillations. He did not instinctively +recognise humility and nobility when he met them, because they bore but +slight resemblance to the stiff lay figures which represented those +qualities in his mind. To meet them in reality would have been to him +bewilderment, disappointment, disillusion. + +Fay was not only what he seemed to want, what he had feebly longed for. +She was more than this. Her nature was the complement of his. A lack of +shrewdness, of mental grasp, a certain silliness were absolutely +essential to the maintenance of a lifelong devotion to him. Wentworth +had found the right woman to give him what he wanted. Fay had found the +right man. + +Love, which had been knocking urgently at their doors for so many futile +years, heard at last a movement as of someone stirring within, and a +hand upon the disused latch. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + O Yanna, Adrianna, + They buried me away + In the blue fathoms of the deep, + Beyond the outer bay. + + But in the Yule, O Yanna, + Up from the round dim sea + And reeling dungeons of the fog + I am come back to thee! + + --BLISS CARMAN. + + +Wentworth stood at the open window of the library watching Michael. + +Michael was lying on a deck chair on the terrace playing with a puppy. +His face was losing a certain grey drawn look which it had worn since he +had left prison. He looked more like himself since his hair had time to +grow. Wentworth felt that he ought to be reassured about him, but a +vague anxiety harassed him. + +Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the puppy fell asleep. Michael +made a movement to reach it, but it was just beyond his grasp. + +In an instant Wentworth was beside him, lifting the sleeping mass of +sleek fat on to Michael's knee. Michael's long hands made a little crib +for it. + +"He will sleep now for a bit," he said contentedly. + +"Do _you_ sleep better?" said Wentworth. He had not forgotten those +first nights at Venice when Michael's feeble step had dragged itself to +and fro in the next room half the night. + +"I sleep like a top. I'm asleep half the time." + +"You are much better the last few days." + +"Oh! I'm all right." + +"All Hampshire has been to call. I knew you would be bored, so I did not +let them disturb you." + +"Thanks." + +"Is there anyone you would like to see?" + +"No one that I know of." + +"No one at _all_?" + +Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth. + +"I should like very much to see--presently--if it could be done----" + +"Yes," said Wentworth eagerly. "Of _course_ it can be done, my dear boy. +You would like to see?" + +"Doctor Filippi," said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "He +was so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all the +time. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for his +holiday. He generally takes it in June. And--let me see--it's May now, +isn't it?" + +Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousy +was of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of the +two emotions was jealousy. + +"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present," he said coldly. +"I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose at +your wish a week ago." + +"Y-yes." + +"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his own +friends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be putting +him to expense." + +Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer. + +Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, +callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed--egotism revolted +Wentworth--that he would _never_ ask to see Wentworth's future wife, the +woman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michael +himself. + +"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devoted +friend of yours, whom you might like to see again." + +Wentworth spoke with deliberation. + +"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense," said Michael +in a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had not +left the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had not +penetrated to it. + +Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part of +the sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurred +faculties. + +"An old friend of mine," he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?" + +"Fay," said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fay +_entirely_? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Her +great goodness to you? And what she is to _me_!" + +"No," said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Her goodness to me. How she +tried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget." + +"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning. +You need not see Magdalen unless you like." + +"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as if +I had heard someone say so." + +"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, +ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not +care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. +But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart +from the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank that +it is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its way +of looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered her +superficial. But I never thought her mercenary--till now. But Fay----" + +"I will see her, too," said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thought +of Fay as--as--but my mind gets so confused--as at a great distance, +quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in +England. Left Italy for good." + +"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told you +so over and over again. I go and see her every day." + +"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can go +by Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as time +passes on." + +Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctor +had most solemnly assured him that his mind was only muffled and +deadened by his physical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworth +as if his brother's brain were softening. + +He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont to +grip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-blooded +shadow; was this all that was left of his brother? + +A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protective +tenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother's +emaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coarse labour, and +scarred and discoloured at the wrist. + +"Get well, Michael," he said huskily. + +Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily. + +Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the grass, +and Wentworth took back his hand instantly. + +"The Duchess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library." + +"Are you quite sure that you _really_ wish to see them--that it will not +tire you?" said Wentworth. + +"Quite sure." + +"I will bring them out." + +"No. Send one at a time. Fay first." + +Michael lay back and closed his eyes. + + * * * * * + +On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, +Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, she +had got over that, but with something more like fear. + +The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by its +appearance of brittleness. To Magdalen Fay's present joy seemed like a +bit of Venetian glass on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child's +elbow. + +It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand the +_insouciance_ which looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative. +The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay's +spirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem to +disturb her growing love for him. + +Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. The +whortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of pale +golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines. + +Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this +underfoot forest. + +Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a +spray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it. + +"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest with +eggs in it," she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds, +Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. I +shall hurt it unless I'm careful." + +She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmering +whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly still +clinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it the +butterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, +opening and shutting its wings. + +It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's +heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose to +her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. What +use, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf +ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace? + +The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may +not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes. + +As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the tree +trunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon between +the blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed from +the sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that it +is laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears an +overflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant, +perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first spring +tide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now in +that little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked but +yesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bitter +tides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now that +at last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, the +seeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tide +of white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presently +inundate her heart. + +Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals from +without--all would go well. + + * * * * * + +At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminent +Fay's _insouciance_ began, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs of +collapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford. + +"Come out with me," she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at her +sister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for a +few minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely and +resolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had been +obliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair. + +Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, but +Michael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, however +light, that has trodden on our heart. + +The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes. + +Fay was standing before him. + +And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. She +looked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the last +verge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. +She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquil +steady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, of +the Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And his +hands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was going +to look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fay +experienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking in +long, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearly +fallen over a dead body. + +The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him without +a word, shrinking, transfixed. + +He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, +that he might keep suffering from her. Fay's self torture, her +protracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it were +anew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during the +heedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock of +Michael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggard +lines of remorse and despair. + +He had not been able to shield her from pain after all. + +"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered." + +"No one knows what it has been," she said hoarsely, sinking into a +chair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. +I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it." + +"You will never have to bear it again," he said with compassion. "It is +over and done with. You are going to be happy now." + +"You have suffered too," she said, reddening. + +"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you had +felt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have." + +"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. +"Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?" + +The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?" +But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, +but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, +that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, +feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. The +excuses, the lies, these shadows of the mind will vanish the moment +Love lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, their +semblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark. + +Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spirit +was alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could not +follow. + +"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?" +said Fay again, wounded to the quick. + +She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long +look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at +being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of +compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting +between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that +they have never met. + +"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free," he said tranquilly, +smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant she +looks!" + +When Magdalen and Fay had departed, and Wentworth had seen them to the +carriage, he came back and sat down by Michael. + +"Not over-tired?" he said, smiling self-consciously, and poking holes in +the turf with his stick. + +"Not in the least." + +"She was looking a little pale to-day." It was obvious that he wished to +talk about Fay. + +"She is more beautiful than ever," said Michael, willing to give his +brother a leg-up. + +"Isn't she!" said the affianced lover expansively. "But it isn't her +beauty I love most, it is her _character_. She is so feminine, so +receptive, so appreciative of the deeper side of life, so absolutely +devoted. Her heart has been awakened for the first time, Michael. She +has, I feel sure, never been loved before as I loved her." + +"I imagine not." + +"I can't believe she ever cared for the Duke. I saw him once, and he +gave me the impression of a very cold-blooded individual." + +"I don't think he was cold-blooded." + +"Evidently not the kind of man capable of drawing the best out of a +woman like Fay." + +"Perhaps not." + +The man who felt himself capable of this feat prodded a daisy and then +went on: + +"You used to see a good deal of them in Rome before--while you were +_attaché_ there. Did you gather that it was a happy marriage, a true +union?" + +"Not very happy." + +"I daresay he was selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the crux +in married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shall +find my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object to +guard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculine +impulse to shield and protect is very strongly developed in me." + +"It is sometimes difficult to guard people," said Michael half to +himself. + +"I hope some day," Wentworth went on shyly, colouring under his tan, +"your turn may come, that you may meet the right woman, and feel as I do +now. It will be a revelation to you. I am afraid it may seem exaggerated +in a person like myself, who am essentially a man's man. (This was a +favourite illusion of Wentworth's.) But some day you will understand, +and you will find as I have done that love is not just slothfully +accepting a woman's slavish devotion." + +"Indeed!" + +"No, Michael, believe me, it is something far greater. It is living not +only for self, but as for her sake. To take trouble to win the smile of +one we love, to gladly forego one's momentary pleasures, one's +convenience, in order to serve her. That is the best reward of life." + +Michael's eyes filled with tears. He felt a hundred years older than +Wentworth at that moment. A tender pained compassion welled up within +him. And with it came a new protective comprehension of the man beside +him who had cherished him from his childhood onwards. + +He put out his hand and gripped Wentworth's. + +"God bless you, Wenty," he said. + +And for a moment they who were so far apart seemed very near together. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + She sees no tears, + Or any tone + Of thy deep groan + She hears: + Nor does she mind + Or think on't now + That ever thou + Wast kind. + + --HERRICK. + + +It quickly became plain to Magdalen that Fay's peace of mind had been +shaken by her interview with Michael. She had vouchsafed no word +concerning it on her way home. But in the days that followed she +appeared ill at ease, and a vague and increasing unrest seemed to +possess her. Magdalen doubted whether she had as yet asked herself what +it was that was disturbing her tranquillity. But it was at any rate +obvious that she shrank from seeing Michael again, and that she was at +times dejected in Wentworth's presence. + +Wentworth perceived the change in her, and attributed it to a most +natural and pardonable jealousy of Michael to which, while he made the +fullest allowance for it, he had no inclination to yield. + +Michael had for a moment seemed to take more interest in life after +Fay's visit, and although he had quickly relapsed into apathy Wentworth +told himself that he was anxious to foster this nascent interest by +another meeting between him and Fay. At the same time he desired to +rehearse the part of central figure poised between two great devotions +which was to be his agreeable _rôle_ in the future. For Michael would of +course live with them after his marriage with Fay. And if there were any +ebullitions of jealousy between Fay and Michael--Wentworth dwelt with +complacency on the possibility--he felt competent to deal with them with +tact and magnanimity, reassuring each in turn as to their equal share in +his affections. + +Michael at any rate showed no disinclination to meet Fay again, and even +evinced something verging on a desire to see Magdalen. And presently +Wentworth arranged to drive him over to luncheon at Priesthope. +Throughout life he had always liked to settle, even in the most trivial +matters, what Michael should do, with whom he should associate. The +situation was not new, nor was there any novelty in Michael's +pliability. + +But when the day came Wentworth arrived without his brother, and +evidently out of temper. Magdalen asked if Michael were less well, and +was curtly assured that he was steadily improving. The luncheon dragged +through somehow as under a cloud. Colonel Bellairs was fortunately +absent on a visit to Miss Barnett at Saundersfoot. His absence was the +only silver lining to the cloud. Fay hardly spoke. Magdalen was thankful +that her prickly Lord Lossiemouth had departed the day before. + +After luncheon, when they were sitting on the terrace over their coffee, +Bessie left them, and Magdalen was about to do the same, when Wentworth +said suddenly: + +"I left Michael with the Bishop of Lostford. That is why he is not here +now. The Bishop is inducting the new Rector of Wrigley this afternoon, +and he sent a wire this morning--he is always doing things at the last +moment--he never considers others--to say that he would call at Barford +on his way to see Michael. Michael is his godson, and he has always been +fond of him. I left them together." + +Magdalen and Fay sipped their coffee in silence. + +"Michael had been as inert and apathetic as usual," continued Wentworth +sullenly, "until the Bishop appeared. The Bishop took him off into the +garden, though I said I did not like his going out so soon after +dressing--he was only just up--and it was perfectly plain they did not +want me. I believe that was why they went out. I was of no account. The +Bishop has always been like that, your friend one day, and oblivious of +you the next. But he and Michael seemed to have a great deal to say to +each other. I watched them from the library walking up and down. Michael +can walk quite well when he wants to. Then when the victoria came +round--I thought he would find that less fatiguing than the dogcart--I +went to tell him that it was time to start, but he only stared vaguely +at me, and the Bishop took his arm and said that you must excuse him for +this once, as he did not mean to let him go at that moment. So I came +away without him." + +"There will be many more opportunities of seeing us, and one must clutch +what few chances one can of seeing the Bishop," said Magdalen. + +"When I went to warn Michael that the carriage was there," continued +Wentworth, "he did not see me till I was quite near--there was a bush +between--and I could not help hearing him say, 'That was half an hour +before I was arrested.'" + +There was an uneasy silence. + +"It seems," said Wentworth with exceeding bitterness, "that I have not +Michael's confidence. The Bishop has it, but I, his only brother. Oh, +no. He can talk to the Bishop about his imprisonment, but to me--not a +word, not a single word. At first when we were together at Venice I +asked him quietly about it once or twice. I asked him why he had never +said a word to _me_ about it at the time, why he had not confided to me +at any rate that he was shielding the Marchesa, but I soon saw that the +subject distressed him. He always became confused, and he never would +reply. Once, since we were back at Barford, when he seemed clearer, I +asked him most earnestly to tell me one thing, whether he actually +witnessed the murder of the Marchese by his wife, as she supposed, and +what had first put it into his head to take the blame on himself. But it +seemed that any allusion to the subject exhausted and worried him. I +said to him at last: 'Do you still hate talking of it as much as ever?' +And he said 'yes.' I could understand that, and from that day to this I +never alluded to it again. But though he won't say a word to me, it +seems he can to others." + +The miserable jealousy in Wentworth's face touched Magdalen. + +"He knew you had strained every nerve to save him," said Wentworth, +turning to Fay. "Has he ever shown his gratitude for what you tried to +do for him?" + +"N-no," stammered Fay. + +"His imprisonment has changed his nature, that is what it is. He went in +alive, and he has come out dead. He has ceased to care for anything or +anyone. He has been killed by inches. He was so affectionate as a boy. I +was father and mother to him. He used to trot after me like a little +dog. And if anyone had his whole confidence I had. I was everything to +him. My one fear of marrying has always been that he might feel pained +at seeing another person first with me." (Wentworth had never had this +altruistic misgiving, but he stated it with conviction.) "But now he is +not the same. I suppose he still has some affection for me. He shows it +sometimes by a kind of effort. He seemed to wake up a bit after you came +over, Fay. I think he had a sort of glimpse from things I said to him of +what love can be, and just for a moment he was more like his old self, +and appeared to enter into my feelings. But he soon sank back again. As +often as not he seems to shrink from any real conversation. We sometimes +sit whole evenings together without speaking. He does not really want me +any more, or anyone. He talked at first a little about the Italian +doctor, but he never mentions him now. And as for my marriage, as for +being distressed by my caring for someone else," resentfully, "he is +absolutely indifferent. You would think that Fay and I, the two people +of all others who have done most for him, who have grieved most over +him, who have shown him most affection, were nothing to him." + +There was a ghastly silence. + +"I don't blame him," said Wentworth with something nearer passion than +he had ever experienced before, in which even his petty jealousy was +momentarily extinguished. "At least, I can't look at him and remain +angry with him. It breaks my heart to see him like this, so callous, so +regardless of all I have suffered on his account. I don't blame him. He +is not himself. His brain is weakened by his poor body. No. The person I +do blame is that accursed woman who allowed him to suffer for her, who +skulked behind him for two endless years, who let him sacrifice his life +for hers, who never had the courage to say the word, and take her crime +upon herself, and get him out of his living grave." + +Fay became cold as death in the May sunshine. What ghost was this which +was taking form before her? What voice was this, how could it be +Wentworth's voice, which was saying at last aloud with passion what that +other accusing voice within had so hoarsely, so persistently whispered +from its cell, during the long years? Her brain reeled. + +"The Marchesa did repent," said Magdalen. + +Wentworth laughed harshly. + +"Oh, yes. On her deathbed, in order to save her soul. She wanted to be +right with the next world. But how could she go on, year in year out, +letting him burn and freeze alternately in that vile cell? She must have +known, someone must have told her, what his life was like. How well I +remember, Fay, your saying: 'Why does not the real murderer confess? How +can he go on letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, +bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?' How little we both knew. +I always supposed the assassin was a man, a common criminal of the +lowest order. Yet it seems there are women in the world, educated, +refined women, who can remorselessly pinch a man's life out of him with +their white hands. The Marchesa has murdered two people, first her +husband, and then my boy, my foolish, quixotic, generous Michael. May +God forgive her! I never will!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + + Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir. + + --A. DE MUSSET. + + +In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signs +of reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and with +fatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But his +languid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His face +took on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly saw +something with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a look +sometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, when +an echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they once +lived, which they have well nigh forgotten. + +Michael's body, which had so far profited by the inertness of his +faculties, resented the change, and gave unmistakable signs of +relinquishing the slight degree of strength it had regained. + +Wentworth became suddenly frantically anxious once more, and in a moment +the wrongs on which he was brooding were forgotten. He decided to go to +London the same day under the guise of business, and to consult the +great doctor privately about Michael, perhaps arrange to bring him back +with him. + +"I wish you would drive oftener," he said to Michael before he left. +"It's much better for you than walking up and down. Why not, if you feel +inclined, as you will be alone all day, drive over to Priesthope this +afternoon. I said you would come the first day you could. It's only four +miles, just an easy little drive." + +An indefinable change passed over Michael's vacant face at the mention +of Priesthope. His eyes became fixed. He looked gravely at his brother, +as if the latter had solved some difficult problem. + +"It's a good idea," he said slowly. "I ought to have gone before, +but----" + +"The Bishop stopped you most inconsiderately last time." + +"Did he? I don't remember being stopped. Oh! yes, yes, I do. But if I +_had_ gone that day---- But anyhow I will go to-day." + + * * * * * + +Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending to +read, when Michael was announced. + +When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness +and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked +ill, and as if she had not slept. + +"I ought to have come before," he said mechanically, making a great +mental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, +but----" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what he +intended to say. + +"The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you," said +Fay drearily. Every word that Wentworth had said that afternoon was +still echoing discordantly in her brain. + +"That's it. The Bishop," said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had a +long talk"--his mind was clearing rapidly--"how you meant to save me." + +"Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. +"But the Marchesa, the same day--it was in the papers." + +"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you +had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, +and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware +you--had thought of it." + +"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me +a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And--oh, Michael, +you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you--you +_could_, you know--to stop my marrying Wentworth?" + +Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn. + +"When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, +"do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all +over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then +I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not +forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another +man's wife. Now that we meet again--_the position is the same_." + +Fay looked at Michael. + +The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish +that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him +first as a lad, which she had _twice_ extinguished, was in his eyes +again. There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when +they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something +exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through +her, beyond her. + +"And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for +then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to +marry a man you--Oh! Fay, you _do_ care for Wentworth, don't you?" + +"I would not have kept _him_ in prison for a day," she said, and hid her +face in her hands. + +If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her +with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her +agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill +to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her +heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for +her, for Michael possibly, but not for her. + +"Wentworth is worth caring for," said Michael. "Not worth caring for in +part, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring for +_altogether_. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyone +in the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop his +marrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid of +his marriage with you being stopped." + +Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him. + +"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen +about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has +always waited to see whether things will come to him of themselves, and +then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them +away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all +the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away +from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over +again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out +for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people _do_; he +has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop +stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth +has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The +Bishop said we must remember that, and that if--anything happened to +shake his--his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it +would be cruelly hard on him." + +"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?" + +"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since--since +the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know +what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid +and muddle-headed since I've been in--in _Italy_ that I _can't_ remember +what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in +absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such +odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He +often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, +all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I +think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out +of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?" + +"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done for +you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a +lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words." + +"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only +one, that perhaps there may be some more?" + +There was a long pause. + +"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'm _sure_ he +will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a +great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him." + +Fay turned her quivering face towards him. + +"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm so +thankful it was _you_, and not him." + +"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked with +your own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs--to +_himself_." + +In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things about +the man she loved. + +"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let me +stay--in Italy." + +"I'd give anything I have," she said with a sob; "I'd give both my +hands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinks +so much of, I'd give anything if only I had not--done that, if I could +only undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't done +it, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. And +then the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what I was doing. +But since you came back I've _seen_; since I loved Wentworth I've +_seen_--what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got in +the way, and left you to die." + +He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguished +realisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her through +love for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawn +her, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his. + +"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out for +his sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while you +were shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I only +tried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of it +any longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself--till now. I see +now that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentle +and loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael. +You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael, _must +Wentworth pay too_?" + +Michael looked at her with compassion. "I am afraid he must. But do not +let him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in your +power to save him part of the--the expense. Let him pay the lesser price +instead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out." + +Silence. + +"It is the only thing to do, Fay." + +No answer. + +"I am afraid you do not love him after all," said the inexorable voice. + +Again silence. + +Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenched +hands between both of his. + +"Love him a little more," he said. "Take the risk and tell him +everything--while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgive +me if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enough +to risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because you +found the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, +because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me," Michael's voice shook, +"it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed." +His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. You +wouldn't if you--if you knew what it was like." + + * * * * * + +Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face on +the sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretched +arms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucified +anew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or of +fear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death. + +Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, to +pierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so late +but come at last, to help her in her sore need? + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + His own thought drove him like a goad.--TENNYSON. + + +"Now," said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustled +down here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. I +calculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that's +worrying you?" + +Michael did not answer. + +The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly. + +"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We are +all in the same steam launch." + +"I don't want anything, thanks." + +"In love?" + +"No." + +"Quite sure? I have always observed that people who are in love are +desperately offended at the bare supposition that such a thing is +possible. Things might be arranged, you know. Young women aren't +intended by nature to live single any more than you are. Would a few +weeks in London meet the case? The season's just beginning. No theatres, +of course, and no late hours. Your brother here seems made of money, +though he will soon be ruined if he goes on sending for me. For I always +charge double if I'm sent for unnecessarily. Come, sir, what _do_ you +want?" + +"I don't know," said Michael, half amused. He was still exhausted by his +expedition to Priesthope of the previous day. "I don't want anything, +thanks. I'm--all right." + +"What do you say to a change?" + +"I had not thought of that," said Michael with a flicker of interest. +"Now you mention it--yes. That's the very thing. I should like--a +change." + +Wentworth came forward at once. + +"Norway?" he said eagerly, "or Switzerland. We must be guided by you, +doctor. Or a yacht? You used to be fond of yachting, Michael. We will go +anywhere you like." + +Michael's face fell. + +The doctor leaned back and examined his finger tips. He had seen what he +wanted. + +"The yacht won't do," he said with decision. "And Norway's out of the +question. Much too far. In fact, there's only one place that will do." + +"Where is that?" said Wentworth. + +"I don't know yet. Where is it, Mr. Carstairs?" + +"I should like," said Michael, colouring painfully, for he knew he was +going to hurt Wentworth, "I should like to go to Lostford; not for long, +just for a little bit." + +"Lostford!" exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. "Lostford, down in that hole. +Oh! no." + +"Well, and why not Lostford?" said the doctor with asperity. "Mr. +Carstairs shows his sense. He is not up to a long journey. Quite near. +Interesting cathedral. Cultivated society. I should have suggested +Lostford myself if he had not." + +"I will ride over and take rooms at the 'Prince Consort' to-day," said +Wentworth meekly. + +"You will do no such thing. Are you taking leave of your senses. Your +brother is not fit to stay in a rackety hotel." + +"The Bishop has asked me," said Michael faintly, "to spend a week or two +with him whenever I like. I believe--it's very quiet there." + +"The Bishop!" said Wentworth. "It would be far from quiet at the Palace. +Worse than an hotel. The Bishop lives in a perpetual turmoil." + +Then he suddenly stopped short, and became very red. Michael preferred +the Bishop to himself. + +"It's a good idea," said the doctor. "I know the Bishop. Splendid man. +The best of company." He got up with decision. "My orders are, Mr. +Carstairs, that you proceed to Lostford without delay. How far is it? +Six miles. Go to-morrow." Then he turned to Wentworth. "You will go over +and see him in a week's time, and report to me." + +"You think him worse," said Wentworth nervously to the doctor in the +hall. + +"No," said the doctor emphatically, watching his motor sliding to the +door, "but he is not better. He is anxious about something, and he can't +afford to be anxious. He is not in a fit state to have a finger ache +with impunity." + +"He has nothing to be anxious about," said Wentworth. "And if he had a +trouble I should be the first to hear of it. I have his entire +confidence--at least, I had till lately. I must own he has become very +changed of late. Of course, I never appear to notice it, but----" + +"Quite right. Quite right. I wish others were as sagacious as you are. +Let him go to Lostford for a week or two--and get you off his nerves," +the doctor added to himself as the motor shot down the beech avenue. + + * * * * * + +A few days later Wentworth was sitting idly watching the stream of +Piccadilly from the windows of his club. The same day that Michael had +gone to Lostford he had discovered that he had business in London. He +would have found it difficult to say what his business there was. But +one of Wentworth's many theories about himself was that he was a very +busy man. He had so constantly given "urgent business" as a reason for +evading uncongenial social engagements that he had finished by believing +himself to be overwhelmed with arduous affairs. So he went to London, +and visited a publisher anent his forthcoming history of Sussex, and +dined with a man whom he met at Lord's, whom he had not seen for years, +and wrote daily to Fay, expressing ardent but vague hopes that he might +be able to "get away" from London by the end of the week. + +He was in no hurry to return. + +A vague fear of something grievously amiss with Michael, he knew not +what; an unformulated anxiety weighed upon him. And he was jealous. +Jealousy had brought him up to London. He was not going to remain +deserted at Barford. Jealousy was keeping him there now. He had seen +that Michael was glad to get away from him, that he had caught at the +doctor's suggestion of a change. His sullen heart was very sore about +Michael. Why did he _want_ to leave him? Where would he meet anyone more +devoted to him than himself? What could any man do for another that he +had not done for Michael? Was it true then, after all, what he had so +often heard was the fate of men of deep affections like himself, that +they give all, and are given nothing in return. + +A sudden exclamation made him look up. + +"Why, Maine, is it you?" + +A tall, bald man was holding out his hand to him. For a moment Wentworth +did not recognise him. Then he remembered him. Lord John Alington. + +He shook hands with tepid civility, but Lord John always mistook a +pained recognition for an enthusiastic welcome. He drew up a chair at +once. + +"Now this is what I call luck," he said, his red face beaming. "And so +your brother is freed at last. Only heard the news when I landed from +Norway a week ago. I congratulate you with my whole heart. I never was +so glad about anything before." And Lord John sawed Wentworth's limp +hand up and down. + +"I was present, you know," he went on. "Made a great impression on me. +Sobered me for a long time I can tell you. I saw Carstairs come forward +and give himself up. Never had such a shock in my life." + +"I remember now you were there." + +"Rather. And I was dead certain from the first that he had never done +it. I always said so. And now at last the mystery is cleared up. And I +was proved right. He hadn't. But fancy shielding that old Marchesa with +her long teeth. Why, she was forty if she was a day. Who would ever have +thought of it!" + +"No one did," said Wentworth. + +"_I_ didn't. I may tell you frankly that I did _not_. The Marchesa! I +knew her. But it never so much as crossed my mind that she had massacred +her old hubby. 'Good God! The Marchesa!' Those were my exact words when +I heard a week ago. Is Carstairs in London? I should like just to shake +him by the hand." + +"He is not in town. He is still feeling the effects of his +imprisonment." + +"I should like to have seen him. It was my fault he was found you know. +I said 'Perhaps he's behind the screen.' Dreadfully sorry. Wish I +hadn't. Only my fun. Never thought he was there, or anyone. I've never +forgotten his coming out from behind the screen. But what I want to know +is," Lord John tapped Wentworth on the arm with his eyeglass, and +lowered his voice confidentially, "_why he ever went behind it_. That's +what has been puzzling me ever since I read the Marchesa's confession. +If he wanted to shield her, why the deuce did he hide at all? Why not +strike a noble attitude bang in the middle of the room--from the first?" + +Wentworth looked at him astonished. The vague suspicion of the last +weeks that Michael was concealing something from him was taking shape at +last. + +There was no doubt that Lord John had got hold of a listener. + +"No, no, Maine. When Carstairs was hiding behind the screen he was not +dying with anxiety to take the Marchesa's crime on his white +shoulders--not at that moment. That explanation don't wash. I believe I +know a better one." + +Wentworth became very red. + +"The Duchess's maid! Did you ever see her? No, evidently not. You've no +time for looking at young maids. Taken up with contemplating an old +maid in the glass. You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiest +little baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an iron +virtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't think +why. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints like +you. _I'm_ not, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? The +Marchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. +Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about the +house after everyone else had gone just for the same reason that I +was--to get a word with that little hussy?" + +At that moment a tall, middle-aged man came into the room, and Lord +John's roving eye fell upon him. He sprang to his feet. + +"Lossiemouth," he said, seizing the latter's unwilling hand. "Why, +you're the very man I wanted to see. Congratulations, my dear chap. All +my heart. Ship come in, and ancestral halls, and going to be married +too, all in one fell swoop. Know Miss Bellairs a little. Jumped with her +in the same skipping rope in childhood's happy hours, danced with her at +her first ball. Madly in love with her. Never seen her since." + +Wentworth escaped. + +The chamber of his soul had been long in readiness, swept and garnished +for the restless spirit that had returned to it--not alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + Est-il indispensable, qu'on s'élève à un point d'où le + devoir n'apparaisse plus comme un choix de nos sentiments + les plus nobles, mais comme une silencieuse nécessité de + toute notre nature. + + +The following afternoon Fay was sitting in the little morning-room at +Priesthope, trying to write a letter, a long, long letter. Wentworth's +last note to her, just arrived by the second post, was open before her, +telling her that he could not return for two days. And then the door +opened gently and he was before her. + +She turned a white, miserable face towards the door. Then as she +suddenly recognised him the colour rushed to her face, and she flew to +him with a cry and locked him in her arms, kissing his shoulder, his +coat, his hands. + +He was thunderstruck. Could a few days' absence so profoundly move these +delicate, emotional creatures, whom an all-wise Providence had made +almost too susceptible to masculine charm! He had never seen Fay like +this. But then, he had never seen anything like anything. She withdrew +herself suddenly, and stood a little apart, her face and neck one +carnation of soft shame. + +"But you are in London," she said, her lip quivering, her eyes falling +before his. "I have your own word for it that you are still in London." +And she pointed at his letter. "I was not expecting to see you." + +A joy so great that it was akin to pain laid its awakening hand on him. + +"I am glad you were not expecting me," he said, in a voice that he +hardly recognised as his own. "I'm thankful." + +And he drew her back into his arms more moved than he had ever been. + +Yes. He was loved. He loved and was loved. He had not known the world +contained anything as great as this. He had always thought that life at +its best was a solitary thing, that passion was a momentary madness with +which he did not care to tamper, that celibacy was a cheap price to pay +for his independence. But he and this woman were one. This was rest and +peace and joy and freedom. This was what he had always wanted, without +knowing he wanted it. One of the many barriers between them went down. +He thought it was the only one. + +They sat a long time in silence, his head against her breast. Her face +had become pinched and sharp, the lovely colour had faded. All its +beauty and youth had gone out of it. Her terrified eyes stared at the +wall. + +"Speak! Speak now," said the inner voice. "You were too late last time. +Speak now." + + * * * * * + +"I am very miserable, Fay," in a whisper against her cheek. + +Her arms tightened round him. + +"Not so miserable now I am with you, but----" + +It seemed to Fay that she was holding to her breast the point of the +sword that was to stab her to death. + +He raised his head, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. Twice +she had seen tears in those narrow grey eyes before: once when he had +talked to her of Michael in prison, and once when Michael was +exonerated. + +They had drawn a little apart. + +"When I came here I had not meant to tell you anything about it, I had +decided not to, but--Fay, I can't believe it, I haven't slept all night, +I have known for two days, I only found it out by the merest accident +that that has happened which I never thought could happen, something +impossible." Wentworth's lip quivered. "Michael has deceived me, not by +mistake, not just for a moment, but systematically, purposely--for +years." + +There was anger as well as pain in his voice. + +"It was about the murder of the Marchese," he said hoarsely, "but I +don't care what it was about. That is not the point. He has deceived me +for reasons of his own. I don't know what they were. And I am afraid, my +darling, he has not stopped there. I am afraid he has deceived you too. +I am afraid he hoodwinked you when he persuaded you to let him hide in +your room. Why did he hide if he wanted to shield the Marchesa? Don't +you see that there was no sense in his hiding, though I never thought of +it till--lately? I always believed in him implicitly, as you have done. +I thought him just the kind of person who _would_ sacrifice himself for +a woman. I can understand doing it. It appeals to a nature like mine. I +was deeply hurt by his reserve about it, since he came home, but I never +thought, it never struck me for one single second that it concealed +anything discreditable." + +"It does not," said Fay suddenly. + +"My dearest, I am afraid there is no doubt it _does_. What was Michael +doing in the garden at that time of night. You forget that. I am the +last person in the world to think him capable of anything disgraceful, +but I can't resist the conclusion that he was waiting--Oh! Fay, your +ears ought not to be polluted by such things--was waiting about in the +garden because he was attracted by someone in the house." + +He felt her hand quiver in his. + +How womanly she was, how pure. How could any man have had the heart to +throw dust in those innocent eyes. He kissed the cold hand reverently. + +"I hate to speak of such a thing to you, and it somehow seems out of the +question when I think of Michael's character. I had brought him up so +carefully. I had impressed on him my own high code of morals from the +first. And yet--and yet--I am afraid, dearest, that Michael must have +been hanging about to have a word with--don't start so, why do you +tremble?--with your maid." + +There was a moment's silence. Fay shook her head. She was unable to +articulate. + +"Then why was he there? You must have been very much surprised and +alarmed at his coming to your room so late. And unless he had given you +some reason, you would not have tried to hide him. We always come back +to that. Fay, why _did_ Michael hide?" + +Fay struggled to speak. Her white lips moved, but no sound came forth. + +"You and the Duke tried to save him from being discovered. We all know +that. The Duke told me so himself." + +Another silence. Fay's face became convulsed. + +"You are no diplomatist, Fay, thank God. I see very well, my darling, +that you know more than you will say. It is plain to me that in the +goodness of your soul you are trying to shield Michael--_for the second +time_." + +He kissed her on the forehead and rose to go. + +"Stop!" said Fay, almost inarticulately. "It isn't the second time. I +didn't shield him last time. I let him slide. But I will now ... I want +to tell you ... I must tell you ... Michael has been here, he came when +you were away in London. And he has begged me,--Oh, Wentworth, he has +implored me to--tell you everything." + +Wentworth became very red. His face hardened. + +"_He_ has begged you to tell me! He has gone behind my back and tried to +depute you to do it, to plead his cause for him. He has not even the +courage to come to me himself. No, Fay, I am going. It is no use +imploring me to stay. I'm not going to listen to you making excuses for +him. I don't blame you, but you ought not to have agreed to do it. +Whatever I ought to know I must hear from Michael himself. I shall go +over and see him to-morrow morning. Even you, dearest, must not come +between--Michael and me." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + Aimer quelqu'un, c'est à la fois lui ôter le droit, et lui + donner la puissance de nous faire souffrir. + + +The following morning the Bishop and Michael were sitting in the library +at Lostford Palace. The Bishop was reading a letter, while Michael +watched him, sunk in an arm-chair. + +Presently the Bishop thrust out his under lip, and gave back the letter +to Michael. + +"Wentworth has dipped his pen in gall instead of in his inkpot," he +said. "For real quality and strength give me the venom of a virtuous +person. The ordinary sinner can't compete with him. Evil doers are out +of the running in this world as well as in the next. I often tell them +so. That is why I took orders. What do you suppose Wentworth suspects +when he says Alington has suggested a discreditable reason for your +being in the di Collo Alto villa that night, and that he is not going to +allow you to skulk behind a woman any longer? He will be here directly +to extort what he is pleased to call 'the truth.' What are you going to +say?" + +"I don't know," said Michael. "That is the worst of me. I never know." + +The Bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. + +"I see one thing," continued Michael, "and that is that it's all +important that he should not break with Fay." + +"That will be his first step--if he knows the truth." + +"I am afraid it will, and yet--that's the pity of it, she will last +longer than I shall, and he does like her--a little--which is a great +deal for him. You don't believe it, but he really does. And he'll want +her more than ever--when I'm gone." + +The Bishop looked keenly at his godson. + +Michael had never before alluded to his precarious hold on life. It was +obvious that he was only considering it now in its bearings on +Wentworth's future. + +"Can a man who has grown grey looking at himself in the glass, and +recording his own microscopic experiences in a diary, can such a man +_forgive_?" said the Bishop. "Forgiveness is tough work. It needs +knowledge of human nature. It needs humility. I forgave somebody once +long ago. And it nearly was the death of me. I've never been the same +man since." + +"Wentworth will have his chance," said Michael. "It's about all we can +do for him." + +"We all know he says he can, but then he says such a lot of things. He +dares to say he loves his fellow men. But I've never yet found that +assertion coincide with any real _working_ regard for them. There are +certain things which those who care for others never say, and that is +one of them. The egoist on the contrary is always asserting of himself +what he ought in common decency to leave others to say of him,--only +they never do. Wentworth actually told me not so long ago that he was +intent on the service of others. I told him it was for those others to +mention that interesting fact, and that nobody had lied about him to +that extent so far in my diocese." + +"He always says that there is perfect confidence between us," said +Michael. "I've heard him say so ever since I can remember, and I've +heard him tell people that I always brought him my boyish troubles. But +I never did, even as a boy, even when I got into a scrape at Eton. My +tutor stood by me in that. Wentworth never could endure him. He said he +was such a snob. But snob or not, he was a firm friend to me. And I +never told him even at the first of my love for Fay. I somehow could +not. You simply can't tell Wentworth things. But he has got it into his +head that I always have, and that this is the first time I have kept +anything from him. If I had only Fay's leave to tell him! It is the only +thing to do." + +The door opened, and to the astonishment of both men, Fay and Magdalen +came in. Fay looked as exhausted, as hopeless, as she had done three +months ago when Magdalen had brought her to make her confession to the +Bishop in this very room. + +She evidently remembered it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him and +said, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Do +you think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy on +me again, like He did before?" + +"Do you mean by God having mercy, that Wentworth will still marry you if +he knows the truth?" + +She did not answer. That was of course what she meant. + +She looked from one to the other of her three friends with a mute +imploring gaze. Their eyes fell before hers. + +"I have not slept all night," she said to the Bishop. "Magdalen stayed +with me. And we came quite early because I had to come. Wentworth must +be told. It isn't because Magdalen says so. She hasn't said so, though I +know she felt he ought to be told from the first. And it isn't because +he's sure to find out. And oh! Michael, it isn't for your sake, to put +you right with him. It ought to be, but it isn't. But I can't let him +kiss me any more, and not say. It makes a kind of pain I can't bear. It +has been getting worse and worse ever since Michael came back, only I +did not know what it was at first, and yesterday----" she stopped short, +shuddering. "He came to see me yesterday," she said in a strangled +voice. "He was so dear and good, so wonderful. There never was anyone +like him. It is in my heart that he will forgive me. And he trusts me +entirely. I can't deceive him any more." + +The eyes of Michael and Magdalen met in a kind of shame. Those two who +had loved her as no one else had loved her, who had understood her as no +one else had understood her, saw that they had misjudged her. They had +judged her by her actions, identified her with them. And all the time +the little trembling "pilgrim soul" in her was shrinking from the pain +of those very actions, was growing imperceptibly apart from them, was +beginning to regard them with horror, not because they had caused +suffering to others, but because they had ended by inflicting anguish +upon herself. The red-hot iron of our selfishness with which we brand +others becomes in time hot at both ends. We don't know at first what it +is that is hurting us, why it burns us. But our blistered hands, cling +as they will, must needs drop it at last. Fay's cruel little white hand +had let go. + +Michael took it in his and kissed it. + +"Wentworth is coming here this morning," said the Bishop gently. "He may +arrive at any moment. Stay here and speak to him. And ask him to forgive +you, Fay. You need his forgiveness." + +"I don't know how to tell him," gasped Fay. "I tried yesterday, and I +couldn't." + +"Let me tell him," said Michael, and as he spoke, the door opened once +more, and Wentworth was announced. + +He had got ready what he meant to say. The venomous sentences which he +had concocted during a sleepless night were all in order in his mind. + +Who shall say what grovelling suspicions, what sordid conjectures, had +blocked his inflamed mind as he drove swiftly across the downs in the +still June morning? He meant to extort an explanation from his brother, +to have the whole subject out with him once for all. He should not be +suffered to make Fay his accomplice for another hour. His tepid spirit +burned within him when he thought of Michael's behaviour to Fay. He said +to himself that he could forgive that least of all. + +He had expected to find Michael alone, or possibly the Bishop only with +him, the Bishop who _knew_. He was disconcerted at finding Fay and +Magdalen there before him. + +A horrible suspicion that Magdalen also knew darted across his mind. + +It was obvious to him that he had broken up a conference, a conspiracy. +His bitter face darkened still more. + +"I don't know what you are all plotting about so early in the morning," +he said. "I must apologise for interrupting you. I seem to be always in +the way now-a-days. People are always whispering behind my back. But I +have come over to see Michael. I want a few plain words with him without +delay, and I intend to have them." + +"That is well," said the Bishop, "because you are about to have them. We +were speaking of you when you came in." + +"I wish to see Michael alone," said Wentworth, stung by the Bishop's +instant admission of being in his brother's confidence. + +He looked only at Michael, who, his eyes on the ground, was leaning +white as death against the mantelpiece. + +"Do you wish us to go, Michael?" said the Bishop. + +"I wish you all to stay," he said, raising his eyes for a moment. His +hand shook so violently that he knocked over a little ornament on the +mantelpiece, and it fell with a crash into the fireplace. His voice +shook, too, but his eyes were steady. His great physical weakness, +poignantly apparent though it was, seemed a thing apart from him, like a +cloak which he might discard at any moment. + +"I cannot say all I have to say before others," said Wentworth fiercely, +"even if they are all his confederates in trying to keep me in the dark, +all, that is, except Fay. We know by experience that she can shield a +man who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know by +experience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes." + +"You have been kept in the dark," said the Bishop with compassion; "you +have not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive." + +In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense of +impending calamity. He looked again at Michael. + +Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembled +impotently. + +Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depths +to see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by the +first sight of him in his convict's blouse. + +"I always trusted you," he said with a groan, putting up his hand so as +to shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secret +you're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't _that_ I mind. It is +that--whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have kept +it from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely, +Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you should +treat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend." + +No one spoke. + +"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It's +rather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, what +I've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well know +for these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of your +own accord, what you have been persuaded to by this--this"--Wentworth +looked at the Bishop--"this outsider, this middle man." + +A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middle +man." + +"You have got to hear," said Michael, and the trembling left him. + +He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand on +the mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalen +for the first time saw a likeness between them. + +"I have kept things from you. You are right there," said Michael, +speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceived +you till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years before +that, I fell in love." + +Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment for +Michael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims. +He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightly +attracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if there +had been any attraction he should have been the first to know of it. Yet +the incredible truth was being thrust at him that Michael had struggled +through his first love without drawing upon the deep wells of +Wentworth's knowledge. + +"The woman I fell in love with was Fay. She was seventeen. I was +nineteen." + +The room went round with Wentworth. + +"Fay," he said, in blank astonishment, "Fay!" Then a glare of light +broke in on him. + +"Then it was she," he stammered, "not her maid, as that brute Alington +said--it was she--she herself that----" + +"It was her I went to see the night I was arrested. I was deeply in love +with her." + +Michael paused a moment, and then added gently, "She never cared for +me. I did not see that clearly at the time, because I was blinded by my +own passion. I have seen it since." + +Wentworth made no movement. + +"I decided to leave Rome. Fay wrote to me that I ought to go. I went to +say good-bye to her in the garden the night the Marchese was murdered. +While I was in the garden, the murder was discovered and the place was +surrounded, and I could not get away. I hid in Fay's boudoir. The Duke +came in and explained to Fay what had happened. It was the first I knew +of it. Then, when they searched the house and I saw that I must be +discovered in another moment, I came out and gave myself up as the +murderer, because I could not be found hiding in Fay's rooms at night. +It was the only thing to do." + +Fay took a long breath. What a simple explanation it seemed after all. +Why had she been so terrified? Wentworth could not blame her seriously +now. + +"I never tried to shield the Marchesa," Michael went on. "That was her +own idea. I only wanted to shield Fay from being--misconstrued. The Duke +understood. He saw me hiding behind the screen, and tried to save me. He +told me so next day. The Duke was good to me from first to last." + +Wentworth turned a fierce, livid face towards his brother. + +"Have I really got at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? The +Duke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at your +romantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion, +that part of the story is not quite so well thought out as the rest, +though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he saw +you behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no need +of an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forced +your love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it, +wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then--_then_--yes, I begin +to see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies--then when by an evil +chance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of your +being discovered, then you persuaded her, the innocent, inexperienced +creature whom you would have wronged if you could--you worked upon her +feelings, you made her into your accomplice, you persuaded her to hide +you.... You mean cur!... You only sneaked out of your hole when escape +was absolutely impossible. And so the truth, or some garbled part of it, +is choked out of you at last. No wonder you were silent all these years. +No wonder you would not speak. No wonder you let your poor dupe of a +brother break his heart over your silence. Credulous fool that I have +been from first to last. So help me God, I will never speak to you +again." + +The violent, stammering voice ceased at last. + +Fay shivered from head to foot, and looked at her lover. + +Both men had forgotten her. Their eyes never left each other. +Wentworth's fierce face was turned with deadly hatred upon his brother. +Michael met his eye, but he did not speak. + +There was death in the air. + +Suddenly as in a glass she saw that Michael was saving her again, was +sacrificing himself for a second time at enormous cost, the cost of his +brother's love. + +"Michael!" said Fay with a sob, "Michael, I can't bear it. You are +trying to save me again, but I can't bear to be saved any more. I have +had enough of being saved. I won't be saved. It hurts too much. I won't +let you do it a second time. I have had enough of being silent when I +ought to speak, I have had enough of hiding things, and pretending, and +being frightened." + +Fay saw at last that the truth was her only refuge from that unendurable +horror which was getting up out of its grave again. She fled to it for +very life, and flung herself upon it. + +She took Michael's hand, and turning to Wentworth began to speak +rapidly, with a clearness and directness which amazed Magdalen and the +Bishop. + +It all came out, the naked truth; her loveless marriage, the great +kindness of her husband towards her, her determination bred of idleness +and vanity to enslave Michael anew when he came to Rome, his resistance, +his decision to leave Italy, her inveigling him under plea of urgency to +come to the garden at night, his refusal to enter the house, her frantic +desire to keep him, his determination to part from her. + +There was no doubt in the minds of those who listened in awed silence +that here was the whole truth at last. + +Fay looked full at Wentworth and then said: "He asked me why I had sent +for him, what it was that he could do for me. And I said--I said--'Take +me with you.'" + +"No," said Michael, wincing as under a lash, "No, you did not. Fay, you +never said that." + +"You did not hear it, but I said it." + +Michael staggered against the mantelpiece. + +Wentworth had not moved. His face had become frightful, distorted. + +"I am a wicked woman, Wentworth," said Fay. "I tried to make him in love +with me. I tried to tempt him. I could make him love me, but not do +wrong. And then I let him take the blame when he was trapped. I had +trapped him there first. He did not want to come. I forced him to come. +I let him spoil his life to save my wretched good name. He is right when +he told you just now that I never loved him. The love was all on his +side. He gave it all. I took it all, and I went on taking it. It was I +who kept him in prison quite as much as the Marchesa. It was I who let +him burn and freeze in his cell. A word from me would have got him out." + +Wentworth laughed suddenly, a horrible, discordant laugh. + +They had rotted down before his eyes to loathsome unrecognisable +corpses--the man and the woman he had loved. + +Fay looked wildly at him. + +"But you are good," she said faintly. "You won't, Wentworth, you won't +cast me off like--like I did Michael." + +He did not look at her. + +He took up his gloves and straightened the fingers as his custom was. + +"There is no longer anything which need detain me here," he said to the +Bishop, and he moved towards the door. + +"Nothing except the woman whose fate is in your hands," said the Bishop +gently. "What of her? She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden. +Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You can +repay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity even +greater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you? +Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves you +and is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crush +her if you will. But will you?" + +"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees. + +His face was as flint, as he looked down at her, and tried to push away +her hands. + +"Let him go, my child," said the Bishop sternly, and he took Fay's +hands, and held them. "It is no use trying to keep a man who does not +love you. Go, Wentworth. You are right. There is nothing to keep you +here. In this room there are two people, one of whom has sinned and has +repented, and both of whom love you and have spoken the truth to you. +But there is no love and truth in you to rise up and meet theirs. You do +not know what love and truth are, even when you see them very close. You +had better go." + +"I will go," said Wentworth, his eyes blazing. And he went out and shut +the door behind him. + +Fay's hands slipped out of the Bishop's, her head fell forward, and she +sank down on the floor. The Bishop and Magdalen bent over her. + +Michael looked a moment at her, and swiftly left the room. He overtook +Wentworth in the hall, groping blindly for his hat. + +"Come in here," said Michael, "I want a word with you," and he half +pushed Wentworth into a room leading out of the hall. It was a dreary +little airless apartment with a broken blind, intended for a +waiting-room but fallen into disuse, and only partially furnished, the +corners piled with great tin boxes containing episcopal correspondence. + +Michael closed the door. + +"Wentworth," he said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand. +Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were +acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He +seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting words towards +himself. + +"I see one thing," said Wentworth, "and that is that I'm not inclined to +marry your cast-off mistress." + +Michael closed with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the +lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, +airless little room with its broken blind. + +Wentworth knew Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands had +him by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay had +knitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers. +But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knew +he was trying to throw him, and break his back. + +Wentworth fought for his life, but he was over-matched. The awful, +murderous hands were feeling for his neck again, the sobbing breath was +on his face, the glaring eyes staring into his. The hands closed on his +throat once more, squeezing his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes out of +his head. He made a last frightful struggle to wrench the hands away. +But they remained clutched into his flesh, choking his life out of him. +There was a thin, guttural, sawing noise mixed in with the sobbing. Then +all in a moment the sobbing ceased, he felt the hands relax, and then an +avalanche of darkness crashed down on him, and buried him beneath it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + That game of consequences to which we all sit down, the + hanger-back not least.--R. L. STEVENSON. + + +Down, very deep down. Buried in an abyss of darkness, shrouded tightly +in a nameless horror that pressed on eyes and breath and hands and +limbs. + +At last a faint sound reached Wentworth. Far away in some other world a +clock struck. His numbed faculties apprehended the sound, and then +forgot it when it ceased. + +At last he felt himself stir. He found himself staring at a glimmer of +light. He could not look at it, and he could not look away from it. What +was it? It had something to do with him. It grew more distinct. It was a +window with a broken blind. + +Someone close at hand began to tremble. Wentworth sat up suddenly and +found it was himself. He was alone, lying crumpled up against the wall +where he had been flung down. He knew where he was. He saw the piles of +tin boxes. He remembered. + +He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after +wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried +to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. +For a long time he did not move. + +At last the clock struck again. + +He staggered to his feet as if he had been called, and looked with +intentness at a fallen book and upset inkstand. There was a quill pen +balancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the cane +bottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table. +He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, and +then got hold of it, and put it on. There was a little glass over the +mantelpiece. A ghastly face with a torn collar was watching him +furtively through it. He turned fiercely on the spy and found the face +was his own. He turned up his coat and buttoned it. Then he went to the +half-open door and looked out. + +His ear caught a faint sound. Otherwise the house was very still. + +A maid servant on her knees with her back to him was washing the white +stone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant, +also with her back to him, was watching her. + +"Then it is early morning," he said. And he walked out of the room, and +out of the house, through the wide open doors. A fine rain was falling, +but he did not notice it. He passed out through the gates and found +himself in the road. He stopped unconsciously, not knowing what to do +next. + +A fly dawdling back to the town from the station, passed him, and pulled +up, as he hesitated. + +"Station, sir?" said the driver. + +"No, Barford," said Wentworth, and he got in. The fly with its faded +cushions and musty atmosphere seemed a kind of refuge. He breathed more +freely when he was enclosed in it. + +As in the garden of Eden desolation often first makes itself felt as a +realisation of nakedness. We must creep away. We must hide. We have no +protection, no covering. + +Wentworth cowered in the fly. He passed without recognising them all the +old familiar landmarks, the twisting white road that branched off to +Priesthope, the dew ponds, the half hidden, lonely farms. He was in a +strange country. + +He looked with momentary curiosity at a weather-worn sign post which +pointed forlornly where four roads met. It was falling to pieces with +age, but yet it must have been put up there since the morning. He had +never seen it before. He shouted to the driver that he had taken the +wrong road. The man pointed with his whip to where, a mile away, the +smoke of Barford rose among its trees. The landscape suddenly slid into +familiar lines again. He recognised it, and sank back, confused and +exhausted. The effort of speaking had hurt his throat horribly. Was he +going mad? How could his throat hurt him like this--if it wasn't--if +Michael had not---- + +He thrust thought from him. He would wait till he got home, till his own +roof was safely over him, the familiar walls round him. + +This was his gate. Here was his own door, with his butler looking +somewhat surprised, standing on the steps. + +He found himself getting out, and giving orders. He listened to himself +telling the servant to pay the fly and to send word by it to his +dog-cart to return home. Of course he had gone to Lostford in the +dog-cart. He had forgotten that. + +Then he heard his own voice ordering a whiskey and soda to be brought +to him in the library. And he walked there. + +The afternoon post had arrived with the newspapers and he took up a +paper. But it was printed in some language unknown to him, though he +recognised some of the letters. + +How long had he been gone, an hour, a day, a year? + +He looked at the clock. + +Half-past two. But this great shock with which the air was still rocking +might have stopped it. He put his ear to it. Strange! It was going. And +it always stopped so easily, even if the housemaid dusted it. + +Was it half-past two in the afternoon or in the night? + +There was a band of sunshine across the floor and outside the gardens +and the downs were steeped in it. + +Perhaps it was day. + +The butler brought in a tray, and placed it near him. + +"Have you had luncheon, sir?" + +Wentworth thought a moment, and then said "yes." + +"And will Mr. Michael return to-day, sir?" + +Wentworth remembered some old, old prehistoric arrangement by which +Michael was to have come back with him to Barford this afternoon. + +"No," he said, the room suddenly darkening till the sunshine on the +floor was barely visible. "No. He is not coming back." + +The man hesitated a moment, and then left the room. + +Wentworth groped for the flagon of whiskey, poured out a quantity, and +drank it raw. Then he waited for the nightmare to lift. + +His mind cleared gradually. His scattered faculties came sneaking back +like defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disaster +and one only to tell. He must needs believe them. + +_Michael had tried to kill him._ Whatever else shifted that remained +true. + +Wentworth bowed his stiffening head upon his hands, and the sweat ran +down his face. + +Michael had tried to kill him, and had all but succeeded. Oh! if only he +had quite succeeded. If only his life had not come back to him! He had +died and died hard in that little room. And yet here he was still alive +and in agony. + +Michael first. That thought was torture. Then Fay. That thought was +torture. The woman he had so worshipped, on whom he had lavished a +wealth of love, far greater than most men have it in them to bestow, had +deceived him, had been willing to be his brother's mistress. + +Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitly +distrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gauged +life and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had he +made an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worse +than the rest. + +What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. What +was Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like other +women, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man like +other men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once his +passions were aroused. It was an old story, as old as the hills, that +men and women betray each other. It was as old as the psalms of David. + +Pah! what a fool he was to allow his heart to be wrung by what was only +the ordinary vulgar experience of those who were so silly as to mix +themselves up with their fellow creatures. + +He had only himself to thank. + +Well, at any rate, he was free now. He was awake now. He was not going +to put his hand in the fire a second time. + +He was going abroad immediately. He would start to-morrow morning. In +the meanwhile, he would go and see somebody, call somewhere, be in high +spirits somewhere with others. They (they were Fay and Michael) would +hear of that afterwards, would see how little he cared. + +He seized up his hat and went out. But when he had walked a few hundred +yards he sank down exhausted on a wooden seat in the alder coppice +overhanging the house, and remained there. The baby pheasants crept in +and out, all round him. Their little houses, each with an anxious +step-mother in it, were set at regular intervals along the grassy path. +Only yesterday he had walked along that path with the keeper, and had +thought that in the autumn he and Michael would be shooting together +once more. + +They would never shoot together again. + + * * * * * + +As the dusk fell he heard a sound of wheels. His dog-cart returning from +Lostford, no doubt. It did not turn into the court-yard, but came on up +to the house. Wentworth peered down through the leaves. + +It was the Bishop's dog-cart. He recognised the groom who drove it. To +his amazement he saw Lord Lossiemouth get out. After some parley he went +into the house. + +Why should he have come? + +Oh! of course, how dense he was. He had been sent over on an embassy by +Magdalen and the Bishop. They wanted to hush up the fight, and bring +about a reconciliation between him and Fay. He should be told Fay was +making herself ill with crying. His magnanimity would be appealed to by +that pompous prig. Well, he had had his journey for nothing. Wentworth +saw his servants looking for him, and hid himself in the coppice. + +A couple of hours later he left the wood, and went down the steep path +to the gardens. It was nearly dark now. Lights twinkled in the house. +The lamp in the library laid a pale finger of light upon the lawn, +through the open glass doors. + +Wentworth went up to it, and then as he was about to enter, shrank back +astonished. + +Lord Lossiemouth was sitting there with his back to the window. +Wentworth stood a long time looking at him. He was evidently waiting for +him to come in. He sat stolidly on as if he were glued to his chair, +smoking one cigarette after another. + +At last he got up. Surely he would go now. He walked to the bookshelves +that lined the walls, inspected the books, selected one, and settled +himself with a voluminous sigh in his arm-chair once more. + +Wentworth stole away across the grass as noiselessly as he had come, and +disappeared in the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + Age by age, + The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard + For its old, heavy, dull, and shapeless ease. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + +Wentworth never knew how he spent the night, if indeed that interminable +tract in which time stopped could have been one night. It was longer +than all the rest of his life put together. In later years, in peaceful +later years, confused memories came to him of things that he must have +seen then, but of which he took no heed at the time; of seeing the +breath of animals like steam close to the ground; of stumbling suddenly +under a hedgerow on a huddled, sleeping figure with a white face, which +struggled up unclean in the clean moonlight, and menaced him in a foul +atmosphere of rags. + +And once, many years later, when he was taking an unfamiliar short cut +across the downs, he came upon a little pool in an old chalk pit, and +recognised it. He had never seen it by day, but he knew it. He had +wandered to it on a night of moon and mist, and had seen a fox bring +down her cubs to drink just where that twisted alder branch made an arch +over the water. + +Wentworth sat by that chalk pit on the down utterly spent in body and +mind hour after hour, till the moon, which had been tangled in the alder +stooped to the violet west with one great star to bear her company. Who +shall say through what interminable labyrinths, through what sloughs, +across what deserts, his tortured mind had dragged itself all night? The +sun had gone down upon his wrath. The moon had gone down upon his wrath. + +The land was grey. The spectral horses moving slowly in the misty fields +were grey. A streak of palest saffron light showed where the dim earth +and dim sky met. + +A remembrance came to him of a summer dawn such as this, years and years +ago, when Michael had been dangerously ill, and how his whole soul had +spent itself in one passionate supplication that he might not be taken +from him. + + * * * * * + +A tender green transparent as the light seen through a leaf in May was +welling up the sky. Two tiny clouds floated in it like rafts of rose +colour upon a sea of glass. + + * * * * * + +A deep and bitter sense of injustice was growing within him with the +growing light. + +A hundred times during the night he had recalled in cold anger every +word of that final scene in the library, his own speech, his own +actions, his great wrongs, his unendurable pain. + +And yet again it returned upon him, always with Fay's convulsed face, +and clinging hands, always with the Bishop's scathing words of +dismissal. Their horrible injustice rankled in his mind, their +abominable cruelty to himself revolted him. Hideous crimes had been +committed against him, but _he_ had done no evil, unless to love and to +trust were evil. Why then was he to be thus thrust into the wrong, thus +condemned unheard, cast forth with scorn because he had not obediently +fallen in with the Bishop's preposterous demand on him to condone +everything? _It was not to be expected of him._ + +Suddenly the faces of the others watching him after Fay's confession +rose before him, the Bishop's, Magdalen's, Michael's. He saw that they +had not expected it of him either--not even Michael. Only in Fay's +up-raised eyes as she held him by the knees had there been one instant's +anguished hope. Only in hers. And that had been quickly extinguished. +_He had extinguished it himself._ + + * * * * * + +The little clouds turned to trembling flame. The whole sky flushed and +then paled. A thread of fire showed upon the horizon. It widened. It +drew into an arch. The sun rose swiftly, a sudden ball of living fire; +and in a moment the smallest shrub upon the down, the grazing horses, +the huddled sheep, were casting gigantic shadows across the whole world. + +A faint sound of wheels was growing clearer and nearer. + +Wentworth saw a dog-cart coming towards him along the great white road. +As he looked it pulled up and then stopped. A man got out and came +towards him. The raw sunlight caught only his face and shoulders. He +seemed to wade towards him waist deep through a grey sea. + +Lord Lossiemouth again! + +Lord Lossiemouth's heavy tired face showed sharp and white in the garish +light. + +"I have been looking everywhere for you," he said, not ungently. "I +waited half the night at Barford, and then went on to Saundersfoot +station, and then to Wrigley. Your servants thought you might possibly +have gone there. But you had not been seen there. Magdalen sent me to +tell you you must go back to the Palace. Your brother is very ill. He +had an attack of hæmorrhage apparently just after you and he parted in +the hall. I promised her not to go back without you. Shall we drive +on?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss.--GOETHE. + + +Michael was dying. All night Magdalen and the Bishop, with nurse and +doctor, fought for his life, vainly strove to stem the stream of blood +with which his life was ebbing away. + +He had been found by Lord Lossiemouth and a servant lying unconscious at +the foot of the staircase in the hall. He had been carried into a room +on the ground floor. Everything had been done, but without avail. +Michael was dying, suffocating in anguish, threshing his life out +through the awful hours, in wild delirium. + +He was in prison once more, beating against the bars of his narrow +window looking out over the lagoon. His hoarse strangled voice spoke +unceasingly. His hands plucked at his wrists, and then dropped exhausted +beneath the weight of the chains which dragged him down. + +Magdalen would fain have spared Fay the ordeal of that vigil. But the +Bishop was inexorable. He bade her remain. And shrunk away in a corner, +shivering to her very soul, Fay listened hour by hour to the wild feeble +voice of her victim, back once more in the cell where he had been so +silent, where the walls had kept his counsel so well. She saw +something--at last--of what he had endured for her, of what he had made +so light. + +At last the paroxysm passed. Michael pushed back the walls with his +hands, and then suddenly gave up the struggle. + +"They are closing in on me," he said. "I cannot keep them back any +longer." + +The contest ceased all in a moment. He lay back motionless with +half-closed eyes, his face blue against the white pillows. The blood had +ceased at last to flow from his colourless lips. Death was very near. + +He knew no one. Not the Bishop, not Magdalen who kept watch beside him, +listening ever for Wentworth's step outside. + +In the dawn Michael's spirit made as if to depart, but it seemed as if +it could not gain permission. + +The light grew. + +And with the light the laboured breathing became easier. He stirred +feebly, and whispered incoherently from time to time. He was still in +his cell. Wentworth's name, the Italian doctor's, rose to his lips. +Then, after a pause, he said suddenly: + +"The Duke is dead. She will come now." + +There was a long silence. He was waiting, listening. + +The Bishop and Magdalen held their breath. Fay knew at last what it is +to fail another. She had failed Michael. Wentworth had failed her. + +"Fay!" Michael said, "come soon." + +She had to bear it, the waiting, the faltered anguish, the suspense, the +faint reiterated call to deaf ears. + +The Bishop got up from his knees beside Michael, and motioned Fay to +take his place. She went timidly to the low couch and knelt down by it. + +"Speak to him," said the Bishop sternly. + +"Michael!" she said. + +He knew her. All other voices had gone from him, but hers he knew. All +other faces had faded from him, but hers he knew. He looked full at her. +Love stronger than death shone in his eyes. + +"Fay," he said in an awed voice--"at last." + +She had come to release him, after the Duke's death, as he knew she +would. + +She leaned her white cheek a moment against his in speechless +self-abasement. + +He whispered to her. + +"Have I served you?" + +She whispered back, "Yes." + +He whispered again, "Do you still love me?" The words were quite +inaudible. + +Again she said, "Yes." + +Again a movement of the lips, but no sound. + +He looked at her with radiant questioning eyes. + +Again she murmured, "Yes." + +It had to be like that. He had always known that this moment had to +come. Had he not foreseen it in some forgotten dream? + +A great trembling laid hold on Michael, and then a stillness of +exceeding joy. + +In the silence the cathedral bells chimed out suddenly for early +service. The sound of the bells came faintly to him as across wide +water, the river of death widening as it nears the sea. It was all part +of his dream. The bells of Venice were rejoicing with him, in this his +blessed hour. + +He was freed at last, free as he had never been, free as the seagull +seen through the bars that could no longer keep him back. Useless bars, +why had he let them hold him so long? He was out and away, sailing over +the sheening water in a boat with an orange sail; in a boat like a +butterfly with spread wings; sailing away, past the floating islands, +past that pale beautiful grief of sea lavender--he laughed to see it +shine so beautiful--sailing away into a pearly morning, under a luminous +sky. + +The prison was far away now. Left behind. There was a great knocking at +its gates, hurried steps upon the stairs, and a voice crying urgently +through the bars. + +But he could not stay to listen. He was too far away to hear. The voice +was to him but like the thin harsh cry of the sea-mew wheeling near, +blended in with the marvel of his freedom. He took no heed of it. He was +afloat on the great sea-faring tide. Far away before him, but nearer, +nearer, and yet nearer, the sea gleamed in trembling ecstasy. + + * * * * * + +"He does not know me. He does not hear me," said Wentworth, on his knees +beside Michael, raising a wild, desperate face to Magdalen. Was +Michael's last look of deadly hatred to remain with him through life? + +"Speak to him again, Fay," said Magdalen. "Tell him Wentworth is here." + +Fay was still kneeling on the other side. The two lovers' eyes met +across the man they had murdered. + +"Michael," the tremulous voice whispered. + +"Louder," said Wentworth hoarsely. + +"Michael," said Fay again. + +But Michael's face was set. He was sunk in a great rest, breathing deep +and slow, deeper and slower yet, his long arms faintly rising and +falling with each breath. + +"Oh, Fay. For God's sake make him hear," said Wentworth with a cry. + +The Bishop and Magdalen standing apart looked at each other. + +"He has forgiven her, though he does not know it," he said below his +breath. + +Fay stooped down. She raised Michael in her arms, and laid his head on +her breast, turning his fading face to his brother. + +"Michael," she whispered into his ear, with a passion which would have +cloven death itself. "Come back, come back and say one word to +Wentworth." + + * * * * * + +Very near the sea now. Very near the great peace and light. This was the +real life at last. All the rest had been a vain shadow, a prison where +he had dwelt a little while, not seeing that this great all-surrounding +water, which had seemed to hem him in, was but a highway of light. + +Who were these two with him in the boat? Who but the two he loved best! +Who but Fay and Wentworth! They were all floating on together in +exceeding joy. They were very near him. He felt them one on each side, +but the light was so great that he could not see them. His head was on +Fay's breast. His hand was in Wentworth's hand. It was all as in dim +dreams he had longed for it to be. + +Fay's voice reached him, pressed close to his ear, like the sound of the +sea, held in its tiniest shell. + +He opened his eyes and his brother's white face came to him for a +moment, like sea foam, blown in from the sea of love to which he was +going, part of the sea. + +"Wenty!" he said, and smiled at him. + +And like blown foam upon a breaking wave, the face passed. + +And like the whisper in the shell under the hush of the surge, the voice +passed. + +The shadow which we call life--passed. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + +***** This file should be named 18834-0.txt or 18834-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/3/18834/ + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/18834-0.zip b/18834-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..788b7f5 --- /dev/null +++ b/18834-0.zip diff --git a/18834-8.txt b/18834-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bda618c --- /dev/null +++ b/18834-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11002 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Prisoners + Fast Bound In Misery And Iron + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18834] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE IT +CONTAINED ... THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"] + + + + +PRISONERS + +FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON + +By + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY + +_Author of_ + +"Red Pottage" + + +"But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail." + +--JULIAN OF NORWICH. + + +DODD, MEAD & COMPANY +NEW YORK MCMVI + +Copyright, 1905, 1906, by + +COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY + +Copyright, 1906, by + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY + +_Published, September, 1906_ + + + + +To +My Brother +Reginald + + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"Her eyes turned towards it mechanically +because it contained ... the man of +whom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_ + +"A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ +words" _Page_ 36 + +"'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden +passion" " 46 + +"'You are all blinder one than the other, that +it's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80 + +"If Fay had come in then he would have killed +her, done her to death with the chains he +had worn so patiently for her sake" " 146 + +"Fay noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders +were" " 184 + + + + +CHAPTER I + + Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you, + And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; + You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due, + Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth. + + --ARTHUR C. LEGGE. + + +Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at +Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little +compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome. + +How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to be +represented by so stupendous a name! + +She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards it +mechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precincts +the man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking. + +It was easy to see that Fay--the Duchess of Colle Alto--was an +Englishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name. + +She had the look of perfect though not robust health, the reflection +over her whole being of a childhood spent much in the open air. She was +twenty-three, but her sweet fair face, with its delicate irregular +features, was immature, childish. It gave no impression of experience, +or thought, or of having met life. She was obviously not of those who +criticise or judge themselves. In how many faces we see the conflict, or +the remains of conflict with a dual nature. Fay, as she was called by +her family, seemed all of a piece with herself. Her unharassed +countenance showed it, especially when, as at this moment, she looked +harassed. Anxiety was evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon her +smooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyes +were her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid, +limpid gaze, in which no guile existed, any more than steadfastness, any +more than unselfishness, any more than courage. + +Fay had come into the world anxious to please. She had never shown any +particular wish to give pleasure. If she had been missed out of her +somewhat oppressed and struggling home when she married, it is probable +that the sense of her absence was tinged by relief. + +She had never intended to marry the Duke of Colle Alto. It is difficult +to say why that sedate distinguished personage married her. + +Fay's face had a very sweet and endearing promise in it which drew men's +eyes after her. I don't know what it meant, and they did not know +either, but they instinctively lessened the distance between themselves +and it. A very thin string will tow a very heavy body if there is no +resistance, and the pace is slow. The duke looked at Fay, who was at +that moment being taken out for her first season by her grandmother, +Lady Bellairs. Fay tried to please him, as was her wont with all except +men with beards. She liked to have him in attendance. Her violet eyes +lighted up with genuine pleasure when he came to see her. + +It is perhaps difficult for the legions of women who do not please +easily, and for the handful whose interests lie outside themselves, and +who are not desirous of pleasing indiscriminately, it is difficult for +either to realise the passionate desire to please which possesses and +saps the life of some of their sisters. Admiration with them is not a +luxury, any more than a hot-water bottle is a luxury to the aged, or a +foot rest to a gouty foot. It is a necessity of life. After a becoming +interval, the interstices of which had been filled with flowers, the +duke proposed to Lady Bellairs for Fay's hand. Fay did not wish to marry +him. He was not in the least her ideal. Neither did she wish to remain +unmarried, neither did she wish to part with her grave, distinguished +suitor who was an ornament to herself. And she was distinctly averse to +living any longer in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in a +Hampshire down. Poor women have only too frequently to deal with these +complicated situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds are +seldom in perfect sympathy. + +Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared for +her, and some had cared much. These last had as a rule torn themselves +away from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind, +and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her little +gilt-edged notes. But the duke did not break away. He had selected her, +she pleased him, he desired to marry an Englishwoman. He had the +approval of Lady Bellairs. + +The day came when Fay was suddenly and adroitly confronted with the fact +that she must marry him, or lose him. + +Many confirmed bachelors who openly regret that they have never come +across a woman to whom they cared to tie themselves for life might be +in a position to descant on the inability of wives to enter into their +husbands' inmost feelings, if only they--the bachelors--had known on a +past occasion how to act with sudden promptitude on the top of patience. + +The duke played the waiting game, and then hit hard. He had coolly +allowed himself to be trifled with, until the moment arrived when it did +not suit him to be trifled with any longer. + +The marriage had not proved a marked success, nor an entire failure. The +duke was an irreproachable husband, but, like many men who marry when +they are no longer young, he aged suddenly after marriage. He quickly +became bald and stout. His tact except in these two particulars remained +flawless. He never allowed his deep chagrin to appear when, three years +after his marriage, he still remained without a son to continue his +historic name. + +He was polite to his wife at all times, mildly sarcastic as to her +extravagance. Fay was not exorbitantly extravagant; but then the duke +was not exorbitantly rich. One of Fay's arts, as unconscious as that of +a kitten, was to imply past unhappiness, spoken of with a cheerful +resignation which greatly endeared her to others--and to herself. The +duke had understood that she had not had a very happy home, and he had +honestly endeavoured to make her new home happy. In the early days of +his marriage he made many small experiments in the hope of pleasing the +pretty creature who had thrown in her lot with his. Possibly also there +may have been other subtle, patient attempts to win somewhat from her of +another nature. Possibly there may have been veiled disappointments, +and noiseless retreats under cover of night. + +However these things may have been, after the first year Fay made the +discovery that she was unhappily married. The duke was kind, in kindness +he never failed; but he was easily jealous--at least she thought so; and +he appeared quite unable to see in their true light her amicable little +flirtations with his delightful compatriots. After one or two annoying +incidents, in which the compatriots had shown several distinctly +un-English characteristics, the duke became, in his wife's eyes, +tiresome, strict, a burden. Perhaps, also, she felt the Englishwoman's +surprise at the inadequate belief in a woman's power of guarding her own +virtue, which remains in some nations an hereditary masculine instinct. +She felt that she could take care of herself, which was, in reality, +just what she could not do, as her imperturbable, watchful husband was +well aware. + +But was he aware of the subject of her thoughts at this moment? It was +more than probable that he was. But Fay had not the faintest suspicion +that he had guessed anything. + +One of her many charms was a certain youthful innocence of mind, which +imputed no evil to others, which never suspected that others would +impute it to her. Her husband was wearisome. He looked coldly on her if +she smiled on young men, and she had to smile at them when they smiled +at her. But, she reasoned, of course all the time he really knew that he +could trust her entirely. There was no harm in Fay's nature, no venom, +there were no dark places, no strong passions, with their awful +possibilities for good and evil. She had already given much pain in her +short life, but inadvertently. She was of that large class of whom it +may truly be said when evil comes, that they are more sinned against +than sinning. They always somehow gravitate into the places where people +_are_ sinned against, just as some people never attend a cricket-match +without receiving a ball on their persons. + +And now trouble had come upon her. She had at last fallen in love. I +would not venture to assert that she had fallen in very deep, that the +"breakers of the boundless deep" had engulfed her. Some of us make +shipwreck in a teacup tempest, and when our serenity is restored--there +is nothing calmer than a teacup after its storm--our experience serves, +after a decent interval, as an agreeable fringe to our confidential +conversation. + +Anyhow, Fay had fallen in love. I feel bound to add that for some time +before that event happened life had become intolerably dull. The advent +to Rome of her distant connection, Michael Carstairs, had been at this +juncture a source of delight to her. She had, before her marriage, +flirted with him a very little--not as much as she could have wished; +but Lady Bellairs, who was fond of him, had promptly intervened, and the +young man had disappeared into his examinations. That was four years +ago. + +In reality Fay had half-forgotten him; but when she saw him suddenly, +pale, handsome, distinguished, across a ballroom in Rome, and, after a +moment's uncertainty, realised who he was, she felt the same pleasurable +surprise, soft as the fall of dew, which pervades the feminine heart +when, in looking into an unused drawer, it inadvertently haps upon a +length of new ribbon, bought, carefully put away, and forgotten. + +Fay went gently up to Michael, conscious of her beauty and her wonderful +jewels, and held out her hand with a little deprecating smile. + +"And so we meet again at last," she said. + +He turned red and white. + +"At last," he said with difficulty. + +She looked more closely at him. The dreamy, poetic face had changed +during those four years. She became dimly aware that he had not only +grown from a youth into a man, but that some other transformation had +been painfully wrought in him. + +Instinctively her beaming face became grave to match his. She was slow +to see what others were feeling, but quick to reflect their mood. She +sighed gently, vaguely stirred, in spite of herself, by something--she +knew not what--in her companion's face. + +"It is four years since I saw you," she said. + +And from her lowered voice it seemed as if her life were rooted in +memory alone. + +"Four years," said Michael, who, promising young diplomat as he was, +appeared only able to repeat parrot-wise her last words after her. + +A pause. + +"Do you know my husband?" + +"I do not." + +"May I introduce him to you?" + +Fay made a little sign, and the duke approached, superb, decorated, +dignified, with the polished pallor as if the skin were a little too +tight, which is the Charybdis of many who have avoided the Scylla of +wrinkles. + +The elder Italian and the grave, fair, young Englishman bowed to each +other, were made known to each other. + +That night as the duke drove home with his wife he said to her in his +admirable English: + +"Your young cousin is an enthusiast, a dreamer, a sensitive, what your +Tennyson calls a Sir Galahad. In Italy we make of such men a priest, a +cardinal. He is not an _homme d'affaires_. It was not well to put him +into diplomacy. One may make a religion of art. One may even for a time +make a religion of a woman. But of the English diplomacy one does not +make a religion." + +Fay lay awake that night. From a disused pigeon-hole in her mind she +drew out and unfolded to its short length that attractive remnant, that +half-forgotten episode of her teens. She remembered everything--I mean +everything she wished to remember. Michael's face had recalled it all, +those exquisite days which he had taken so much more seriously than she +had, the sudden ruthless intervention of Lady Bellairs, the end of the +daydream. Fay, whose attention had been adroitly diverted to other +channels, had never wondered how he took their separation at the time. +Now that she saw him again she was aware that he had taken it--to heart. + +During that sleepless night Fay persuaded herself that Michael had not +been alone in his suffering. She also had felt the parting with equal +poignancy. + +They met again a few days later by chance in an old cloistered, deserted +garden. How often she had walked in that garden as she was doing now +with English friends! His presence gave the place its true significance. +They met as those who have between them the bond of a common sorrow. + +"And what have you been doing all these four years?" she asked him, as +they wandered somewhat apart. + +"I have been working." + +"You never came to say good-bye before you went to that place in Germany +to study." + +"I was told I had better not come." + +"I suppose grandmamma told you that." + +"She did, most kindly and wisely." + +A pause. + +She was leaning in the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb of +carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced +inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying +death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to +wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept +its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white +gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than in memory. +She seemed at one with this wonderful, passionate southern spring, which +trembled between rapture and anguish. The red roses and the white irises +were everywhere. Even the unkept grass in which her light feet were set +was wild with white daisies. + +"Do you remember our last walk on the down that day in spring?" she said +suddenly. + +She had forgotten it until last night. + +"I remember it." + +"It was May then. It is May again now." + +He did not answer. The roses left off calling to the dead, and suddenly +enfolded the two young grave creatures leaning against the tomb, in a +gust of hot perfume. + +"Do you remember," Fay's voice was tremulous, "how you gave me a bit of +pink may?" + +"I remember." + +"I was looking at it yesterday. It is not very pink now." + +It was true. In all shallow meanings, and when she had not had time to +get her mind into a tangle, Fay was perfectly truthful. She had +yesterday been turning over the contents of a little cedar box in which +she kept her childish possessions, and she had found in an envelope a +brown unsightly ghost of what had once been a may-blossom on a Hampshire +down. She had remembered the vivid sunshine, the wheeling seagull, the +soft south wind blowing in from the sea. Michael had kissed her under +the thin dappled shade of the flowering tree, and she had kissed him +back. + +Michael's eyes turned for a long moment to the yellow weather-stained +arches of the cloister, and then he looked full at Fay with a certain +peculiar detached glance which had first made her endeavour to attract +him. There is a look in a man's face which women like Fay cannot endure, +because it means independence of them. + +"I thought," he said, with the grave simplicity which apparently was +unchangeable in him whatever else might change, "that it was only I who +remembered. It has always been a comfort to me that any unhappiness +which my want of forethought, my--my culpable selfishness may have +caused, was borne by myself alone." + +"I was unhappy too," she said, speaking as simply as he. She looked up +at him suddenly as she said it. There was a wet glint in her deep violet +eyes. She believed absolutely at that moment that she had been as +unhappy as he for four years. There was no suspicion in her mind that +she was not genuine. Only the sincere ever doubt their sincerity. Fay +never doubted hers. She felt what she said, and the sweet eyes turned on +Michael had the transparent fixity of a child's. + +They walked unsteadily back to the others and spoke no more to each +other that day. Conscience pricked Fay that night. + +"Leave him alone," it said. "You have both suffered. Let the dead past +bury its dead." + +Fay's conscience was a wonderfully adaptable one with a tendency to +poetic quotation. It showed considerable tact in adopting her point of +view. Nevertheless from that generally fallacious standpoint it often +gave her quite respectable advice. "Leave him alone," said the +hoodwinked monitor. "You are married and Andrea is easily jealous. +Michael is sensitive, and has been deeply in love with you. Don't stir +him up to fall in love with you again. _Leave him alone._" + +The young British matron waxed indignant. Was she, Fay, the kind of +woman to forget her duty to her husband? Was Michael the kind of man to +make love to a married woman? Such an idea was preposterous, unjust to +both of them. And people would begin to talk at once if she and her +cousin (Michael was only a distant connection) were studiously to avoid +each other, if they could not exchange a few words simply like old +friends. No one had suggested an attitude of rigid avoidance; but +throughout life Fay had always convinced herself of the advisability of +a certain wished-for course by conjuring up, only to discard it, the +extreme and most obviously senseless opposite of that course--as the +only alternative. + +She imagined her husband saying: "Why won't you ask Mr. Carstairs to +dinner? He is your cousin and he is charming. What can the reason be +that you so earnestly refuse to meet him?" And then Andrea, who always +"got ideas into his head," would begin to suspect that there had been +"something" between them. + +_No. No._ It would be far wiser to meet naturally now and then, and to +treat Michael like an old friend. Fay had a somewhat muffled conception +of what an old friend might be. After deep thought she came to the +conclusion that it was her duty to ask Michael frequently to the house. +When Fay once recognised a duty she performed it without delay. + +She met with an unexpected obstacle in the way of its adequate +performance. The obstacle was Michael. + +The young man came once, and then again after an interval of several +months, but apparently nothing would induce him to frequent the house. + +Fay did not recognise her boyish eager lover in the grave sedate man, +old of his age, who had replaced him. His dignified and quite +unobtrusive resistance, which had not indifference at its core, added an +intense, a feverish, interest to Fay's life. She saw that he still cared +for her, and that he did not intend to wound himself a second time. He +had had enough. She put out all her little transparent arts during the +months that followed. The duke watched. + +She had implied to her husband with a smile that she had not been very +happy at home. She implied to Michael with a smile that it was not the +duke's fault, but that she was not very happy in her married life, that +he did not care much about her, and that they had but few tastes in +common. Each lived their own life on amicable terms, but somewhat apart +from each other. She owned that she had hoped for something rather +different in marriage. She had, it seemed, started life with a very +exalted ideal of married life, which the duke's + + coarse thumb + And finger failed to plumb. + +Michael remained outwardly obdurate, but inwardly he weakened. His +tender adoration and respect for Fay, wounded and mutilated though they +had been, had nevertheless survived what in many minds must have proved +their death-blow. He still believed implicitly all she said. + +But to him her marriage was the impassable barrier, a barrier as +enfranchisable as the brown earth on a coffin lid. + +After many months Fay at last vaguely realised his attitude towards her. +She told herself that she respected it, that it was just what she +wished, was in fact the result of her own tactfully expressed wishes. +She seemed to remember things she had said which would have led him to +behave just as he had done. And then she turned heaven and earth to +regain her personal ascendency over him. She never would have regained +it if an accident had not befallen her. She fell in love with him during +the process. + +The day came, an evil day for Michael, when he could no longer doubt it, +when he was not permitted to remain in doubt. Who shall say what waves +of boundless devotion, what passionate impulses of protection, of +compassion, of intense longing to shield her from the fire which had +devastated his own youth, passed in succession over him as he looked at +the delicate little creature who was to him the only real woman in the +world--all the rest were counterfeits--and who now, as he believed, +loved him as he had long loved her. + +Michael was one of the few men who bear through life the common +masculine burden of a profound ignorance of women, coupled with an +undeviating loyalty towards them. He supposed she was suffering as he +had suffered, that it was with her now beside the fountain, under the +ilexes of her Italian garden, as it had been with him during these five +intolerable years. + +How Fay wept! What a passion of tears, till her small flower-like face +was bereft of all beauty, of everything except a hideous contraction of +grief! + +He stood near her, not touching her, in anguish far deeper than hers. At +last he took her clenched hand in his. + +"Do not grieve so," he said brokenly. "It is not our fault. It is +greater than either of us. It has come upon us against our wills. We +have both struggled. You don't know how I have struggled, Fay, day and +night since I came to Rome. But I have been in fault. I ought never to +have come, for I knew you were living near Rome. But I did not know it +had touched you, and for myself I had hoped--I thought--that it was +past--in as far as it could pass--that I was accustomed to it. Listen, +Fay, and do not cry so bitterly. I will leave Rome at once. I will not +see you again. My poor darling, we have come to a hard place in life, +but we can do the only thing left to us--our duty." + +Fay's heart contracted, and she suddenly ceased sobbing. She had never +thought of this horrible possibility that he would leave her. + +She drew the hand that clasped hers to her lips and held it tightly +against her breast. + +"Don't leave me," she stammered, trembling from head to foot, from sheer +terror at the thought; "I will be good. I will do what is right. We are +not like other people. We can trust each other. But I can't live without +seeing you sometimes, I could not bear it." + +He withdrew his hand. They looked wildly into each other's eyes. His +convulsed face paled and paled. Even as he stood before her she knew she +was losing him, that something was tearing him from her. It was as +certain that he was going from her as if she were standing by his +deathbed. + +He kissed her suddenly. + +"I shall not come back," he said. And the next moment he was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + Nous passons notre vie à nous forger des chaînes, et à + nous plaindre de les porter.--VALTOUR. + + +For a long time Fay had stood on her balcony looking out towards Rome, +while the remembrance of the last few months pressed in upon her. + +It was a week since she had seen Michael, since he had said, "I shall +not come back." + +And in the meanwhile she had heard that he had resigned his appointment, +and was leaving Rome at once. She had never imagined that he would act +so quickly, with such determination. She had vaguely supposed that he +would send in his resignation, and then remain on. In novels in a +situation like theirs the man never really went away, or if he did he +came back. Fay knew very little of Michael, but nevertheless she +instinctively felt and quailed before the conviction that he really was +leaving her for ever, that he would reconstruct a life for himself +somewhere in which she could not reach him, in which she would have no +part or lot. He might suffer during the process, but he would do it. His +yea was yea, and his nay, nay. She should see him no more. Some day, not +for a long time perhaps, but some day, she should hear of his marriage. + +Suddenly, without a moment's warning, her own life rose up before her, +distorted, horrible, unendurable. The ilexes, solemn in the sunset, +showed like foul shapes of disgust and nausea. The quiet Campagna with +its distant faintly outlined Sabine hills was rotten to the core. + +The duke passed across a glade at a little distance, and, looking up, +smiled gravely at her, with a slight courteous gesture of his brown +hand. + +She smiled mechanically in response and shrank back into her room. Her +husband had suddenly become a thing to shudder at, repulsive as a +reptile, intolerable. Her life with him, without Michael, stretched +before her like a loathsome disease, a leprosy, which in the +interminable years would gradually eat her away, a death by inches. + +The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probably +seldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws which +light the faggots round it. + +The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowing +whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough. + +"I cannot live without him," she sobbed to herself. "This is not just a +common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life! +It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have +been! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on. What is reputation +worth, the world's opinion of me?--_nothing_." + +It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worth +to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed with +love. + +To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and to +the worldly as the only real life, the only path. But if we disbelieve +in it, and framing our lives on other lines become voluntarily +bedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we--when that in which we +have not believed comes to pass--can we suddenly rise and follow Love up +his mountain passes? We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds. +We even go feverishly a little way with him. But unless we have learnt +the beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seem +to turn giddy, and lose our footing. Certain precipices there are where +only the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are the +piled bones of many passionate pilgrims. + +Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh, +to be added to that putrefying heap? But can we blame anyone, be they +who they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergo +a real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it? + +Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt to +meet it. It was not to be expected that the attempt would be quite wise +or quite sincere either. Still it was the best she could do. She would +sacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one would +ever speak to her again, but she did not care. + +Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat which +the duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She should +never wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was a +unique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now! They had served to +pass the time in the sort of waking dream in which she had lived till +Michael came. But she was awake now. She looked at herself in the glass +long and fixedly. Yes, she was beautiful. How dreadful it must be for +plain women when they loved! They must know that men could not really +care for them. They might, of course, respect and esteem them, and wish +in a lukewarm way to marry them, but they could never really love them. +She, Fay, carried with her the talisman. + +A horrible doubt seized her, just when she was becoming calm. Supposing +Michael would not! Oh! but he _would_ if he cared as she did. The +sacrifice was all on the woman's side. No one thought much the worse of +men when they did these things. And Michael was so good, so honourable +that he would certainly never desert her. They would become legal +husband and wife directly Andrea divorced her. + +From underneath these matted commonplaces, Fay's muffled conscience +strove to reach her with its weak voice. + +"Stop, stop!" it said. "You will injure him. You will tie a noose round +his neck. You will spoil his life. And Andrea! He has been kind in a +way. And your marriage vows! And your own people at home! And Magdalen, +the sister who loves you. Remember her! Stop, stop! Let Michael go. You +were obliged to relinquish him once. Let him go again now." + +Fay believed she went through a second conflict. Perhaps there lurked at +the back of her mind the image of Michael's set face--set away from her; +and that image helped her at last to say to herself, "Yes. It is right. +I will let him go." + +But did she really mean it? For while she said over and over again, +"Yes, yes; we must part," she decided that it was necessary to see him +just once again, to bid him a last farewell, to strengthen him to live +without her. She could not reason it out, but she knew that it was +absolutely essential to the welfare of both that they should see each +other just once more before they parted--_for ever_. The parting no +longer loomed so awful in her mind if there was to be a meeting before +it took place. She almost forgot it directly her mind could find a +staying point on the thought of that one last sacred interview, of all +she should say, of all they would both feel. + +But how to see him! He had said he would not come back. He left Rome in +a few days. She should see him officially on Thursday, when he was in +attendance on his chief. But what was the use of that? He would hardly +exchange a word with her. She might decide to see _him_ alone; but what +if he refused to see _her_? Instinctively Fay knew that he would so +refuse. + +"We must part." Just so. But how to hold him? How to draw him to her +just once more? That was the crux. + +In novels if a woman needs the help of the chivalrous man ever kneeling +in the background, she sends him a ring. Fay looked earnestly at her +rings. But Michael might not understand if she sent him one, and if the +duke intercepted it he would certainly entirely misconstrue the +situation. + +Fay sat down at her writing-table, and got out her note-paper. Truth +compels me to state that it was of blue linen, that it had a little gilt +coronet on it, and that it was scented. + +She thought a long time. At least she bit the little silver owl at the +end of her pen for a long time. She tore up several sheets. At last she +wrote in her large, slanting, dashing handwriting: + + "_I know that we must part. You are right and I wish it too. It is + all like a terrible dream, and what will the awakening be?_" (Fay + did not quite know what she meant by this, but it impressed her + deeply as she wrote it, and a tear dropped on "the awakening" and + made it look like "reckoning." She was not of those, however, who + having once written one word ever think it can be mistaken for + another; and really reckoning did quite as well as awakening.) + "_But I must see you once before you go. I have something of urgent + importance to say to you._" (It was not clear to Fay what the + matter of importance was. But has not everyone in love laboured + daily under a burden as big as Christian's, of subjects which + demand instant discussion, or the bearer may fall into a state of + melancholia? Fay was convinced as she wrote that there was + something she ached to say to him: and also the point was to say + something that would bring him.) "_Don't fail me. You have never + failed me yet. You left me before when it was right we should part. + Did I try to keep you then? Did I say one word to hold you back?_" + (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a + new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She + realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not + faltered then.) "_I did not falter then. I will not do so now, + though this time is harder than the first._" (It certainly was.) + "_You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. + I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others_ + _have gone come back through the gardens. The door by the fountain + will be unlocked, and come up the balcony steps to my sitting-room. + The balcony window will be open. You know that I should not ask you + to do this unless it was urgent. Will you fail me at the last? For + we shall never meet again, Michael!_" + +Fay closed the note, directed it, pinned it into the lace of her inmost +vest--the wife of an Italian distrusts pockets and postal +arrangements--and then wept her heart out, her vain, selfish little +heart, which for the first time in her life was not wholly vain, nor +wholly selfish. Perhaps it was not her fault if she was cruel. It takes +many steadfast years, many prayers, many acts of humble service before +we may hope to reach the place where we are content to bear alone the +brunt of that pang, and to guard the one we love even from ourselves. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + There will no man do for your sake, I think, + What I would have done for the least word said. + I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, + Broken it up for your daily bread. + + --A. C. SWINBURNE. + + +A witty bishop was once heard to remark that one of the difficulties of +his social life lay in the fact that all women of forty were exactly +alike, and it was impossible to recall their individual label, to which +archdeacon, or canon, or form of spinster good works, they belonged. It +would be dangerous, irreverent, to pry further into the recesses of the +episcopal, or even of the suffragan, mind. There are snowy peaks where +we lay helpers should fear to tread. But it may be stated, without +laying ourselves open to a suspicion of wishing to undermine the Church, +that when the woman of forty in her turn acidly announces, as she not +infrequently does, that all young men seem to her exactly alike, she is +in a parlous condition. + +Yet many women had said that Michael was exactly like every other young +man. And to all except the very few who knew him well he certainly did +appear to be--not an individual at all--but only an indistinguished unit +of a vast army. + +His obvious good looks were like the good looks of others. He looked +well bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class as it is +rare in another. He had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, +square in the shoulders, and thin in the flank; he had the clear +weather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and the +self-effacing manner, which we associate with myriads of well-born, +machine-trained, perfectly groomed, expensively educated, uneducated +Englishmen. Our public schools turn them out by the thousand. The "lost +legion" is made up of them. The unburied bones of the pioneers of new +colonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never never +country," under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; they +fall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen and +craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. +They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from +them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which +they never showed in the business of cricket and football. + +They are essentially not of the stuff of which those dull persons, the +thinkers, the politicians, the educationalists, are made. No profession +knows them except the army. They have no opinions worth hearing. Only +the women who are to marry them listen to them. They are sometimes +squeezed into Parliament and are borne with there like children. About +one in a hundred of them can earn his own living, and then it is as a +land agent. + +They make adorable country squires, and picturesque, simple-minded, +painstaking men of rank. They know by a sort of hereditary instinct how +to deal with a labouring man, and a horse, and how to break in a dog. +They give themselves no airs. We have _millions_ of men like this, and +it is doubtful whether the nation finds much use for them, except at +coronations, where they look beautiful; or on county councils, where +they can hold an opinion without the preliminary fatigue of forming it; +and on the bloodstained fringes of our empire, where they serenely meet +their dreadful deaths. + +In the ranks of that vast army I descry Michael, and I wonder what it is +in him that makes me able to descry him at all. He is like thousands of +other men. In what is he unlike? + +I think it must be something in his expression. Of many ugly men it has +been said with truth that one never observes their ugliness. Something +in the character redeems it. With Michael's undeniable good looks it was +the same. One did not notice them. They were not admired, except, +possibly, for the first moment, or across a room. His rather +insignificant grey eyes were the only thing one remembered him by, the +only part of him which seemed to represent him. + +It was as if out of the narrow window of a fortress _our friend_ for a +moment looked out; that "friend of our infinite dreams" who in dreams, +but, alas! never by day, comes softly to us across the white fields of +youth; who, later on, in dreams but never by day, overtakes us with +unbearable happiness in his hand in which to steep our exhaustion on the +hillside; who when our hair is grey comes to us still in dreams but +never by day, down the darkening valley, to tell us that our worn out +romantic hopes are but the alphabet of his language. + +Such a look there was in Michael's eyes, and what it meant who shall +say? Once and again at long intervals we pass in the thoroughfare of +life young faces which have the same expression, as if they saw beyond, +as if they looked past their own youth across to an immortal youth, from +their own life to an unquenchable, upwelling spring of life. When +Michael spoke, which was little, his words verged on the commonplace. He +explained the obvious with modest directness. He had thought out and +made his own a small selection of platitudes. It is at first a shock to +some of us when we discover that a beautiful spiritual nature is linked +with a tranquil commonplace mind and narrow abilities. + +When Michael's eyes rested on anything his still glance seemed to pass +through it, into its essence. An inscrutable Fate had willed that his +eyes should not rest on any woman save Fay. + +Was her little hand to rend his illusions from him; or did he perhaps +see her as she was, as her husband, her shrewd old grandmother, her +sister even, had never seen her? Fay had revealed to Michael that of +which many men who write glibly of passion die in ignorance, the wonder +and awe of love, clothed in a woman's form, walking the earth. And in a +reverent and grateful loyalty Michael would have laid down his life for +her, as gladly as Dante would have done for "his lady." But Michael +would have laid down his in silence, as one casts off a glove. He had +never read the "New Life." It is improbable that it would have made any +impression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or books +or poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He was +unconsciously by nature that which others of the artistic temperament +consciously are in a lesser degree, and are doomed to try to express. +Michael never wanted to express anything, had no impulse of +self-revelation, no interest in his own mental experiences. + +While Fay was turning over her little _bric-a-brac_ assortment of +feelings, her toy renunciations, her imitation convictions, Michael was +slowly making the great renunciation without even taking himself into +his confidence. To go away. To see her no more. This was death by +inches. As he sat hour after hour in his little room behind the Embassy +it seemed to him as if, by some frightful exertion of his will, he were +wading with incredible slowness out to sea, over endless flats in +inch-deep water, which after an interminable journey would be deep +enough to drown him at last. + +The nausea and horror of this slow death were upon him. Nevertheless, he +meant to move towards it. And where Michael's eye was fixed there his +foot followed. He was not of those who rend themselves by violent +conflict. If he had ever been asked to give his reason for any action of +his life, from the greatest to the smallest, he would have looked at the +questioner in mild surprise, and would have said: "It was the only thing +to do." + +To him vacillation and doubt were unknown. A certain wisdom could never +be his, for he saw no alternatives. He never balanced two courses of +action against each other. + +"There were no two ways about it," he said to his godfather, the Bishop +of Lostford, respecting a decision where there were several +alternatives, which he had endeavoured to set before Michael with +impartiality. But Michael saw only one course, and took it. + +And now again he only saw one course, and he meant to take it. He +sickened under it, but his mind was made up. Fay's letter which duly +reached him only made him suffer. It did not alter his determination to +go. Certainly, he would see her again, if she desired it so intensely, +and had something vitally important to tell him, though he disliked the +suggestion of a clandestine meeting. Still it was Fay's suggestion, and +Fay could do no wrong. But he knew that nothing she could do or say, +nothing new that she could spring upon him would have power to shake his +decision to leave Rome on Friday. _It was the only thing to do._ + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + L'on fait plus souvent des trahisons par faiblesse que + par un dessein formé de trahir.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. + + +Fay's evening-party was a success. Her parties generally were. It was a +small gathering, for as it was May but few of the residents had come +down to the villas. Some of the guests had motored out from Rome. My +impression is that Fay enjoyed the evening. She certainly enjoyed the +brilliancy which excitement had momentarily added to her beauty. + +All the time she was saying to herself, "If people only knew. What a +contrast between what these people think and what I really am. Perhaps +this is the last time I shall have a party here. Perhaps I shall not be +here to-morrow. Perhaps Michael will insist on taking me away with him, +from this death in life, this hell on earth." + +What large imposing words! How well they sounded! Yes, in a way Fay was +enjoying herself. + +Often during the evening she saw the grave, kindly eyes of the duke upon +her. Once he came up to her, and paid her a little exquisite compliment. +Her disgust and hatred of him were immediately forgotten. She smiled +back at him. She did not love him of course. A man like that did not +know what love was. But Fay had never yet felt harshly towards any man +who admired her. The husband who did not understand her watched her with +something of the indulgent, protecting expression which we see on the +face of the owner of an enchanting puppy, which is ready to gallop on +india rubber legs after any pair of boots which appears on its low +horizon. + + * * * * * + +The guests had ebbed away by degrees. Lord John Alington, a tall, bald, +boring Englishman, and one or two others, remained behind, arranging +some expedition with the duke. + +Michael's chief had long since gone. Michael did not depart with him, +but took his leave a few moments later. Michael's departure from Rome +the following day on urgent affairs was generally known. The duke had +watched him bid Fay a mechanical farewell, and had then expressed an +urbane regret at his departure. The thin, pinched face of the young man +appealed to the elder one. The duke had liked him from the first. + +"It is time he went," he said to himself as he watched Michael leave the +room. As Michael left it Fay's excitement dropped from her, and she +became conscious of an enormous fatigue. A few minutes later she dragged +herself up the great pictured staircase to her little boudoir +overlooking the garden, and sank down exhausted on a couch. Her pretty +Italian maid was waiting for her in the adjoining bedroom, and came to +her, and began to unfasten her jewels. + +Fay dismissed her for the night, saying she was not going to bed yet. +She often stayed up late reading. She was of those who say that they +have no time for reading in the day, and who like to look up (or rather, +to say afterwards they looked up) to find the solemn moon peering in at +them. + +To-night there was no solemn or otherwise disposed moon. + +Fay's heart suddenly began to beat so wildly that it seemed as if she +would suffocate. What violent emotion was this which was flooding her, +sweeping away all landmarks, covering, as by one great inrolling tidal +wave, all the familiar country of her heart? Whither was she being swept +in the midst of this overwhelming roaring torrent? Out to sea? To some +swift destruction? Where? Where? + +She clutched the arm of the sofa and trembled. She had known so many +small emotions. What was this? And like a second wave on the top of the +first a sea of recklessness broke over and engulfed her. _What next?_ +She did not know. She did not care. Michael, his face and hand. These +were the only realities. In another moment she should see him, feel him, +hold him, never, never let him go again. + +In the intense stillness a whisper came up through the orange blossom +below her balcony: + +"Fay." + +She was on the balcony in a moment. The scent of the orange blossom had +become alive and confused everything. + +"Come up," she said almost inaudibly. + +"I cannot." + +"You must. I must speak to you." + +"Come down here then. I am not coming up." + +She ran down, and felt rather than saw Michael's presence at the foot of +the little stair. + +He was breathing hard. He did not move towards her. + +"You sent for me, so I came," he said. "Tell me quickly what I can do +for you, how I can serve you. I cannot remain here more than a moment. I +endanger your safety as it is." + +It was all so different from what she had expected, from what she had +pictured to herself. He was so determined and stern; and it had never +struck her as possible that he would not come up to her room, that the +interview would be so short. + +"I can't speak here," she said, angry tears smarting in her eyes. + +"You can and must. Tell me quickly, dearest, why you sent for me. You +said it was all-important. I am here, I will do your bidding, if you +will only say what it is." + +"Take me with you," she gasped inaudibly. + +She had not meant to say that. She was merely the mouthpiece of +something vast, of some blind destructive force that was rending her. +She swayed against the railings, clinging to them with both hands. + +Even as she spoke her voiceless whisper was drowned in a sound but very +little louder. There was a distant stir, a movement as of waking bees in +the house. + +He had not heard her. He was listening intently. + +"Go back instantly and shut the window," he said, and in a moment she +felt he was gone. + +She crept feebly up the stairs to her room and sank down again on the +couch, broken, half dead. + +"I shall see him no more. I shall see him no more," she said to herself, +twisting her hands. What a travesty, what a mockery that one hurried +moment had been! What a parting that was no parting! He had no heart. +He did not really love her. + +Through her stupor she felt rather than heard a movement in the house. +She stole out of her room to the head of the grand staircase. Nearly all +the lights had been put out. Close to a lamp in the saloon below, the +duke and Lord John were standing, looking at a map. "The Grotta Ferrata +road is the best," the duke was saying. And as he spoke a servant came +in quickly, and whispered to the duke, who left the saloon with him. + +Fay fled back to her own room. Something was happening. But what? Could +it have any connection with herself and Michael? No, that seemed +impossible. And Michael must by now have left the gardens, by the +unlocked door by which he had come in. + +Fay drew the reading lamp nearer to her, and opened the book of +devotions which Magdalen, her far off sister in England, had sent her. +Her eyes wandered over the page, her mind taking no heed. + +"_For it is the most pain that the soul may have, to turn from God any +time by sin._" + +There certainly was a sort of subdued stir in the house. A nameless fear +was invading Fay's heart. The book shook in her hand. What _could_ be +happening? And if it was, as it must be, something quite apart from her +and Michael, what did it matter, why be afraid? + +"_For sin is vile, and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to +no pain which is not sin. And to me was showed no harder hell than +sin._" + +A low tap came at the window. Fay started violently, and the book +dropped on the floor. + +The tap was repeated. She went to the window, and saw Michael's face +through the glass. + +She opened the glass door, and he came in. His clothes were smeared and +torn, and there was blood upon his hand. + +"Something has happened," he said. "I don't know what it is, but the +garden is surrounded, and there is someone watching at the door I came +in at. I have tried all the other ways. I have tried to climb the wall, +but there was glass at the top. I can't get out. And they are searching +the gardens with lanterns." + +Even as he spoke they saw lights moving among the ilexes. + +"They can't know," she said faintly. + +"It does not seem possible. They are probably looking for someone else, +but I can't be found here at this hour without raising suspicion. Is +there any way out through the house from here?" + +"Only down the grand staircase." + +"I must risk it. Show me the way." + +They went together down the almost dark corridor. Fay's heart sickened +at the thought that a belated servant might see them. But all was quiet. +At the head of the staircase they both peered over the balustrade. At +its foot in a narrow circle of light stood the duke and Lord John, and a +man with a tri-coloured sash. Even as they looked, the three turned and +began slowly to mount the staircase. + +Fay and Michael were back in her boudoir in a moment. + +"There is a way out here," he said, indicating the door into her +bedroom. + +"It leads into my bedroom, and then through to Andrea's rooms. There is +no passage, and he has a dog in his room. It would bark." + +"I must go back to the garden again," he said, and instantly moved to +the window. Both saw two _carabinieri_ standing with a lantern at the +foot of the balcony steps. + +"If you go down now," said Fay hoarsely, "my reputation goes with you." + +He looked at her. + +It was as if his whole life were focussed on one burning point; how to +save her from suspicion. If he could have shrivelled into ashes at her +feet he would have done it. She saw her frightful predicament, and +almost hated him. + +The animal panic of being trapped caught them both simultaneously. He +overcame it instantly, while she shook helplessly as in a palsy. + +He went swiftly back to the door leading to the staircase, and glanced +through it. + +"They are coming along the corridor," he said. "They will certainly come +in here." + +"Stand behind the screen," she gasped. "I will say no one has been here, +and they will pass through into the other room. As soon as they have +left the room go quickly out by the staircase." + +He looked round him once, and then walked behind a tall screen of +Italian leather which stood at the head of a divan. + +Fay took up her book from the floor, but her numb fingers refused to +hold it. She put it on the edge of the table near her, under the lamp, +hid her shaking hands in the folds of her long white chiffon gown, and +fixed her eyes upon the page. + +The words of the dead saint swam before her eyes: + +"_Yea, He loveth us now as well while we are here, as He shall do while +we are there afore His blessed face. But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail._" + +There were subdued footsteps outside, a tap, the duke's voice. + +"May I come in?" + +"Come in," she said, but she heard no words. + +She made a superhuman effort. + +"Come in," she said again, and this time to her relief she heard the +words distinctly. + +The duke entered and held the door half closed. + +"I feared to disturb you, my child," he said, "but it is unavoidable +that I disturb you. It is a relief to find that you are not yet in bed +and asleep. A very grave, a very sad event has happened which +necessitates the presence of the police commissioner. Calm yourself, my +Francesca, and my good friend the _delegato_ will explain." + +The official in the sash came in. Lord John stood in the doorway. + +"Duchess," said the official, "I grieve to say that one of your guests +of this evening, the Marchese di Maltagliala, has been assassinated in +the garden, or possibly in the road, and his dead body was dragged into +the garden afterwards. He was found just inside the east garden door, +which by some mischance had been left unlocked." + +A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ words. + +[Illustration: "A DEATHLIKE SILENCE FOLLOWED THE DELEGATO'S WORDS"] + +Fay turned her bloodless face towards him, and her eyes never left +him. She felt Michael listening behind the screen. + +"There was hardly an instant," continued the official, with a touch of +professional pride, "before the alarm was given. By a fortunate chance I +myself happened to be near. The garden was instantly surrounded. It is +being searched now. It seems hardly possible that the assassin can have +escaped. I entreat your pardon for intruding this painful subject on the +sensitive mind of a lady, and breaking in on your privacy." + +"I should think he has escaped by now," said Fay hoarsely. + +"It is possible, but improbable," said the official. Then he turned to +the duke. "This is, I understand from you, the only way into the house +from the garden?" + +"The only way that might possibly still be open," said the duke. "The +doors on the ground floor are both locked, as we have seen." + +"We greatly feared," continued the duke, turning to his wife, "that the +murderer if he were still in the garden, finding it was being searched, +might terrify you by rushing in here." + +"No one has been in here," said Fay automatically. + +"Have you been in this room ever since you left the saloon?" said her +husband. + +"Yes. I have been reading here ever since." + +"Then it is impossible that anyone should have escaped into the house +through this room," said the duke. "The duchess must have seen him. It +is no longer necessary to search the house." + +The _delegato_ hesitated. He opened the glass door and spoke to the men +with the lantern. + +"They are convinced that it is not possible he is concealed in the +garden," he said. "Perhaps if the duchess were deeply engaged in study +he might have serpentinely glided through into the next room without her +perceiving him. It is, I understand, the duchess's private apartment. It +might be as well--where does the duchess's apartment lead into?" + +"Into my rooms," said the duke, "and my dog is there. He would have +given the alarm long ago if any stranger had passed through my room. If +he is silent no one has been near him." + +There was a pause. + +Fay learned what suspense means. + +The _delegato_ twirled his moustaches. + +He was evidently reluctant to give up the remotest chance, and yet +reluctant to inconvenience the duke further. + +"It is just possible," he said, "that the assassin may have taken refuge +in here before the duchess came back to her apartment. My duties are +grave, duchess. Have I your permission?" + +Fay bowed. + +The duke, still urbane, but evidently finding the situation unduly +prolonged, led the way into Fay's bedroom. + +This story would never have been written if Lord John had not remained +standing in the doorway. + +Did Michael know he was there? He had not so far spoken, or given any +sign of his presence. + +"Won't you go into my room, Lord John, and help in the capture," she +said distinctly; and as she spoke she was aware that she was only just +in time. + +But Lord John would not go in, thanks. Lord John preferred to advance +heavily in her direction, and to sit down by her on the couch, telling +her not to look so terrified, that he would take care of her. + +She stared wildly at him, livid and helpless. + +A door was softly opened, and was instantly followed by the furious +barking of a dog. + +"Go and help them," said Fay to Lord John. + +But Lord John did not move. Like all bores he was conscious of his own +attractive personality. He only settled his eyeglass more firmly in his +pale eye. + +"You never spoke to me all evening," he said, with jocular emphasis. +"What have I done to deserve such severity?" + +In another moment the duke and the official returned, followed by +Sancho, a large Bridlington terrier, still bristling and snarling at the +official. + +Fay called the dog to her, and held it forcibly, pretending to caress +it. + +"No one has gone by that way," said the _delegato_ to the duke. "The dog +proves that." + +"Sancho proves it," said the duke gravely. + +As he spoke he paused as if suddenly arrested. His eyes were fixed on a +small Florentine mirror which hung over Fay's writing-table in the angle +of the wall. The duke's face changed, as a man's face might change, who, +conscious of no enemy, feels himself stabbed from behind in the dark. +Then he came forward, and said with a firm voice: + +"We will now go once more into the gardens. Lord John, you will +accompany us." + +Lord John got heavily to his feet. + +"Take Sancho with you," said Fay, holding the dog with difficulty, who +was obviously excited and suspicious, its mobile nostrils working, its +eyes glued to the screen. + +The duke opened the glass door, and Sancho, his attention turned, rushed +out into the night, barking furiously. + +"You need have no further fear," said the duke to Fay, looking into her +eyes. "The assassin has certainly escaped." + +"No doubt," said Fay. + +"Unless he is hiding behind the screen all the time," said Lord John, +with his customary facetiousness. "It is about the only place in the +room he could hide in, except of course the wastepaper basket." + +The _delegato_, who was not apparently a man who quickly seized the +humorous side of a remark, at once stepped back from the window, and +glanced at the wastepaper basket. + +"I may as well look behind the screen," he said, and went towards it. + +But before he could reach it the screen moved, and Michael came out from +behind it. + +The four people in the room gazed at him spell-bound, speechless; Lord +John reeled against the wall. The duke alone retained his +self-possession. + +Michael advanced into the middle of the room, and for a moment his eyes +met Fay's. Who shall say what he read in their terror-stricken depths? + +Then he turned to the duke and said: + +"I ask pardon of you, duke, and of the duchess, my cousin, for the +inconvenience I have caused you. I confess to the murder of the Marchese +di Maltagliala, and sought refuge in the garden. When the garden was +surrounded I sought refuge here. I did not tell the duchess what I had +done, but I implored her to let me take shelter here, and to promise not +to give me up. She ought at once to have given me up. She yielded to the +dictates of humanity and suffered me to hide in this room. Duchess, I +thank you for your noble, your self-sacrificing but unavailing desire to +shield a guilty man." + +Michael went up to her, took her cold hand and kissed it. Then he turned +again to the duke. + +"I offer you my apologies for this intrusion," he said, and the two men +bowed to each other. + +"And now, signor," he said in Italian to the amazed official, "I am at +your service." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser.--VAUVENARGUES. + + +Michael was imprisoned for the night in a cell attached to the Court of +Mandamento, and the next day was sent to Rome to await his trial at the +_assise_. + +Early on the second day after he reached Rome the duke came to him. The +two men looked fixedly at each other. They exchanged no form of +greeting. + +The duke made a little sign with his hand, and the warder withdrew +outside the cell door, which he left ajar. + +Then the duke sat down by Michael. + +"I should have come yesterday," he said in English, "but it took time to +gain permission, and also"--he nodded towards the door--"to arrange." + +"For God's sake give me details," said Michael. + +The duke gave them in a low voice. He described in a careful sequence +the exact position of the dead body, the wound, caused by stabbing in +the back, the strong inference that the murdered man had been attacked +in the road, and then dragged just inside the Colle Alto garden door. + +"I don't see any reason why he should have gone outside the garden," +said Michael. + +"Neither do I. But the garden door was unlocked. It had been locked as +usual, my gardener swears, and the key left in the lock on the inside. +Who then opened it, if for some reason the marchese did not open it +himself?" + +Michael did not answer. + +"I saw the body before it was moved," continued the duke. "It was still +warm. I incline to think the marchese was murdered actually inside the +garden, and that he fell on his face where he stood, and was dragged +behind the hydrangeas. But the _delegato_ thought differently. You will +remember, Carstairs, that the dead man had been dragged by the feet." + +"Did I put him on the right side or the left of the door as you go in?" + +"On the left." + +"On his face?" + +"Yes." + +There was a pause. + +"You had no quarrel with the marchese, I presume?" said the duke +significantly. + +"On the contrary," said Michael; "it is not known, but I had." + +"Just so. Just so. About a woman?" + +Michael winced. + +"About a horse," he said. + +"No," said the duke, with decision. "Think again. Your memory does not +serve you. It was about a woman. Was it not a dancing-girl?" + +"I am not like that," said Michael, colouring. + +"It is of no account what you are like, or what you are not like. What +matters is that which is quickly believed. A quarrel about a woman is +always believed, especially by women who think all turns on them. Were +you not in Paris at Easter?" + +"I was." + +"Was not the marchese in Paris at Easter?" + +"He was. I saw him once at the Opera with the old Duke of Castelfranco." + +"Just so. A quarrel about a dancing-girl at Paris at Easter. That was +how it was." + +"You are right," said Michael, regaining his composure with an effort. +"I owed him a grudge. You will be careful to mention this to no one?" + +"I will mention it only to one or two women on whom I can rely," said +the duke; "and to them only in the strictest confidence." + +Michael nodded. + +Silence fell between them, and he wondered why the duke did not go. The +warder shifted his feet in the passage. + +Presently the duke began to speak in a low, even voice. + +"I owe you an apology," he said. "I saw you standing behind the screen, +reflected in a little mirror, and for one moment I thought you had done +me a great injury. It was only for a moment. I regained myself quickly. +I would have saved you if I could. But I owe you an apology for a +suspicion unworthy of either of us." + +"It was natural," said Michael. He was greatly drawn to this man. + +"I may in some matters be deceived," continued the duke, "for in my time +I have deceived others, and have not been found out. I don't know why +you were in my wife's rooms that night. Nevertheless, I clearly know two +things: one, that you did not murder the marchese, and the other, that +there was nothing wrong between you and my wife. With you her honour was +safe. You and I are combining now to guard only her reputation before +the world." + +Michael did not answer. He nodded again. + +"At the price," continued the duke, "probably of your best years." + +"I am content to pay the price," said Michael. "It was the only thing to +do." Then he coloured like a girl, and raised his eyes to the duke's. "I +went to her that night to say good-bye," he said. "That was why the +garden door was unlocked. I love her. I have loved her for years." + +It seemed as if everything between the two men had become transparent. + +"I know it," said the duke. "She also, the duchess, is in love with +you." + +Michael drew back perceptibly. His manner changed. + +"A little--not much," continued the duke. "I watched her, when you gave +up yourself. She could have saved you. She could save you still--by a +word. But she will not speak it. She appeared to love me a little once. +I was not deceived. I knew. She loves you a little now. Why do you +deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has a +permanent and deep affection--for her very charming self." + +The words fell into the silence of the bare room. Michael's thin hands, +tightly clenched, shook a little. + +The duke bent towards him. + +"Is she worth it?" he said, with sudden passion. + +No answer. Michael hid his face in his hands. + +"Is she worth it?" said the duke again. + +Michael looked up suddenly at the duke, and the elder man winced at the +expression in his face. He looked through the duke, through his veiled +despair and disillusion, beyond him. + +"Yes, she is worth it," he said. "You do not understand her because you +only love her in part. I meant to serve her by leaving Rome, but now I +can't leave it. What I can do for her I will. It is no sacrifice--I am +glad to do it--to have the chance. I have always wished--to serve +her--to put my hands under her feet." + +The sudden radiance in Michael's face passed. He looked down +embarrassed, annoyed with himself. + +"There remains then but one other person to be considered," said the +duke, looking closely at him. "The beautiful heroine, the young lover, +these are now accommodated. All is _en régle_. But that dull elderly +person who takes the _rôle_ of husband on these occasions! Is there not +a husband somewhere? What of him? Will he indeed fold his arms as on the +stage? Will he indeed stand by as serenely as you suppose and suffer an +innocent man to make this sacrifice for the sake of his--honour?" + +"He will, only because he must," said Michael, catching his breath. "I +had thought of that. He can do nothing. Have I not accused myself? And +his honour is also hers. They stand and fall together." + +[Illustration: "'IS SHE WORTH IT?' HE SAID WITH SUDDEN PASSION"] + +"They stand and fall together," said the duke slowly. "Yes, that is +true. And he is old. He is finished. He is the head of a great house. +His honour is perhaps the only thing that still means anything to +him. Nevertheless, it is strange to me that you think he would consent +to keep it at so great a cost, the cost perhaps of twenty years. That +were impossible.... He could not permit _that_. But--one little year--at +most. That perhaps his conscience might permit. One little year! You are +young. Supposing he has within him," he laid his hand on his heart, +"that of which his wife does not know, which means that his release is +_sure_. Do you understand? Supposing it must come soon--very soon--her +release--and yours. Perhaps then----" There was a long pause. "Perhaps +then his conscience might suffer him to keep silence." + +Michael's hand made a slight movement. The duke took it in his, and held +it firmly. + +"Listen," he said at last. "Once when I was young, twenty years ago, I +loved. I too would fain have served a woman, would have put my hands +under her feet. There is always one such a woman in life, but only one. +She was to me the world. But I could only trouble her life. She was +married. She had children. I knew I ought to go. I meant to go. She +prayed me to go. I promised her to go--nevertheless I stayed. And at +last--inasmuch as she loved me very much--I broke up her home, her life, +her honour, she was separated from her children. She lost all, and then +when all was gone she died. The only thing which I could keep from her +was poverty, which would have been nothing to her. She never reproached +me. There is no reproach in love. But--she died in disgrace, and alone. +From the first to the last it was her white hands under my feet. That +was how I served the one woman I have deeply loved, the one creature +who deeply loved me." The duke's voice had become almost inaudible. "You +have done better than I," he said. + +Then he kissed Michael on the forehead, and went out. + +They never met again. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + The year slid like a corpse afloat.--D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +And how did it fare with Fay during the days that followed Michael's +arrest? + +Much sympathy was felt for her. Lord John, wallowing in the delicious +novelty of finding eager listeners, went about extolling her courage and +unselfishness to the skies. Her conduct was considered perfectly natural +and womanly. No man condemned her for trying to shield her cousin from +the consequences of his crime. Women said they would have done the same, +and envied her her romantic situation. + +And Fay, shut up in her darkened room in her romantic situation--she who +adored romantic situations--what were Fay's thoughts? + +There is a travail of soul which toils with hard crying up the dark +valley of decision, and brings forth in anguish the life entrusted to +it. Perhaps it is the great renunciation. Perhaps it is only the loyal +inevitable deed which is struggling to come forth, to be allowed to live +for our healing and comfort. + +But there is another travail of soul, barren, unavailing, which flings +itself down, and tosses in impotent misery from side to side, from mood +to mood, as in a sickly trance. + +Such was Fay's. + +Her decision not to speak had been made in the moment when she had let +Michael accuse himself, and she kept silence. But that she did not know. +She thought it was still to make. + +"I must speak. I must speak," she said to herself all through the +endless day after Michael's arrest, all through the endless night, until +the dawn came up behind the ilexes, the tranquil dawn that knew all, and +found her shuddering and wild-eyed. + +"I must speak. I cannot let Michael suffer for me, even to save my +reputation." + +_Her reputation!_ How little she had cared for it twenty-four hours ago, +when passion clutched the reins! + +But now---- The public shame of it--the divorce which in her eyes must +ensue--Andrea! Her courteous, sedate, inexorable husband, whose will she +could not bend, whom she could not cajole, whose mind was a closed book +to her; a book which had lain by her hand for three years, which she had +never had the curiosity to open!--Fay feared her husband, as we all fear +what we do not understand. He would divorce her--and then---- And +Magdalen at home--and---- + +A flood of suffocating emotion swept over her, full of ugly swimming and +crawling reptiles, and invertebrate horrors, the inevitable scavengers +of the sea of selfish passion. + +Fay shrank back for very life. She could not pass through that flood and +live. Nevertheless she felt herself pushed towards it. + +"But I have no choice. I _must_ speak. He is innocent. He is doing this +to shield me because he loves me. But I also love him, far, far more +than he loves me, and I will prove it." + +Fay went in imagination through a fearful and melodramatic scene, in +which she revealed everything before a public tribunal. She saw her +husband's face darken against her, her lover's lighten as she saved him. +She saw her slender figure standing alone, bearing the whole shock, +serene, unshaken. The vision moved her to tears. + +Was it a prophetic vision? + +It was quite light now, and she crept to her husband's room. She had not +seen him during the previous day. He had been out the whole of it. She +felt drawn towards him by calamity, by the loneliness of her misery. + +The duke was not asleep. He was lying in bed with his hands clasped +behind his head. His sallow face, worn by a sleepless night, and perhaps +by a wounding memory, was turned towards the light, and the new day +dealt harshly with it. There were heavy lines under the eyes. The eyes +looked steadily in front of him, plunged deep in a past which had +something of the irrevocable tenderness of the dawn in it, the holy +reflection of an inalienable love. + +He did not stir as his wife came in. His eyes only moved, resting upon +her for a moment, focussing her with difficulty, as if withdrawn from +something at a great distance, and then they turned once more to the +window. + +A pale primrose light had risen above the blue tangled mist of ilexes +and olives. The cypresses stood half-veiled in mist, half-sharply clear +against the stainless pallor of the upper sky. + +"I am so miserable, Andrea." + +He did not speak. + +"I cannot sleep." + +Still no answer. + +"I am convinced that Michael is innocent." + +"It goes without saying." + +"Then they can't convict him, can they?" + +"They will convict him," said the duke, and for a moment he bent his +eyes upon her. "Has he not accused himself?" + +"They won't--hang him?" + +The duke shrugged his shoulders. He did not think fit to enlighten his +wife's ignorance of the fact that in Italy there is no capital +punishment. + +"But if he has not done it, and we know he has not," faltered Fay. + +"He is perhaps shielding someone," said the duke, "the real murderer." + +"I don't see how that could be." + +"He may have his reasons. The real murderer is perhaps a friend--or +a--woman. Your cousin is a romantic. It is always better for a romantic +if he had not been born. But generally a female millstone is in +readiness to tie itself round him, and cast him into the sea. The world +is not fitted to him. It is to egotistic persons like you and me, my +Francesca, to whom the world is most admirably adapted." + +"I don't see how the murderer could be a woman. Women don't murder men +on the high road." + +"No, not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty is +the high road! But I have known, not once nor twice, women to murder men +very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die. I am much +older than you, but you will perhaps also live to see a woman do this, +Francesca. And now retire to your room, and let me counsel you to take +some rest. Your beauty needs it." + +She burst into tears. + +"How little you care!" she said between her sobs, "how heartless you +are! I will never believe they will convict him. He is innocent, and his +innocence will come to light." + +"I think the light will not be suffered to fall upon it," said the duke. + +Afterwards, years afterwards, Fay remembered that conversation with +wonder that its significance had escaped her. But at the time she could +see nothing, feel nothing except her own anguish. + +She left her husband's room. There was no help or sympathy in him. She +went back to her own room and flung herself face downwards on her bed. +Let no one think she did not suffer. + +A faint ray of comfort presently came to her at the thought that +Michael's innocence might after all come to light. It might be proved in +spite of himself. + +She would pray incessantly that the real murderer might give himself up, +or that suspicion should fall on him, and he should be dragged to +justice. And then, if--_after all_--Michael were convicted and his life +endangered, then she _must_ speak. But--not till then. Not now when all +might yet go well without her confession.... And it was not as if she +were guilty of unfaithfulness. She had not done anything wrong beyond +imprudence. Yes, she had certainly been imprudent; that she saw. But she +had done nothing _wrong_. It could not be right to confess to what in +public opinion amounted to unfaithfulness on her part, and dishonourable +conduct on his, when it was not so. They were both innocent. It would be +telling a lie to let anyone think either of them could be guilty of such +a sordid crime. It looked sordid now. Why should she drag down his name +with hers into the mud--unless it were absolutely necessary.... And she +must remember how distressed Michael would be if she said a word, if she +flung her good name from her, which he had risked all to save. Some +semblance of calm returned to her, as she thus reached the only +conclusion which the bias of her mind would permit. The stream ran +docilely in the little groove cut out for it. + +During the days and weeks that followed Fay shut herself up, and prayed +incessantly for Michael. + +She prayed all through the interminable interval before the trial. + +"If it goes against him, I will speak," she said. + +Yet all the time Michael who loved her knew that she would not speak. +Her husband who could have loved her, and who watched her struggle with +compassion, knew that she would not speak. Only Fay who did not know +herself believed that she would speak. + + * * * * * + +The day came when the duke gravely informed her that Michael was found +guilty of murder. + +Fay's prayers it seemed had not availed. She prayed no more. There was +no help in God. Probably there was no God to pray to. Her sister +Magdalen seemed to think there was. But how could she tell? Besides, +Magdalen had such a calm temperament, and nothing had ever happened to +make her unhappy, or to shake her faith. It was different for Magdalen. + +Evidently there was no justice anywhere, only a blind chance. "The truth +will out," Fay had said to herself over and over again. She had tried to +have faith. But the truth had not come out. She was being pushed, pushed +over the edge of the precipice. Oh, why had Michael fallen in love with +her when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgust +those early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time of +primroses. It had brought her to _this_--to this horrible place of tears +and shame and shuddering--to these wretched days and hideous nights. Oh, +why, why, had he loved her! Why had she let herself love him! + +Suddenly she said to herself, "They may reprieve him yet. If his +sentence is not commuted to imprisonment I will speak, so help me God I +will." + +It could never be known whether she would have kept that oath, for the +next day she heard that Michael had been sentenced to fifteen years' +imprisonment. Why had Andrea been so cruel as to let her imagine for a +whole horrible night that Michael's would be a death sentence, when in +Italy it seemed there was no capital punishment as in England? It was +just like Andrea to torture her needlessly! When the sentence reached +her Fay drew breath. The horrible catastrophe had been averted. To a man +of Michael's temperament the living grave to which he was consigned was +infinitely worse than death. But what was Michael's temperament to Fay? +She shut her eyes to the cell of an Italian prison. Michael would live, +and in time the truth would come to light, and he would be released. + +She impressed this conviction with tears on his half-brother Wentworth +Maine, the kind, silent elder brother, Michael's greatest friend, who +had come out to Italy to be near him, and who heard sentence given +against him with a set face, and an unshaken belief in his innocence. +Even to Wentworth Michael had said nothing, could be induced to say no +word. He confessed to the murder. That was all. + +Wentworth, who had never seen Fay before, as she had married just before +he came to live at his uncle's place in Hampshire near Fay's home, saw +the marks of grief in her lovely face, and was unconsciously drawn +towards her. He was shy as only men can be; but he almost forgot it in +her sympathetic presence. She came into his isolated, secluded life at +the moment when the barriers of his instinctive timidity and apathy were +broken down by his first real trouble. And he was grateful to her for +having done her best to save Michael. + +"I shall never forget that," he said, when he came to bid her good-bye. +"There are very few women who would have had the courage and +unselfishness to act as you did." + +Fay winced and paled, and he took his leave, bearing away with him a +grave admiration for this delicate, sensitive creature, so full of +tender compassion for him and Michael. + +He made no attempt to see her again when he returned to Italy some +months later to visit Michael in prison. To visit Fay on that occasion +would have taken him somewhat out of his way, and Wentworth never went +out of his way, not out of principle, but because such a course never +occurred to him. He would have liked to see her, in order to tell her +about Michael's condition, and also to deliver in person a message which +Michael had sent to Fay by him. But when he realised that a detour would +be necessary in order to accomplish this, he wrote to Fay to tell her +with deep regret that it was impossible for him to see her, gave her +Michael's message, and returned to England by the way he came. +Nevertheless, he often thought of her, for she was inextricably +associated with the unspeakable trouble of his life, his brother's +living death. + +When all was over, and the last sod had--so to speak--been cast upon +that living grave, Fay tried to take up her life again. But she could +not. She had lost heart. She dared not be alone. She shunned society. At +her earnest request her sister Magdalen came out to her for a time, from +the home in England, into which she was wedged so tightly. But even +Magdalen's calm presence brought no calm with it, and the deepening +friendship between her sister and her husband only irritated Fay. +Everything irritated Fay. She was ill at ease, restless, feebly +sarcastic, impatient. + +There is a peace which passes understanding, and there is an unpeace +which passes understanding also. Fay did not know, would not know, why +she was so troubled, so weary of life, so destitute of comfort. + +Had she met the great opportunity of her life, the turning point, and +missed it? I do not think so. It was not for her. + + * * * * * + +A year later the duke died. + +He made a dignified exit. An attack of vertigo to which he was liable +came on when he was on horseback. He was thrown and dragged, and only +survived a few days as by a miracle. His wife, who had seen little of +him during the last year, saw still less of him during the days of his +short illness. But when the end was close at hand he sent for her, and +asked her to remain in a distant recess of his room during the painful +hours. + +"It will be a happier memory for you," he said gently to her between the +paroxysms of suffering, "to think that you were there." + +And so propped high in a great carved bedstead in the octagonal room +where the Colle Altos were born, and where, when they could choose, they +died, the duke lay awaiting the end. + +He had received extreme unction. The chanting choir had gone. The priest +had closed his pale fingers upon the crucifix, when he desired to be +left alone with his wife. + +She drew near timidly and stood beside his bed. + +He bent his tranquil, kindly eyes upon her. + +"Good-bye, my Francesca," he said. "May God and his angels protect you, +and give you peace." + +A belated compunction seized her. + +"I wish I had been a better wife to you, Andrea," she said brokenly, +laying her hand on his. + +He made the ghost of a courteous, deprecating gesture, and raised her +hand to his lips. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes and his +hand fell out of hers. + +Through the open window came a sudden waft of hot carnations, a long +drawn breath of the rapturous Italian spring. + +It reached the duke. He stirred slightly, and opened his eyes once more. +Once more they fell on Fay, and it seemed to her as if with the last +touch of his cold lips upon her hand their relation of husband and wife +had ceased. Even at that moment she realised with a sinking sense of +impotence how slight her hold on him from first to last had been. +Clearly he had already forgotten it, passed beyond it, would never +remember it again. + +"It is spring," he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and for +a moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sun +shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year +he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you keep your +cousin Michael in prison?" + +And thereupon the duke closed his eyes on this world, and went upon his +way. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + A bachelor's an unfinished thing ... He wants somebody to listen to + his talk.--EDEN PHILLPOTTS. + + +Reader, do you know Barford, in Hampshire? If you don't, I can tell you +how to get to it. You take train from Victoria, and you get out at +Saundersfoot. There is nothing at Saundersfoot, except a wilderness of +lodgings and a tin station and a high wind. It need not detain an active +mind beyond the necessary moment of enquiring by which road it may be +most quickly left. I cannot tell you who Saunders was, nor why the +watering-place was called after his foot. But if you walk steadily away +from it for five miles inland, along the white chalky road between the +downs, you will arrive at the little village of Barford. + +There is only one road, so you cannot miss your way. Little twisty lanes +fretted with sheep-tracks drop down into it now and then from the +broad-shouldered downs on either side, but take no notice of them. If +you persevere, you will in due course see the village of Barford lying +in front of you, which, at a little distance, looks as if it had been +carelessly swept into a crease between the downs, while a few cottages +and houses on the hillside seem to have adhered to the ground, and +remained stuck where they were when the sweeping took place. + +After you have passed the pond and the post office, and before you reach +the school, you will see a lodge, and an old Italian iron gateway, +flanked by a set of white wooden knobs planted in the ground on either +side, held together by chains. The white knobs are apparently there in +order to upset carriages as they drive in or out. But very few carriages +have driven in or out during the last two years, except those of the +owner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine. Wentworth, since he inherited +the place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhat +secluded life. But during the last two years, ever since his +half-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy, +Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of his +neighbours. He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as a +magistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin, +refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of long +tracts of solitary unhappiness. And the habit of solitude was growing on +him. + +The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny low +rooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of +ancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of the +place as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon its +surface. The patch, however, adroitly copied, is seen to be an +innovation. + +The old house, which had known so much, had sheltered so much, had kept +counsel so long, seemed to resent the artificial peace that its present +owner had somewhat laboriously constructed round himself, within its +mellow, ivied walls. + +There is a fictitious tranquillity which is always on the verge of being +broken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential, +velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of +the inharmonious or jarring elements which pervade daily life. + +Such an imitation peace, coy as a fickle mistress, Wentworth cherished. +Was it worth all the trouble he took to preserve it, when the real thing +lay at his very door? + +On this February morning, as he sat looking out across the down, white +in the pale sunshine, the current of his life ran low. He had returned +the night before from one of his periodical journeys to Italy to visit +Michael in his cell. He was tired with the clang and hurry of the long +journey, depressed almost to despair by the renewed realisation of his +brother's fate. Two years--close on two years, had Michael been in +prison. + +In Wentworth's faithful heart that wound never healed. To-day it bled +afresh. He bit his lip, and his face quivered. + + * * * * * + +Wentworth was not as handsome as Michael, but, nevertheless, he was +distinctly good to look at, and the half-brothers, in spite of the +fifteen years' difference between their ages, bore a certain superficial +resemblance to each other. Wentworth was of middle height, lightly and +leanly built, with a high bridge on a rather thin nose, and with narrow, +clean grey eyes under light eyelashes. He looked as if he had been made +up of different shades of one colour. His light brown hair had a little +grey in it, his delicately cut face and nervous hands were both tanned, +by persistent exposure to all kinds of weather, to nearly the same +shade of indeterminate brown as his hair. + +You could not look at Wentworth without seeing that he was a man who had +never even glanced at the ignoble side of life, for whose fastidious, +sensitive nature sensual lures had no attraction, a man who could not +lie, who could not stoop, whose mind was as clean as his hand, and, for +an Englishman, that is saying a good deal. He was manly in a physical +sense. He rode straight, he shot well. He could endure bodily strain +with indifference, though he was not robustly built. He was sane, +even-tempered, liable to petty resentments, mildly and resolutely +selfish, except where Michael was concerned, a conscientious and just +master--at least, just in intention--a patient and respectful son where +patience and respect had not been easy. + +The strain of scholar and student in him was about evenly mixed with +that of the country gentleman. The result was a certain innate sense of +superiority which he was not in the least aware that he showed. He had +no idea that he was considered "fine," and "thinking a good deal of +himself," by the more bucolic of his country neighbours. No one could +say that Wentworth was childlike, but perhaps he was a little childish. +He certainly had a _naïf_ and unshakable belief that the impressions he +had formed as to his own character were shared by others. He supposed it +was recognised by his neighbours that they had a thinker in their midst, +and always tacitly occupied the ground which he imagined had been +conceded to him on that account. + +His mother, a beautiful, foolish, whimsical, hard-riding heiress, the +last of a long line, had married the youngest son--the one brilliant, +cultivated member--of a family as ancient, as uneducated, and as prosaic +as her own. Wentworth was the result of that union. His father had died +before his talents were fully recognised: that is to say, just when it +was beginning to be perceived that he was a genius only in his own +class, and that there were hordes of educated men in the middle classes +who could beat him at every point on his own ground, except in carriage +and appearance, and whom no one regarded as specially gifted. Still, in +his own county, among his own friends, and in a society where education +and culture eke out a precarious, interloping existence, and are +regarded with distrustful curiosity, Lord Wilfrid Maine lived and died, +and was mourned as a genius. + +After many years of uneasy, imprudent widowhood, the widow of the great +man had made a disastrous second marriage, and had died at Michael's +birth. + +No one had disputed with Wentworth over the possession of Michael. +Wentworth, a sedate, self-centred young man of three-and-twenty, of +independent means, mainly occupied in transcribing the nullity of his +days in a voluminous diary, had taken charge of him virtually from his +first holidays, during which Michael's father had achieved the somewhat +tedious task of drinking himself to death. Michael's father had +appointed Wentworth as his son's guardian. If it had been a jealous +affection on Wentworth's part, it had also been a deep one. And it had +been returned with a single-hearted devotion on Michael's part which had +gradually knit together the hearts of the older and the younger man, as +it seemed indissolubly. No one had come between them. Once or twice +Wentworth had become uneasy, suspicious of Michael's affection for his +tutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys, +and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few of +these incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case, +judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships he +had not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number was +Michael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael's +boyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. It had come about +during the last year of his great uncle's life at Barford, which was +within a few miles of Priesthope, Fay's home. Michael had spent many +weeks at Barford with the old man, who was devoted to him. Everyone had +expected that he would make Michael his heir, but when he died soon +afterwards, it was found he had left the place, in a will dated many +years back, to Wentworth. If Michael had never mentioned his first +painful contact with life to Wentworth, it was perhaps partly because he +instinctively felt that the confidence would be coldly received, partly +also because Michael was a man of few words, to whom speech had never +taken the shape of relief. + +There had no doubt been wretched moments in Wentworth's devotion to +Michael, but nevertheless it had been the best thing so far in his +somewhat colourless existence, with its hesitating essays in other +directions, its half-hearted withdrawals, its pigeon-holed emotions. He +had not been half-hearted about Michael. It is perhaps natural that we +should love very deeply those who have had the power to release us +momentarily from the airless prison of our own egotism. How often it is +a child's hand which first opens that iron door, and draws us forth into +the sunshine! With Wentworth it had been so. The pure air of the +moorland, the scent of the heather and the sea seem indissolubly mingled +with the remembrance of those whom we have loved. For did we not in +their company walk abroad into a new world, breathe a new air, while +Self, the dingy turnkey, for once slept at his post? + +One of the reasons of his devotion to Michael was that Michael's +character did not apparently or perceptibly alter. He was very much the +same person in his striped convict's blouse as he had been in his Eton +jacket. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had ever realised of what +materials that character consisted. Wentworth was of those who never get +the best out of men and women, who never divine and meet, but only come +into surprised uncomfortable contact with their deeper emotions. +Michael's passion of service for Fay would have been a great shock to +Wentworth had he suspected it. It remained for the duke to perceive the +latent power in Michael, and to be taken instantly into his confidence +on the matter, while Wentworth, unwitting, had remained for life outside +his brother's mind. + +Some men and women are half conscious that they are thus left out, are +companions only of "the outer court" of the lives of others. But +Wentworth never suspected this, partly because he regarded as friendship +a degree of intimacy which most men and all women regard as +acquaintanceship. He did not know there was anything more. Those from +whom others need much, learn perforce, whether they will or no, to what +heights, to what depths human nature can climb and--fall. But Wentworth +was not a person on whom others made large demands. But if his love for +Michael had been his one tangible happiness, it had become now his one +real pain. + +Contrary to all his habits, he sat on, hour after hour, motionless, +inert, watching the cloud shadows pass across the down. He tried to +rouse himself. He told himself that he must settle back into his old +occupations. He must get forward with his history of Sussex, and write +up his diary. He must come to some decision about the allotment scheme +on his property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help Colonel +Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way +across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel +Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as +a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch +business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and +inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere +presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with +himself struggling in the middle. + +Wentworth must save the old autocrat from putting himself in the wrong, +when he was so plainly in the right. Wentworth must at any rate, if he +could do nothing else this morning, read his letters, which had +accumulated during his short absence. + +Without moving from his chair he turned over, with a groan, the pile of +envelopes waiting for him at his elbow. Invitations, bills, tenants' +complaints, an unexpected dividend. It was all one to him. The Bishop +of Lostford--so his secretary wrote--accepted Wentworth's invitation to +dine and sleep at Barford that night, after holding a confirmation at +Saundersfoot. Wentworth had forgotten he had asked him. Very well, he +must remember to order a room to be got ready. That was all. A +subscription earnestly solicited by the daughter of a neighbouring +clergyman for a parish library. Why could he not be left in peace? Oh! +what was the use of anything--of life, health, money, intellect, if +existence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this, +only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful of +bricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and sense +of being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form of +dissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as you +liked, _if you did not like it?_ Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He +forgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michael +had been free and happy. Not quite, but nearly. Now he attributed the +whole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, to +his distress about his brother's fate. + +That wound, never healed, bled afresh. Who felt for him in his trouble? +Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood? No one. That was the +way of the world. + +Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rose +suddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had met +her walking in the woods near her father's house. She had gone back to +her old home after the duke's death. She, at least, had grieved for him +and Michael with an intensity which he had never forgotten. Even in her +widowed desolation she had remembered Michael, and always asked after +him when Wentworth went over to Priesthope. And Wentworth was often +there, for one reason or another. Michael, too, had asked after her, and +had sent her a message by his brother. Should he go over to-day and +deliver it in person? Among his letters was a scrawling, illegible note, +already several days old, from Colonel Bellairs, Fay's father, about the +right of way. The matter, it seemed, was more urgent than Wentworth had +realised. Any matter pertaining to Colonel Bellairs was always, in the +opinion of the latter, of momentous urgency. + +Colonel Bellairs asked Wentworth to come over to luncheon the first day +he could, and to walk over the debatable ground with him. + +Wentworth looked at his watch, started up and rang the bell, and ordered +his cob Conrad to be brought round at once. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + Le plus grand élément des mauvaises actions secrètes, des lâchetés + inconnues, est peut-être un honheur incomplet. + + --BALZAC. + + +When Fay, in her panic-stricken widowhood, had fled back to her old home +in Hampshire, she found all very much as she had left it, except that +her father's hair was damply dyed, her sister Magdalen's frankly grey, +and the pigtail of Bessie, the youngest daughter, was now an imposing +bronze coil in the nape of her neck. + +But if little else was radically changed in the old home except the hair +of the family, nevertheless, the whole place had somehow declined and +shrunk in Fay's eyes during the three years of her marriage. The dear +old gabled Tudor house, with its twisted chimneys, looked much the same +from the outside, but within, in spite of its wealth of old pictures and +cabinets and china, it had contracted the dim, melancholy aspect which +is the result of prolonged scarcity of money. Nothing had been spent on +the place for years. Magdalen seemed to have faded together with the +curtains, and the darned carpets, and the bleached chintzes. + +Colonel Bellairs alone, a handsome man of sixty, had remained remarkably +young for his age. The balance, however, was made even by the fact that +those who lived with him grew old before their time. It had been so +with his wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men as +superficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, +as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. But +Colonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapable +of even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy of +all decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggested +arrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "spring +cleaning" could never be mentioned in his presence. The thing itself +could only be achieved by stealth. A month at the seaside for the sake +of the children was a subject that could not be approached. All small +feminine social arrangements, dependent for their accomplishment on the +use of the horses, were mown down like grass. Colonel Bellairs hated +what he called "living by clockwork." + +You may read, if you care to do so, in the faces of many gentle-tempered +and apparently prosperous married women, an enormous fatigue. Wicked, +blood-curdling husbands do not bring this look into women's faces. It is +men like Colonel Bellairs who hold the recipe for calling it into +existence. + +Mrs. Bellairs, a beautiful woman, with high spirits, but not +high-spirited, became more and more silent and apathetic year by year, +yielded more and more and more, yielded at last without expostulation +equally at every point, when she should have yielded and when she should +have stood firm, yielded at last even where her children's health and +well-being were concerned. + +Apathy and health are seldom housemates for long together. Mrs. Bellairs +gradually declined from her chair to her sofa. She made no effort to +live after her youngest daughter was born. She could have done so if she +had wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on any +other subject. There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in it +all the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs. Bellairs exemplified it. "It +is better to sit than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit. It is +better to sleep than to lie. It is better to die than to sleep." + +Fay had been glad enough, as we have seen, to escape from home by +marriage. No such way of escape had apparently presented itself for the +elder sister. As Magdalen and Fay sat together on the terrace in front +of the house, the contrast between the sisters was more marked than the +ten years' difference of age seemed to warrant. + +Magdalen was a tall, thin woman of thirty-five, who looked older than +her age. She had evidently been extremely pretty once. Perhaps she might +even have been young once. But it must have been a long time ago. She +was a faded, distinguished-looking person, with a slight stoop, and a +worn, delicately-featured face, and humorous, tranquil eyes. Her thick +hair was grey. She looked as if she had borne for many years the brunt +of continued ill health, or the ill health of others, as if she had been +obliged to lift heavy weights too young. Perhaps she had. Everything +about her personality seemed fragile except her peace of mind. You could +not look at Magdalen without seeing that she was a happy creature. + +But very few did look at her when Fay was beside her. Fay's beauty had +increased in some ways and diminished in others during the year of her +widowhood. She had become slightly thinner and paler, but not to the +extent when beauty suffers wrong. A very young face can bear a worn +look, and even have its charm enhanced thereby. The mark of suffering on +Fay's childlike face and in her deep violet eyes had brought with it an +expression which might easily be mistaken for spirituality, especially +by those--and they are very many--to whom a pallid and attenuated aspect +are the outward signs of spirituality. + +That she was miserable was obvious. _But why was she so restless?_ +Magdalen had often silently asked herself that question during the past +year. Even Bessie, the youngest sister, had noticed Fay's continual +restlessness and had commented on it, had advised her sister to embark +on a course of reading, and to endeavour to interest herself in work for +others. + +She had also, with the untempered candour of eighteen, suggested to Fay +that she should cease to make a slave of Magdalen. It is hardly +necessary to add that Fay and Bessie did not materially increase the sum +of each other's happiness. + +As Magdalen and Fay were sitting together in the sun the door into the +garden opened, and Bessie stalked slowly towards them across the grass, +in a short cycling skirt. + +"It surely is not necessary to be quite so badly dressed as Bessie," +said Fay with instant irritation. "If she must wear one of those hideous +short skirts, it might at any rate be well cut. I have told her so often +enough." + +Since Bessie had been guilty of the enormity of suggesting a course of +reading, Fay had made many sarcastic comments on Bessie's direful +clothes. + +"I must advise her to take dress more seriously," said Magdalen +absently. She was depressed by a faint misgiving about Bessie. Bessie +was to have lunched to-day with congenial archæological friends, +intelligent owners of interesting fossils. Nevertheless, when +Wentworth's cob Conrad was seen courteously allowing himself to be +conducted to the stable she instantly decided to lunch at home, and to +visit her friends when they were not expecting her, in the afternoon. +_It could make no difference to them_, she had told Magdalen, who shook +her head over that well-known phrase, which Colonel Bellairs had long +since established as "a household word." Bessie was not to be moved by +Magdalen's disapproval, however. She retired to her chamber, donned a +certain enamel brooch which she only wore on Sundays, and appeared at +luncheon. + +It was not a particularly cheerful meal. Wentworth was silent and +depressed. Colonel Bellairs did not for an instant cease to speak about +the right of way during the whole of luncheon, even when his back was +turned while he was bending over a ham on the sideboard. And the moment +luncheon was over he had marched Wentworth off to the scene of the +dispute. + +Magdalen was vaguely uneasy at the tiny incident of Bessie's change of +plan, and was glad it had escaped Fay's notice. Most things about Bessie +did escape Fay's notice except her clothes. Bessie was not at eighteen +an ingratiating person. No one had ever called her the sunbeam of the +home. She had preserved throughout her solemn childhood and flinty +youth a sort of resentful protest against the attitude of her family at +her advent, namely, that she was not wanted. Her mother had died at her +birth, and for several years afterwards her father had studiously +ignored her presence in the house, not without a sense of melancholy +satisfaction at this proof of his devotion to her mother. + +"No, no. It may be unreasonable. It may be foolish," he was wont to say +to friends who had not accused him of unreasonableness, "but don't ask +me to be fond of that child. I can't look at her without remembering +what her birth cost me." + +Bessie was a fine, strong young woman, with a perfectly impassive +handsome face--no Bellairs could achieve plainness--and the manner of +one who moves among fellow creatures who do not come up to the standard +of conduct which she has selected as the lowest permissible to herself +and others. Bessie had not so far evinced a preference for anyone in her +own family circle, or outside it. Her affections consisted so far of a +distinct dislike of and contempt for her father. She had accorded to Fay +a solemn compassion when first the latter returned to Priesthope. +Indeed, the estrangement between the sisters, brought about by the +suggested course of reading, had been the unfortunate result of a +cogitating pity on Bessie's part for the lamentable want of regulation +of Fay's mind. + +Bessie liked Magdalen, though she disapproved of her manner of life as +weak and illogical. You could not love Bessie any more than you could +love an ironclad. She bore the same resemblance to a woman that an iron +building does to a house. She was not in reality harder than tin or +granite or asphalt, or her father; but it would not be an over-statement +to suggest that she lacked softness. + +She advanced with precision to the bench on which her sisters were +sitting. + +"I am now going to cycle to the Carters'," she said to Magdalen. "I +forgot to mention till this moment that I met Aunt Mary this morning at +the Wind Farm, and that she gave me a letter for father, and said that +she and Aunt Aggie were lunching with the Copes." + +"Poor Copes!" ejaculated Fay. + +"And would both come on here afterwards to an early tea," continued +Bessie, taking no notice of the interruption. "Aunt Mary desired that +you would not have hot scones for tea, as Aunt Aggie is always depressed +after them. She said there was no objection to them cold, and buttered, +but not hot." + +"I shall have tea in my own room then," once more broke in Fay. "I can't +stand Aunt Mary. She is always preaching at me." + +"It is a pity that Fay is disinclined to share the undoubted burden of +entertaining our relatives," said Bessie, addressing herself exclusively +to Magdalen, "as I do not feel able to defer my visit to the Carters any +longer." + +Magdalen struggled hard against a smile, and kept it under. + +"Possibly the aunts are coming over to consult father about a private +matter," she said. "The letter beforehand to prepare his mind looks like +it. So it would be best if you and Fay were not there. The aunts' +affairs generally require the deepest secrecy." + +"And then father lets it all out at dinner before the servants," said +Bessie over her shoulder as she departed. + +When she was out of hearing Fay said with exasperation, "You are not +wise to give way so much to Bessie, Magdalen. She is selfishness itself. +Why did not you insist on her staying and helping with the aunts? She +never considers you." + +Magdalen was silent. + +"I hate sitting here with the house staring at me," said Fay. "I can't +think why you are so fond of this bench. Let us go into the beech +avenue." + +For a long time past Magdalen had noticed that Fay always wanted to be +somewhere she was not. + +They went in silence through the little wood that bounded the gardens, +and passed into the great, bare, grey aisle of the beech avenue. + +In a past generation a wide drive had led through this avenue to the +house. It had been the south approach to Priesthope. But in these +impoverished days, the road, with its sweep of turf on either side, had +been neglected, and was now little more than a mossy cart-rut, with a +fallen tree across it. + +The two sisters sat down on a crooked arm of the fallen tree. + +It was a soft, tranquil afternoon, flooded with meek February sunshine. +Far away between the green-grey trunks of the trees, the sea glinted +like a silver ribbon. Everything was very still, with the stillness set +deep in peace of one who loves and awaits in awe love's next word. The +earth lay in the sunshine, and listened for the whisper of spring. Faint +birdnotes threaded the high windless spaces near the tree-tops. + +"Look!" said Magdalen, "the first crocus." + +What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peering +against the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like a +child's "soft absolving touch," the inflamed, aching, unrest of the +spirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reach +through with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy, +and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us? + +Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner, +absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two large +tears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. She shivered, +and crept a little closer to her sister. She felt alienated from she +knew not what, dreadfully cold and alone in the sunshine, with her cheek +against her sister's shoulder. Though she did not realise it, something +long frost-bound in her mind was yielding, shifting, breaking up. The +first miserable shudder of the thaw was upon her. + +She glanced up at Magdalen, who was looking into the heart of the +crocus, and a sudden anger seized her at the still rapture of her +sister's face. The contrast between her own gnawing misery and +Magdalen's serenity cut her like a knife. What right had Magdalen to be +so happy? Why should she have been exempted from all trouble? What had +she done that anguish could never reach her? Fay's love for Magdalen, +and at this time Magdalen was the only person for whom she had any +affection--had all the violent recoils, the mutinous anger, the sudden +desire to wound on the one side, all the tender patience and grieved +understanding on the other which are the outcome of a real attachment +between a bond woman and a free one. + +The one craved, the other relinquished; the one was consumed with +unrest, the other had reached some inner stronghold of peace. The one +was imprisoned in self, the other was freed, released. The one made +demands, the other was willing to serve. It seems as if only the free +can serve. + +"I am very miserable," said Fay suddenly. She was pushed once more by +the same blind impulse that had taken her to her husband's room the +night after Michael's arrest. + +She used almost the same words. And as the duke had made no answer then, +so Magdalen made none now. She had not lived in the same house with Fay +for nearly a year for nothing. + +Magdalen's silence acted as a goad. + +"You think, and father thinks," continued Fay, her voice shaking, "you +are all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for. +It's not." + +"I know that," said Magdalen. "You never cared much about him. I have +often wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply." + +Fay winced. Magdalen had noticed something, after all. + +"I have sometimes feared,"--continued Magdalen with the deliberation of +one who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the opening +comes, and not to be silent when it does come--"I have sometimes feared +that your heart was locked up in an Italian prison." + +"My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not very +astonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen. "My heart!" she laughed +bitterly. "Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gone +through, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or out +of it? I suppose you mean poor dear Michael. I hate men, and their +selfish, stupid, blundering ways." + +Fay had often alluded to the larger sex _en bloc_ as blunderers since +the night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen. + +"There are two blunderers coming towards us now," said Magdalen, as the +distant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beech +avenue. + +Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief. + +Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind of +forcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family. +He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as a +pruning hook to their selfishness. But he had one great compensating +quality as a father. He never for one moment thought that any man, +however young, visited the house except for the refreshment and solace +of his own society. He never encouraged anyone to come with a view to +becoming acquainted with his daughters. His own problematic re-marriage, +often discussed in all its pros and cons with Magdalen, was the only +possible alliance that ever occupied his thoughts. In this respect he +was an ideal parent in his daughters' eyes, an inhumanly selfish one +according to his two sisters, Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs, at this +moment stepping out towards Priesthope from the north lodge. + +[Illustration: "'YOU ARE ALL BLINDER ONE THAN THE OTHER, THAT IT'S +ANDREA I'M GRIEVING FOR'"] + +Wentworth had almost given up hope of a word with Fay until he saw her +sitting with Magdalen in the avenue. The world would be a much harder +place than it already is for women to live in if men concealed their +feelings. A reverent and assiduous study of the nobler sex leads the +student to believe that they imagine they conceal them. But it is women +who early in life are taught to acquire this art, at any rate when they +are bored. Half the happy married women of our acquaintance would be the +widows of determined suicides if women allowed it to appear when they +were bored as quickly as men do. + +Wentworth had no idea that he was not an impassable barrier of reserve. +He often said of himself: "I am a very reserved man, I know. It is a +fault of character. I regret it, but I can't help it. I have not the art +of chatting about my deepest feelings at five o'clock tea as a man must +do who lays himself out to be popular with women. What I feel it is my +nature to conceal." + +His reserve on this occasion was concentrated in his face, which +remained unmoved. But the lofty impassiveness on which he prided himself +did not reach down to his legs. Those members, which had been dragging +themselves in a sort of feeble semi-paralysis in the wake of the +ruthless Colonel Bellairs, now straightened themselves, and gave signs +of returning energy. Magdalen from a distance noted the change. +Wentworth for the first time was interested in what Colonel Bellairs +was saying. His own voice, which had become almost extinct, revived. +There was also a hint of spring in the air. Not being a person of much +self-knowledge, he mentioned that fact to Colonel Bellairs. + +Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to be +the one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore. + +"I said so half an hour ago," he remarked severely, "when we were +inspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it." + +"You were right all the same," said the younger man. + +What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertain +how many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limply +assured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is that +they are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know how +many infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we should +devour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt with +matters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, the +decadent poet, had said he was "a child of nature," how often, if ever, +the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate at +Salvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it was +true that an Archbishop had ever really said "I am sorry" without an +"if" after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelist +exists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticism +is a lost art. + +"Is the right-of-way dispute progressing?" said Magdalen to her father +as the two men came up and stopped in front of them. + +Colonel Bellairs implied that it would shortly be arranged, as his +intellect was being applied to the subject. + +Wentworth said emphatically, for about the thirtieth time, that the +right of a footpath, or church path across the domain was well +established and could not be set aside; but that whether it was also a +bridle path was the moot point; and whether Colonel Bellairs was +justified in his recent erection of a five-barred stile. + +(I may as well add here, for fear the subject should escape my mind +later on, that at the time of these pages going to press the dispute, +often on the verge of a settlement, had reached a further and acuter +stage, being complicated by Colonel Bellairs' sudden denial even of a +church path, to the legal existence of which he had previously agreed in +writing.) + +Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home. + +"We will walk back to the house with you," said Magdalen, and she led +the way with her father. + +"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary," he said to Magdalen as they +walked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood. +Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that +accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand +it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you." + +"I will tell her." + +Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. She +was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. _On ne peut +s'appuyer que contre ce qui résiste._ Though Colonel Bellairs did not +know it, he was always wanting to _s'appuyer_. He had found in his +daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in +his wife, who had not resisted him. + +"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this +morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is +coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a +moment's peace?" + +Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, +upright hand, marked _Private_, at the top. + +"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage +mine," he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen. + +"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'" + +"Read it. Read it," said Colonel Bellairs irritably. + +Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as +she and her father walked slowly back to the house. + +It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with +Colonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalen +had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two +deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom. + +"Well! well!" said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested than +he wished to appear. "What do you think of it? We noticed in the papers +a week ago that he had succeeded his cousin." + +"Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections." + +"How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch as +light as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor old +Blore." + +"Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen's +joyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service.' That is very well +put, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him that +you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to +invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn +you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you +stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next. +Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leave +the Almighty in charge." + +"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat +surprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I +don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no +visible means of subsistence." + +"And no intention of making any." + +"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by"--(it +had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost +none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall +shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in +introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on +my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house." + +"After forbidding him to come to it?" + +Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper. + +"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this +house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away." + +"Ask him, in that case." + +"You agree that on the whole that would be best." + +"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that it +is a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by her +judgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till she +tried to coerce you into it." + +"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man in +petticoats," said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be here +directly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I _don't_ ask him?... +She will be here directly." + +They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavily +in his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrug +near him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, he +nodded, and she dropped it in. + +"Perhaps, Magdalen," said her father with dignity, "it would be just as +well if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these little +things best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anything +on that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would come +best from _you_, eh?" + +"I think so, father." + +Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye of +one about to drop off into an habitual nap. + +The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where a window is never +opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where +years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its +occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual +soporific charm. + +"Took Mary a long time to write," he said, with a sleepy chuckle, as the +last vestige disappeared of the laboriously constructed missive which +Lady Blore had sat up half the previous night, with gold-rimmed +pince-nez on Roman nose to copy out by her bedroom candle, and had sent +to pave the way before her strong destructive feet. + +The footman came in. + +"Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs are in the drawing-room." + +"Just pull the blinds half-way down before you go," said Colonel +Bellairs to Magdalen, "and remember other people have got letters to +write as well as her, and I'm not to be disturbed on any account." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en prend point de + second.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. + + +The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room. + +When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been +brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small +square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated +oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the +Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what +they called supports to their brother's motherless children. + +They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of those +who lean on them. + +No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might +perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to +push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed +to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune +to be the object of their good offices. + +She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance--it +could hardly be called a marriage--with a general, distinguished in +India and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "The +Towers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place after +years of half-gratified reluctance on his part and indomitable crude +persistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a long +attachment," and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to the +hilt, that the sterner sex prefer to have their affairs of the heart +arranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once let +loose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour to +escape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputation +of all external interests will detain them within the sacred precincts +of THE HOME. + +Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was no +tactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had only +been the first of the crushing defeats which she had inflicted upon him. +Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severely +tried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up his +sword. + +His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she considered +suitable amusements and occupations. He was told that he took an +interest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province rather +larger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out, +tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, and +hanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes. + +In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly the +same, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman, +with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariably +dressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The Towers +Aunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majestic +gardening the sun was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satin +parasol. + +There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were +children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever +laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, +like the phoenix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or a +bugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes. + +Aunt Mary was no doubt one of these. + +Near her, on the edge of her chair, perhaps not so entirely on the edge +of it as at first appeared, sat Aunt Aggie. Aunt Aggie looked as if she +had been coloured by some mistake from a palette prepared to depict a +London fog. + +Her eyes were greyish yellow, like her eyelashes, like her hair,--at +least her front hair,--like her eyebrows, and her complexion. She was +short and stout. She called slender people skeletons. Her gown, which +was invariably of some greyish, drabbish, neutral-tinted material, +always cocked up a little in front to show two large, flat, soft-looking +feet. + +Aunt Aggie began quite narrow at the top. Her forehead was the thin edge +of the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first +indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her +cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave +the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part +of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a +religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back +seat, in the Divine consciousness. + +It would not be fair to Aunt Aggie to omit to mention, especially as she +continually made veiled allusions to the subject herself, that she also +had known the tender passion. There had been an entanglement in her +youth with a High Church archdeacon. But we all know how indefinite, how +inconclusive, how meagre in practical results archidiaconal conferences +are apt to be! After one of them it was discovered that the entanglement +was all on Aunt Aggie's side. The archdeacon remained unenmeshed. Under +severe pressure from Lady Blore, then an indomitable bride of forty, +flushed by recent victory, he even went so far as to say that his only +bride was the Church. It was after this disheartening statement that +Aunt Aggie found herself drawn towards an evangelical and purer form of +religion. The Archdeacon subsequently married, or rather became guilty +of ecclesiastical bigamy. But Aunt Aggie throughout life retained +pessimistic views respecting the celibacy of the clergy. + + * * * * * + +Aunt Mary bestowed a strong businesslike peck, emphasized by contact +with the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggie +greeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Have +you ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to salute +Aunt Aggie's cheek. + +"Where are Fay and Bessie?" enquired Aunt Mary instantly. When the aunts +announced their coming, which was invariably at an hour's notice, they +always expected to find the whole family, including Colonel Bellairs, +waiting indoors to receive them. This expectation was never realised, +but the annoyance that invariably followed had retained through many +years the dew of its youth. + +"Bessie and Fay are out. I am expecting them back every moment." + +"They will probably be later than usual to-day," said Aunt Mary grimly, +with the half-conscious intuition of those whom others avoid. Did she +know that with the exception of Sir John, whose vanity had led him to +take refuge in a _cul-de-sac_, her fellow creatures rushed out by back +doors, threw themselves out of windows, hid behind haystacks, had +letters to write, were ordered by their doctors to rest, whenever she +appeared? Did she know? One thing was certain. Magdalen was one of the +very few persons who had never avoided her, who at times openly sought +her society. And Aunt Mary, though she would have been ashamed to own +it, loved Magdalen. She intended that Magdalen should live with her some +day at the Towers, as an unpaid companion, when Sir John and Aunt Aggie +had entered into peace. + +"And your father," continued Aunt Mary. "Did he get my letter? I intend +to have a serious conversation with him after tea." + +"Father has this moment come in, and he asked me to tell you that he had +business letters which he is obliged to write." + +"I know what _that_ means." + +"Oh! Mary!" interpolated Aunt Aggie eagerly. "You forget that Algernon +always, from the time he was a young man, left his letters to the last +moment. All the Bellairs do." + +The Bellairs had other unique family characteristics, as peculiar to +themselves as their choice of time for grappling with their +correspondence, which Aunt Aggie was never tired of quoting. "Bellairs +are always late for breakfast. It is no kind of use finding fault with +Bessie about it. I was just the same at her age." + +Aunt Aggie went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, +which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner +small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of +existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between +contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could +not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not +appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, +of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird. + +"I intend to see your father after tea," repeated Aunt Mary, taking no +notice of her sister's remark. + +"Father is much worried about the right of way," continued Magdalen. "He +showed me your most kind letter about myself, and----" + +"Showed it to _you_!" said Aunt Mary, becoming purple. "It was not +intended for any eye except your father's." + +"Confidence between a father and his child," began Aunt Aggie, clasping +her stout little hands, and looking eagerly from her sister to her +niece. + +Magdalen went on tranquilly. "It only told me what I knew before, Aunt +Mary, that you have my welfare at heart. Father said that he thought it +would be best if you and I talked the matter over. I agreed with him. +It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be for +the first time." + +It would not indeed! + +"Aggie," said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your way +here to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom and +investigate them." + +"I think they are kept locked," said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed to +stay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a love +affair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach the +subject. + +"They are unlocked," said Aunt Mary with decision. + +Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bitten +bun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed her +sister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage at +Saundersfoot to relations in need of sea air. + +An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's fine +countenance. + +"Magdalen," she said at once, "in the presence of that weak +sentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as it +is your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myself +whether anything has transpired about Everard Constable--Lord +Lossiemouth, as I suppose he now is." + +"Nothing," said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. If +she was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power of +concealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She +seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that +animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their +environment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its +head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there +than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental +features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had +adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obvious +that she had almost nothing in common except her name. + +Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her the +discussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violently +mismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affection +had a little scent, but it was set round with thorns. + +"He has behaved disgracefully," she said, looking with anger and +disappointment at her niece's faded face. + +"We have discussed that before," said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as you +know, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and better +forgotten." + +"He was poor then. No one ever thought he would succeed with two lives +between. But it is different now that he is wealthy and in a position to +marry." + +"He has never been in a position to marry me," said Magdalen, "because +he never cared enough for me to make an effort on my behalf. That was +not his fault. He mistook a romantic admiration for love, and naturally +found it would not work. How could it? It was not necessary to turn +heaven and earth to gain me. But it _was_ necessary to turn a few small +stones. He could not turn them." + +"Well, at any rate, he asked you, and you accepted him." + +"A hundred years ago." + +"And you have waited for him ever since." + +"Not at all. I am not waiting for him or for anyone." + +"You would have married Mr. Grenfell if it had not been for Everard." + +"Perhaps I should have married Everard if it had not been for Everard," +said Magdalen. + +It seemed as if nothing could shake her dispassionate view of the +matter. + +"Your feelings were certainly engaged, Magdalen. There is no use in +denying that." + +"Have I ever denied it?" + +Aunt Mary was silent for a moment, but her under lip was ominously +thrust out. She was not thinking of what Magdalen had said. If she had +ever listened to the remarks of others when they differed from her, she +would not have become Lady Blore. She was only silent because she was +rallying her forces. + +"A woman's hands become talons when they try to hold on to a man when he +wants to get away," said Magdalen gently. + +Aunt Mary turned on her niece an opaque eye that saw nothing beyond the +owner's views. + +"Something ought to be done," she said with emphasis. "After all, your +father dismissed him. I shall advise your father to write to him, and if +he does not--I shall write to him myself." + +"I hope you will not do that," said Magdalen. "Do you remember what a +subject for gossip it was at the time? When father became angry with +Everard he told everyone, and it became a sort of loud turmoil. The +servants knew, the parish knew, the whole county knew that I had had a +disappointment. I have remained ever since in the eyes of the neighbours +a sort of blighted creature, a victim of the heartlessness of man. A new +edition of that old story now that my hair is grey would be, I think, a +little out of place. I had hoped----" + +The door was suddenly thrown open, and Bessie marched into the room with +Aunt Aggie hanging nervously at her heels. + +"I came back as quickly as I could from the Carters' in order not to +miss you," said Bessie to Aunt Mary in her stentorian voice, and she +presented a glowing rose cheek to be kissed. + +Magdalen shot a grateful glance at her sister, and the conversation +became general. + +After the aunts had departed, Bessie said to Magdalen on their way +upstairs to dress, "I found when I reached the Carters' that they had +gone out with Professor Ridgway to see the Roman camp. Only old Mrs. +Carter was at home, and she was rather chilly, and said they had +expected me to luncheon. They had had a little party to meet the +Professor. I saw that my conduct called for an apology. I made one." + +"I am glad of that." + +"I see now that it would have been wiser to have gone over for luncheon +as arranged. I also thought how selfish it was of Fay not to help you +with the aunts. And then I perceived that there were not two pins to +choose between us, as I had been just as bad myself, so I hurried back +as quickly as I could." + +"I was most grateful to you when I saw you come in. And Aunt Mary was +pleased too. She never shows it much; but she was." + +"It is of secondary importance whether she was pleased or not. My object +in returning was twofold: to help you, and also for the sake of my own +character. I begin to see that unless I am careful I shall become as +selfish as father." + +Magdalen did not answer. + +"The aunts never do things like other people," continued Bessie. "I +found Aunt Aggie standing, eating a bun, just outside the drawing-room +door. She was quite flurried when I came up, and said she wanted to see +my fossils, but would rather look at them another day." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + La vie est un instrument dont on commence toujours par jouer faux. + + +Wentworth and Fay did not follow Colonel Bellairs and Magdalen back to +the house. When they reached the end of the avenue they turned back +silently by mutual consent, and retraced their steps down it. + +Presently they reached the trunk of the tree where Fay had been sitting +with Magdalen. + +Fay sank down upon it once more, white and exhausted. He sat down at a +little distance from her. + +"How is Michael?" she said at last, twisting her ungloved hands +together. + +"I came to tell you about him; I only got back last night. I knew you +would wish to hear." + +"How is he?" + +"He has been ill. He has had double pneumonia. It started with +hæmorrhage, and some of the blood got into the lungs, and caused +pneumonia. He is better now, nearly well, in fact. The prison doctor +seemed a sensible man, and he spoke as if he were interested in Michael. +From what he said I gathered that he did not think Michael would survive +another winter there. The prison[1] stands in a sort of marsh. It is a +very good place to prevent prisoners escaping, but not a good place for +them to keep alive in. The doctor is pressing to have Michael moved. He +thinks he might do better at the 'colonia agricola,' where the labour is +more agricultural; or that even work in the iron mines of Portoferriao +would try his constitution less than the swamp where he now is." + +[Footnote 1: The prison described has no counterpart in real life.] + +"Was he still in chains?" + +"No. And the doctor said there was some talk of abolishing them +altogether. If not, he will be obliged to go back to them now he is +better. He is looking forward to the sea lavender coming out. He says +the place is beautiful beyond words when it is in flower: whole tracts +and tracts of grey lilac blossom in the shallows, and hordes of wild +birds. He asked me to tell you that you were to think of him as living +in fairyland." + +Fay winced as if struck. + +"You gave him my message?" she stammered. + +"Of course I did. And he said I was to tell you not to grieve for him, +for he was well and happy." + +"Happy!" echoed Fay. + +"Yes, happy. He said he had committed a great sin, but that he hoped and +believed that he was now expiating it, and that it would be forgiven." + +"I am absolutely certain," said Fay in a suffocated voice, "that Michael +did not murder the Marchese di Maltagliala." + +"That is impossible," said Wentworth. + +"Then what great sin can he be expiating?" + +Even as Fay asked the question she knew the answer. Michael believed he +was expiating the sin of loving another man's wife. In his mind that was +probably on a par with the murder he had not committed. + +"I asked him that," said Wentworth, "but he would not say. He would only +repeat that his punishment was just." + +Two large tears ran down Fay's cheeks. + +"It is unjust, unjust, unjust!" she gasped. "Why does God allow these +dreadful things?" + +There was a long silence. + +For a time Wentworth had forgotten Fay. He saw again the great yellow +building standing in a waste of waters. He saw again the thin, +prematurely aged face of his brother, the shaved head, the coarse, +striped convict dress, the arid light from the narrow barred window. He +saw again Michael's grave smile, and heard the tranquil voice, "This +place is beautiful in autumn. Mind you come next when the sea lavender +is out." + +The remembrance of that meeting cut sharper than the actual pain of it +at the moment. He had gone through with it with a sort of stolid +endurance, letting Michael see but a tithe of what he felt. But the +remembrance was anguish unalloyed. For a time he could neither speak nor +see. + +A yellow butterfly that had waked too soon floated towards them on a +wavering trial trip. Close at hand a snowdrop drooped "its serious +head." The butterfly knew its own, and lit on the meek, nunlike flower, +opening and shutting its new wings in the pallid sunshine. It had +perhaps dreamed, as it lay in its chrysalis, "that life had been more +sweet." Was this chill sunshine that could not quicken his wings, was +this grim desert that held no goal for butterfly feet, was this one +snowdrop--_all_? Was this indeed the summer of his dreams, in the sure +and certain hope of which he had spun his cocoon, and laid him down in +faith? + +Fay looked at it in anguish not less than Wentworth's, whose dimmed eyes +saw it not at all. She never watched a poised butterfly open and shut +its wings without thinking of Michael. The flight of a seagull across +the down cut her like a lash. He had been free once. He who so loved the +down, the sea, the floating cloud, had been free once. + +When Wentworth had winked his steady grey eyes back to their normal +state, he looked furtively at Fay. She was weeping silently. He had seen +Fay in tears before, but never without emotion. With a somewhat halting +utterance he told her of certain small alleviations of Michael's lot. +The permission, urgently asked, had at last been granted that English +books might be sent him from time to time. The lonely, aching smart of +Wentworth's morning hours was vaguely soothed and comforted by Fay's +gentle presence. + +She appeared to listen to him, but in reality she heard nothing. She sat +looking straight in front of her, a tear slipping from time to time down +her white cheek. Except on one or two occasions Fay had that rarest +charm of looking beautiful in tears. She became paler than ever, never +red and disfigured and convulsed, with the prosaic cold in the head that +accompanies the emotions of less fortunate women. + +"How old is Michael?" she asked suddenly in the midst of a painstaking +account of certain leniencies as to diet, certain macaronis and soups +which the doctor had insisted on for Michael. + +"He is twenty-seven." + +"And how long has he been in prison?" + +"Nearly two years." + +"And he has thirteen more," said Fay, looking at Wentworth with wide +eyes blank with horror. + +"No," said Wentworth, his voice shaking a little. "No, Michael will not +live long in that swamp, not many years, I think." + +"But they will move him to a better climate." + +"He does not want to be moved. I should not, either, in his case." + +Fay's hands fell to her sides. + +"When my mother died," said Wentworth, "I promised her to be good to +Michael. There was no need for me to promise to be good to him. I always +liked him better than anyone else. I taught him to ride and to shoot. He +got his gun up sharp from the first. It's easy to do things for anyone +you like. But what is hard is when the time comes"--Wentworth stopped, +and then went on--"when the time comes that you can't do anything more +for the person you care for most." + +Silence. + +The yellow butterfly was still feebly trying to open and shut his wings. +The low sun had abandoned him to the encroaching frost, and was touching +the bare overarching branches to palest gold, "so subtly fair, so +gorgeous dim"; so far beyond the reach of tiny wings. + +"I don't think," said Wentworth, "I would stick at anything. I don't +know of anything I would not do, anything I would not give up, to get +him back his freedom. But it's no use, I can do nothing for him." + +"Oh! Why does not the real murderer confess?" said Fay with a sob, +wringing her hands. "How can he go on, year after year, letting an +innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his +horrible crime?" + +That mysterious murderer occupied a large place in Fay's thoughts. She +hated him with a deadly hatred. He was responsible for everything. That +one crooked channel of thought that persistently turned aside all blame +onto an unknown offender, had at last given a certain crookedness, a +sort of twist, to the whole subject in Fay's mind. + +"I begged Michael again for the twentieth time to tell me anything that +could act as a clue to discovering the real criminal," said Wentworth. +"I told him I would spend my last shilling in bringing him to justice, +but he only shook his head. I told him that some of his friends felt +certain that he knew who the murderer was, and was shielding him. He +shook his head again. He would not tell me anything the first day I went +to him after he was arrested. And still, after two years in prison, he +will not speak. Michael will never say anything." + +The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waning +afternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frosty +breath was stirring the dead leaves. The butterfly had closed his wings +for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. A +tiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death. + +Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her. + +"I must go in," she said. + +They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods +from the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them +above the gathering sea mist. + +They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the +consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which +had drawn them together. + +"I will come again soon, if I may," he said diffidently, "unless seeing +me reminds you of painful things." His voice had lowered itself +involuntarily. + +"I like to see you," said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from +him like a shadow among the shadows. + +The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any +possible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, +which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them. + +He pondered over them as he rode home. + +How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been +a happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss +was still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had shown +towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to +shield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her +sorrowing compassion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she had +shown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds! + +Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women he +was aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, +mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest +owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and +treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by +sudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow. + +But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above the +ordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level of +pettiness and vanity, by her simplicity and nobility and capacity for +devotion--_could such a woman love a second time?_ + +The thirst to be loved, to be the object of an exquisite tenderness, +what man has not, consciously or unconsciously longed for that? What +woman has not had her dream of giving that and more, full measure, +running over? + +To find favour in a woman's eyes a man need only do his stupid bungling +best. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had a best of any kind in him +to do. + +At twenty-five he would not have risked as much for love as even +cautious men of robuster fibre will still ruefully but determinedly risk +in the forties. And now at forty he would risk almost nothing. + +Where Michael was concerned Wentworth's love had reached the strength +where it could act, indefatigably, if need be. Michael had been so far +the only creature who could move his brother's egotism beyond the +refinements of bedridden sentiment. + +It was as well for Fay that she did not realise, and absolutely +essential for Wentworth that he did not realise either, that in spite of +an undoubted natural attraction towards her he would have seen no more +of her unless she had come within easy reach. + +A common trouble had drawn them towards each other. A common interest, a +common joy or sorrow, a house within easy distance--these are some of +the match makers between the invalids of life, who are not strong enough +to want anything very much, or to work for what they want. For them +favourable circumstance is everything. + +Wentworth could ride four and a half miles down a picturesque lane to +see Fay. But he could not have taken a journey by rail. + +A few years before Wentworth met Fay he had been tepidly interested in +the youthful sister of one of his college friends and contemporaries, an +Oxford Don at whose house he stayed every year. The sister kept house +for her brother. It was the usual easy commonplace combination of +circumstances that has towed lazy men into marriage since the +institution was first formed. He saw her without any effort on his part. +He arrived at a kind of knowledge of her. He found her to be what he +liked. She was sympathetic, refined, shy, cultivated, unselfish, and of +a wild rose prettiness. After a time he kept up, mainly on her account, +a regular intercourse with the brother, who was becoming rather prosy, +as was Wentworth himself. Presently the brother married, and the sister +ceased to live with him. + +Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure. He +found his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, the +friend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizures +of increasing frequency. The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund. But +it never entered his mind to enquire into the whereabouts of the sister, +and to continue his acquaintance with her independently. If he had +continued to meet her regularly he would almost certainly have married +her. She on her side seemed well disposed towards him. As it was he +never saw her again. He gradually ceased to think of her, except on +summer evenings, as a charming possibility which Fate had sternly +removed, as one lost to him for ever. He wrote a little poem about her, +beginning, "Where are you now?" (She was at Kensington all the time.) +Wentworth never published his verses. He said there was no room for a +new poet who did not advertise himself. There had been room for one of +his college friends, but that had been a case of log rolling. + +I do not know whether it was a fortunate or an unfortunate fate that had +prevented the gay little lady of the pink cheeks from being at that +moment installed at Barford as the wife of a poet who scorned publicity. + +If Wentworth had been riding home to his wife on that February evening +he would not have taken unconsciously another of the many steps which +entailed so many more, by saying to himself, thinking of Fay: + +"Could a woman like that love a second time?" + +Then he hastened his speed as he remembered that his old friend the +Bishop of Lostford had by this time arrived at Barford. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + If you feel no love, sit still; occupy yourself with things, + with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. + + --TOLSTOY. + + +In Wentworth's youth he had been attracted towards many, besides the +Bishop, among the bolder and less conventional of his contemporaries. +Their fire, their energies, their enthusiasm, warmed his somewhat +under-vitalized nature. He regarded himself as one of them, and his +refinement and distinction drew the robuster spirits towards himself. +But gradually, as time went on, these energies and enthusiasm took form, +and, alas! took forms which he had not expected--he never expected +anything--and from which his mind instinctively recoiled. He had +supposed that energy was energy. He had not realised that it was life in +embryo, that might develop, not always on lines of beauty, into a new +policy, or a great discovery, or a passion, or a vocation. He hated +transformations, new births, all change. His friends at first rallied +him unmercifully, then lost patience, and finally fell from him, one by +one. Some openly left him, the more good-natured among them forgot him, +and if by chance they found themselves in his society, hurried back with +affectionate cordiality to reminiscences of school and college life, +long-passed milestones before the parting of the ways. + +The Bishop when he plunged into his work also for a time lost sight of +Wentworth, but when he was appointed to the See of Lostford, within +five miles of Barford, the two men resumed, at first with alacrity, +something of the old intercourse. + +Wentworth had an element of faithfulness in him which enabled him to +take up a friendship after a long interval, but it was on one condition, +namely that the friend had remained _planté là_ where he had been left. +If in the meanwhile the friend had moved, the friendship flagged. + +It was soon apparent that the Bishop had not by any means remained +_planté là_, and the friendship quickly drooped. It would long since +have died a natural death if it had not been kept alive by the Bishop +himself, a man of robust affections and strong compassions, without a +moment to spend on small resentments. After Michael's imprisonment he +had redoubled his efforts to keep in touch with Wentworth, and the great +grief of the latter, silently and nobly endured, had been a bond between +the two men which even a miserable incident which must have severed most +friendships had served to loosen, not to break. + +The Bishop had in truth arrived at Barford, and was now sitting +apparently unoccupied by the library fire. To be unoccupied even for an +instant except during recuperative sleep was so unusual with the Bishop, +so unprecedented, that his daughter would have been terrified could she +have seen him at that moment. He had only parted from her and her +husband at mid-day, yet it was a sudden thought suggested by his visit +to them which was now holding him motionless by the fire, his lean +person bulging with unanswered letters. + +The Bishop was a small ugly man of fifty, unconventional to the core, +the younger son of a duke, and a clergyman by personal conviction. He +had been born in a hurry, and had remained in a hurry ever since. He had +neither great administrative capacities, nor profound scholarship, but +what powers he had were eked out by a stupendous energy. His Archbishop +said that he believed that the Bishop's chaplains died like flies, and +that he merely threw their dead bodies into the Loss, which flowed +beneath his palace windows, without even a burial service. His chaplains +and secretaries certainly worked themselves to the bone for him. They +could have told tales against him, but they never did. For it was a +strain to serve the Bishop, to get his robes thrown over him at the +right--I mean the last--second, to thrust him ruthlessly into his +carriage just in time to catch the tail ends of departing trains--he +generally travelled with the guard. His admirable life had been spent in +a ceaseless whirl. He had never had time to marry. He had hurried to the +altar when he was an eager curate with a pretty young bride who was a +stranger to him, whom his mother had chosen for him. During the years +that followed what little he saw of her at odd moments he liked. After +ten years of what he believed to be married life she died, leaving one +child; tactful to the last, pretty to the last, having made no claim +from first to last, kissing his hand, and thanking him for his love, and +for the beautiful years they had spent together. + +His friends said that he bore her loss with heroism, but in reality he +missed her but little. Her death occurred just after he had become an +ardent suffragan. His daughter grew up in a few minutes, and quickly +took her mother's place. She was her mother over again in character and +appearance. His wife had lived in his house for ten years, his daughter +for twenty. By dint of time he learned to know her as he had never known +her mother. At twenty she married his chaplain. + +The chaplain was a tall, stooping, fleckless, flawless, mannerless, +joyless personage, middle-aged at twenty-eight, with a voice like a +gong, with a metallic mind constructed of thought-tight compartments, +devoted body and soul to the Church, an able and indefatigable worker, +smelted from the choice ore of that great middle class from which, as we +know, all good things come. That he was a future ornament, or at any +rate an iron girder of the Church was sufficiently obvious. + +The Bishop saw his worth, and ruefully endured him until the chaplain, +in the most suitable language, desired to become his son-in-law, and +that at the most inconceivably awkward moment, namely, just when the +Bishop had presented him with a living. The marriage had to be. The +daughter wished it with an intensity that amazed her father. And +gradually the Bishop discovered that he detested his paragon of a +son-in-law. But why? It was not jealousy. He really was a paragon, not a +sham. To the Bishop it seemed, and with truth, that any other woman +would have done as well as his daughter, that her husband neither +understood her nor wished to understand her, that he accepted ruthlessly +without knowing that he accepted it, her selfless devotion, that he used +her as a cushion to make his rare moments of leisure more restful, that +her love was not even a source of happiness to him, only a solace. And +she, extraordinary to behold, was radiantly content. + +"_Just like her mother over again_," the Bishop had wrathfully said to +himself as he drove away from his daughter's door. And at that moment a +slide was drawn back from his mind, and he saw that the marriage was a +replica of his own, except in so far that his son-in-law, greatly +assisted by circumstances, had actually taken a little trouble to +arrange his marriage for himself, while the Bishop's--what there was of +it--had been done for him by his mother. + +Till this morning he had believed his marriage to have been an ideally +happy one, that he had felt all that man can feel; and he had been +inclined to treat as womanish the desperate desolation of men who had +after all only suffered the same bereavement as he had himself, and +which he had quickly overcome. He saw now that he had missed happiness +exactly as his son-in-law was missing it. The same thing had befallen +them both. Love could do there no mighty works because of their +unbelief. When he remembered his wife's face he realised that her joy +had been something beyond his ken. He had not shared it. He had not +known love, even when it had drawn very nigh unto him. + +As he waited motionless for Wentworth to come in, his strong, intrepid +mind worked. The Bishop at fifty went to school to a new thought. It was +that power of going to school at fifty to a new thought which had made +his Archbishop, who loved him, give him the See of Lostford, to the +amazement of the demurer clergy who were scandalised by his +unconventionality, and his fearful baldness of speech. They could only +account for the appointment by the fact that he was the son of a duke. +It was that power which made the Bishop seem a much younger man than +Wentworth, who was in reality ten years his junior. The Bishop was still +a learner. He still moved with vigour mentally. Wentworth, on the +contrary, had arrived--not at any place in particular, but at the spot +where he intended to remain. His ideas, and some of them had been rather +good ones at twenty-five, had suffered from their sedentary existence. +They had become rather stout. He called them progressive because in the +course of years he had perceived in them a slight glacier-like movement. +To others they appeared fixed. + +Wentworth's attitude towards life, of which he was so fond of speaking, +was perhaps rather like that of a shrimper who, in ankle-deep water, +watches the heavily freighted whale boats come towering in. He does not +quite know why he, of all men, with his special equipment for the +purpose, and his expert handling of the net, does not also catch whales. +That they seldom swim in two-inch water does not occur to him. At last +he does not think there are any whales. He has exploded that fallacy. +For, in a moment of adventurous enthusiasm, counting not the cost, did +he not once wade recklessly up to his very shoulders in deep water: _and +there were no whales_,--only pinching crabs. Crabs were the one real +danger, the largest denizens of the boundless main, whatever his former +playmates the whalers might affirm. + +When the shrimper and the whaler had dined together, and the Bishop had +heard with affectionate sympathy the little there was to hear +respecting Michael, and the conversation tended towards more general +topics, the radical antagonism between the two friends' minds threatened +every moment to make itself felt. + +The Bishop tried politics somewhat tentatively, on which they had +sympathised in college days, but it seemed they had widely diverged +since. Wentworth, though he frequently asserted that no one enjoyed more +than he "the clashing of opposite opinions," seemed nevertheless only +able to welcome with cordiality a mild disagreement, just sufficiently +defined to prove stimulating to the expression of his own views. A wide +divergence from them he met with a chilly silence. He did so now. The +Bishop looked at his neat ankle, and changed the subject. + +"Have you seen or heard anything of Everard Constable since he came into +his kingdom, such a very unexpected kingdom, too?" + +"No. I fancy he is still abroad. But I can't say that for some time past +I have found Constable's aims in life very sympathetic. His unceasing +struggle after literary fame appears to me somewhat undignified." + +"Oh! come. Give the devil his due. Constable can write." + +"Of course, of course. That is just what I am saying. But he and I +differ too widely in our outlook on life to remain really intimate. He +cares for the big things, ambition, popularity, a prominent position, +luxury. He will enjoy being a personage, and having wealth at his +command. For my part, I am afraid I care infinitely more for the small +things of life, love, friendship, sympathy." + +"The _small_ things! Good Lord!" said the Bishop, and his jaw dropped. +He also dropped the subject. + +"I ran up against Grenfell last week," he continued immediately. "Do you +see _him_ now? You and he used to be inseparable at Cambridge." + +Wentworth became frigid. + +Grenfell had accused him at their last meeting of being an old maid, an +accusation which had wounded Wentworth to the quick, and which he had +never forgotten or forgiven. He had not in the least realised that +Grenfell was not alluding to the fact that he happened to be unmarried. + +"I can't say I care to see him now," he said. "He has become entirely +engrossed in his career. A simple life like mine, the life of thought, +no longer interests him. He is naturally drawn to people who are playing +big parts." + +"What nonsense! He is just the same as ever. A little vehement and +fiery, but not as much as he was. They say he will be the next +Chancellor of the Exchequer to a certainty." + +"I daresay he will. He has the art of keeping himself before the public +eye. Being myself so constituted--it is not any virtue in me, only a +constitutional defect--that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficult +for me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, can +bring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above that +kind of thing." + +"So he is. So he is. A blind man can see Grenfell's unworldliness. It +sticks a yard out of him. My dear Wentworth, if energetic elbows were, +as you imply, the key to success, how do you account for the fact that +hundreds of painful persons have triumphantly passed that preliminary +examination who never achieve anything beyond a diploma in the art of +pushing?" + +Wentworth did not answer. + +He firmly believed that in order to attain the things he had not +attained, had never striven for, of which he invariably spoke +disparagingly, but which he secretly and impotently desired, the +co-operation of certain ignoble qualities was essential, sordid allies +whom he would have disdained to use. + +"I don't blame Grenfell," he said at last. "He had his way to make. I +know how blinding the glamour of ambition is, how insidious and +insistent the claims of the world may become. I don't pretend to be +superior to certain temptations if they came in my way. But I happen to +have kept out of their way. That is all." + +"You have certainly kept out of the way of--nearly everything." + +"For my part, I daresay I am hopelessly out of date, but I value beauty +and peace and simplicity higher than a noisy success. But a noisy +success is the one thing that counts nowadays." + +"Does it?" + +"And Grenfell has taken the right steps to gain it. If a man craves for +popularity, if he really thinks the bubble worth striving for, he must +lay himself out for it. If he wants a place he must jostle for it. If he +wants power he must discard scruples. If he wants social success it can +be got--we see it every day--by pandering to the susceptibilities and +seeking the favour of influential persons. Everything has its price. I +don't say that everyone obtains these things who is ready to bid for +them. But some do. Grenfell is among those who have. I don't blame him. +I am not sure that I don't rather envy him." + +The Bishop could respect a conviction. + +"Are you not forgetting Grenfell's character?" he said gently, as one +speaks to a sick man. "Think of him, his nobility, his integrity, his +enthusiasm, his transparent unworldliness which so often in the old days +put us all to shame!" + +"That is just what makes it all so painful to me," said Wentworth, and +there was no possibility of doubting his sincerity. "That contact with +the world can taint even beautiful natures like his. He was my ideal at +one time. I almost worshipped him at Cambridge." + +"I love him still," said the Bishop. "A cat may look at a king, so I +suppose a poor crawler of a bishop may look at a man like Grenfell. +Don't you think, Wentworth, that sometimes a man who succeeds may have +worked as nobly as a man who fails--you always speak so feelingly of +failure, it is one of the many things I like about you. Don't you think +that perhaps sometimes success may be--I don't say it always is--as +high-minded as failure, that a hard-won victory may be as honourable as +defeat, that achievement may _sometimes_ be the result not of chance or +interest, but of unremitting toil? Don't you think you may be +unconsciously cutting yourself adrift from Grenfell's friendship by +attributing his success to unworthy means which a man like him could +never have stooped to?" + +"It is he who has cut himself adrift from me," said Wentworth icily. "I +have not changed." + +"That is just it. A slight change, shall we say expansion on your part, +might have enabled you to"--the Bishop chose his words as carefully as a +doctor counts drops into a medicine glass--"to keep pace with him?" + +"I do not regard friendship as a race or a combat of wits," said +Wentworth. "Friendship is to my mind something sacred. I hope I can +remain Grenfell's friend without believing him to be absolutely +faultless. If he is so unreasonable as to expect that of me, which I +should not for a moment expect of him, why then----" Wentworth shrugged +his shoulders. + +One of the few friends who had not drifted from him looked at him with +somewhat pained affection. + +Why does a life dwelt apart from others tend to destroy first generosity +and then tenderness in man and woman? Why does one so often find a +certain hardness and inhumanity encrusting those who have withdrawn +themselves behind the shutters of their own convenience, or is it, after +all, their own impotence? + +"Has he always been hard and cold by nature?" said the Bishop to +himself, "and is the real man showing himself in middle age, or is his +meagre life starving him?" + +He tried again. + +"You nearly lost my friendship a year ago by attributing a sordid motive +to me, Wentworth." + +Wentworth understood instantly. + +"That is all past and forgotten," he said quickly. "I never think of it. +Have I ever allowed it to make the slightest difference?" + +"No," said the Bishop, looking hard at him, "and for that matter neither +have I. We have never talked the matter out. Let us do so now. I don't +suppose you have forgotten the odium I incurred over the living of +Rambury. It had been held for generations by old men. It had become a +kind of clerical almshouse. When it fell vacant there was of course yet +another elderly cleric----" + +"My uncle," said Wentworth, "a most excellent man." + +"Just so, but in failing health. Rightly or wrongly I was convinced that +it was my duty to give the place a chance by putting there a younger +man, of energy and capacity for hard work. I gave it to my future +son-in-law as you know." + +Wentworth nodded. "Everyone said at the time he was an excellent man," +he said with evident desire to be fair. + +"I daresay, but that is not the point. The point is that I had no idea +that iron traction engine wanted to marry my daughter or anybody's +daughter. The tactless beast got up steam and proposed for her the day +after I had offered him the living. He had never given so much as a +preliminary screech on the subject, never blown a horn to show what his +horrid intentions were--I only hope that if I had known I should still +have had the moral courage to appoint him. The Archbishop assures me I +should--but I doubt it. I was loudly accused of nepotism, of course. +Your uncle, who died soon afterwards, forgave me in the worst of taste +on his deathbed. I had no means of justifying myself. The Archbishop and +Grenfell and a few other old friends believed. _Why were you not among +those old friends, Wentworth?_" + +"I _was_ among them," said Wentworth, meeting the Bishop's sombre eyes. +"You never answered it, so I suppose you never received it, but at the +time I wrote you a long letter assuring you that I for one had not +joined in the cry against you, even though my uncle did. I frankly owned +that, while I regarded the appointment as an ill-considered one, I took +for granted that Mr. Rawlings was suited for the place. I said that I +knew you far too well to suppose even for a moment that you would have +given the post to a man, even if he were your son-in-law, unless he had +been competent to fill it. You never answered the letter, so I suppose +it failed to reach you." + +"I received it," said the Bishop slowly. "I felt it to be an +illuminating document, but it did not seem to call for an answer. It was +in itself a response to a tacit appeal." + +There was a pause, and then he continued cheerfully. "Rawlings has +proved himself dreadfully competent as you prophesied, and Lucy is very +happy in her new home. I came on from there this morning. My son-in-law, +with the admirable promptitude and economy of time which endeared him to +me as my chaplain, had arranged that every moment of my visit should be +utilised; that I should christen their first child, dedicate a +thank-offering in the shape of a lectern, consecrate the new portion of +the churchyard, open a reading-room, and say a few cordial words at a +drawing-room meeting before I left at mid-day. I told him if he went on +like this he would certainly come to grief and be made a bishop some +day. But he only remarked that he was not solicitous of high +preferment. I think you would like Rawlings if you knew him better. You +and he have a certain amount in common. I must own that I am glad that +it is Lucy who has to put up with him and not I. I should think even God +Almighty must find him rather difficult to live with at times. And now, +Wentworth, if I am to be up and away at cock-crow, I must go to bed." + +But the Bishop did not go to bed at once when Wentworth had escorted him +to his room. + +"It was no use," he said to himself. "It was worth trying, but it was no +use. He never saw that he had misjudged me. He met my eye. He has a +straight, clean eye. He is sincere as far as he goes, but how far _does_ +he go? He has never made that first step towards sincerity of doubting +his own sincerity. He mistakes his moods for convictions. He has never +suspected his own motives, or turned them inside out. He suspects those +of others instead. He is like a crab. He moves sideways by nature, and +he thinks that everyone else who moves otherwise is not straightforward, +and that he must make allowances for them. According to his lights he +has behaved generously by me. Has he! Damn him! God forgive me. Well, I +must stick to him, for I believe I am almost the only friend he has left +in the world." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?--D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +Fay did not sleep that night. + +For a long time past, she seemed to have been gradually, inevitably +approaching, dragging reluctant feet towards something horrible, +unendurable. She could not look this veiled horror in the face. She +never attempted to define it to herself. Her one object was to get away +from it. + +It had not sprung into life full grown. It had gradually taken form +after Michael's imprisonment. At first it had been only an uneasy ghost +that could be laid, a spectre across her path that could be avoided; but +since she had come home it had slowly attained gigantic and terrifying +proportions. It loomed before her now as a vague but insistent menace, +from which she could no longer turn away. + +A great change was coming over Fay, but she tacitly resisted it. She did +not understand it, nor realise that the menace came from within her +gates, was of the nature of an insurrection in the citadel of self. We +do not always recognise the voice of the rebel soul when first it begins +to speak hoarsely, unintelligibly, urgently from the dark cell to which +we have relegated it. + +Some of us are so constituted that we can look back at our past and see +it as a gradation of steps, a sort of sequence, and can thus gain a +kind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are even +now striking our feet. + +But poor Fay saw her life only as shattered, meaningless fragments, +confused, mutilated masses without coherence. The masses and the gaps +between them were of the same substance in her eyes. She wandered into +her past as a child might wander among the rubbish heaps of its old home +in ruins. She was vaguely conscious that there had been a design once in +those unsightly mounds, that she had once lived in them. On that remnant +of crazy wall clung a strip of wall-paper which she recognised as the +paper in her own nursery; here a vestige of a staircase that had led to +her mother's room. And as a child will gather up a little frockful of +sticks and fallen remnants, and then drop them when they prove heavy, so +Fay picked up out of her past tiny disjointed odds and ends of ideas and +disquieting recollections, only to cast them aside again as burdensome +and useless. + +The point to which she wandered back most frequently--to stare blankly +at it without comprehension--was her husband's appeal to her on his +deathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. +She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures and +twisted memories towards that particular place. + +She saw again the duke's dying face, and the tender fixity of his eyes. +She could almost hear his difficult waning voice saying: + +"The sun shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. +Since a year he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you +keep your Cousin Michael in prison?" + +_Since a year he does not see them._ + +It was two years now. + +The shock to Fay at the moment those words were spoken had been that her +husband had known all the time. That revelation blotted out all other +thoughts for the time being. It even blotted out all considerations of +her own conduct towards Michael, which it might conceivably have +rendered acute. It made her mind incapable of receiving the impression +that the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make on +it; that surely she would not, after his death, still keep Michael in +his cell. Throughout the early weeks of her widowhood Fay remained as +one stunned. Even Magdalen, who hurried out to her, supposed at first +that she was stunned by grief. + +"Then Andrea knew all the time." That was the constant refrain of her +bewildered, half-paralysed mind. + +Gradually in the quiet monotonous life at Priesthope the question made +itself felt. "_How did he know?_" + +That question was never answered by Fay, deeply though she pondered over +it. It remained a mystery to her all of her life. She recalled little +scraps of his conversation, tiny incidents which might have shown her +that he knew. But she had noticed nothing at the time. Her cheek burned +when she recalled his tranquil, sarcastic voice. + +"Not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty, is +the high road! But I have known, not once, nor twice, women to murder +men very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die." + +When first she remembered those words of her dead husband, a horrible +revulsion of feeling against him seized her. She had been vaguely +miserable and remorseful at his death until those words, so tranquilly +spoken in a primrose dawn, came back to her. + +Then she was suddenly glad he was dead, gone for ever. She almost hated +him once more. It was dreadful to live with people whom she did not +understand, who knew things they kept secret, whose minds and thoughts +and motives were incomprehensible to her, who believed horrible untrue +things of her. It had been a fixed idea with Fay during her husband's +lifetime that he believed horrible untrue things about her. But what +they were she would have found it difficult to say. + +Fay's was not a suspicious nature in its normal state, but most persons +of feeble judgment become suspicious when life becomes difficult. They +cannot judge, and consequently cannot trust. Fay had never learnt even +so much of her husband as that she might have trusted him entirely. Now +that he was gone without betraying her, the knowledge that he had known +her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a +flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal +he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear +and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of +the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when +it has been generously and humanely dealt with. + +When Fay had somewhat recovered from the shock of her husband's dying +speech she had turned with all her might to Magdalen, had cast herself +upon her, clung to her in a sort of desperation. Magdalen at any rate +believed in her. + +For many months after she came to Priesthope, her mind remained in a +kind of stupor, and it seemed at first as if she were regaining a sort +of calm, caught as it were from Magdalen's presence. + +But gradually miserable brooding memories returned, and it seemed at +last as if something in Magdalen's gentle serenity irritated instead of +soothing Fay as heretofore. Was Magdalen a sort of unconscious ally of +that fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words of +Magdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any rate +something stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrink +from Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moody +intervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at the +housekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later she +would be humbly and hysterically affectionate once more, asking to be +forgiven for her waywardness. She could not live without the comfort of +Magdalen's tenderness. And at times she could not live with it. Magdalen +preserved an unmoved front. She ignored her sister's petulance and +spasmodic fault-finding. She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill, +but what that ill was she did not know. She kept the way open for Fay's +sudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited. + +Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow +to take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a +rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up +the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led +her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should +touch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that +she lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the natural +instincts of animals. + +Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months at +Priesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to her +life by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent. +His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partially +blurred, persistently pushed aside--the memory of Michael in prison. The +figure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other figure in its +cell. + +But now the remembrance of Michael, continually stirred up by poor +Wentworth, with his set, bereaved face, was never suffered to sleep. +With every week of her life it seemed to Fay some new pain came. + +Magdalen could not comfort her. Magdalen, who was so fond of Michael. + +_If Magdalen knew!_ + +_Magdalen must never, never know._ She could not live without Magdalen. +Magdalen was not like Andrea in that. She at any rate was concealing +nothing, could know nothing. Now that Andrea was dead, only one living +person beside herself _knew_--Michael. Fay was unconsciously growing to +hate the thought of that one other person, to turn with horror from the +remembrance of Michael: his sufferings, his patient life in death +filled her with nausea, disgust. Her vehement selfish passion for him +had been smothered by the hideous débris which had been cast upon it. + +She had never loved him, as the duke well knew, and now the shivering +remembrance of him, constantly renewed by Wentworth, had become like a +poignard in a wound that would not heal. Wentworth had to-day yet again +unconsciously turned the dagger in the wound, and her whole being +sickened and shuddered. Oh! if she could only tear out that sharp-bladed +remembrance and cast it from her, then in time the aching wound in her +life might heal, and she might become happy and well and at peace once +more;--at peace like Magdalen. An envious anger flared up in her mind +against Magdalen's calm and happy face. + +Oh, if poor Michael could only die! He wanted to die. If only he could +die and release her. _Release her from what?_ + +From her duty to speak and set him free? Those were the words which she +never permitted the rebel voice within to say. Still, they were there, +silenced for the time, but always waiting to be said. Their gagged +whisper reached her in spite of herself. + +Oh! if only Michael were dead and out of his suffering, then she would +never be tortured by them any more. Then, too, her husband's words would +lose their poisoned point, and she could thrust them forth from her mind +for ever. + +"Francesca, how much longer will you keep your cousin Michael in +prison?" + +Oh! Cruel, cruel Andrea, vindictive to the very gates of death. + +Down the empty, whispering gallery of ghostly fears in which her life +crouched, Michael's voice spoke to her also. She could hear his grave, +low tones. "Think of me as in fairy-land." + +That tender, compassionate message had a barbed point which pierced +deeper even than the duke's words. + +Her lover and her husband seemed to have conspired together to revenge +themselves upon her. + +Fay leaned her pretty head against the window-sill and sobbed +convulsively. + +Poor little soul in prison, weeping behind the bars of her cell, that +only her own hands could open! + +Were not Fay and Michael both prisoners, fast bound: she in misery, he +only in iron. + +The door opened gently and Magdalen came in in a long white wrapper, +with a candle in her hand. + +She put down the candle and came towards Fay. She did not speak. Her +face quivered a little. She bent over the huddled figure in the window +seat, and with a great tenderness drew it into her arms. For a moment +Fay yielded to the comfort of the close encircling arms, and leaned her +head against Magdalen's breast. + +Then she wrenched herself free, and pushed her sister violently from +her. + +"Why do you come creeping in like that?" she said fiercely. "You only +come to spy upon me." + +Magdalen did not speak. She had withdrawn a pace, and stood looking at +her sister, her face as white as her night-gown. + +Fay turned her tear-drenched face to the window and looked fixedly out. +There was a faint movement in the room. When she looked round Magdalen +was gone. + +Fay, worn with two years of partially eluded suffering, restless with +pain, often sick at heart, was at last nearing the last ditch:--but she +had not reached it yet. + +Many more useless tears, many more nights of anguish, many more days of +sullen despair still lay between her and that last refuge. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + Il n'y a point de passé vide ou pauvre, il n'y a point + d'événements misérables, il n'y a que des événements + misérablement accueillis.--MAETERLINCK. + + +Magdalen went back to her own room, and set down her candle on the +dressing-table with a hand that trembled a little. + +"I ought not to have gone," she said half aloud, "and yet--I knew she +was awake and in trouble. And she nearly spoke to me to-day. I +thought--perhaps at last--the time had come like it did with Mother. But +I was wrong. I ought not to have gone." + +The large room which had been her mother's, the elder Fay's, seemed +to-night crowded with ghostly memories: awakened by the thought of the +younger Fay sobbing in the room at the end of the passage. + +In this room, in that bed, the elder Fay had died eighteen years ago. + +How like the mother the child had become who had been named after her. + +Magdalen saw again in memory the poor pretty apathetic mother who had +taken so long to die; a grey-haired Fay, timid as the present Fay, +unwise, inconsequent, blind as Fay, feebly unselfish, as alas! Fay was +not. + +There is in human nature a forlorn impulse, to which Mrs. Bellairs had +yielded, to speak at last when the great silence draws near, of the +things that have long cankered the heart, to lay upon others part of +the unbearable burden of life just when death is about to remove move +it. Mrs. Bellairs had always groped feebly in heavy manacles through +life, in a sort of twilight, but her approaching freedom seemed towards +the last to throw a light, faint and intermittent but still a light, on +much that had lain confused and inexplicable in her mind. Many whispered +confidences were poured into Magdalen's ears during those last weeks, +faltered disjointed revelations, which cut deep into the sensitive +stricken heart of the young girl, cutting possibly also new channels for +all her after life to flow through. + +Did the mother realise the needless anguish she inflicted on the spirit +of the grave, silent girl of seventeen. Perhaps she was too near the +great change to judge any longer--not that she had ever judged--what was +wise or unwise, what was large or small. Trivial poisoned incidents and +the deep wounds of life, petty unreasonable annoyances and acute +memories were all jumbled together. She had never sorted them, and now +she had ceased to know which was which. The feeble departing spirit +wandered aimlessly among them. + +"You must stand up to your father, Magdalen, when I'm gone. I never +could. I was too much in love with him at first, and later on when I +tried he had got the habit of my yielding to him, and it made a +continual wretchedness if I opposed him. He always thought I did not +love him if I did not consent to everything he wished, or if I did not +think him right whatever he did. I did try to stand up about the +children, but at last I gave up that too. I was not fit to have +children, if I sacrificed their wellbeing to his caprice and his whim, +but that was what I did. I have been a poor mother, and an unfaithful +friend, and an unjust mistress. Women like me have no business to +marry.... + +"You don't remember Annie, do you? She was second housemaid, the best +servant I ever had. She was engaged to William, the footman with the +curly hair. He is butler now at Barford. She cared for him dreadfully, +poor soul. But your father could not bear her because she had a squint, +and he never gave me any peace till I parted with her. I did part with +her--and I got her a good place--but--I spoilt her marriage. It did not +take much spoiling perhaps, for after she was gone he soon began to walk +with the kitchen maid, but--she had been kind to me. So good once when I +was ill, and my maid was ill. She did everything for me. I have often +cried about that at night since." + + * * * * * + +"Mother always used to tell me and I never believed it, but it is +true--men are children and it is no good thinking them different. They +never grow up. I don't know if there are any grown up men anywhere. I +suppose there must be--but I have never met one. I don't know any Prime +Ministers or Archbishops, but I expect they are just the same as your +father in home life." + + * * * * * + +"I daresay your father will be sorry when I'm gone. People like your +father are always very fond of someone who is dead, who has no longer +any claim upon them: a mother or a sister, whom they did not take much +trouble about when they were alive. + +"Of course I am going to die first, but I sometimes used to think if +your father died before me and if he were allowed to come back after +death--such things do happen--I had a friend who saw a ghost +once--whether he would be as vexed then at any little change as he is +now. You know, Magdalen, it has always been a cross to me that the +writing-table in my sitting-room is away from the light. My eyes were +never strong. I moved it near the window when I first came here, but +your father was annoyed and had it put back where it is now, because his +mother always had it there. But I really could not see to write there. +And I have often thought if he came back after he was dead whether he +would mind if he found I had moved it nearer the window." + + * * * * * + +"The Bishop of Elvaston married us. I daresay you don't remember him, my +dear. He died a few years later. He had a wart on his chin and he once +shook hands with baby's feet. But he was good. He told me I must +sacrifice all to love. But what has been the use of all my sacrifices, +first of myself and then of others? Your father has not been the happier +or the better for it, but the worse. I have let him do so many cruel +little things for which others have suffered. It was not exactly that he +did not see what he was doing. He would not see. Some people are like +that. They won't look, and they become dreadfully angry if they are +asked to look. I gave it up at last. Oh, my poor husband! I knew I had +failed everybody else, but at any rate not him. But I see now,"--the +weak voice broke--"I see now that I have failed him, too. We ought +never to have married. Love is not any guide to happiness. Remember +that, Magdalen. We were both weak. He was weak and domineering. I was +weak and yielding. I don't know which is the worst." + +As the shadows deepened all the tacit unforgiveness of a weak, +down-trodden nature which has been vanquished by life whispered from the +brink of the grave. + +"I have never been loved. I have given everything, and I have had +nothing back. Nothing. Nothing. Don't marry, Magdalen. Men are all like +that. Lots of women say the same. They take everything and they give +nothing. It is our own fault. We rear them to it from their cradles. +From their schooldays we teach them that everything is to give way to +them, beginning with the sisters. With men it is Take, Take, Take, until +we have nothing left to give. I went bankrupt years ago. There is +nothing left in me. I _have_ nothing and I _am_ nothing. I'm not dying +now. I have been dead for years." + + * * * * * + +"You say I am going to be at peace, Magdalen, but how do you know? I +daresay I'm not. I daresay I am going to hell, but if I do I don't care. +I don't care where I go so long as it is somewhere where there aren't +any more husbands, and housekeeping, and home, weary, weary home, and +complaints about food. I don't want ever to see anything again that I +have known here. I am so tired of everything. I am tired to death." + + * * * * * + +Poor mother and poor daughter. + +Who shall say what Magdalen's thoughts were as she supported her +mother's feeble steps down to the grave. Perhaps she learned at +seventeen what most of us only learn late, so late, when life is half +over. + +Bitterness, humiliation, the passionate despair of the heart which has +given all and has received nothing,--these belong not to the armed band +of Love's pilgrims, though they dog his caravan across the desert. + +These are only the vultures and jackal prowlers in Love's wake, ready to +pounce on the faint hearted pilgrim who through weakness falls into the +rear, where fang and talon lie in wait to swoop down and rend him. + +If we adventure to be one of Love's pilgrims we must needs be long +suffering and meek, if we are to win safe with him across the desert, +and see at last his holy city. + + * * * * * + +Tears welled up into Magdalen's eyes as one piteous scene after another +came back to her, enacted in this very room. + +Poor little mother, who had seemed to Magdalen then so old and forlorn, +who, when she died, had only been a year or two older than Magdalen +herself was now. + +And poor little wavering life sobbing in the room at the end of the +passage over some mysterious trouble. + +The elder Fay lived on in the younger Fay. Was she also to be vanquished +by life, to become gradually embittered and resentful? There seemed to +be nothing in her lot to make her so. What was it, what could it be that +was casting a blight over Fay's life? + +How to help her, how to release her from the self-imposed fetters in +which her mother had lived and--died. + +Just as some persons have the power of making something new out of +refuse--paper out of rags--so Magdalen seemed to have the power of +cherishing and transforming the weaker, meaner elements of the +characters with which she came in contact. Certain qualities in those we +are inclined to love daunt us. Insincerity, callousness, selfishness, +treachery in its more refined aspects, these are apt to arouse at first +incredulity and at last scorn in us. But they aroused neither in +Magdalen. She saw them with clearness, and dealt tenderly with them. + +What others discarded as worthless, she valued. To push aside the feeble +and intermittent affection of a closed and self-centred nature, +believing it is giving its best, what is that but to push aside a poor +man's little offering. Many years ago Magdalen had accepted not without +tears, one such offering from a very poor man indeed. + +Loving-kindness, tenderness, have their warped, stunted shoots as well +as their free-growing, stately blossoms. It is the same marvellous, +fragrant life struggling to come forth through generous or barren soil. +There are some thin, dwarfed, almost scentless flowers of love and +friendship, of which we can discern the faint fragrance only when we are +on our knees. But some of us have conscientious scruples about kneeling +down except at shrines. Magdalen had not. + +She knew that Fay cared but little for her in reality. But she also knew +that she did care a little. Fay had turned to her many times, and had +repulsed and forgotten her not a few times. + +Magdalen had a good memory. + +"When she really wants me she will turn to me again," she said +tranquilly to herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + Toute passion a son chemin de croix. + + +And Michael? + +What of him during these two endless years? + +What did he think about during his first year in prison: what was the +first waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradual +discovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside his +window to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn, +how did he bear them? + +His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. The +egoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his. +He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not +thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did +he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he +accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through +the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against +him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one, +minister to him in his great need? + +Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was suffering +voluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept hold +of the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot what +he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emerged +from behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that moment +in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love. + +Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love for +him was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that +realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before +the trial, that she would not speak. + +Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his +love for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He saw +that she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that she +was not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice which +would have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he saw +that. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she might +make it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had to +be gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she _did_ love him +in her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a _small_ +sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into a +smaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too much +distress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that if +a slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she would +indubitably have made it. + +After a year in prison the news tardily reached Michael through his +friend, the doctor, that the duke was dead. + +The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive. +He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to each +other. + +But now, _now_, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to her +to do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have to +endure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which her +delicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that made +all the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. A +little courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a small +sacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other had +been too much to expect. _But this_---- + +Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, and +sobbed for joy. + +Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. He +knew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength. + +Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death of +his friend had brought him. + +Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy ever +rose and rose afresh within him. + +Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving for +her was no longer a sin. + +It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a +floating gossamer tangle of sound across the water. + +Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him. + +He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of his +narrow window. + +How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice! + +He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each with +its little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boats +from Chioggia, floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in the +pearl haze of the lagoon. + +How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyes +from them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into the +man in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him, +and break him upon its wheel. + +He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at him +like a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air; +free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under a +luminous sky. + +He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleaming +islands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an orange sail. + +For Fay would come to him. The one woman in the world of counterfeits +would come to him, and set him free. She would take him in her arms at +last, and lay her cool healing touch upon his aching life. And he would +lean his forehead against her breast, and his long apprenticeship to +love would be over. It seemed to Michael that she was here already, her +soft cheek against his. + +He pressed his face to the stone wall, and whispered as to her: + +"Fay, have I served you?" + +He almost heard her tremulous whisper, "Yes." + +"Do you still love me?" + +"Yes." + +"We may love each other now." + +Again Fay's voice very low. "Yes." + +It had to be like that. This moment was only a faint foreshadowing of +that unendurable joy, which inevitably had to come. + +A great trembling laid hold on Michael. He could not stand. He fell on +his knees, but he could not kneel. He stretched himself face downwards +on his pallet. But it was not low enough. He flung himself on the floor +of his cell, but it was not low enough. A grave would hardly have been +low enough. The resisting stone floor had to do instead. + +And through the waves of awe and rapture that swept over him came +faintly down to him, as from some dim world left behind, the bells of +Venice, and the thin cry of the sea-mew rejoicing with him. + +Can we call a life sad which has had in it one such blessed hour? + +Luminous day followed luminous day, and the nights also were full of +light. His work was nothing to him. The increasing heat was nothing to +him. His chains were nothing to him. + +But at last when the weeks drew into a month, two months, a chill doubt +took up its abode with him. It was resolutely cast out. But it returned. +It was fought against with desperation. It was scorned as want of faith. +Michael's strength waned with each conflict. But it always returned. At +last it became to him like a mysterious figure, always present with him. + +"Fay," he whispered over and over again through the endless burning +nights of summer. "Dear one, come soon." + +There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn. + +The shadow deepened. + +A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael. + +What could have happened? + +Was she ill? + +Was she dead? + +He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still. + +Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known what +it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn +into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the +unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns +into a forest tree,--for a word which does not come. + + * * * * * + +Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of the +duke--Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall--he received a +letter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year. + +He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all the +time that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust. + +With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each +other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the +retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had +married his chaplain--a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been able +to resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridges +had done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. But +he did not care to shoot without Michael. + +He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence. + +"Your cousin, the Duchess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthope +for good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally. +At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rather +more cheerful as time passes on." + +The letter fell out of Michael's hand. + +"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._" + +Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh. + +Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was he +who had laughed. + +"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._" + +He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behind +him,--during which the time had passed on. He saw them pieced together +into a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in the +midst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him, +under a blinding sun. + +That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. He +had touched the goal. + +She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; not +lately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke's +death, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as the +sick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italy +for good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must have +made up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake. +She had decided to leave him to his fate. + +She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief over +its rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to love +him--he felt still her hands holding his hands against her breast--had +never loved him. She did not know what love was. + +She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last. + +There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at +its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot +love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later +that shudder has to come. + +Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. +We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can +teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. +Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, +tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us +and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking +and faithful God? + +Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us? + +The duke's words came back to Michael. + +"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for +whom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charming +self." + +He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days. + +Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He +broke his teeth against his chains. + +If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with +the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake. + +[Illustration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE +HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"] + +And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild +outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake +a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, +and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilité des + femmes? Qui sait jusq'où peut aller l'inconstance de ce + sable mouvant?--ALFRED DE MUSSET. + + +The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold. + +Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate too +narrow for him? + +After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with the +walls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep or +eat. He was absorbed in one idea. + +Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, +rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive +feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by +reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he +learned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled up +against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage. + +He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind of +pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes he +got up, and pushed them back with his hands. + +The sun had shifted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a few +minutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. He +looked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him. + +He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything. + +The doctor came to see him, and looked closely at him, and spoke kindly +to him. He was interested in the young Englishman, and, like several of +the warders, was convinced of his innocence. + +Michael took no notice of him, barely answered his questions. He was +impatient of any interruption. + +He was absorbed in one thought. + +He had loved Fay for a long time. How long was it? Five years? Ten +years? Owing to his peculiar fate love had usurped in Michael's life too +large a place, the place which it holds in a woman's life, but which is +unnatural in a man's. He did not know it, but he had travelled a long +way on the road towards an entire oblivion of Fay when he came to Rome. +But the one great precaution against her he had not taken. He had not +replaced her, and "Only that which is replaced is destroyed." He had +grown accustomed to loving her. + +In these days he went over, slowly, minutely, every step of his long +acquaintanceship with her, from the first day, when he was nineteen and +she was seventeen, to the last evening six years later, when he had +kissed the cold hand that could have saved him, and did not. + +Old people, wise old learned people, smoke-dried Dons and genial bishops +sitting in their dignified studies, had spoken with guarded frankness to +him in his youth on the temptations of life. They had told him that +love, save when it was sanctified by marriage, was only a physical +passion, a temporary madness, a fever which all men who were men +underwent, but to which a man of principle did not succumb, and which if +vigorously suppressed soon passed away. + +Why had it not been so with him? He had never had to contend with the +coarse forms of temptation of which his elders had spoken, as if they +were an integral part of his youth. + +Why, then, had he loved this pretty, false, selfish woman so long? Why +had he allowed himself to be drawn back into her toils after he had +known she was false? Why was he more weak, more credulous, more +infatuated than other men? + +The duke had actually been her husband, had actually possessed that +wonderful creature, and yet he, under the glamour of her personal +presence, which it made Michael gasp to think of, he, the duke, had not +been deceived. + +Why had he, Michael, been deceived? + +He remembered the exhortations of his tepid-minded, painlessly married +tutor at Oxford, who read the vilest French novels as a duty, and took a +walk with his wife on fine afternoons; and whose cryptic warnings on the +empire of the passions would have made a baboon blush. + +Michael laughed suddenly as he recalled the mild old-maidish face. What +was the old prig talking about? What did he know, dried up and +shrivelled like a bit of seaweed between the leaves of a folio. + +Everyone had told him wrong. + +Why had they decried this awful power, why had they so confused it with +sensual indulgence that he had had to disentangle it for himself? Why +had they not warned him, on the contrary, that the love of woman was a +living death, a pitfall from which there was no escape, from the depths +of which you might stare at the sky till you starved to death, as he was +doing now. + +With all their warnings they had not warned him, these grave men, these +instructors of youth, who had never known any world except their little +world of books, who ranged women into two camps, one in which they held +a docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, +mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of his +demure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgar +temptresses, on a level with the wine cup and the gambling table. + +Why had he allowed himself to be duped and hoodwinked by his elders and +by his own shyness, into chastity? They had entreated him to believe it +was the only happy life. _It was not._ To be faithful to his future +wife. Ha! Ha! That was the beginning of the trap, the white sand neatly +raked over the hidden gin. + +If he had only lived like other men! If he had only listened to the +worst among them, if he had only torn the veil early from every limb of +that draped female figure, that iron maiden, if he had only seen it in +its horror of nudity, with its sharp nails for eyes, and its jagged +knives where the bosom should be, he should not be pressed to death in +its embrace now. + +He had been deceived, betrayed, fooled. That was why he was shut up. He +had believed in a woman, had believed that the cobra's bite was only a +wasp's sting. Good Lord, what an imbecile! He was insane of course, +raving mad. And he had been here eighteen months and only saw the joke +now. + +Michael laughed again, shouted with laughter. + +The sun was setting again. It was always setting now. It set in the +mornings as well. The red thong of light was on the wall again. Blood +red! He rocked to and fro shaking with laughter. + +The doctor and a warder came in. It was just like them. They were always +coming in when they were not wanted. + +He pointed at the bar of light, stumbled to it, and tried to tear it +from the wall. It had been there long enough. Too long. And as he tore +at it with hands dyed crimson, something that was pressing upon him +lightened suddenly, and the blood gushed forth from his mouth, flooding +the sun-stained wall. + +"I have put out that damned sunset at last," he said to himself as he +fell. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + So we must keep apart, + You there, I here, + With just the door ajar + That oceans are, + And prayer, + And that pale sustenance + Despair! + + --EMILY DICKENSON. + + +It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice +of his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness that +Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did +not lavish on him. + +Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and +closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer +together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift +when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was +aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days +passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything. + + * * * * * + +He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor had +been in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made him +drink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. +How clear everything was becoming. He raised his hand to his head. He +had not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at his +wasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these marks +on the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he had +forgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he should +know numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, and +held it close to his eyes. + +These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. And +here over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deep +sore once. + +_When?_ + +If only he could remember! + +The mist in his mind cleared a little. + +_Those bruises were made by chains._ + +A deadly faintness came over him. + + * * * * * + +Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back into +his feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what he +had done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a long +time, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious, +crouching in the back of his mind. + +The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, and +he shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want to +have the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest to +please the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. The +doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the +early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate +grey lilac. + +"I remember," said Michael, whitening. + +It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering +and the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon his +brain. + +"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it +is a purple brown." + +The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, +looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gently +and took it away. + +Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which he +should see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the very +edge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's last +desertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark. + + * * * * * + +A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterflies +this time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind, +and he feared for his brain. He was too weak to read. He might perhaps +like to look at pictures. + +The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immense +butterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay, +but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee. + +Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it had +been looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender. + +Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousands +once in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he had +been abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in the +sunshine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like an +army of fairies. + +How heavy the book was on his knee. + +He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor +would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when +he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf. + +Were there English butterflies here as well? + +Yes. Here was a sheet of them. + +He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common +enough in the south of England. + +He looked idly at it. + +And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal +screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop. + +He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly like +that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening +and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed +how beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards +it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, +and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed +over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its +wings, one by one, because they were so pretty. + +He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and +almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly +thing with struggling legs. + +The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain. + +"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand." + +And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look +into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had +put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had +cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But +nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had done +it on purpose to that other poor creature of God. _She did not +understand._ + +Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came +back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's +face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he +had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with +her pretty hand. + +Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she +would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now +at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more +deeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of grief +came, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted had +been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt. + +An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in all +the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid +heart. + +Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light! + +Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the +death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always +enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place. + +A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It +shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child +against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love +that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, +and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had +strength from her to wander away from her--back into her arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + And no more turn aside and brood + Upon Love's bitter mystery. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + +It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the +embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties +have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is +callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell +in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that +was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in +the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the +ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand. +Old age ceases to understand. + +But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond +youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and +gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their +zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. +Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind +them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the +world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, +call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might +wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they +are looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only +be loved and served. They cannot love--as yet. They exact love and miss +it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, +frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyse +it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is +nothing to be got out of it after all. + +They seem inhuman because they are not human--as yet. They seem +variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's +body and brain must so seem. They are not sane--as yet. + +And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth +and beauty and tenderness may not come forth--as yet. + +We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them +now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like +half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes. + +Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived +unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days +that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was +supported by the illusion--was it an illusion--that it was Fay really +who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her +place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, +unless he helped her through. + +He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well +enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once +more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his, that +they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh? + +When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it +was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go--at +last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's. + +His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its +exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was + a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the + easiest.--EDITH WHARTON. + + +On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awake +listening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distance +away from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorb +her, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for so +many years past. + +Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearing +wind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listen +intently. + +Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the passage +to Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none that +could be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over the +groaning old house. + +She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over the +dim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay. + +Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out her +arms. + +Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly: + +"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?" + +Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms. + +Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost as +much as Fay. + +Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane. +Within, another storm had broken in a passion of tears. + +Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing. + +"I was coming to you, Magdalen,--I was trying to come--and I couldn't--I +had pushed you away when you came before--and I thought perhaps you +would push _me_ away--no--no--I didn't, but I said to myself you would. +I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the same +because--because,"--Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into a +strangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more." + +"Tell me about it." + +But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself face +downwards on the bed. + +"I can't," she gasped. "I must and I can't. I must and I can't." + +Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that the +breaking moment had come and she waited. + +She waited a long time. + +The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself. + +At last Fay sat up. + +Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, she +blew the dim embers to a glow. + +Fay watched her. + +Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes +fixed upon it. + +"I have done something very wicked," said Fay in a hollow voice from the +bed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me +that you will never tell anybody?" + +"I promise," said Magdalen after a moment. + +"Swear it." + +"I swear." + +Fay made several false starts and then said: + +"I was very unhappy with Andrea." + +Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red. + +"He never cared for me," continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and +kneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who +does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too +selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know +anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me." + +Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passage +she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful +weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to +love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in +silence then so she listened in silence now. + +"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully +disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real +confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, +those whom God has joined together. Andrea never seemed to remember +that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to +care for him, and--he brought it on himself--I'm not excusing myself, +Magdalen--I see now that I was to blame too--I ended by caring for +someone else--someone who _did_ love me, who always had since we were +boy and girl together." + +"Not Michael!" + +"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It +never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. +I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared +at last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me." + +Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so +far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her +confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking +the whole truth and nothing but the truth. + +"Of course he found it out at last and--and we agreed to part. We +decided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to say +good-bye. Was it _very_ wrong of me to let him come once,--just once?" + +"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not +he leave Rome?" + +"He was arrested the same night," faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to him +in the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they were +looking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out. +And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hid +behind the screen in my room. And then--you know the rest--the police +came in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to the +murder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing to +do to save my reputation, and he did it." + +"And what did you say?" + +"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak." + +"And later on when you were not too faint?" + +"I never said anything later on either." Fay's voice had become almost +inaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess." + +"But when he did not confess?" + +"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that he +might still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen." + +There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures in +Magdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefully +safeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in the +process. + +At last she said, "Did Andrea _know_ that Michael was innocent of the +murder?" + +"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he said +something cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence for +certain, had known it from the first." + +"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do you +suppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight, +after he had ostensibly left the house?" + +Fay stared at her sister aghast. + +"I never thought of that," she said. + +"What _can_ Andrea have thought of that?" + +"Andrea was very secretive," faltered Fay. "You never could tell what he +was thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. Roman +Catholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of the +wife." + +There was another silence. + +Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given +time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents +that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken +refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, but +they don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse to +weigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quickly +confused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all they +remember that upholds their own view of the situation and--discard the +rest. + +Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could only +restate her own view of her husband's character. + +Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others if +they had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waited +a moment, and then said: + +"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment between +yourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had not +guessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew it +_then_--for certain. _For certain_, Fay. Remember that is settled. There +was no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if you +bar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea is +concerned. Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect for +Michael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which would +have ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did not +understand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me he +acted towards you with great nobility and delicacy." + +Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husband +must not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have any +fixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the whole +tightly wedged fabric in position. + +"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed," she +said. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the least +hint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison." + +"Perhaps he hoped--hoped against hope--that----" Magdalen did not finish +her sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them, +and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, she +went on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without a +word to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I see +now that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italian +hereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such a +height as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicions +he might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael if +he had not followed a very noble instinct, that of entire trust in you +both in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Dear Fay, the +proof was overwhelming." + +Fay was silent. + +"Just as we all believed in Michael's innocence of the murder, so Andrea +believed in your innocence of a crime even greater, never faltered in +his belief, and went to his grave without a word of doubt. Oh! Fay, Fay, +do you suppose there are many men like that?" + +And Magdalen, who so seldom wept, suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps the +thought forced itself through her mind, "If only once long ago I had met +with one little shred of such tender faith!" + +"Andrea was better than I thought," Fay faltered. The admission made her +uneasy. She wished he had not been better, that her previous view of him +had not been disturbed. + +Magdalen's tears passed quickly. She glanced again at Fay through a veil +of them, looking earnestly for something she did not find. + +"And Michael," she went on gently. "Dear, dear Michael. He gave himself +for you, spent in one moment, not counting the cost, his life, his +future, his good name--for your sake. And he goes on day by day, month +by month, year in year out, enduring a living death without a word--for +your sake. How long has Michael been in prison?" + +"Two years." Fay's voice was almost inaudible. + +"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But if +his strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was any +man since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and your +lover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish and +could not love. I have heard many women say the same. But _you_! How can +_you_ say such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love and +serve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever find +anything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material of +men's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to have +stood between two such men who must have crushed you between them if +either of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentary +selfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and--where would +_you_ have been?" + +"No one knows how good Michael is better than I do," said Fay, "but what +you don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been for _me_. +He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. +No, I don't _think_ it, I _know_ it. He can't have suffered as much as I +have." + +Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a +tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always +tender. + +"You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain +things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the +loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years? +What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!" + +Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's +knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone +to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she +loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but +had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a +more prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able +to tell her sister everything. + +The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of +the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, +when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the +rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. +Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about +ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive +anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines +of our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister +ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up +from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one +whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly +for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our +meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the +world what only Love may safely know concerning us? + +Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless +bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. She +heard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much that +Fay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that it +was misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yet +repentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of our +prisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cells +bolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business of +leaving our cells when only misery urges us forth. I think that +Magdalen's heart must have sunk many times, but whenever Fay looked up +she met the same tender, benignant look bent down upon her. + +"Oh! why didn't I tell you before?" she said at last. "I always wanted +to, but I thought--at least I felt--I see I did you an injustice--I +thought you might press me to--to----" + +"_To confess_," said Magdalen, her low voice piercing to Fay's very +soul. + +"Y-yes, at least to say something to a policeman or someone, so that +Michael might be let out. I was afraid if I told you you would never +give me any peace till Michael was released." + +"Have you _had_ any peace since he was put into prison?" + +Fay shook her head. + +"Make your mind easy, Fay, I shall never urge you to"--Magdalen +hesitated--"to go against your conscience." + +"What would you have done in my place?" said Fay hastily. + +"I should have had to speak." + +"You are better than me, Magdalen, more religious. You always have +been." + +"I should have had to speak, not because I am better or worse than you, +but simply because I could not have endured the misery of silence. It +would have broken me in two. And if I had not had the courage to speak +in Andrea's lifetime, I would have spoken directly he was dead, and have +released Michael and married him. You have not told me why you did not +do that." + +"I never thought of it. I somehow regarded it as all finished. And I +have never even _thought_ of marrying Michael or anyone when I was left +a widow. I was much too miserable. I had had enough of being married." + +There was a difficult silence. + +"I should never have a moment's peace if--if I _did_ speak," said Fay at +last. + +"Yes, you would," said Magdalen with sudden intensity. "That is where +peace lies." + +Fay raised herself to her knees and looked into Magdalen's eyes. The +dawn had come up long ago, and in its austere light Magdalen's face +showed very sharp and white in a certain tender fixity and compassion. +She had seen that look once before in her husband's dying eyes. Now that +she was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood it +for the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might be +given peace! + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + There is no wild wind in his soul, + No strength of flood or fire; + He knows no force beyond control, + He feels no deep desire. + + He knows no altitudes above, + No passions elevate; + All is but mockery of love, + And mimicry of hate. + + --EDGAR VINE HALL. + + +The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library at +Barford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down lay +Priesthope, where Fay was. + +He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulated +existence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade him +only in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid his +purpling beeches. + +Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those mornings +sacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagant +surmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards a +thing or person--in what he called his point of view--than in the thing +viewed. + +He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with his +feelings about her than with herself. It was these which were now +engrossing him. + +For some time past he had been working underground--digging out the +foundations--and as a rule invisible as a mole within them--of a tedious +courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is +much more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was not +to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously +diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large +battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon +themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. He +had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance +meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed +by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves +across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine +violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex; +and that when he met the _right_ woman she would set to work like the +others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be +conveniently arrived at. + +But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent +grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain +turn which affairs might one day take. + +At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one +of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further +masculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, +almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings +under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. He +was aware--at least, he told himself that he was aware--that +extraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how he +reconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. The +chance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions, +and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with much _naïf_ +dignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other old +friend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposed +but earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grappling +with the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was of +estrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning and +found he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at the +correct moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by the +comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He +shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with +himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the +meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild +emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a +little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was +delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse. + +I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the verge +of being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails from +the abyss by a certain _naïveté_ and uprightness of character. The +Bishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact that +dolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond of +him. + +Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was still unconsciously +meditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancing +furtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary, +self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman, +however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining him +with her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by looking +back. + +Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he did +propose he would be accepted--she in short must commit herself--and +then--after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still--at any +rate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of Pilgrim +Road. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would be +an entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "short +cut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of his +return journey from Lostford. + +It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down Pilgrim +Road feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth was +breathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking in +the vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossy +track dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on the +boles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze of +myriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. There +was a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself. + +At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on a +fallen tree near the track. + +For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he should +ride past, just taking off his hat. But he had ridden past in life, +just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. He +almost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismounted +and walked up to Fay, bridle in hand. + +"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way." + +This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its +obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet +anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a +foot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and +left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the +actual facts. The moral is--morals cluster like bees round certain +individuals--that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like +Wentworth. + +"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get +some palm." + +She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on +them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he +looked at them with grave attention. + +The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, +suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head +slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut. + +"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us." + +Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig. + +Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in his +strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, +though of doubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfect +rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere +of exquisite manners. + +Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came +back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He +had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something +striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much. + +A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a +choice of subject. + +From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of +mouse talk, intermittent, _affairé_, accompanied by sudden rustlings and +dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and +bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of +life in a new soft silken coat! + +Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time +to time. + +"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in +these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says." + +"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?" + +"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not +our morbid craving for a listener." + +"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking about +themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of +his on the subject would be considered final. + +"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more +like a cavalier than ever. + +Then he actually noticed how pale she was. + +"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you +awake." + +"Yes," she said, and hung her head. + +Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her +more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with +recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than +those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling +new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing +him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality +been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The +elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this +and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day, +toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some +unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night. + +He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never +considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously +about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman +of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart. + +He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no +surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really +nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go +forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything +before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it +passed away again, leaving a great tranquillity behind, together with a +mounting sense of personal power. + +If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did +not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him +through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood +it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking +the reed for music! + +Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain things +exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to +whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we +sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands? + +The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth +had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a +reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might +be ready when the time came. + +"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret. + +"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always assented +to what was said. + +"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I +sit here any longer I shall never get home at all." + +"Let me take you home on Conrad." + +Fay hesitated. + +"I am frightened of horses." + +"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse. +And I will lead him." + +Fay still hesitated. + +He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She +was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope. + +Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for +anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came. + +Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling +foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it. + +She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timidity +was reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking +beside her, with his hand on the rein. + +The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part. + +Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind +wandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them very +often. + +Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his +mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to +indicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point of +view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have +lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with +childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that +he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering +swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own +freedom from ambition, his devotion--unlike other men--to the _small_ +things of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had +been struck by that sentence when he first said it to the Bishop, and +he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more +sympathetic listener than the Bishop. + +I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse +said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his +brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of +vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the _débris_ +of last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired +her. _He_ did not know anything uncomfortable about her--_as Magdalen +did_. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person +who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he +talked! What a wide-minded, generous man! + +The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was +reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, +stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of +Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt +instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. +She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She +was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more +robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they +required assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy +of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well +enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwart +figure warded off from her the sympathy to which her severe cramps +undoubtedly entitled her. + +"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that +the good hour was over. + +Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her +cheek. + +Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a +favourite walk of yours?" + +"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon." + +"I have to pass that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut +to Lostford." + +He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom +used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed +the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with +because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said +the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener +minds had had to fight against in dealing with him. + +For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense of +regret and loss. + +Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen who +was so good, and so safe, such a comforter--_but who knew_. Fay shrank +back instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs to +her own room, and had tea there. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "FAY NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW LIGHTLY WENTWORTH +WALKED, HOW SQUARE HIS SHOULDERS WERE"] + +Wentworth rode home feeling younger that he had done for years. What is +thirty-nine? No age for a thin man. (He was in reality nearly +forty-one.) He was pleased with himself. How quaintly amusing he had +been about the mouse. He regretted, not for the first time, that he +did not write novels, for little incidents like that, which the +conventional mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving, +would intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he had +rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her--he +did not know exactly what--but something larger than to-day. Any fool, +any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. He +would like to do something which another person could _not_ do, +something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time place +him in a magnanimous light. + +We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness to +the one we love. We need not trouble ourselves to seek for such an +occasion, for though many things fail us in this life the opportunity so +to act has never yet failed to arrive, and has never arrived alone, +always hand in hand with some prosaic hideously difficult circumstance, +which, if we are of an artistic temperament, may appear to us too ugly. + +Wentworth had never wished to do anything for the gay little lady who, a +few years ago, had crossed his path. The principal subject of his +cogitations about her had been whether she would be able to adapt +herself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided wayward +nature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on the +contrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag on +his soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelings +for her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind of +compassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in it +the possibility of growth, of some expansion. And what other feeling in +Wentworth's clean, well-regulated, sterilized mind had shown any power +of growth? + +The worst of growth is that a small acorn does not grow into a large +acorn as logical persons expect. It ought to, but it does not. It grows +instead into something quite unrecognisable from its small beginnings, +something for which, perhaps, beyond a certain stage, there is no +room,--not even a manger. + +Those who love must discard much. Wentworth had not yet felt the need of +discarding anything, and he had not the smallest intention of doing so. +He intended instead to make a small ornamental addition, a sort of +portico, to his life. His mind had got itself made up this afternoon, +and he contemplated the proposed addition with some complacency as +already made. + +There is, I believe, a method of planting an acorn in a bottle, +productive of the happiest results--for those who love small results. +You only give the acorn a little water every day,--no soil of course. +The poor thing will push up a thin twig of stem through the bottle neck, +and in time will unfold a few real oak leaves. Men like Wentworth would +always prefer the acorn to remain an acorn, but if it shews signs of +growth, some of them are wise enough, take alarm early enough, to +squeeze it quickly down a bottle neck before it has expanded too much to +resist the passage. + +Had Fate in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or +would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his own +convenience a great possibility? + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + Look through a keyhole, and your eye will be sore. + + +During the weeks which followed Fay's confession Magdalen became aware +that she watched her, and aware also that she avoided her, was never +alone with her if she could help it. + +At this time Fay began to do many small kindnesses, and to talk much of +the importance of work for others, of the duty of taking an interest in +our fellow creatures. This was a new departure. She had not so far +evinced the faintest interest in the dull routine of home duties which +are of the nature of kindnesses, and had often reproached Magdalen for +spending herself in them. To play halma with zest all the evening with a +parent who must always win, to read the papers to him by the hour, not +while he listened, but while he slept--Fay scorned these humble efforts +of Magdalen's. She shewed no disposition to emulate them; but she did +shew a feverish tendency towards isolated acts of benevolence outside +the home life, which precluded any claim upon her by arousing a hope of +their continuance, which tied her to nothing. Fay began to send boxes of +primroses to hospitals, to knit stockings for orphans, to fatigue +herself with enormous walks over the downs with illustrated papers for +the Saundersfoot work-house. + +It was inevitable at this juncture that she should feel some shocked +surprise at the supineness of those around her. Her altruistic efforts +were practically single-handed. She had hoped that when she inaugurated +them, Magdalen at any rate would have followed suit, would have worked +cheerfully under her direction. But Magdalen, whose serene cheerfulness +had flagged of late, fell painfully below her sister's expectation. Fay +came to the conclusion that it was more lack of imagination than +callousness on her sister's part which held her back. + +Many careworn souls besides Fay have discovered that the irritable +exhaustion, the continual ache of egotism can be temporarily relieved by +taking an inexpensive interest in others. The remedy is cheap and +efficacious, and it is a patent. Like Elliman applied to a rheumatic +shoulder it really does do good--I mean to the owner of the shoulder. +And you can stop rubbing the moment you are relieved. Perhaps these +external remedies are indispensable to the comfort of those who dwell by +choice, like Fay, in low-lying swampy districts, and have no thought of +moving to higher ground. + +Magdalen knew these signs, and sometimes her heart sank. + +Was Fay unconsciously turning aside to busy herself over little things +that were not required of her, in order to shut her eyes to the one +thing needful--a great act of reparation? + +If Fay was watching Magdalen, someone else was watching Fay. Bessie's +round, hard, staring eyes were upon her, and if Bessie did anything she +did it to some purpose. + +One afternoon in the middle of April Bessie came into Magdalen's sitting +room and sat down with an air of concentration. + +"I have reason to be deeply ashamed of myself," she said. "I _am_ +ashamed of myself. If I tell you about it it is not in order that you +may weakly condone and gloss over my conduct." + +Magdalen reflected that Bessie had inherited her father's graceful way +of approaching a difficulty by finding a preliminary fault in his +listener. + +Bessie shut her handsome mouth firmly for a moment, and then opened it +with determination. + +"I thought that whatever faults I had I was at any rate a lady, but I +find I am not. I discovered something by the merest chance a short time +ago, and since then, for the last fortnight I have been acting in a +dishonourable and vulgar manner, in short, spying upon another person." + +"That must have made you miserable." + +"It has. I am miserable. But I deserve that. I did not come to talk +about that. The point is this----" + +"Bessie, I don't want to hear what you evidently ought not to know." + +"Yes, you must, because someone else needs your advice." + +"We won't trouble our minds about the someone else." + +Bessie had, however, inherited another characteristic trait of her +father's. She could ignore when she chose. She chose now. + +"I may as well put you in possession of the facts," she continued. "A +few weeks ago I was coming home by Pilgrim Road. I was not hurrying +because I was struck, as I always am struck--I don't suppose I am +peculiar in this--by the first appearance of spring. Pilgrim Road is a +sheltered place. Spring always comes early there." + +"It does." + +"I will even add that I was recalling to myself verses of poetry +connected with the time of year, when I saw a couple in front of me. +They were walking very slowly with their backs towards me, taking +earnestly together. They were Fay and Wentworth." + +Magdalen made no movement, but her face, always pale, became suddenly +ashen grey. + +If Fay were seriously attracted by Wentworth would she ever confess, +ever release Michael! + +"There was no harm in their walking together," she said tremulously. + +"There was one harm in it," retorted Bessie. "It made me so angry that I +did not know how to live. They did not see me, and I struck up into the +wood, and I had to stay an hour by myself holding on to a little tree, +before I could trust myself to come home." + +"It does not help matters to be angry, Bessie. I was angry once for two +years. I said at the time like Jonah that I did well, but I see now that +I might have done better." + +"I don't particularly care what helps matters and what does not. I now +come to my own disgraceful conduct. I have spied upon Fay steadily for +the last fortnight. She is so silly she never even thinks she is +watched. And she meets Wentworth in Pilgrim Road nearly every afternoon. +I once waylaid her as if by accident, on her way home, and asked her +where she had been, and she said she had been on her way to Arleigh +wood, but had not got so far, as she was too tired. Too tired! She had +been walking up and down with Wentworth for over an hour. I timed them. +She never meant to go to Arleigh wood. And when they said Good-bye, +he--he kissed her hand. Since Fay has come back to live here I have +gradually formed the meanest opinion of her. She is not truthful. She is +not sincere. She is absolutely selfish. I was inclined to be sorry for +her at first, but I soon saw through her. She did not really care for +Andrea. She only pretended. Everything she does is a kind of pretty +pretence. She does not really care for Wentworth. She is only leading +him on for her own amusement." + +"I think it is much more likely that she is drifting towards marriage +with him without being fully aware of what she is doing. But women like +you and me are not in the same position towards men as Fay is. +Consequently it is very difficult for us to judge her fairly." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"You and I are not attractive to men. Fay is. You saw Wentworth kiss her +hand. You naturally infer, but you are probably wrong, that Fay had been +leading him on, as you call it." + +"It will take a good deal to disabuse me of that at any rate. I believe +my own eyes." + +"I should not if I were you. If anyone kissed your hand or mine it would +not only be an epoch in our lives, but also the sign manual of some +ponderous attachment which you, my dear, would carefully weigh, and +approximately value. But do you suppose for one moment that Fay +attaches any importance to such an everyday occurrence!" + +"I see what you are driving at, that Fay is not responsible for her +actions. But she is. She must know when she does things or lets them be +done, that will make others suffer." + +"If you could look into Fay's heart, Bessie, you would find that Fay is +suffering herself and attributing her pain to others. As long as we do +that, as long as we hold the stick by the wrong end, we must inflict +pain in some form or other. Fay is not happy. You cannot look at her +without seeing it." + +"I would not mind so much if it were not for Wentworth," said Bessie +with dreadful courage. "I know it is partly jealousy, but it is not only +jealousy. There are a few crumbs of unselfishness in it. I thought at +first--I reasoned it out with myself and it appeared a logical +conclusion--that father was the ostensible but not the real object of +Wentworth's frequent visits. I took a great interest in his +conversation; it is so lucid, so well informed, so illuminative. I do +not read novels as a rule, but I dipped into a few, studying the love +scenes, and the preliminary approaches to love scenes in order to aid my +inexperience at this juncture. I am sorry to say I fell into the error +that he might possibly reciprocate the growing interest I felt in him, +in spite of the great disparity in age. It was a mistake. I have +suffered for it." + +The two roses of Bessie's cheeks bloomed on as unflinchingly as ever. + +Magdalen's eyes were fixed on her own hands. + +"You would not have suited each other if he had cared for you," she said +after a moment, "for you would not have done him justice when you got to +know him better, any more than you do Fay justice now that you _do_ know +her better. Wentworth is made of words, just as other men are made of +flesh and blood. How would you have kept any respect for him when you +had become tired of words? You are too straightforward, too +sledge-hammer to understand a character like his." + +"In that case Fay ought to suit him," said Bessie grimly. "No one, not +even you, can call her straightforward. But I begin to think, Magdalen, +that you actually wish for the marriage." + +"I had never thought of it as possible on her side until a few minutes +ago, when what you said took me by surprise. Of course I had noticed the +attraction on his side, but it appeared to me he was irresolute and +timid, and it is better to ignore the faint emotions of half-hearted +people. They come to no good. If you repel them they are mortally +offended and withdraw, and if you welcome them they are terrified and +withdraw." + +"I don't think Wentworth intends withdrawing." + +"No. These meetings look as if he had unconsciously drifted with the +current till the rowing back would be somewhat arduous." There was a +moment's silence, in which Magdalen recalled certain lofty sentiments +which Wentworth had aired with suspicious frequency of late. She knew +that when he talked of his consciousness of guidance by a Higher Power +in the important decisions of his life he always meant following the +line of least resistance. In this case the line of least resistance +_might_ tend towards marriage. + +"It never struck me as possible till now," she said aloud, "that Fay +would think seriously of him." + +"I don't suppose she is. She is only keeping her hand in. Don't you +remember how cruel she was to that poor Mr. Bell." + +"I am convinced that she is not keeping her hand in." + +"Then you actually favour the idea of a marriage." Bessie got up and +stalked slowly to the door. "You will help it on?" she said over her +shoulder. + +"No." Magdalen's voice shook a little. "I will do nothing to help it, or +to hinder it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul-- + No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, + But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. + + --D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +If Fay's progress through life could have been drawn with a pencil it +would have resembled the ups and downs, like the teeth of a saw, of a +fever chart. + +To Magdalen it appeared as if Fay could undergo the same feelings with +the same impotent results of remorse or depression a hundred times. They +seemed to find her the same and leave her the same. But nevertheless she +did move, imperceptibly, unconsciously--no, not quite unconsciously. The +sense--common to all weak natures--not of being guided, but of being +pushed was upon her. + +Once again she tried to extricate herself from the pressure of some +mysterious current. There seemed no refuge left in Magdalen. There +seemed very few comfortable people left in the world, to whom a +miserable woman might turn. Only Wentworth. _He did not know._ + +Perhaps Fay would never have turned to him if she had not first confided +in and then shrunk from Magdalen. For the second time in her life she +longed feverishly to get away from home, the home to which only a year +ago she had been so glad to hurry back, when she had been so restlessly +anxious to get away from Italy. Wentworth was beginning to look like a +means of escape. The duke had at one time worn that aspect. Later on +Michael had looked extremely like it for a moment. Now Wentworth was +assuming that aspect in a more solid manner than either of his +predecessors. She was slipping into love with him, half unconsciously, +half with _malice prepense_. She told herself continually that she did +not want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea of +marriage. + +But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflection +of these inward communings. And why did she conceal from Magdalen her +now constant meetings with him? + +Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimate +knowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to work +out quite smoothly. + +Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay's +demeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to his +intentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm. (How he had set +her mind at rest on that occasion he knew best.) It seemed this +exquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance to +respond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances. +He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, on +the theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to how +he, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to feminine +charm; how he, the determined celibate--Wentworth always called himself +a celibate--had been taken captive after all. To judge by the letters +which Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially one +to Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellect +that he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex to +have remained a bachelor--a celibate, I mean--so long. + +We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves. In the composition of +these imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy. + + * * * * * + +In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the +postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in +London hospitals. + +Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and over +again. They were a kind of anodyne. + +On a blowing afternoon in the middle of April she made her way across +the down with her basket to a distant hazel coppice to which she had not +been as yet. + +A fever of unrest possessed her. She had thought when she confessed to +Magdalen that her misery had reached its lowest depths. But it had not +been so. Her wretchedness, momentarily relieved, had since gone a step +deeper, that was all. She had endeavoured to allay her thirst with a cup +of salt water, which had only increased it to the point of agony. + +As she walked a bare tree stretched out its naked arms to waylay her. It +was the very tree under which Michael and she had kissed each other, six +spring-tides ago. She recognised it suddenly, and turned her eyes away, +as if a corpse were hanging in chains from one of its branches. Her +averted eyes fell upon a seagull wheeling against the blue, the +incarnation of freedom and the joy of life. She turned away her eyes +again and hurried on, looking neither to right nor left. + +A light wind went with her, drawing her like a "kind constraining hand." + +She stumbled across the bare shoulder of the down to the wood below. + +Magdalen came by the same way soon afterwards, but not to gather +primroses. Magdalen usually so serene was becoming daily more troubled. +The thought of Michael in prison ground her to the earth. Fay's obvious +wayward misery, which yet seemed to bring her no nearer to repentance, +preyed upon her. She was crushed beneath her own promise of secrecy. +Every day as it passed seemed to cast yet another stone on the heap +under which she lay. + +Could she dare to keep that promise? How much longer could she dare to +keep it? And yet if she broke it, what would breaking it avail? +Certainly not Michael's release. No creature would believe her +unsupported word. She had not even been in Italy at the time. She would +only appear to be mad. The utmost she might achieve would be to cast a +malignant shadow over her sister. Even if Fay herself confessed the +difficulties of obtaining Michael's release after this lapse of time +would be very great. Unless the confession came from her they would be +insuperable. + +As Magdalen walked her strong heart quailed within her. Long ago in her +passionate youth she had met anguish and had vanquished it alone. But +how to bear the burden of another's sin without sharing the sin? How to +help Fay and Michael? Fay had indeed cast her burden upon her. She knew +not how to endure it, she who had endured so much. + +She reached the wood, and entered one of the many aimless paths that +wandered through it. The uneven ground sloped downwards to the south, +and through the manifold branches of the undergrowth of budding hazels +the sea lay deeply blue, far away. The primroses were everywhere among +the trees. A winding side path beckoned to her. She walked a few steps +along it, and came suddenly upon a clearing in the coppice. + +She stood still, dazed. + +The primroses had taken it for their own, had laid tender hold upon that +little space, cleared and forgotten in the heart of the wood. + +Young shoots of hazel and ash pricked up here and there from ivy-grown +stumps, moss gleamed where it could, through the flood of primroses. The +wild green of the mercury, holding its strong shield to the sun, the +violets, and the virgin white of the anemones were drowned in the uneven +waves and billows and shallows of that sea of primroses. They who come +in meekness year by year to roadside hedgerow and homely meadow had come +in power. The meek had inherited the earth. + +The light wind impotently came, and vainly went. Overhead a lark sang +and sang in the blue. But none heeded them. The wind and the song were +but a shadow and an echo. They that are the very core of spring hung +forgotten on her garments' fringe. All the passion of the world was +gathered into the still, upturned faces of the primroses, glowing with a +pale light from within. All the love that ever had been, or could be, +all rapture of aspiration and service and self-surrender were mirrored +there. + + * * * * * + +Magdalen wept for Fay, as once in bygone years she had wept for Everard: +as perhaps some woman of Palestine may have wept when Jesus of Nazareth +passed by, speaking as never man spake, and her lover went with him a +little way and then turned back. + + * * * * * + +"There is no sorrow," said the primroses. "There is neither sorrow nor +sin. You are of one blood with us. You have come through into light, as +we have done, and those others are coming, too. There is no sorrow, only +a little pressure through the brown earth. There is no sin, only a +little waking and stirring in the dark. Why then grieve, oh little +faith! They are all waking and coming. For the Hand that made us made +them. The Whisper that waked us, wakes them. The Sun that draws us, +draws them. The Sun will have us come." + + * * * * * + +Fay had already passed by that way, had picked a few primroses, and had +gone on. _Was she never to be at peace again?_ Was she never to know +what it is to lie down in peace at night, never to know what it is to be +without fear. Her whole soul yearned for peace, as the sick man yearns +for sleep. Andrea had prayed that she might find peace. Magdalen had +told her where peace lay. But all that she had found was despair. + +On her way homewards she came again upon the clearing and stopped short. +The place seemed to have undergone some subtle change. A tall figure +was standing motionless in it. The face was turned away, but Fay +recognised it instantly. As she came close Magdalen turned. For a moment +Fay saw that she did not recognise her, that she was withdrawn into a +great peace and light. + +Then recognition dawned in Magdalen's eyes and with it came a look of +tenderness unspeakable. + +"Fay," she said in a great compassion. "How much longer will you torture +yourself and Michael? How much longer will you keep him in prison?" + +Fay was transfixed. + +Those were the same words that Andrea had said on his deathbed. Those +words were alive, though he was dead. Never to any living creature, not +even to Magdalen, had she repeated them. Yet Magdalen was saying them. +She could not withstand them any longer. The very stones would shriek +them out next. + +She fell at Magdalen's feet with a cry. + +"I will speak," she gasped in mortal terror. "I will speak." And she +clung for very life to her sister's knees, and hid her face in her +gown. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + To-day unbind the captive, + So only are ye unbound. + + --EMERSON. + + +The following afternoon saw Magdalen and Fay driving together to +Lostford, to consult the Bishop as to what steps it would be advisable +to take in the matter of Michael's release. Magdalen felt it would be +well-nigh impossible to go direct to Wentworth, even if he had been at +Barford. But he had been summoned to London the day before on urgent +business. And with Fay even a day's delay might mean a change of mind. +It was essential to act at once. + +But to Magdalen's surprise Fay did not try to draw back. When the +carriage came to the door she got into it. She assented to everything, +was ready to do anything Magdalen told her. She was like one stunned. +She had at last closed with the inevitable. She had found it too strong +for her. + +Did Fay realise how frightfully she had complicated her position by her +own folly? She lay back in her corner of the brougham with her eyes +shut, pallid, silent. Magdalen held her hand, and spoke encouragingly +from time to time. + +You had to be constantly holding Fay's hand, or kissing her, or taking +her in your arms if you were to make her feel that you loved her. The +one light austere touch, the long grave look, that between reserved and +sympathetic natures goes deeper than any caress, were nothing to Fay. + +It was a long drive to Lostford, and to-day it seemed interminable. + +The lonely chalk road seemed to stretch forever across the down. Now and +then a few heavily-matted, fatigued-looking sheep, hustled by +able-bodied lambs, got in the way. The postman, horn on shoulder, passed +them on his way to Priesthope with the papers. + +Once a man on a horse cantered past across the grass at some distance. +Magdalen recognised Wentworth on Conrad. She saw him turn into the +bridle path that led to Priesthope. He had then just returned from +London. + +"He is on his way to see Fay," said Magdalen to herself, "and he is +actually in a hurry. How interested he must be in the ardour of his own +emotions at this moment. He will have a delightful ride, and he can +analyse his feelings of disappointment at not seeing her, on his way +home to tea." + +Magdalen glanced at Fay, but she still lay back with closed eyes. She +had not seen that passing figure. + +Magdalen's mind followed Wentworth. + +"Does she realise the complications that must almost certainly ensue +with Wentworth directly her confession is made? + +"Will her first step towards a truer life, her first action of +reparation estrange him from her?" + + * * * * * + +The Bishop was pacing up and down in the library at Lostford, waiting +for Magdalen and Fay, when the servant brought in the day's papers. He +took them up instantly with the alertness of a man who can only make +time for necessary things by seizing every spare moment. + +"Oh! you two wicked women," he said as he opened the _Times_. "Why are +you late? Why are you late?" + +They were only five minutes late. + +His swift eye travelled from column to column. Suddenly his attention +was arrested. He became absorbed. Then he laid down the paper, and said +below his breath "Thank God." + +At that moment Magdalen and Fay were announced. + +For a second it seemed as if the Bishop had forgotten them. Then he +recollected and went forward to meet them. He knew that only a matter of +supreme urgency could have made Magdalen word her telegram as she had +worded it, and when he caught sight of Fay's face he realised that she +was in jeopardy. + +All other preoccupations fell from him instantly. He welcomed them +gravely, almost in silence. + +The sisters sat down close together on a sofa. Fay's trembling hand put +up her long black veil, and then sought Magdalen's hand, which was ready +for it. + +There was a short silence. Magdalen looked earnestly at her sister. + +Fay's face became suddenly convulsed. + +"Fay is in great trouble," said Magdalen. "She has come to tell you +about it. She has suffered very much." + +"I can see that," said the Bishop. + +"I wish to confess," said Fay in a smothered voice. + +"That is a true instinct," said the Bishop. "God puts it into our hearts +to confess when we are unhappy so that we may be comforted. When we come +to see that we have done less well than we might have done--then we need +comfort." + +Fay looked from him to Magdalen with wide, hardly human eyes, like some +tiny trapped animal between two executioners. + +The Bishop's heart contracted. + +Poor, poor little thing! + +"Would you like to see me alone, my child?" he said, seeing a faint +trembling like that of a butterfly beginning in her. "All you say to me +will be under the seal of confession. It will never pass my lips." + +It was Magdalen's turn to become pale. + +"Shall I go?" she said, looking fixedly at her sister. + +"Yes," said Fay, her eyes on the floor. + +Magdalen went slowly to the door, feeling her way as if half blind. + +"Come back," shrieked Fay suddenly. "Magdalen, come back. I shall never +say it all, I shall keep back part unless you are there to hold me to +it. Come back. Come back." + +Magdalen returned and sat down. The Bishop watched them both in silence. + +"I have confessed once, already," said Fay in a low hurried voice, +"under the promise of silence. Magdalen promised not to say, and I told +her everything, weeks ago. I thought I should feel better then, but it +wasn't any good. It only made it worse." + +"It is often like that," said the Bishop. "We try to do something right +but not in the best way, and just the fact of trying shows us there is +a better way--only harder, so hard we don't know how to bring ourselves +to it. Isn't that what you feel?" + +"Yes." + +"But there is no rest, no peace till we come to it." + +"No," whispered Fay. "Never any rest." + +"That is God's Hand drawing you," said the Bishop, his mind seeming to +embrace and support Fay's tottering soul. "There are things He wants +done, which He needs us to do for Him, which perhaps only we can do for +Him. At first we don't understand that, and we are so ignorant and +foolish that we resist the pressure of His Hand. Then we suffer." + +Fay shivered. + +"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, the +only real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. And +it is no manner of use to resist Him, for God is stronger than we are, +and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, +ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don't understand that He can't +do without us, and that we can't do without Him. And at last, when we +feel God's need of us, then it becomes possible"--the Bishop paused--"to +say the difficult word, to do the difficult deed." + +Did she understand? Who shall say! Sometimes it seems as if no actual +word reaches us that Love would fain say to our unrest and misery. But +our troubled hearts are nevertheless conscious by some other channel, +some medium more subtle than thought and speech, that Love and Peace +have drawn very near to us. It is only reflected dimly through dear +human faces that some of us can catch a glimpse of "the light that +lighteth every man that cometh into the world." + +The small tortured face relaxed between the two calm ones. The sunny +room was quite still. Fear shrank to a shadow. + +Suddenly the fire drew itself together with a little encouraging sound. + +Fay started slightly, looked at it, and began to speak rapidly in a low +clear voice. + +As Magdalen listened she prayed with intensity that Fay might really +tell the Bishop the whole story, as she had told it to herself, that +stormy night in March, half a life-time ago. + +The little voice went on and on. It faltered, sank, and then struggled +up again. One point after another was reached in safety, was passed. +Nothing that Fay had already admitted was left out. Gradually, as +Magdalen listened, a faint shame laid hold of her. Her whole life had +for the time centred in one passionate overwhelming desire that Fay +should make to the Bishop as full a confession as she had made to +herself. Now she realised that Fay was saying even more than she had +done on that occasion, was excusing herself less, was blaming others +less. + +Fay herself saw no discrepancy between her first and second account of +the tragedy. But then she never did see discrepancies. Her mind had +shifted a little towards the subject, that was all. This mysterious +unconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who had +felt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm had +had no effect on Fay's mind. She had never seen till now a vestige of +an effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that was +all. + +Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, if +made to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regenerating +repentance is entirely powerless with a different class of mind. But +although an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being, +and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless the +weaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortable +appeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressing +to its _amour propre_ than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay had +retained in her mind Magdalen's vivid description of the love her +husband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon the +remembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weeks +when she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrance +had worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towards +her husband, drawing her towards compassion on Michael. + +Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who had +blamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them no +longer. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the real +murderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so far +aroused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind. + +Fay had passed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen's +anxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardily +seen, only partially realised, had helped her at last. + +The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent forward, his eyes on +the floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fay +reached Michael's arrest, but he quickly recovered himself. + +The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end. +The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison. + +"I have kept him there two years," said Fay, and was silent. + +How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband's dying words. What +passionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them. +Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resist +them, and the sting had gone clean out of them. + +"Two years," said the Bishop. "Two years. Fast bound in misery and iron. +You in misery and he only in iron. You two poor children." + +His strong face worked, and for a moment he shaded it with his hand. + +Then he looked keenly at Fay. + +"And you have come to me to ask me to advise you how to set Michael and +yourself free?" + +"Yes," whispered Fay. + +"It was time to come." + +There was a short silence. + +"And you understand, my dear, dear child, that you can only rescue +Michael by taking heavy blame upon yourself, blame first of all for +having a clandestine meeting with him, and then blame for letting him +sacrifice himself for your good name, and lastly blame for keeping an +innocent man in prison so long." + +Fay shook like a leaf. + +The Bishop took her lifeless hands in his, and held them. He made her +meet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a glint +of tears in them. + +"You are willing to bear the cross, and endure the shame?" he said. + +Two large tears gathered in Fay's wide eyes, and rolled down her +bloodless cheeks. + +You could not look at her, and think that the poor thing was willing to +endure anything, capable of enduring anything. + +The Bishop looked at her, through her. + +"Or would you rather go home and wait in misery a little longer, and +keep him in his cell a little longer: another week--another +month--another _year_! You know best how much longer you can wait." + +Silence. + +"And Michael can wait, too." + +"Michael must come out," said Fay, with a sob. "He was always good to +me." + +"Thank God," said the Bishop, and he rose abruptly and went to the +window. + +Magdalen and Fay did not move. They leaned a little closer together. +Fay's timid eyes sought her sister's like those of a child which has +repeated its lesson, and looks to its teacher to see if it has done +well. + +Magdalen kissed her on the eyes. + +"I have said everything, haven't I?" + +"Everything." + +"I wish I was dead." + +Magdalen had no voice to answer with. + +The Bishop came back, and sat down opposite them. + +"Fay," he said, "as long as you live you will be thankful that you came +to me to-day, that you were willing to make atonement by this great act +of reparation. The comfort of that remembrance will sink deep into your +troubled heart, and will heal its wounds. But the sacrifice is not to be +exacted of you. I had to ask if you were willing to make it. But there +is no longer any necessity for you to make it. Do you understand?" + +The Bishop spoke slowly. The two women looked at him with dilated eyes. + +"Is Michael dead?" said Magdalen. + +"No. Michael is, I believe, well. The murderer of the Marchese di +Maltagliala has confessed. It is in to-day's papers. The Marchese was +murdered by his wife. It was quite sudden and unpremeditated, the work +of an instant of terror. She has made a full confession on her deathbed. +It exonerates Michael entirely. She implores his forgiveness for her +long silence." + +The Bishop's last words reached Fay from a great distance. The room with +its many books, and the tall mullioned window with the bare elm branches +across it, were all turning gently together in a spreading dimness. The +only thing that remained fixed was Magdalen's shoulder, and even that +shook a little. Fay leaned her face against it, and let all the rest go. +The window with its tree quivered for a moment across the dark and then +flickered out. The consciousness of tender hands and voices lingered a +moment longer and then vanished too. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + All the heavy days are over.--W. B. YEATS. + + +It was very late when Magdalen and Fay reached home. + +Bessie was on the lookout for them, and met them in the hall. + +"Wentworth has been here," she said. "He arrived about an hour after you +had started. As you were both out he asked to see me. He was greatly +excited. He had come to tell us that Michael's innocence has suddenly +been proved. He goes to Italy to-morrow. He said he would call here on +his way to the station a little before eleven, to tell you both about +it." + +And punctually at a few minutes to eleven Wentworth appeared, and was +ushered into the little white morning-room where Fay was waiting for +him. + +The room was full of sunshine. The soft air came gently in, bringing +with it a breath of primroses. + +Delight was in the room, tremulous, shining in Fay's eyes. Delight was +in the whole atmosphere. An enormous boundless relief overflowed +everything. + +Wentworth was excited, softened, swept out of himself. + +He held her soft hand in his. He tried to speak, but he could not. His +eyes filled with tears. He was ashamed. + +And when he looked up he saw Fay's eyes were wet, too. His heart went +out to her. She was rejoicing with him. He pulled himself together, and +told her what little he knew; not much more than the bare facts +contained in the papers. It was now known by the Marchesa's confession +that the murder took place inside the Colle Alto gardens. Everyone, +including the police, had believed that the murder took place in the +road, and that the assassin took advantage of the accident of the garden +door being unlocked to drag the body into the garden, and hide it there. +But the Marchesa stated that she stabbed her husband in the garden +suddenly without premeditation, but with intent to kill him, because of +his determination to marry their seventeen year old daughter to a friend +of his, a _roué_, the old Duke of Castelfranco, who drank himself to +death soon afterwards. + +The Marchesa stated that she dragged the body behind a shrub, walked +back through the garden to the house with the front of her gown covered +with blood without being noticed, found no attendant in the cloak room, +wrapped herself in a long cloak not belonging to her, told her servants +that the Marchese would follow later, and drove home, partially burned +her gown and the cloak as if by accident, and then awaited events. The +first news she received of her husband's death next morning was +accompanied by the amazing information that Michael had confessed to the +murder. + +The Marchesa in her tardy confession stated that she believed Michael, +who had always shown her great sympathy, must have actually witnessed +the crime, and out of a chivalrous impulse towards her, had immediately +taken the guilt of it upon himself. + +"That accounts for his extraordinary silence," said Wentworth, "not +only to others, but to myself. He never would say a word pro or con, +even when I told him it was no use trying to persuade me he was guilty. +The mystery is cleared up at last. I shall reach Milan to-night, and I +shall see him to-morrow. And I suppose we may be able to start home the +following day. I say these things, but I don't believe them. I can't +believe them. It all seems to me like some wonderful dream. And you are +like a person in a dream, too, as if a fairy wand had passed over you?" + +As he spoke Wentworth suddenly realised that this marvellous, radiant +transformation which he beheld in Fay, which seemed to flow even to the +edges of her lilac gown, was happiness, and that he had never seen her +happy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful, +listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released from +some great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Her +beauty had taken on a new magic. + +There is no joy so rapturous, so perfect as the moment of relief from +pain. There was, perhaps, no creature in the world on this particular +April morning whose happiness approached Fay's. She raised her white +eyelids and smiled at Wentworth. + +His well-conducted heart nudged him suddenly like a vulgar, jocular +friend. + +"Is all your gladness for Michael?" he said boldly. "Have you none to +spare for me?" + +He was in for it. + +"You must forgive me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate," he said, +"but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go." He rose and came +towards her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felt +himself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You have +known for a long time that I love you," he said. "Won't you tell me that +you love me a little, too?" + +A delightful sense of liberty and newness of life were flowing in +regenerating waves over Fay's spirit. + +Wentworth seemed a part of this all-pervading joyousness and freedom. +She made a little half unconscious movement towards him, and in a +moment, that intrepid man, that dauntless athlete of the emotions had +taken her in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the + rest no longer in his power.--JEAN PAUL. + + +The Marchesa's confession made a great and immediate sensation +throughout Italy. Everyone who had known Michael, and a great many who +had not, proclaimed with one consent that his innocence was no news to +them. The possibility that he might be shielding someone had been +discussed at the time of the trial, but had found no shred of +confirmation. + +And now the mystery was solved at last, and in the most romantic manner. +Michael had come out with flying colours. + +To many minds the romance was enhanced by the fact that the Marchesa was +a gentle, middle-aged, grey-haired woman in no way attractive, whose +whole interest in life centred in her daughter. Michael's transcendent +act of chivalry towards the Marchesa, dramatically acknowledged by her +at last upon her deathbed, appealed even to the most unimaginative +natures. He became the hero of the hour. Telegrams of congratulation +poured in from every quarter. Letters snowed in on him. Even before +Wentworth could reach him enthusiastic strangers had tried to force +their way into his cell. Determined young reporters came out in +gondolas, and it was all the warders and the doctor could do to protect +Michael from invasion. + +He sat apparently stunned in his cell, the only person unmoved. Every +servant and warder in that dreary establishment had come to offer him +their congratulations. The other convicts had sent messages. The man in +the next cell, slowly dying of gangrene, had crawled from his pallet to +beat a tattoo on the wall. The doctor was beside himself with joy. + +"You must keep calm," he kept saying in wild excitement. "Your brother +will be here to-morrow morning. I implore you to be calm." + +And he brought Michael his best pipe, and some of his most cherished +tobacco, and a weird suit of black clothes, and urged him to spend the +evening with him in his own sitting-room. + +But Michael shook his head. He had no hatred of his striped blouse. He +was accustomed to it. He said he would prefer to await his brother's +arrival in his cell. He was accustomed to that, too. He felt as if he +could not bear to have everything torn from him at once, as if he should +be lost if all his landmarks were changed. He sat hour by hour, smoking, +and every now and then reading Wentworth's telegram. + +He tried to realise it. He said to himself over and over again: "I am +free. I am going away. Wentworth is coming to take me home." But it was +no good. His mind would not take hold. + +He looked for the twentieth time at Wentworth's telegram. Wentworth was +hurrying towards him at this moment, would be travelling all night, +would reach him in the morning. Dear, dear Wenty, he would be happy +again now. + +Michael groaned. + +"It's no kind of use. I _can't_ believe it." + +He tried to think of Fay. He should see _her_ soon, touch her hand, hear +her voice. Poor little darling! She had not the courage of a mouse. +Perhaps she was a little glad at his release. Yes. No doubt she had been +pleased to hear it. He hoped she would not feel shy of him at seeing him +again. He hoped she would not thank him. + +The door, no longer locked, was suddenly opened, and the head warder +deferentially ushered in a visitor. + +A tall, dark man in a tri-coloured sash came in, and the warder +withdrew. + +The man bowed and looked with fixity at Michael, who stared back at him, +dazed and confused. Where had he seen that face before? + +Ah! _He remembered!_ + +"I perceive that you have not forgotten me," said the Delegato. "It was +I who arrested you. It was to me that you confessed to the murder of the +Marchese di Maltagliala." + +"I remember." + +"I never was able to reach any certainty that you were really guilty," +continued the Delegato. "I was not even convinced that you had had a +quarrel with the Marchese." + +"I had no quarrel with him." + +"I knew that. That you might be shielding someone occurred forcibly to +my mind. _But who?_" + +Michael looked steadily at the official. + +"And there was blood upon your hand and sleeve when you confessed." + +"There was." + +"It was not the Marchese's blood," said the Delegato, drawing a sallow +finger across a blue chin. "It remained a mystery. I will own that it +had not crossed my mind that that fragile and timid lady had killed her +husband, and that as she at last confesses you were shielding her." The +Delegato looked piercingly at Michael. + +Michael was silent. + +"You have always been silent. Is not the moment come to speak?" + +Michael shook his head. + +The Delegato bowed. + +"I came to ask you to discuss the affair openly," he said, "to relieve +my perplexity as a matter of courtesy. But you will not speak. Then I +will speak instead. When first I read the Marchesa's confession it came +into my mind that the Marchesa, who I believe was your friend, might for +some reason, possibly the sentimental devotion of an older woman for a +young man--such things have been--that she _might_ have confessed on her +deathbed to a crime which she had not committed in order to save you +from--_this_"--he touched the wall of the cell. "I doubted that she +really murdered her husband. _But she did._ I sought out the maid who +had been with her when the Marchese died, and she, before the confession +was published, informed me that she had not undressed the Marchesa on +her return from the Colle Alto party. And that next morning part of the +cloak which was not hers, and part of her gown were found to be burnt as +stated in her confession. It was indeed necessary to burn them. The +Marchesa murdered the Marchese." + +There was a long silence. + +"I cannot tell whether you witnessed the crime or not. At first I +thought the blood on your hands and clothes might have come from helping +her to drag the body into the garden. But it was not so. At the time I +attached a great importance to the garden door being unlocked. Too +great. It led me astray. The gardener, in spite of his oath that he had +locked it, had probably left it unlocked. We now know from the Marchesa +that the murder took place within the garden, and the locking and +unlocking of the door was an accident which looked like a clue.... But, +if you witnessed the murder, and wished to retire without raising an +alarm, or denouncing that unhappy lady, I ask myself why did you not +open the garden door from within--the key was in the lock, I saw it--and +pass out on to the high road. Why did you, instead, try so hard to +escape over the wall behind the ilexes that you tore your hands on the +cut glass on the top? I found the place next day. There was blood on it. +When you were struggling to escape over that wall you were not anxious +to take the Marchesa's guilt upon yourself. When you were hiding behind +the screen in the Duchess' apartment you were not--_at that +moment_--very determined to shield the Marchesa from the consequences of +her deed. All Italy is ringing with your quixotic, your chivalrous, your +superb action. _Nevertheless_, if I had quitted the Duchess' apartment, +if my natural and trained acuteness had not made one last effort +respecting the screen, _I do not think you would have followed me into +the garden to denounce yourself_." + +The Delegato paused. + +Michael was quite unmoved. Everything reached him dimly as through a +mist. He partly saw the difficulty in the official's mind, but it did +not interest him. He was cleared. That was enough. + +"In two years much is forgotten," said the Delegato, sententiously, "and +it is, perhaps, I alone who recall the more minute details of the case, +because I was present and my interest was overwhelming. I have not +spoken of this to anyone but yourself. I shall not speak of it again. I +have taken a journey to discuss it with you because I had hoped you +would understand my professional interest in unravelling that which +remains still obscure, a mystery, which is daily becoming to me a +greater mystery than before the Marchesa's confession. You have it in +your power to gratify my natural desire for elucidation by an +explanation which can no longer injure you in any way. You are innocent. +It is proved. But even now you will not speak. You prefer to preserve +your attitude of silence to the end. Good! I will intrude on you no +longer. I offer you my congratulations. I deplore your inevitable +imprisonment. I withdraw." + +The Delegato bowed yet again and went to the door. + +"That of which you will not speak was known to your friend the Duke of +Colle Alto," he said. "_The Duke knew._" + +"The Duke is dead," said Michael. + +"I am aware of that," said the Delegato, frigidly. He bowed for the last +time, and left the cell, gently closing the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + Est-ce donc une monnaie que votre amour, pour qu'il + puisse passer ainsi de main en main jusqu'à la mort? Non, + ce n'est pas même une monnaie; car la plus mince pièce d'or + vaut mieux que vous, et dans quelques mains qu'elle passe + elle garde son effigée.--A. DE MUSSET. + + +Wentworth came in the morning, tremulous, eager, holding Michael by the +shoulders, as he used to do when Michael was a small boy, as he had +never done since. + +The brothers looked long at each other with locked hands, water in their +eyes. + +"Wenty," said Michael at last, with his grave smile. + +And that was all. + +They sat down together in silence on the little bed. Wentworth tried to +speak once or twice, but it was no use. + +"Fay cried with joy at the news," he said at last, looking with shy +hungry love at his brother. "If you could have seen her radiant face. I +never saw any creature so changed, so transfigured." + +A faint flush rose to Michael's face. + +"I know how she grieved over your imprisonment. She is the most +tender-hearted woman in the world. I never knew anyone so sympathetic." +Wentworth hesitated. Then he added tremulously. "My great grief has been +her grief, too. She helped me to bear it." + +"I did not know she had--minded so much," said Michael, almost +inaudibly. + +"You might have guessed it," said Wentworth, "knowing her to be what she +is. She has always been so pale and sad, as if bowed down by trouble. +But directly the news came that you were cleared--I went to see her at +once--if you could only have seen her face, her tears of joy, her +delight." + +"Did she send a message, or a note? Just a line. Perhaps you have a +letter with you." + +"No, she did not write," said Wentworth, self conscious, but beaming. +"There was not time. There was time for nothing. It was all such a rush. +I only saw her on my way to the station. But I know she won't mind my +telling you, Michael--you ought to know first of anyone--it all seems so +wonderful. But I daresay--no, I see you have guessed it--I daresay I +have said things in my letters that showed you it was coming--it was the +grief about you that first drew us together. Fay and I are going to be +married." + +Michael put his hand to his head. + +"Everything has come at once," said Wentworth. "I have you again. And I +have her. I've nothing left to wish for." + + * * * * * + +Michael did not leave the prison in the gondola which had brought +Wentworth, and which was waiting to take them both away. The excitement +of his brother's arrival had proved too great, and he fell from one +fainting fit into another. Wentworth was greatly alarmed, but the doctor +was reassuring and cheerful. He said that Michael had borne the news +with almost unnatural calmness, but that the shock must have been great, +and a breakdown was to be expected. He laughed at Wentworth's anxiety +even while he ministered to Michael, and assured him that no one in his +experience had died of joy. + +But later in the evening when Wentworth, somewhat pacified, had returned +to Venice for the night, the doctor felt yet again for the twentieth +time that the young Englishman baffled him. + +It seemed to him that he was actually relieved when the kind, awkward, +tender elder brother had reluctantly taken his departure, promising to +come back early in the morning. + +"Do not distress yourself, you will be quite well enough to leave +to-morrow," the doctor said to him many times. "I expected this +momentary collapse. It is nothing." + +Michael's eyes dwelt on the kind face and then closed. There was that in +them which the doctor could not fathom. + +He took the food that was pressed on him, and then turned his face to +the wall, and made as if he slept. + +And the walls bent over him, and whispered to him, "Stay with us. We are +not so cruel as the world outside." + +And that night the dying convict in the next cell, nearly as close on +freedom as Michael, heard all through the night a low sound of strangled +anguish that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth +anew, from dark to dawn. + +The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm and +wan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately at +him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + Les caractères faibles ne montrent de la décision que + quand il s'agit de faire un sottise.--DANIEL DARC. + + +A week or two after the news of Michael's proved innocence had convulsed +Hampshire, and before Michael and Wentworth had returned to Barford, +Aunt Aggie might have been seen on a fine May afternoon walking slowly +towards "The Towers." She had let her cottage at Saundersfoot for an +unusually long period, and was marking time with the Blores. Whatever +Aunt Mary's faults might be she was always ready to help her sister in +this practical manner, when Aunt Aggie was anxious to add to the small, +feebly frittered away income, on which her muddled, impecunious +existence depended. + +In spite of the most pertinent remarks to the contrary from her sister, +Aunt Aggie believed herself to be an unsurpassed manager of restricted +means. She constantly advised young married couples as to the judicious +expenditure of money, and pressed on Magdalen the necessity of +retrenching in exasperating directions, namely, where a minute economy +entailed a colossal inconvenience. + +In her imagination she saw herself continually consulted, depended on, +strenuously implored to give her opinion on matters of the utmost +delicacy, fervently blessed for her powerful spiritual assistance of +souls in jeopardy, and always gracefully attributing the marvellous +results of her intervention to a Higher Power of which she was but the +unworthy channel. + +These imaginary scenes were the unfailing solace of Aunt Aggie's +somewhat colourless life, and the consciousness of them in the +background gave her a certain meek and even patient self-importance, the +basis of which was hidden from Lady Blore. + +Aunt Aggie had also another perennial source of chastened happiness in +recalling the romance of her youth, those halcyon days before the +Archdeacon had been unsuccessfully harpooned and put to flight by Lady +Blore. + +Her clerical love affair perfumed her conversation, as a knife which has +once associated with an onion inevitably reveals, even in estrangement, +that bygone intimacy. + +No one could breathe the word Margate without Aunt Aggie remarking that +she had had a dear friend who had evinced a great partiality for +Margate. Were the clergy mentioned in her presence with the scant +respect with which the ministry and other secular bodies have to put up, +Aunt Aggie vibrated with indignation. _She_ had known men of the highest +talents holding preferment in the Church. + +But in her imagination her affair of the heart had passed beyond +reminiscence. Far from being buried in the past it remained the chief +factor in her life, colouring and shaping the whole of her future. + +Aunt Aggie could at any moment dip into a kind of sequel to that early +history. In the sequel the Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to die; +but, owing to circumstances which Aunt Aggie had not yet thoroughly +worked out, that unhappy lady was first to undergo tortures in some +remote locality, nursed devotedly--poor thing--by Aunt Aggie. The result +of her ministrations was never in doubt from the first. The Archdeacon's +wife was, of course, to succumb, calling down blessings on the devoted +stranger at her bedside, with the enigmatical smile which spoke of some +sacred sorrow. + +Aunt Aggie had shed many delicious tears over that deathbed scene, and +the chastened grief of the saintly Archdeacon, quite overshadowed by his +boundless gratitude to herself. At this crisis his overwhelming +desolation wrung from him--with gross disloyalty to the newly dead--a +few disjointed sentences which revealed only too clearly how unsuited to +him his wife had been, how little she had understood him, how lonely his +wedded life had been. She had evidently been one of those tall thin +maypoles of women who have but little tenderness in them. + +Aunt Aggie, after giving the children a sample of what a real mother +could be, was to retire to her little home at Saundersfoot. Here the +real joy of the situation was to begin. + +After a decent interval the Archdeacon was to be constantly visiting +Saundersfoot, was to be observed visiting Aunt Aggie at Saundersfoot, +singling her out from among the numerous spinsters of that +watering-place to make her the object of reverent attentions. Others +younger and better looking than Aunt Aggie--especially Miss Barnett, the +doctor's sister, who, it was whispered, wore an artificial cushion from +Douglas's under her hair--were to set their caps or cushions at the +dignified Archdeacon, seen pacing the sands. But it was all of no avail. +He had eyes for no one but the gentle, retiring Miss Bellairs. Aunt +Aggie was to become the object of burning jealousy and detraction on the +part of the female--that is to say almost the whole--population of +Saundersfoot. But she herself, while envious calumny raged round her, +went on her way calm and grave as ever. + +But the proposal long warded off could not be parried forever. The +frenzied passion of the Archdeacon was at last not to be restrained. +Aunt Aggie had in her mind a set of proposals, all good, out of which it +became harder and harder as time went on to select one. But her answer +was ever the same, a pained but firm refusal. She was happy in her lot. +She was greatly needed where she was. She did not wish to marry. She was +no longer young. This last reason was an enormous concession to realism +on Aunt Aggie's part. + +Then came the cream of the whole story. The Archdeacon was to pine +secretly. His work was to be neglected. He was to be threatened with a +nervous breakdown. He was to confide his sorrow to the paternal bosom of +his Bishop. When Aunt Aggie was in her normal state it was the Bishop in +whom the Archdeacon was to confide. But sometimes in the evenings after +a glass of cowslip wine, her imagination took a bolder flight. The +Archbishop himself was to be the confidant of the distracted cleric. +This presented no real difficulty after the first moment, for the +Archbishop was in the flower of his age--the Archdeacon's age--and +might easily have been at school with him. Aunt Aggie had once seen +Lambeth from a cab window as she passed over Westminster Bridge. Under +that historic tower she heard the first subject of the King urge his +brother prelate to take heart, promising assistance. + +We will pass over Aunt Aggie's amazed reception of a cordial invitation +to stay at Lambeth, her hesitating acceptance, her arrival, the +magnificent banquet, crowded with ministers and bishops, the fact that +the Archbishop himself singled her out as the object of courtly though +somewhat anxious attentions. And then after dinner Aunt Aggie, in her +plum-coloured satin, was to be unconsciously but skilfully withdrawn +from the glittering throng by the Archbishop. And in his study he was to +make a great, a fervent appeal to her. Aunt Aggie had bought a +photograph of him in order to deaden the shock of this moment. But +nevertheless whenever she reached this point she was always really +frightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask her +with tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify the +labours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfish +predilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powers +of a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowing +colours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spite +of her marvellous self-control to course down her cheek. The eye of an +Archbishop misses nothing. With an ejaculation of profound relief he +beckons to a distant figure which appears in a doorway. The Archdeacon +in his evening gaiters rushes in. Aunt Aggie gives way! + +After this final feat of the imagination Aunt Aggie generally felt so +worn out by emotion that food was absolutely necessary to her. + +On this occasion she sat down quivering on a heap of stones by the +roadside, and drew forth a biscuit which she had secreted at luncheon at +the Vicarage an hour before. It must be owned that she was fond of food, +though not in the same way that most of us are addicted to it. She liked +eating buns out of paper bags at odd moments in the open air, and +nibbling a sponge cake half forgotten and suddenly found in a drawer +with her handkerchiefs. But in justice to her it ought to be added that +she seemed only to care for the kind of provender which yielded the +largest increment in the way of crumbs. + +As she sat and nibbled an uneasy recollection stole across her mind. + +This recollection was becoming more disconcerting day by day. And yet +she had acted for the best. That fact did not insure to her immunity +from blame on the part of that awful personage, her sister Mary. Good +intentions had never yet received their due as extenuating circumstances +in Lady Blore's sweeping judgments. + +If a certain secret chivalrous action of Aunt Aggie's "turned out +wrong," she knew well the intonation in which Lady Blore would ask her +why she had been such a fool. Nevertheless she, Aunt Aggie, had only +done with consummate tact what Mary herself had contemplated doing in +her rough way, and had been persuaded not to do. + +Some weeks ago Aunt Aggie had concocted in secret, recopied about twenty +times, and had finally despatched a letter to Lord Lossiemouth anent +Magdalen. It had been the boldest action of her life. At first, even +after she had seen that she was the only person able to deal adequately +with so delicate a matter, she had feared that she would not have the +strength to perform her mission. But strength had apparently been lent +to her for the occasion. The letter had actually been posted. + +The moment it was irrevocably gone Aunt Aggie fell into a panic. +Supposing it failed in its object, and that Algernon or Mary discovered +what she had done. She could not even face such a possibility. But then, +supposing on the other hand that her missive united two loving, +estranged hearts, and that dear Magdalen owed her happiness--and a +titled happiness--to her. Then Algernon and Mary would be forced to +admit that she had shown a courage and devotion greater than theirs. "We +only talked, you acted," they would both say, and she would thenceforth +be recognised in her true light, as an incomparable counsellor, and a +judicious, far-seeing friend. + +But three weeks had elapsed since Aunt Aggie, stealing out alone, had +dropped that momentous letter into the village post-box. Nothing had +happened. She had not even received an answer. She was becoming +frightened and anxious. _Was he secretly married?_ She wished she had +thought of that possibility before she posted the letter. + +Many simple-minded men of disengaged affections, cheerfully pursuing +their virtuous avocations, would be thunderstruck if they knew the dark +suspicions harboured against them in spinster bosoms, that they are +concealing some discreditable matrimonial secret, which alone can +account for their--well--their _extraordinary_ behaviour in not coming +forward! + +It has actually been said that real life is not always like a novel. +This feebly false assertion was disproved forever in Aunt Aggie's mind +by the sight of a dog-cart coming rapidly toward her from the direction +of Lostford. She glanced indifferently at it as it approached, and then +her pale eyes became glued to it. In the dog-cart sat Everard Constable, +now Lord Lossiemouth. She had not seen him for fifteen years, but +nevertheless she recognised him instantly. There was no doubt it was he: +thickened and coarsened, but still he. He whirled past leaning back in +his seat, looking neither to right nor left. + +Aunt Aggie's heart gave a thump that nearly upset her equilibrium. The +biscuit dropped onto the road, with a general upheaval of crumbs from +all parts of her agitated person. + +Lord Lossiemouth! + +Going in the direction of Priesthope! + +Her letter! + +She nearly swooned with joy and pride. + +Now Mary and Algernon, now everyone would believe in her. + +She raised herself from the heap of stones and with trembling legs +hurried towards "The Towers." She must tell Mary at once. + +She found Lady Blore seated at her writing-table in the drawing-room, +which was choked by the eastern and Japanese impedimenta, the draperies, +the krises, the metal bowls, the ivory boxes, which an Indian career +seems so inevitably to entail. Sir John had brought back crates of the +kind of foreign _bric-à-brac_ cheap imitations of which throng London +shop windows. The little entrance hall was stuffy with skins. Horned +skulls garnished the walls, pleading silently for decent burial. Even +the rugs had once been bears. + +Aunt Mary was bored with her drawing-room, which looked like a stall at +a bazaar, but, to her credit be it said, that she had never made any +change in it, except to remove a brass idol from the writing-table, at +which she was at this moment sitting. + +By one of those sudden instincts which make people like Aunt Aggie the +despair of those with whom they live, she instantaneously conceived the +idea (for no reason except that she was thinking of her own letter) that +her sister was at that moment writing to Lord Lossiemouth. + +She "had a feeling" that this was the case. The feeling became in a +second a rooted conviction. The butler came in, arranged an +uncomfortable Indian table, placed a brass tray with tea things on it +before Lady Blore, and asked if there were any more letters for the +post. Aunt Mary was in the act of giving him one when Aunt Aggie +intervened. + +"Don't," she said in wild agitation, clasping her hands. "Mary, I beg of +you, I conjure you not to post that letter." + +"Why not? I have resolved to give him another chance." + +"Keep it back one post, I implore you. I have a reason." + +Aunt Mary looked attentively at her sister, and took back the letter. +It was not like her to give way. She seemed less overbearing than usual. + +"Well? Why not employ him again?" she said wearily. "The Irish butter is +the cheapest after all. Why do you make such a point of my leaving him." + +Aunt Aggie was entirely nonplussed. A thousand similar experiences had +never lessened the shock of the discrepancy between what she expected +her sister to say, and what she actually said. + +"I thought, I thought," she stammered, "I felt sure that, I see now I +was wrong, but I had a conviction that that letter--you see I knew you +were thinking of writing--was to, was in short to Lord Lossiemouth." + +Aunt Mary's face became magenta colour. + +"To Lord Lossiemouth! Why should you think I was writing to him?" + +"Well, I could not help knowing--don't you remember how you discussed +the subject with me and dear Magdalen some weeks ago?--that the subject +of a judicious and dignified letter was in your mind." + +"I was careful not to mention the subject to Magdalen in your presence. +I see now that you must have listened outside the door." + +Aunt Aggie experienced a second shock. How did Mary always spy out these +things? + +"I can't think," continued Lady Blore, "how you can lower yourself to +eavesdrop in the way you do; and if you must do these underhand actions, +why you don't conceal them better. When you read a private letter of +mine the other day, because I inadvertently left it for a moment on my +writing-table----" + +"You always say you lock up your private letters, you do, indeed, Mary. +_Be_ fair. I could not _tell_ it was private." + +"You would have been wiser not to have alluded next day to its contents. +If you had not done so I might not have known you had read it." + +Aunt Aggie burst into tears. + +"The truth is I am not secretive like you, Mary," she said between her +sobs. "It is as natural to me to be open and trustful with those I love +as it is for you to be the reverse. Whatever I do you think wrong. But +perhaps some day--and that before long--you will be forced to admit----" + +At this moment the drawing-room door opened and Colonel Bellairs came +in. He often came to tea at "The Towers," though the meeting seldom +passed off without a sharp brush with Lady Blore. + +"Draw up that chair, Algernon," said that lady, with grim but instant +cordiality. "The tea will be ready in a moment." + +Colonel Bellairs looked more floridly handsome than usual. He was +evidently in a state of supreme self-satisfaction. + +"Fine day," he said, "for the time of year." + +At this moment a small parchment face, and bent figure leaning on a +stick, might have been seen peering in through the closed windows. Sir +John looked dispassionately at the family group, and shook his head. +Then he hobbled back to his chair under the cedar. Tea was evidently a +meal to be dispensed with this afternoon. + +"I have news for you," said Colonel Bellairs, expanding his chest. + +Lady Blore held the tea-pot suspended. + +"Everard Constable--Lossiemouth, I should say--is at this moment sitting +in the drawing-room at Priesthope, alone with Magdalen." + +Colonel Bellairs was not disappointed in the effect of his words on his +audience. + +Aunt Aggie trembled and looked proudly guilty. Lady Blore put down the +tea-pot suddenly, and said, "Thank God!" + +Aunt Aggie, her mouth open to speak, began to choke. She looked +piteously from her brother to her sister, struggling in vain to +articulate. It was too cruel that she should be bereft of speech at this +supreme moment. + +Lady Blore turned putty pale and magenta colour alternately. A great +relief softened her hard face. There were actually tears in her eyes. +Then she said majestically, but with a tremor in her metallic voice: + +"I am not surprised." + +"It is my doing," shrieked Aunt Aggie, in the strangled squeak in which +we always explain that it is "only a crumb" gone wrong. And she relapsed +into a fresh spasm. + +Lady Blore sternly bade her be silent. Colonel Bellairs was slightly +annoyed. + +"It is no use, Mary, your saying you are not surprised, for you are," he +said judicially, "and really," relapsing into complacency, "so am I in a +way. It is fifteen years since I forbade Everard the house. I fear that +I was unduly harsh. I dismissed him, so it was for me to recall him. Now +that the cat is out of the bag I don't mind telling you that I wrote to +him a few weeks ago." + +"You--wrote--to--him!" said Aunt Mary in great agitation. "Algernon, you +sent me word by Magdalen that you refused to meddle in the matter." + +"I daresay I did. I may not have liked the tone you took about it, Mary. +You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you that +I was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after mature +consideration--I turned the matter over in my mind--I was not the least +influenced by your long-winded epistle--that in fact rather put me off +than otherwise--still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforward +letter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if his +feelings were unchanged--mark that--as I had reason to believe +Magdalen's were--he was at liberty to come to Priesthope and resume +cordial relations with us all. You observe that I only asked him to come +if his feelings were unchanged. _He is there now._" + +It would be impossible to describe the varying emotions which devastated +Lady Blore, as her brother made his announcement. Her hands trembled so +much that she was obliged to give up any pretence of holding her cup. It +chattered against its saucer. + +"When did you write?" she asked at last. + +"About three weeks ago." + +Aunt Mary seemed to make a mental calculation. + +"It is my doing. I wrote a month ago," gasped Aunt Aggie. "Algernon, you +must not take the credit of it. I waited till you and Mary had decided +not to write--you know, Mary, you told Magdalen you would not--and +then--and then--I could not stand by and see that dear child's happiness +slip away for want of one bold word, one brave friend to say for her +what she could not say for herself,--I have seen so many lives wrecked +for want of a sympathetic hand to draw two severed hearts +together,--that I wrote. I wrote a month ago. A week before you did." + +"I might have known you would do some folly," said Colonel Bellairs with +contempt. "I am glad this did not come to my ears earlier, or I should +have been very angry. It was most unsuitable, most undignified, that you +and I should both write. But," it was evidently impossible for him to be +seriously annoyed by anything on this particular afternoon, "all's well +that ends well. We will say no more about it, Aggie. Don't cry. You +can't help being a fool. But don't do anything of that kind, or of any +kind again. I might not be so easy going next time." + +Lady Blore drank down a large cup of tea. Her black silk bosom heaved. +Contrary to all precedent she did not turn on her quaking sister. + +"Where are Fay and Bessie?" she asked. + +"Fay is spending the afternoon with the Carters, and Bessie is out +somewhere, I don't know where. But I saw her start after luncheon." + +"How fortunate! Then you knew he was coming?" + +"Yes. I had a telegram from him this morning saying he was in the +neighbourhood, and would come over this afternoon." + +"Of course you warned Magdalen?" + +"Not I. I knew better than that. She has a cold, so I knew she could not +go out. So directly I had seen him drive up I came off here. I did not +think I was particularly wanted at home. Two is company and three's +none." + +"Oh, Algernon, what tact! Most men would never have thought of that," +said Aunt Aggie. + +"Have another cup, Algernon," said Lady Blore graciously. + +Colonel Bellairs stroked his moustache. He had another cause, a secret +one, for self-complacency. At last, after many rebuffs from charming +women, thirty years his junior, he was engaged to be married. Should he +mention it? Was not this a most propitious moment? Yes? No. Perhaps +better not. Another time! The lady had accepted him some weeks ago, but +had expressed altruistic doubts as to whether she could play a mother's +part to daughters as old as herself, whether in short, much as she +craved for their society, _they_ might not feel happier, more +independent in a separate establishment, however modest. It was on a +sudden impulse of what he called "providing for the girls," that Colonel +Bellairs had written to Lord Lossiemouth. + +The renewal of his engagement to Magdalen would pave the way to Colonel +Bellairs's marriage. He had already decided that Bessie would live with +Magdalen, who would take her out. Fay had her jointure. But he had a not +unfounded fear that his second nuptials would be regarded with profound +disapproval, even with execration, by his sisters. + +Magdalen alone knew about it as yet. She had taken the news, which her +father had feared would crush her to the earth, very tranquilly. She was +a person of more frigid affections than he had supposed. He had already +asked her to break the news to Fay and Bessie. Perhaps it would be +better to let her break it to his sisters too. If he did it himself they +might, at the first moment, say things they might afterwards regret. +Yes, he would leave the announcement to Magdalen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + Our chain on silence clanks. + Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs. + + --GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +Lord Lossiemouth had come into his kingdom. He was rich, but not +vulgarly so. He had a great position, and what his artistic nature +valued even more, the possession of one of the most beautiful places in +England. The Lossiemouth pictures and heirlooms, the historic house with +its wonderful gardens--all these were his. + +He had at first been quite dazed by the magnitude of his good fortune. +When it came to him it found him somewhat sore and angry at a recent +rebuff which had wounded his vanity not a little. But the excitement of +his great change of fortune soon healed what little smart remained. + +A few months before he succeeded, he had fallen in love, not for the +first time by many times, with a woman who seemed to meet his +requirements. She was gentle, submissive, pretty, easily led, refined, +not an heiress, but by no means penniless. + +To his surprise and indignation she had refused him, evidently not +without a certain tepid regret. He discovered that the mother had other +views for her daughter, and that the daughter, though she inclined +towards him, was quite incapable or even desirous of opposing her +mother. She was gentleness and pliability itself. These qualities, so +admirable in domestic life, have a tendency of which he had not thought +before to make their charming owner, if a hitch occurs, subside into +becoming another man's wife. If only women could be adamant until they +reach the altar, and like wax afterwards. + +When everything bitter that could be said at the expense of women had +been ably expressed, Lord Lossiemouth withdrew. A month later, when he +was making an angry walking tour in Hungary, he learned from an English +paper, already many days old, of the two deaths which effected his great +change of fortune. He communicated with his lawyer, arranged to return +by a certain date, and continued his tour for another month. + +On his return he had gone at once to Lossiemouth, which he had visited +occasionally as a poor and peppery and not greatly respected relation. +Business of all kinds instantly engulfed him. He was impatient, +difficult, _distrait_, slightly pleased with himself at showing so +little gratification at his magnificent inheritance. + +On the third day he sorted out the letters which looked like personal +ones, from among a heap of correspondence, the accumulation of many +weeks. + +Quantities of envelopes were torn open, and the contents thrown aside, +begging letters, decently veiled congratulations from "old friends" who +had not so far shown any particular desire to make their friendship a +joy to him. + +Presently he came upon a long, closely written letter of several sheets, +in a slanting hand, which he was about to dismiss as another begging +letter when his eye fell on the signature. Bellows? Bulteel? Buller? +_Bellairs?_ + +Aunt Aggie's signature was quite illegible. It was an arranged squiggle +painfully acquired in youth, which through life had resulted in all +kinds of difficulties with tradespeople, and in continual annoyance and +inconvenience to herself. Letters and parcels were frequently directed +to her as A. Buller, Esq. She could only account for this mistake by the +business-like nature of her style and handwriting. She often told her +friends that, unless people knew her personally, her letters were +generally believed to be a man's. + +It had never struck Aunt Aggie that Lord Lossiemouth might possibly, in +an interval of fifteen years, have forgotten who _A._ Bellows might be. + +But the words "my beloved niece Magdalen" strongly underlined, and the +postmark on the envelope, showed him who A. Bellairs was. He thought he +remembered an old aunt who lived near Priesthope. + +He read the long sentimental effusion and bit his lip. + +Ah, me! Was that half-forgotten, dim-in-the-distance boyish love of his +to be raked up again now! + +He sighed impatiently. Why had Fate parted him and Magdalen? He still +regretted her in a way, when he was depressed or harassed, or disgusted +with the world in general; and he was often depressed and harassed and +disgusted. + +More letters. What business had people to give him the trouble of +reading them? The floor was becoming strewn with his correspondence. The +empty fireplace had become a target for crumpled balls of paper. + +A short one in a large, scrambling, illiterate hand with a signature +that might mean anything. That tall capital, shaped like a ham, was +perhaps a B. + +The letter was written on Priesthope notepaper. "_My daughter +Magdalen._" + +This, then, was from Colonel Bellairs. + +It was not such a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. +When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made his +precarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that Lord +Lossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it in +his mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not had +time. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that sentence he had felt, not +without pride, that it covered the ground of his fifteen years' silence, +and also showed that Lord Lossiemouth's wealth had nothing to do with +his recall. For the letter was a recall. + +"Blundering old idiot," said Lord Lossiemouth, but he had become very +red. + +All kinds of memories were surging up in him; Magdalen's crystal love +for him, her indefinable charm, her gaiety, her humility, her shyness, +her exquisite beauty. + +Life had never brought him anything so marvellous, so enchanting, as +that first draught of April passion. And he had quenched his thirst at +many other cups since then. His lips had been blistered and stained at +poisoned brims. Why had that furious old turkey-cock parted him and +Magdalen! His heart sank for a moment at the remembrance of his first +love. + +But what was the use! The Magdalen he had loved had ceased to exist. The +wand-like figure with its apple-blossom face faded, faded, and in its +place rose up the image of the thin, distinguished-looking grey-haired +woman who had supplanted that marvel. He had met Magdalen accidentally +once or twice in London of late years, and had felt dismayed anger at +the change in her, an offended anger not wholly unlike that with which +he surveyed himself at his tailors', and inspected at unbecoming angles, +through painfully frank mirrors, a thick back and a stout neck and jaw +which cruelly misrepresented his fastidious artistic personality. + +He returned to his letters. + +Three sheets in a firm, upright hand. + +"I do not suppose you remember me," it began, "but I intend to recall +myself to your memory, which I believe to be none of the best. I am the +wife of Sir John Blore, and aunt to Magdalen Bellairs." + +He flung the letter down. But this was intolerable, a persecution. And +what fools they were _all_ to write. Had Magdalen set them on? + +He groaned with sudden self-disgust. What unworthy thought would come to +him next? Of course she knew nothing of this. + +He looked at the date of each letter carefully. Aunt Aggie's according +to her wont had only the day of the week on it, just Tuesday, or it +might be Thursday--but Colonel Bellairs's and Lady Blore's were fully +dated, and about a fortnight apart. Colonel Bellairs had written last. + +Lord Lossiemouth divined that each of the three believed him or herself +to be the only one to tackle the subject. + +How ghastly! What a cruelly good short story it would make for a +magazine! + +Then he read Lady Blore's letter. Apparently it was not pleasant +reading. It seemed to prick somewhat sharply. He winced once or twice, +and spoke angrily to it. + +"My good woman, as if I did not _know_ that! Men are always behaving +heartlessly to women in their opinion. It is the normal male state. It +is an established fact that we are all brutes. Why do you want me to +marry your paragon if you have such a low opinion of me?" + +Still he could not put the letter down. + +"It is possible though improbable," wrote that dauntless woman, "that +your vacillating and selfish character may have improved sufficiently in +the course of years for you to have become aware that you have behaved +disgracefully to a woman, who, if she had had any sense, ought never to +have given you a second thought, who was and still is deeply attached to +you; probably the only person on this earth who has the misfortune to +care two pins about you." + +Lord Lossiemouth tried to feel sarcastic. He tried to laugh. But it was +no use. Lady Blore's arrow had penetrated a joint in his harness. + +After all he need take no notice of any of these monstrous effusions. + +He was disgusted with opening letters. Nevertheless he hurried on. +Perhaps he should find others less intolerable. + +A somewhat formal letter from his cousin the Bishop of Lostford, who had +never been cordial to him since his engagement to Magdalen had been +broken off. The Bishop pointed out certain grave abuses connected with +house property at Lostford, at which the late Lord Lossiemouth had +persistently connived, but which he hoped his successor might enquire +into personally and redress. + +Quantities of other letters were torn open and aimed in balls at the +empty grate. But at last he came to a long one which he read +breathlessly. + +It was from the mother of the girl who had so recently refused him, an +involved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriously +attached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again he +would not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, +nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. +The mother had evidently made her write. + +A very venomous expression settled on Lord Lossiemouth's heavy face. He +suddenly took up a Bradshaw and looked out the trains for Lostford. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + Tard oublie qui bien aime. + + +On this momentous afternoon Magdalen was sitting alone in the +morning-room at Priesthope somewhat oppressed by an oncoming cold. It +had not yet reached the violent and weeping stage. That was for +to-morrow. She, who was generally sympathetically dressed, was +reluctantly enveloped in a wiry red crochet-work shawl which Bessie had +made for her, and had laid resolutely upon her shoulders before she went +out. + +She tried to read, but her eyes ached, and after a time she laid down +her book, and her mind went back, as it had a way of doing--to Fay. + +Fay had told her as "a great secret" that she had accepted Wentworth. +She was so transfigured by happiness, so radiant, so absolutely unlike +her former listless, colourless, carping self that Magdalen could only +suppose that two shocks of joy had come simultaneously, the discovery +that she loved her prim suitor, and the overwhelming relief to her +tortured conscience of Michael's release. + +Wentworth and Michael were still at Venice. Michael, it seemed, had been +prostrated by excitement, and had been too weak to travel immediately. +But they would be at Barford in a few days' time. + +When Magdalen saw Fay entirely absorbed in trying on a succession of new +summer hats, sent for from London in preparation for Wentworth's +return, she asked herself for the twentieth time whether Fay had +entirely forgotten her previous attraction for Michael, or that there +might be some awkwardness in meeting her faithful lover and servant +again, especially as the future wife of his brother. + +Two years had certainly elapsed since that sudden flare-up of disastrous +passion, and in two years much can be forgotten. But after two years +everything may still be remembered, as Magdalen knew well. And she +feared that Michael was among those who remember. + +Magdalen had that day told Fay of her father's intention of marrying +again, but she took almost no notice of the announcement. To use one of +Aunt Aggie's metaphors, the news "seemed to slide off her back like a +duck." + +She only said, "Really! How silly of him!" + +As Magdalen thought of Fay the door opened and Bessie, who was supposed +to have gone for a walk, came in. + +She had a spray of crab-apple blossom in her hand. She held it towards +Magdalen as if it were a bill demanding instant payment. These little +amenities were a new departure on Bessie's part. + +Magdalen's pleasure in the apple blossom seemed to her somewhat +exaggerated, but she made allowances for her, as she had a cold. + +"Are you going out again?" asked Magdalen. + +"No." + +"Then I should like to have a little talk with you. I have something to +tell you." + +Bessie sat down. + +"I am prepared for the announcement you have to make. I have seen it +coming. It is about Fay." + +"No, it is about Father. He has asked me to tell you that he is engaged +to be married." + +"Father!" + +"Yes, it is not given out yet." + +"Father!" + +"It is to a Miss Barnett. You may have seen her. The doctor's sister at +Saundersfoot." + +"I know her by sight, a tall, showy-looking woman of nearly forty, with +amber hair and a powdered nose." + +"Yes." + +"Father has sunk very low," said Bessie, judicially. "He must have been +refused by a lot of others, younger and better-looking, and ladies, to +be reduced to taking her. And fancy anyone in their senses being willing +to take Father, with his gout, and his tendency to drink, and his total +disregard of hygiene. Well, she looks a vulgar pushing woman, but I am +sorry for her. And I must own that I am disappointed that if there was +to be an engagement in our family it should be Father. There is not +likely to be more than one going for a home like ours. It is just like +him to grab it." + +Magdalen tried not to laugh. + +"I've looked round," continued Bessie. "I don't say that at present I +could entertain the thought of marriage myself. I can't just yet, but I +mean to in the future. It's merely a question of time. Marriage is the +higher life. Besides, if one remains unmarried people are apt to think +it is because one can't help it. It would certainly be so in my case. +And I have looked round. There is not a soul in the neighbourhood for +any of us to marry that I can see except Wentworth, who is of course +extremely elderly. Hampshire seems absolutely bare of young men. And if +there are a few sons in some of the houses, they are never accessible. +And the really superior ones like Lord Alresford's only son would never +look at me. It would be waste of time to try. There is positively no +opening in Hampshire unless I marry the curate." + +"That reminds me that he is to call this afternoon about the +boot-and-shoe club. I wish, my dear, in the intervals between your +aspirations towards the higher life, you would go through the accounts +with him. My head is so confused with this cold." + +"I will. And where on earth are you going to live when Father marries +again? Of course, I shall graduate at Cambridge. He won't oppose that +now. Magdalen, why don't you marry, too?" + +"I can't, dear Bessie. No one wants me." + +"May I go on?" + +"No. Please don't." + +"I think I will all the same. Why not marry Lord Lossiemouth after all? +Don't speak. I want to place the situation dispassionately before you. I +have thought it carefully over. You are an extremely attractive woman, +Magdalen. I don't know what it is about you, I fail to analyse it, but +one becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if a +man once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care just +because you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact that +there certainly has been a mutual attachment. I then ask myself----" + +At this moment the door opened and the footman announced "Lord +Lossiemouth." + +The shock to both women was for the moment overwhelming. + +Magdalen recovered herself almost instantaneously and welcomed him with +grave courtesy, but she was unable to articulate. + +He had seen the amazement in the four eyes turned on him as he came in, +and cursed Colonel Bellairs in his heart. Why had not the old idiot +warned Magdalen of his coming? + +He had felt doubtful of his reception. A simulated coldness on +Magdalen's part was, perhaps, to be expected. But for her blank +astonishment he was not prepared. + +"This is Bessie," she said in a shaking voice. + +Bessie! This tall, splendid young woman. Could this be the tiny child of +three who used to sit on his knee, and blow his watch open. + +"I cannot be expected to remember you," said Bessie, advancing a limp +hand. She fixed a round dispassionate eye on his heavy, irritable face, +and found him unpleasant looking. + +He instantly thought her odious. + +And they all three sat down simultaneously as if by a preconcerted +signal. + +"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" asked Magdalen, as a paralysed +silence became imminent. A faint hectic colour burnt in her cheeks. + +Lord Lossiemouth pulled himself together, and came to her assistance. +Together they held back the silence at arm's length. + +Yes, he was staying in the neighbourhood--at Lostford in fact. House +property near the river. Liable to floods. + +Did he mention the word floods? + +Yes. Floods at certain seasons of the year. Time to take measures now +before the autumn, etc. + +Magdalen was glad to hear of some measures being taken. Long needed. + +Yes, culpable neglect. + +A wall? + +Yes, a wall. Certainly a wall. + +Bessie rose, marched to the door, opened it, hit her body against it, +and went out. + +A certain degree of constraint went with her. + +"I had your Father's leave to come," he said after a moment. "I should +not have ventured to do so otherwise." + +"I wish Father had warned me," she said. + +They looked away from each other. Here in this room fifteen years ago +they had parted. Both shivered at the remembrance. + +Then they looked long at each other. + +Magdalen became very pale. She saw as in a glass what was passing +through his mind; and for a moment her heart cried out against those +treacherous deserters, her beauty and her youth, that they should have +fled and left her thus, defenceless and unarmed to endure his cruel +eyes. But she remembered that he had left her before they did. They had +not availed to stay him. They had only slipped away from her in his +wake. And at the time she had hardly noticed their departure, as he was +no longer there to miss them. + +Lord Lossiemouth had come determined to propose to Magdalen, his +determination screwed "to the sticking point" by a deliberately recalled +remembrance of the change the years had wrought in her. He had told +himself he was prepared for that. Nevertheless, now that he was actually +face to face with her, in spite of his regard and respect for her, a +horrid chasm seemed to yawn between them, which only one primitive +emotion can span, an emotion which, like a disused bridge, had fallen +into the gulf years ago. + +And yet how marvellously strong, how immortal it had seemed once--in +this same room with this same woman. It had seemed then as if it could +not break, or fall, or fade. + +It had broken, it had fallen, it had faded. + +As he looked earnestly at her he became aware that though she had been +momentarily distressed a great serenity was habitual to her. The eyes +which now met his had regained their calm. It seemed as if her life had +been steeped in tranquil sunshine, as if the free air of heaven had +penetrated her whole delicate being, and had left its clear fragrance +with her. + +Oh! if only they had been married fifteen years ago! What happiness they +might have given each other. How perfect to have owed it all to each +other. How fond he would still be of her. How tender their mutual regard +would still be. Then his present feeling for her would not be amiss. +They ought to be sitting peacefully together at this moment, not in this +intolerably embarrassing personal relation towards each other, but at +ease with each other, talking over their boy at Eton, and the new pony +for their little daughters. He did not want to _begin_ being married to +her now. + +She knew what he felt. + +"Magdalen," he said, "I am distressed that I have taken you by surprise. +I had hoped that you were prepared to see me. But my coming is not, I +trust, painful to you." + +A pulse fluttered in her cheek. + +"I am glad to see you," she said. "If I did not seem so the first moment +it was only because I was taken aback." + +"A great change has come over my fortunes," he continued, anxious to +give her time, and yet aware that no conversation except on the object +of his visit was really possible. "I am at last in a position to marry." + +"When I heard the news I thought that you would probably marry soon." + +"Our engagement was broken off solely for lack of means," he continued. +Her eyes dropped. "Now that that obstacle is removed I have come to ask +you, to beg you most earnestly to renew it." + +"It is very good of you," she said almost inaudibly. "I appreciate +your--kindness." + +He saw that she was going to refuse him. But he was prepared for that +contingency. It was a natural feminine method of readjusting the balance +between them. He would certainly give her the opportunity. He owed it to +her. Besides, the refusal would not be final. He knew from her relations +that she still loved him. + +"If your feeling towards me is unchanged will you marry me?" + +The door opened, and the footman announced "Mr. Thomson." + +The new curate came slowly into the room, his short-sighted eyes peering +about him, a little faggot of papers girdled by an elastic band, clasped +in his careful hand against his breast. + +Magdalen started violently, and Lord Lossiemouth experienced a furious +exasperation. + +Magdalen mechanically introduced the two men to each other, and they all +three sat down, with the same sudden automatic precision as when Bessie +had been present. + +"The days are beginning to lengthen already," said Mr. Thomson. "I have +noticed it, especially the last few days, and the rooks are +clamourous--very clamourous." + +"It was to be expected," faltered Magdalen. + +"The accounts are, I am glad to say, in perfect order. I am proud to +add, though I fear a statement so unusual may lay me open to a charge of +romancing, that we have a small balance in hand." + +How he had looked forward to saying these words. With what a flash of +surprised delight he had expected this astounding, this gratifying +announcement would be received. + +He paused a moment to let his words sink in--evidently Miss Bellairs had +not heard. + +"Three pounds five and nine," he said. + +"It is wonderful," said Magdalen emphatically. + +"Quite wonderful. I never heard of a boot-and-shoe club which was not +in debt. Have you?" And she turned to Lord Lossiemouth. + +But Lord Lossiemouth's temper was absent. He found the situation +intolerable. He only answered, "Never." + +"Bessie is waiting to hear all about it in the schoolroom," continued +Magdalen. "I have asked her to go over the papers with you. She will be +as surprised and delighted as I am. Shall we go and tell her?" + +And without waiting for an answer she rose and led the way to the +schoolroom, followed by Mr. Thomson. Bessie was sitting alone there, +staring in front of her, paralysed by Lord Lossiemouth's arrival, and +indignant at the possibility that Magdalen might marry that "horrid old +thing," who was not the least like the charming photograph of him in her +sister's album. However, she grasped the situation, and after an +imploring glance from Magdalen, grappled with all her might with the +boot-and-shoe club. + +Magdalen hurriedly tore off the little red shawl and returned to the +morning-room, and closed the door. It was a considerable effort to her +to close it, and by doing so to invite a renewal of Lord Lossiemouth's +offer. But it could not be left open. + +"It was not poor Mr. Thomson's fault," she said, "but I wish I could +have saved you this annoyance." + +He struggled to recover his temper. Her quivering face shewed him that +she was suffering from the miserable accident of the interruption even +more than he was. + +"I was asking you to marry me," he said with courage, but with visible +irritation. "Will you?" + +"I am afraid I cannot." + +"I knew you would say that. I expected it. But I beg you to reconsider +it, that is if--if your feeling for me is still unchanged." + +"It is unchanged." + +"Then why not marry me?" + +"Because you do not care for me." + +"I felt certain you would say that. But I _do_ care for you. Should I be +here if I did not? We are two middle-aged people, Magdalen. The old +raptures and roses would be out of place, but I have always cared for +you. Surely you know that. Have you forgotten the old days?" + +"No." + +"Neither have I. All we have to do is to forget the years between." As +he spoke he felt that the thing could hardly have been better put. + +"I have no wish to forget them." + +He had made a great effort to control his temper, but he found her +unreasonable. His anger got the upper hand. + +"It is one of two things that makes you refuse me. Either you can't +forgive me, and I daresay I don't deserve that you should, I am not +posing as a faultless character--or you have ceased to love me. Which is +it?" + +"I have not ceased to love you," she replied. "Have I not just told you +so? But you would find yourself miserable in the--lop-sided kind of +marriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to make bricks +without straw." + +"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me, +why was I sent for?" he stammered, white with anger. He struck the +table with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if I +was to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately planned +rebuff directly I set foot in the house!" + +"Why were you _sent for_?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your own +accord. _Sent for!_ _Who_ sent for you?" + +She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint. + +"_Who_ sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?" + +He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands. +Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, the +desire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated. +Others could be humiliated as well as himself. + +"Read them," he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood by +the window with his back to her. + +Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's, +Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped the +sweat from her forehead. + +Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw them +creep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring, +their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they to +rend her again? + +She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away. +They could not reach her. They could not touch her. + +She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seen +him stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind his +back, looking out to the sea. + +She went softly to him, and stood beside him. + +"I am more grieved that I can say about these," she said, touching the +letters. "I did not know the poor dears had written. It was good of you +to come back at the call of these unhappy letters. Will you not burn +them, Everard, and forget them? There is a fire waiting for them." + +She put them into his hand. She had not spoken to him by his Christian +name before. His anger sank suddenly. He took them in a shamed silence, +and dropped them into the fire. Magdalen sat down by the hearth, and he +sat down near her. Together they watched them burn. + +"I ought to have burnt them yesterday," he said remorsefully. + +"I am glad you did not. I am so thankful to see you again, and that +these foolish letters brought you. I have often longed to have a talk +with you. + +"It seems unreasonable," continued Magdalen, her clear eyes meeting his, +"but the fact of your asking me to marry you makes it possible for me to +tell you what I have long wished to tell you. I have often thought of +writing it. I did write it once, but I tore it up. It seems as if a +woman _can't_ say certain things to a man till he has said, 'Will you +marry me?' Then it is easy, because then nothing she may say can rouse a +suspicion in his mind that she wants to make him say it." + +"I have proposed to you twice, Magdalen. Is not that enough?" His voice +was very bitter. "I venture to prophesy that you will be safe from my +pestering you with a third offer." + +"I am sure of it. I never dreamed that you would ask me this second +time. I never thought we should meet again except by chance, as we did a +year ago. But I have had you in my mind, and I have often +feared--often--that I was a painful remembrance to you; that when you +thought of me it was with regret that you had perhaps--it is not so easy +to say after all--that you had spoilt my life." + +"I did reproach myself bitterly with having made love to you when you +were so very young and inexperienced, and when I ought to have +remembered that I was not in a position to marry. Your father did rub +that in. As if I could help my poverty." + +"Father is not a reasonable person. You were nearly as young as I was. +Looking back now it seems as if we had both been almost children." + +"It was a great misfortune for both of us," he said, colouring. He had +not felt it great after the first. + +"Not for me," she said. "That is what I have long wished to tell you. It +has been my great good fortune. Not at first--but after a time. I should +never have known love--of that I am sure--unless it had been for you. +You were the only person who could waken it in me. The power to love is +the great gift; to be permitted to know that marvel, to be allowed once +in one's life to touch the infinite. Love opens all the doors. Some +opened in pain, but they did open. I never knew, I never guessed until +long after you had come into my life, and gone away again, how much I +owed to you. Then I began to see, first in gleams, and then plainly. +Your momentary attraction towards me was a tiny spark of the Divine +love, a sort of little lantern leading me home through the dark." + +He stared at her amazed. Her transparency transfixed him. What is +superficial is also often deep in clear natures such as Magdalen's, like +a water lily whose stem goes down a long way. + +"Love releases us from ourselves, our hard proud selves, and makes +everything possible to flow in to us, happiness, peace, joy, gratitude. +I thank God for having let me know you, for having made me love you. I +might have missed it. I see others miss it. I might have gone through +life not knowing. I might have had to bear the burden of life, without +the one thing that makes it easy. I see other people toiling and +moiling, and getting hopeless and miserable and exhausted till my heart +aches for them. After the first I have never toiled, never grieved, +never despaired. I have been sustained always. For there are not two +kinds of love, Everard, but only one. The love of you is the cup of +water, and the love of God is the well it is taken from.... You had +better go now before anyone else comes in, but I want you to remember +when you think of me that I bless and thank you, and am grateful to you. +I have been grateful for years." + +She took his leaden hand in both of hers, and held it for a moment to +her lips. + +Lord Lossiemouth's face was pinched and aged. His hand fell out of +hers. + +Then his face became suddenly convulsed, frightful to behold, like that +of a man being squeezed to death. + +"I never loved you," he said in a fierce, suffocated voice. "I was a +little in love with you, that was all, and that was not much. I soon got +over it." + +"I know," she said. + +"I felt pain for a time. You were very beautiful, and you were the +first. I was the same as you then. But I found other beautiful women. I +took what I could get out of life, and out of women. I rubbed out my +pain that way. It was not your father who parted us, it was myself. I +would not own it, I was always bitter against him, but it was my fault. +I did not mean to work, and tie myself to an office stool: I had the +chance, but I wanted to travel and see the world. It was not lack of +means that parted us. I said a few minutes ago that it had been the only +obstacle to our marriage, and your eyes dropped. You have known better +all the time, but you wouldn't say. All these years I have put it down +to that. But it was _not_. We were parted by lack of love." + +"I know," she said again. + +"On my side." + +"It was not your fault. We can't love to order, or by our own will. It +is a gift." + +"Some of us can't love at all," he said fiercely. "That is about it. We +have not got any room for it if--if it _is_ given us. It could not get a +foothold. It was crowded out. I was often glad afterwards that I did not +tie myself to you. _Glad!_ Do you hear, Magdalen? It left me free to--it +did give me pain when I thought of you. I knew what I had done to you. +I used to tell myself that you gave me up very easily, that you did not +really want me. But I knew in my heart that you did. But it only made me +bitter, and I put the thought away. That time, it is ten years ago; good +God! it is all so long ago, when you nearly died of scarlet fever in +London, I heard of it by chance when you were at your worst, I was +shocked, but I did not really care, for I had long ceased to want you. I +used to visit a certain woman every day in that street, and I once asked +her who the straw was down for, and she said it was for a 'Miss Magdalen +Bellairs.' I was in love with her at the moment, if you can call it +love. I have dragged myself through all kinds of sordid passions +since--we parted." + +Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He looked at her through them. It +seemed as if no wounding word under heaven would be left to say by the +time he had finished. + +"And I did not come back in order to make amends," he went on. "You know +me very little if you think that. I came back solely out of pique. It +was not those absurd letters which brought me, or held me back. It was +another woman. I wanted to pay her out." + +"I thought perhaps it was something like that," said Magdalen. + +"It was a virtuous attachment this time. I am nearly forty. I am getting +grey and stout. Young women have a difficulty in perceiving my +existence. It was high time to settle, and to live on some attractive +woman's money. There are thousands of women who must marry someone. So +why not me? I found the attractive woman. I walked into love with her," +he stammered with anger. "I regarded it as a constitutional. But the +attractive woman, though she liked me a little, weighed the pros and +cons exactly as I had done, and decided not to take her constitutional +in my impecunious company. She refused me when I was poor, and +_now_--now that I am rich--she is willing." + +The harsh voice ceased suddenly. Magdalen looked for a moment at the +savage, self-tortured face, and her heart bled. + +"That is how I have treated you," he said, choking with passion. "Now +you know the truth of me--for the first time. That is the kind of man I +am, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you have +idealised, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years." + +"I have known always the kind of man you were," she said steadily. "I +never idealised you, as you call it. I loved you knowing the worst of +you. Otherwise my love could not have endured through. A foolish +idealism would have perished long ago." + +"And then I come down here, on a sudden despicable impulse, intending to +use you as a weapon to strike her with, not that she is worth striking, +poor feeble pretty toy. And I encouraged myself in a thin streak of +patronising sentiment for you. I wrote a little cursed sonnet in the +train how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets blooming +in autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temper +is aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enough +to try to humiliate you by shewing you those letters, to try to revenge +myself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! On you!" + +She did not speak nor move. Her face was awed, as the face of one who +watches beside the pangs of death or--birth. + +Outside in the amber sunset a thrush piped. + +"Magdalen," he said almost inarticulately, "you have never repulsed me. +Don't repulse me now, for I am very miserable. Don't pour your love into +the sand any more. Give it me instead. I am dying of thirst. Give me to +drink. You can live without me, but I can't live without you. I have +tried--I have tried everything. I am not thinking of you, only of +myself. I am only asking for myself, only impelled towards you by my own +needs. Does not that prove to you that I am at last speaking the truth? +Does not that force you to believe me when I tell you that I want you +more than anything in the world. I have wanted you all my life without +knowing it. I don't want to make amends to you for the past. I want you +yourself, for myself, as my wife. I swear to God if you won't marry me I +will marry no one. You are the only woman I can speak to, the only one +who does not fail, who holds on through thick and thin, the only one who +has ever really wanted me. I daresay I shan't make you happy. I daresay +I shall break your heart. God help me, I daresay I shall put my +convenience before your happiness, my selfish whims before your health. +I have always put myself first. But risk it. Risk it, Magdalen. Take me +back. Love me. For God's sake marry me." + +Each looked into the other's bared soul. + +Something in his desperate face which she had always sought for, which +had always been missing from it--she found. + +"I will," she said. + +They made no movement towards each other. They had reached a spiritual +nearness, a passion of surrender each to each, which touch of hand or +lip could only at that moment have served to lessen. + +"You are not taking me out of pity? You are sure you can still love me a +little?" + +"More than in the early days," she said. "For you have not only come to +me, Everard. You have come to yourself." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + Me, too, with mastering charm + From husks of dead days freeing, + The sun draws up to be warm + And to bloom in this sweet hour. + The stem of all my being + Waited to bear this flower. + + --LAURENCE BINYON. + + +It would be hardly possible to describe the unholy, the unmeasured +rejoicing to which Magdalen's engagement gave rise in her family. It is, +perhaps, enough to say that the twenty years of her cheerful, selfless +devotion to the domestic hearth had never won from her father and her +two aunts anything like the admiring approval which her engagement at +once elicited. The neighbourhood was interested. Lord Lossiemouth was a +brilliant match for anyone (if you left out the man himself). The +announcement read impressively in the _Morning Post_. The neighbours +remembered that there had been a youthful attachment, an early +engagement broken off owing to lack of means. And now it seemed the +moment he was rich he had come flying back to cast his faithful heart +once more at her feet. It was a real romance. Magdalen was considered an +extraordinarily fortunate woman by the whole countryside, but Lord +Lossiemouth was placed on a pedestal. What touching constancy. What +beautiful fidelity. What a contrast to "most men." "Not one man in a +hundred would have acted in that chivalrous manner," was the feminine +verdict of Hampshire. + +A wave of cheap sentiment overflowed the Bellairs family, in which +Colonel Bellairs floated complacently like a piece of loose seaweed, and +in which even Aunt Mary underwent a dignified undulation. + +Bessie alone was unmoved. + +"You said, 'Yes' too soon," she remarked to Magdalen in private. "I +should never have thought you would be so lacking in true dignity. He +goes away for fifteen years and I should not wonder a bit if he had +thought of someone else in the interim for all you know to the +contrary--men are like that--and then he just lounges in and says 'Marry +me,' and you agree in a second. You might at any rate have made him wait +for his answer till after tea. In my opinion you have made yourself +cheap by such precipitate action. He thinks he has only got to ask, and +he can have." + +Magdalen did not answer. + +"I don't understand you," continued the pained monitor. "I have always +had a certain respect for you, Magdalen, and when he came back I +supposed you would give in to him in time if he pressed you without +intermission, and was constant for a considerable period--say a couple +of years; but I never thought it possible you would collapse like this. +I fear you have not taken his character sufficiently into consideration. +If I were in your place I should be afraid that Everard would not allow +my nature free scope, or take an interest in my mental development, and +that the sacrifices which make domestic life tolerable might have to be +all on my side. He is absolutely unworthy of you, and his nose is quite +thick. I daresay you have not remarked it, but I did at once. And in my +opinion he ought for his own good to have been made to _realise_ it. +Even Aunt Mary, though she says she entirely approves of the marriage, +admits that you have shown too much eagerness." + +Fortunately for Magdalen the interest of the neighbours, and even of her +own family, was speedily diverted to another channel by the return of +Wentworth and Michael to Barford. The enthusiastic welcome which Michael +received from all classes, and from distant families who had never +evinced much cordiality to his elder brother, astonished Wentworth, +touched him to the quick. + +"I had no idea we had so many friends," he said repeatedly. + +Michael smiled vaguely and took everything for granted. Wentworth was so +anxious to shield him from fatigue and excitement that at first he was +only too thankful that Michael took everything so quietly. But after a +few days he became uneasy at his brother's inertness of mind and body. A +great doctor, however, explained Michael's state very much as the +Italian doctor had done. He was in an exhausted condition. What was +essential to him was rest. He must not be made to see anyone or do +anything he did not like. + +"Your brother will regain his health entirely," the great man had said, +"if he is left in peace, and nothing happens to overexcite him. He is +worn to a shadow by that accursed prison. Many men in his condition +can't rest. Then they die. He can. He has the temperament that +acquiesces. He will cure himself if he is left alone. Let him lie in +the sun, and give nature a chance." + +In spite of his anxiety Wentworth saw that Michael's bodily strength was +slowly returning. Every afternoon he left him half asleep in the sun, +and rode over to see Fay. Since she had accepted him it had become a +necessity to him to see her every day. + +Wentworth had long been bent to the dust under the pain of Michael's +imprisonment. Fay had been bent with anguish to the dust by the weight +of her own silence which had kept him there. + +And now in the twinkling of an eye they both stood erect, freed. Life +was transfigured for both at the same instant. + +This marvellous moment found them both just when they were deciding +mildly to love each other. It took them and flung them together in a +common overwhelming joy. It almost seemed as if the shock might make a +man of Wentworth. + +Did he half know (he was certainly always tacitly guarding himself +against the assumption of such an idea in the minds of others) that he +had so far been left out, not only from the whirl of life--he had +deliberately withdrawn from that--but from the weft of life itself. The +great loom had not swept him in. It had not appeared to need him. Some +of us seem to hang on the fringe of life, of thought, of love, of +everything. We are not for good or ill interwoven into the stuff, part +of the pattern. + +Wentworth felt young for the first time in his life, happy for the first +time in his life, really energetic for the first time. A certain languid +fatigue which had been with him from boyhood, which had always lain +mournfully on its back waving its legs in the air like a reversed +Battle, had now been jolted right side upper-most, and was using those +legs, not as proofs of the emptiness of the world, but as a means of +locomotion. + +He had at first been enormously raised in his own self-esteem by his +engagement to a young and beautiful woman. He was permanently relieved +from the necessity of accounting to his friends for the fact that he was +still unmarried, reminding them that it was his own fault. Perhaps at +the bottom of his heart a fear lurked, implanted by the brutal Grenfell, +that he was going to be an old maid. That fear was now dispelled. It was +mercifully hidden from Wentworth that Grenfell and the Bishop and most +of his so-called friends would still so regard him even if he were +married. + +But gradually and insensibly the many petty reasons for satisfaction +which his engagement to Fay had given him, and even the delight in being +loved, were overshadowed by a greater presence. + +At first they had never been silent together. Wentworth liked to hear +his own voice, and prosed stolidly on for hours with exquisite enjoyment +and an eye to Fay's education at the same time, about his plans, his +aspirations, his past life (not that he had had one), the hollowness of +society (not that he knew anything about it), a man's need of solitude, +and the solace of a woman's devotion, its softening effect on a life +devoted hitherto, perhaps, too entirely to intellectual pursuits. + +Fay did not listen to him very closely. She felt that his mind soared +beyond her ken. But she was greatly impressed, and repeated little bits +of what he had said to Magdalen afterwards. And she looked at him with +rapt adoration. + +"Wentworth says that consideration in little things is what makes the +happiness of married life," she would announce pontifically. + +"How true!" + +"And he says social life ought to be simplified." + +"Indeed! Does he happen to mention how it is to be done?" + +"He says it ought to be regulated, and that everyone ought to be at +liberty to lead their own life, and not to be expected to attend cricket +matches and garden parties, if you are so constituted that you don't +find pleasure in them. I used to think I liked garden parties, Magdalen, +but I see I don't now. I care more for the big things of life now. Does +Everard ever talk to you like that when you and he are alone?" + +"Never. Never." + +"And Andrea never did, either. Wentworth is simply wonderful. You should +hear him speak about fame being shallow, and how the quiet mind looking +at things truly is everything, and peace not being to be found in the +market place, but in a walk by a stream, and how in his eyes a woman's +love outweighs the idle glitter of a social success. Oh! Magdalen, I'm +beginning to feel I'm not worthy of Wentworth. I've always liked being +admired, so different from him. I did not know there were men so +high-minded as he. He makes me feel very petty beside him. And he is so +humble. He says I must not idealise him, that he does not _wish_ it, for +though he may not be worse or better than I think he is only too +conscious of his many deficiencies. But I can't help it. Who could?" + +And Fay let fall a tear. + +"We needs must love the highest when we see it." + +But the highest some of us can see is the nearest molehill. + +What Michael and the Duke had failed to do for Fay Wentworth was +accomplishing. + +"You are made for each other," said Magdalen, with conviction. "Every +day shows me that you and Wentworth bring out the best in each other. +Perhaps, gradually, you will keep nothing back from each other, tell +each other everything." + +"He tells me everything now," said Fay. "He trusts me entirely." + +"And you?" said Magdalen. "Do you tell him everything?" + + * * * * * + +Wentworth, too, had reached the conviction that he and Fay were made for +each other. He might have starved out the deeper love, the truth and +tenderness of a sincerer nature, if it had been drawn towards him. He +had often imagined himself as being the recipient of the lavished +devotion of a woman beautiful, humble, exquisite and noble, whose truth +was truth itself, and had vaguely wondered why she had not come into his +life. But perhaps if he had met such a woman, and if she had loved him +as he pined to be loved, he would have become suspicious of her, and +would have left her after many vacillations. He did not instinctively +recognise humility and nobility when he met them, because they bore but +slight resemblance to the stiff lay figures which represented those +qualities in his mind. To meet them in reality would have been to him +bewilderment, disappointment, disillusion. + +Fay was not only what he seemed to want, what he had feebly longed for. +She was more than this. Her nature was the complement of his. A lack of +shrewdness, of mental grasp, a certain silliness were absolutely +essential to the maintenance of a lifelong devotion to him. Wentworth +had found the right woman to give him what he wanted. Fay had found the +right man. + +Love, which had been knocking urgently at their doors for so many futile +years, heard at last a movement as of someone stirring within, and a +hand upon the disused latch. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + O Yanna, Adrianna, + They buried me away + In the blue fathoms of the deep, + Beyond the outer bay. + + But in the Yule, O Yanna, + Up from the round dim sea + And reeling dungeons of the fog + I am come back to thee! + + --BLISS CARMAN. + + +Wentworth stood at the open window of the library watching Michael. + +Michael was lying on a deck chair on the terrace playing with a puppy. +His face was losing a certain grey drawn look which it had worn since he +had left prison. He looked more like himself since his hair had time to +grow. Wentworth felt that he ought to be reassured about him, but a +vague anxiety harassed him. + +Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the puppy fell asleep. Michael +made a movement to reach it, but it was just beyond his grasp. + +In an instant Wentworth was beside him, lifting the sleeping mass of +sleek fat on to Michael's knee. Michael's long hands made a little crib +for it. + +"He will sleep now for a bit," he said contentedly. + +"Do _you_ sleep better?" said Wentworth. He had not forgotten those +first nights at Venice when Michael's feeble step had dragged itself to +and fro in the next room half the night. + +"I sleep like a top. I'm asleep half the time." + +"You are much better the last few days." + +"Oh! I'm all right." + +"All Hampshire has been to call. I knew you would be bored, so I did not +let them disturb you." + +"Thanks." + +"Is there anyone you would like to see?" + +"No one that I know of." + +"No one at _all_?" + +Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth. + +"I should like very much to see--presently--if it could be done----" + +"Yes," said Wentworth eagerly. "Of _course_ it can be done, my dear boy. +You would like to see?" + +"Doctor Filippi," said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "He +was so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all the +time. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for his +holiday. He generally takes it in June. And--let me see--it's May now, +isn't it?" + +Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousy +was of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of the +two emotions was jealousy. + +"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present," he said coldly. +"I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose at +your wish a week ago." + +"Y-yes." + +"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his own +friends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be putting +him to expense." + +Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer. + +Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, +callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed--egotism revolted +Wentworth--that he would _never_ ask to see Wentworth's future wife, the +woman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michael +himself. + +"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devoted +friend of yours, whom you might like to see again." + +Wentworth spoke with deliberation. + +"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense," said Michael +in a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had not +left the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had not +penetrated to it. + +Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part of +the sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurred +faculties. + +"An old friend of mine," he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?" + +"Fay," said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fay +_entirely_? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Her +great goodness to you? And what she is to _me_!" + +"No," said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Her goodness to me. How she +tried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget." + +"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning. +You need not see Magdalen unless you like." + +"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as if +I had heard someone say so." + +"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, +ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not +care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. +But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart +from the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank that +it is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its way +of looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered her +superficial. But I never thought her mercenary--till now. But Fay----" + +"I will see her, too," said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thought +of Fay as--as--but my mind gets so confused--as at a great distance, +quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in +England. Left Italy for good." + +"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told you +so over and over again. I go and see her every day." + +"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can go +by Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as time +passes on." + +Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctor +had most solemnly assured him that his mind was only muffled and +deadened by his physical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworth +as if his brother's brain were softening. + +He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont to +grip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-blooded +shadow; was this all that was left of his brother? + +A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protective +tenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother's +emaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coarse labour, and +scarred and discoloured at the wrist. + +"Get well, Michael," he said huskily. + +Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily. + +Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the grass, +and Wentworth took back his hand instantly. + +"The Duchess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library." + +"Are you quite sure that you _really_ wish to see them--that it will not +tire you?" said Wentworth. + +"Quite sure." + +"I will bring them out." + +"No. Send one at a time. Fay first." + +Michael lay back and closed his eyes. + + * * * * * + +On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, +Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, she +had got over that, but with something more like fear. + +The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by its +appearance of brittleness. To Magdalen Fay's present joy seemed like a +bit of Venetian glass on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child's +elbow. + +It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand the +_insouciance_ which looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative. +The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay's +spirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem to +disturb her growing love for him. + +Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. The +whortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of pale +golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines. + +Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this +underfoot forest. + +Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a +spray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it. + +"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest with +eggs in it," she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds, +Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. I +shall hurt it unless I'm careful." + +She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmering +whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly still +clinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it the +butterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, +opening and shutting its wings. + +It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's +heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose to +her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. What +use, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf +ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace? + +The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may +not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes. + +As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the tree +trunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon between +the blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed from +the sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that it +is laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears an +overflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant, +perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first spring +tide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now in +that little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked but +yesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bitter +tides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now that +at last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, the +seeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tide +of white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presently +inundate her heart. + +Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals from +without--all would go well. + + * * * * * + +At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminent +Fay's _insouciance_ began, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs of +collapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford. + +"Come out with me," she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at her +sister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for a +few minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely and +resolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had been +obliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair. + +Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, but +Michael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, however +light, that has trodden on our heart. + +The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes. + +Fay was standing before him. + +And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. She +looked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the last +verge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. +She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquil +steady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, of +the Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And his +hands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was going +to look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fay +experienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking in +long, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearly +fallen over a dead body. + +The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him without +a word, shrinking, transfixed. + +He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, +that he might keep suffering from her. Fay's self torture, her +protracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it were +anew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during the +heedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock of +Michael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggard +lines of remorse and despair. + +He had not been able to shield her from pain after all. + +"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered." + +"No one knows what it has been," she said hoarsely, sinking into a +chair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. +I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it." + +"You will never have to bear it again," he said with compassion. "It is +over and done with. You are going to be happy now." + +"You have suffered too," she said, reddening. + +"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you had +felt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have." + +"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. +"Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?" + +The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?" +But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, +but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, +that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, +feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. The +excuses, the lies, these shadows of the mind will vanish the moment +Love lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, their +semblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark. + +Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spirit +was alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could not +follow. + +"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?" +said Fay again, wounded to the quick. + +She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long +look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at +being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of +compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting +between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that +they have never met. + +"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free," he said tranquilly, +smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant she +looks!" + +When Magdalen and Fay had departed, and Wentworth had seen them to the +carriage, he came back and sat down by Michael. + +"Not over-tired?" he said, smiling self-consciously, and poking holes in +the turf with his stick. + +"Not in the least." + +"She was looking a little pale to-day." It was obvious that he wished to +talk about Fay. + +"She is more beautiful than ever," said Michael, willing to give his +brother a leg-up. + +"Isn't she!" said the affianced lover expansively. "But it isn't her +beauty I love most, it is her _character_. She is so feminine, so +receptive, so appreciative of the deeper side of life, so absolutely +devoted. Her heart has been awakened for the first time, Michael. She +has, I feel sure, never been loved before as I loved her." + +"I imagine not." + +"I can't believe she ever cared for the Duke. I saw him once, and he +gave me the impression of a very cold-blooded individual." + +"I don't think he was cold-blooded." + +"Evidently not the kind of man capable of drawing the best out of a +woman like Fay." + +"Perhaps not." + +The man who felt himself capable of this feat prodded a daisy and then +went on: + +"You used to see a good deal of them in Rome before--while you were +_attaché_ there. Did you gather that it was a happy marriage, a true +union?" + +"Not very happy." + +"I daresay he was selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the crux +in married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shall +find my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object to +guard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculine +impulse to shield and protect is very strongly developed in me." + +"It is sometimes difficult to guard people," said Michael half to +himself. + +"I hope some day," Wentworth went on shyly, colouring under his tan, +"your turn may come, that you may meet the right woman, and feel as I do +now. It will be a revelation to you. I am afraid it may seem exaggerated +in a person like myself, who am essentially a man's man. (This was a +favourite illusion of Wentworth's.) But some day you will understand, +and you will find as I have done that love is not just slothfully +accepting a woman's slavish devotion." + +"Indeed!" + +"No, Michael, believe me, it is something far greater. It is living not +only for self, but as for her sake. To take trouble to win the smile of +one we love, to gladly forego one's momentary pleasures, one's +convenience, in order to serve her. That is the best reward of life." + +Michael's eyes filled with tears. He felt a hundred years older than +Wentworth at that moment. A tender pained compassion welled up within +him. And with it came a new protective comprehension of the man beside +him who had cherished him from his childhood onwards. + +He put out his hand and gripped Wentworth's. + +"God bless you, Wenty," he said. + +And for a moment they who were so far apart seemed very near together. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + She sees no tears, + Or any tone + Of thy deep groan + She hears: + Nor does she mind + Or think on't now + That ever thou + Wast kind. + + --HERRICK. + + +It quickly became plain to Magdalen that Fay's peace of mind had been +shaken by her interview with Michael. She had vouchsafed no word +concerning it on her way home. But in the days that followed she +appeared ill at ease, and a vague and increasing unrest seemed to +possess her. Magdalen doubted whether she had as yet asked herself what +it was that was disturbing her tranquillity. But it was at any rate +obvious that she shrank from seeing Michael again, and that she was at +times dejected in Wentworth's presence. + +Wentworth perceived the change in her, and attributed it to a most +natural and pardonable jealousy of Michael to which, while he made the +fullest allowance for it, he had no inclination to yield. + +Michael had for a moment seemed to take more interest in life after +Fay's visit, and although he had quickly relapsed into apathy Wentworth +told himself that he was anxious to foster this nascent interest by +another meeting between him and Fay. At the same time he desired to +rehearse the part of central figure poised between two great devotions +which was to be his agreeable _rôle_ in the future. For Michael would of +course live with them after his marriage with Fay. And if there were any +ebullitions of jealousy between Fay and Michael--Wentworth dwelt with +complacency on the possibility--he felt competent to deal with them with +tact and magnanimity, reassuring each in turn as to their equal share in +his affections. + +Michael at any rate showed no disinclination to meet Fay again, and even +evinced something verging on a desire to see Magdalen. And presently +Wentworth arranged to drive him over to luncheon at Priesthope. +Throughout life he had always liked to settle, even in the most trivial +matters, what Michael should do, with whom he should associate. The +situation was not new, nor was there any novelty in Michael's +pliability. + +But when the day came Wentworth arrived without his brother, and +evidently out of temper. Magdalen asked if Michael were less well, and +was curtly assured that he was steadily improving. The luncheon dragged +through somehow as under a cloud. Colonel Bellairs was fortunately +absent on a visit to Miss Barnett at Saundersfoot. His absence was the +only silver lining to the cloud. Fay hardly spoke. Magdalen was thankful +that her prickly Lord Lossiemouth had departed the day before. + +After luncheon, when they were sitting on the terrace over their coffee, +Bessie left them, and Magdalen was about to do the same, when Wentworth +said suddenly: + +"I left Michael with the Bishop of Lostford. That is why he is not here +now. The Bishop is inducting the new Rector of Wrigley this afternoon, +and he sent a wire this morning--he is always doing things at the last +moment--he never considers others--to say that he would call at Barford +on his way to see Michael. Michael is his godson, and he has always been +fond of him. I left them together." + +Magdalen and Fay sipped their coffee in silence. + +"Michael had been as inert and apathetic as usual," continued Wentworth +sullenly, "until the Bishop appeared. The Bishop took him off into the +garden, though I said I did not like his going out so soon after +dressing--he was only just up--and it was perfectly plain they did not +want me. I believe that was why they went out. I was of no account. The +Bishop has always been like that, your friend one day, and oblivious of +you the next. But he and Michael seemed to have a great deal to say to +each other. I watched them from the library walking up and down. Michael +can walk quite well when he wants to. Then when the victoria came +round--I thought he would find that less fatiguing than the dogcart--I +went to tell him that it was time to start, but he only stared vaguely +at me, and the Bishop took his arm and said that you must excuse him for +this once, as he did not mean to let him go at that moment. So I came +away without him." + +"There will be many more opportunities of seeing us, and one must clutch +what few chances one can of seeing the Bishop," said Magdalen. + +"When I went to warn Michael that the carriage was there," continued +Wentworth, "he did not see me till I was quite near--there was a bush +between--and I could not help hearing him say, 'That was half an hour +before I was arrested.'" + +There was an uneasy silence. + +"It seems," said Wentworth with exceeding bitterness, "that I have not +Michael's confidence. The Bishop has it, but I, his only brother. Oh, +no. He can talk to the Bishop about his imprisonment, but to me--not a +word, not a single word. At first when we were together at Venice I +asked him quietly about it once or twice. I asked him why he had never +said a word to _me_ about it at the time, why he had not confided to me +at any rate that he was shielding the Marchesa, but I soon saw that the +subject distressed him. He always became confused, and he never would +reply. Once, since we were back at Barford, when he seemed clearer, I +asked him most earnestly to tell me one thing, whether he actually +witnessed the murder of the Marchese by his wife, as she supposed, and +what had first put it into his head to take the blame on himself. But it +seemed that any allusion to the subject exhausted and worried him. I +said to him at last: 'Do you still hate talking of it as much as ever?' +And he said 'yes.' I could understand that, and from that day to this I +never alluded to it again. But though he won't say a word to me, it +seems he can to others." + +The miserable jealousy in Wentworth's face touched Magdalen. + +"He knew you had strained every nerve to save him," said Wentworth, +turning to Fay. "Has he ever shown his gratitude for what you tried to +do for him?" + +"N-no," stammered Fay. + +"His imprisonment has changed his nature, that is what it is. He went in +alive, and he has come out dead. He has ceased to care for anything or +anyone. He has been killed by inches. He was so affectionate as a boy. I +was father and mother to him. He used to trot after me like a little +dog. And if anyone had his whole confidence I had. I was everything to +him. My one fear of marrying has always been that he might feel pained +at seeing another person first with me." (Wentworth had never had this +altruistic misgiving, but he stated it with conviction.) "But now he is +not the same. I suppose he still has some affection for me. He shows it +sometimes by a kind of effort. He seemed to wake up a bit after you came +over, Fay. I think he had a sort of glimpse from things I said to him of +what love can be, and just for a moment he was more like his old self, +and appeared to enter into my feelings. But he soon sank back again. As +often as not he seems to shrink from any real conversation. We sometimes +sit whole evenings together without speaking. He does not really want me +any more, or anyone. He talked at first a little about the Italian +doctor, but he never mentions him now. And as for my marriage, as for +being distressed by my caring for someone else," resentfully, "he is +absolutely indifferent. You would think that Fay and I, the two people +of all others who have done most for him, who have grieved most over +him, who have shown him most affection, were nothing to him." + +There was a ghastly silence. + +"I don't blame him," said Wentworth with something nearer passion than +he had ever experienced before, in which even his petty jealousy was +momentarily extinguished. "At least, I can't look at him and remain +angry with him. It breaks my heart to see him like this, so callous, so +regardless of all I have suffered on his account. I don't blame him. He +is not himself. His brain is weakened by his poor body. No. The person I +do blame is that accursed woman who allowed him to suffer for her, who +skulked behind him for two endless years, who let him sacrifice his life +for hers, who never had the courage to say the word, and take her crime +upon herself, and get him out of his living grave." + +Fay became cold as death in the May sunshine. What ghost was this which +was taking form before her? What voice was this, how could it be +Wentworth's voice, which was saying at last aloud with passion what that +other accusing voice within had so hoarsely, so persistently whispered +from its cell, during the long years? Her brain reeled. + +"The Marchesa did repent," said Magdalen. + +Wentworth laughed harshly. + +"Oh, yes. On her deathbed, in order to save her soul. She wanted to be +right with the next world. But how could she go on, year in year out, +letting him burn and freeze alternately in that vile cell? She must have +known, someone must have told her, what his life was like. How well I +remember, Fay, your saying: 'Why does not the real murderer confess? How +can he go on letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, +bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?' How little we both knew. +I always supposed the assassin was a man, a common criminal of the +lowest order. Yet it seems there are women in the world, educated, +refined women, who can remorselessly pinch a man's life out of him with +their white hands. The Marchesa has murdered two people, first her +husband, and then my boy, my foolish, quixotic, generous Michael. May +God forgive her! I never will!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + + Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir. + + --A. DE MUSSET. + + +In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signs +of reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and with +fatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But his +languid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His face +took on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly saw +something with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a look +sometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, when +an echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they once +lived, which they have well nigh forgotten. + +Michael's body, which had so far profited by the inertness of his +faculties, resented the change, and gave unmistakable signs of +relinquishing the slight degree of strength it had regained. + +Wentworth became suddenly frantically anxious once more, and in a moment +the wrongs on which he was brooding were forgotten. He decided to go to +London the same day under the guise of business, and to consult the +great doctor privately about Michael, perhaps arrange to bring him back +with him. + +"I wish you would drive oftener," he said to Michael before he left. +"It's much better for you than walking up and down. Why not, if you feel +inclined, as you will be alone all day, drive over to Priesthope this +afternoon. I said you would come the first day you could. It's only four +miles, just an easy little drive." + +An indefinable change passed over Michael's vacant face at the mention +of Priesthope. His eyes became fixed. He looked gravely at his brother, +as if the latter had solved some difficult problem. + +"It's a good idea," he said slowly. "I ought to have gone before, +but----" + +"The Bishop stopped you most inconsiderately last time." + +"Did he? I don't remember being stopped. Oh! yes, yes, I do. But if I +_had_ gone that day---- But anyhow I will go to-day." + + * * * * * + +Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending to +read, when Michael was announced. + +When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness +and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked +ill, and as if she had not slept. + +"I ought to have come before," he said mechanically, making a great +mental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, +but----" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what he +intended to say. + +"The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you," said +Fay drearily. Every word that Wentworth had said that afternoon was +still echoing discordantly in her brain. + +"That's it. The Bishop," said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had a +long talk"--his mind was clearing rapidly--"how you meant to save me." + +"Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. +"But the Marchesa, the same day--it was in the papers." + +"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you +had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, +and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware +you--had thought of it." + +"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me +a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And--oh, Michael, +you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you--you +_could_, you know--to stop my marrying Wentworth?" + +Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn. + +"When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, +"do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all +over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then +I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not +forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another +man's wife. Now that we meet again--_the position is the same_." + +Fay looked at Michael. + +The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish +that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him +first as a lad, which she had _twice_ extinguished, was in his eyes +again. There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when +they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something +exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through +her, beyond her. + +"And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for +then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to +marry a man you--Oh! Fay, you _do_ care for Wentworth, don't you?" + +"I would not have kept _him_ in prison for a day," she said, and hid her +face in her hands. + +If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her +with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her +agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill +to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her +heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for +her, for Michael possibly, but not for her. + +"Wentworth is worth caring for," said Michael. "Not worth caring for in +part, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring for +_altogether_. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyone +in the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop his +marrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid of +his marriage with you being stopped." + +Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him. + +"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen +about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has +always waited to see whether things will come to him of themselves, and +then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them +away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all +the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away +from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over +again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out +for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people _do_; he +has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop +stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth +has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The +Bishop said we must remember that, and that if--anything happened to +shake his--his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it +would be cruelly hard on him." + +"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?" + +"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since--since +the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know +what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid +and muddle-headed since I've been in--in _Italy_ that I _can't_ remember +what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in +absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such +odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He +often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, +all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I +think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out +of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?" + +"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done for +you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a +lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words." + +"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only +one, that perhaps there may be some more?" + +There was a long pause. + +"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'm _sure_ he +will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a +great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him." + +Fay turned her quivering face towards him. + +"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm so +thankful it was _you_, and not him." + +"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked with +your own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs--to +_himself_." + +In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things about +the man she loved. + +"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let me +stay--in Italy." + +"I'd give anything I have," she said with a sob; "I'd give both my +hands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinks +so much of, I'd give anything if only I had not--done that, if I could +only undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't done +it, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. And +then the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what I was doing. +But since you came back I've _seen_; since I loved Wentworth I've +_seen_--what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got in +the way, and left you to die." + +He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguished +realisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her through +love for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawn +her, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his. + +"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out for +his sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while you +were shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I only +tried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of it +any longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself--till now. I see +now that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentle +and loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael. +You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael, _must +Wentworth pay too_?" + +Michael looked at her with compassion. "I am afraid he must. But do not +let him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in your +power to save him part of the--the expense. Let him pay the lesser price +instead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out." + +Silence. + +"It is the only thing to do, Fay." + +No answer. + +"I am afraid you do not love him after all," said the inexorable voice. + +Again silence. + +Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenched +hands between both of his. + +"Love him a little more," he said. "Take the risk and tell him +everything--while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgive +me if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enough +to risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because you +found the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, +because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me," Michael's voice shook, +"it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed." +His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. You +wouldn't if you--if you knew what it was like." + + * * * * * + +Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face on +the sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretched +arms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucified +anew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or of +fear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death. + +Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, to +pierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so late +but come at last, to help her in her sore need? + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + His own thought drove him like a goad.--TENNYSON. + + +"Now," said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustled +down here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. I +calculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that's +worrying you?" + +Michael did not answer. + +The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly. + +"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We are +all in the same steam launch." + +"I don't want anything, thanks." + +"In love?" + +"No." + +"Quite sure? I have always observed that people who are in love are +desperately offended at the bare supposition that such a thing is +possible. Things might be arranged, you know. Young women aren't +intended by nature to live single any more than you are. Would a few +weeks in London meet the case? The season's just beginning. No theatres, +of course, and no late hours. Your brother here seems made of money, +though he will soon be ruined if he goes on sending for me. For I always +charge double if I'm sent for unnecessarily. Come, sir, what _do_ you +want?" + +"I don't know," said Michael, half amused. He was still exhausted by his +expedition to Priesthope of the previous day. "I don't want anything, +thanks. I'm--all right." + +"What do you say to a change?" + +"I had not thought of that," said Michael with a flicker of interest. +"Now you mention it--yes. That's the very thing. I should like--a +change." + +Wentworth came forward at once. + +"Norway?" he said eagerly, "or Switzerland. We must be guided by you, +doctor. Or a yacht? You used to be fond of yachting, Michael. We will go +anywhere you like." + +Michael's face fell. + +The doctor leaned back and examined his finger tips. He had seen what he +wanted. + +"The yacht won't do," he said with decision. "And Norway's out of the +question. Much too far. In fact, there's only one place that will do." + +"Where is that?" said Wentworth. + +"I don't know yet. Where is it, Mr. Carstairs?" + +"I should like," said Michael, colouring painfully, for he knew he was +going to hurt Wentworth, "I should like to go to Lostford; not for long, +just for a little bit." + +"Lostford!" exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. "Lostford, down in that hole. +Oh! no." + +"Well, and why not Lostford?" said the doctor with asperity. "Mr. +Carstairs shows his sense. He is not up to a long journey. Quite near. +Interesting cathedral. Cultivated society. I should have suggested +Lostford myself if he had not." + +"I will ride over and take rooms at the 'Prince Consort' to-day," said +Wentworth meekly. + +"You will do no such thing. Are you taking leave of your senses. Your +brother is not fit to stay in a rackety hotel." + +"The Bishop has asked me," said Michael faintly, "to spend a week or two +with him whenever I like. I believe--it's very quiet there." + +"The Bishop!" said Wentworth. "It would be far from quiet at the Palace. +Worse than an hotel. The Bishop lives in a perpetual turmoil." + +Then he suddenly stopped short, and became very red. Michael preferred +the Bishop to himself. + +"It's a good idea," said the doctor. "I know the Bishop. Splendid man. +The best of company." He got up with decision. "My orders are, Mr. +Carstairs, that you proceed to Lostford without delay. How far is it? +Six miles. Go to-morrow." Then he turned to Wentworth. "You will go over +and see him in a week's time, and report to me." + +"You think him worse," said Wentworth nervously to the doctor in the +hall. + +"No," said the doctor emphatically, watching his motor sliding to the +door, "but he is not better. He is anxious about something, and he can't +afford to be anxious. He is not in a fit state to have a finger ache +with impunity." + +"He has nothing to be anxious about," said Wentworth. "And if he had a +trouble I should be the first to hear of it. I have his entire +confidence--at least, I had till lately. I must own he has become very +changed of late. Of course, I never appear to notice it, but----" + +"Quite right. Quite right. I wish others were as sagacious as you are. +Let him go to Lostford for a week or two--and get you off his nerves," +the doctor added to himself as the motor shot down the beech avenue. + + * * * * * + +A few days later Wentworth was sitting idly watching the stream of +Piccadilly from the windows of his club. The same day that Michael had +gone to Lostford he had discovered that he had business in London. He +would have found it difficult to say what his business there was. But +one of Wentworth's many theories about himself was that he was a very +busy man. He had so constantly given "urgent business" as a reason for +evading uncongenial social engagements that he had finished by believing +himself to be overwhelmed with arduous affairs. So he went to London, +and visited a publisher anent his forthcoming history of Sussex, and +dined with a man whom he met at Lord's, whom he had not seen for years, +and wrote daily to Fay, expressing ardent but vague hopes that he might +be able to "get away" from London by the end of the week. + +He was in no hurry to return. + +A vague fear of something grievously amiss with Michael, he knew not +what; an unformulated anxiety weighed upon him. And he was jealous. +Jealousy had brought him up to London. He was not going to remain +deserted at Barford. Jealousy was keeping him there now. He had seen +that Michael was glad to get away from him, that he had caught at the +doctor's suggestion of a change. His sullen heart was very sore about +Michael. Why did he _want_ to leave him? Where would he meet anyone more +devoted to him than himself? What could any man do for another that he +had not done for Michael? Was it true then, after all, what he had so +often heard was the fate of men of deep affections like himself, that +they give all, and are given nothing in return. + +A sudden exclamation made him look up. + +"Why, Maine, is it you?" + +A tall, bald man was holding out his hand to him. For a moment Wentworth +did not recognise him. Then he remembered him. Lord John Alington. + +He shook hands with tepid civility, but Lord John always mistook a +pained recognition for an enthusiastic welcome. He drew up a chair at +once. + +"Now this is what I call luck," he said, his red face beaming. "And so +your brother is freed at last. Only heard the news when I landed from +Norway a week ago. I congratulate you with my whole heart. I never was +so glad about anything before." And Lord John sawed Wentworth's limp +hand up and down. + +"I was present, you know," he went on. "Made a great impression on me. +Sobered me for a long time I can tell you. I saw Carstairs come forward +and give himself up. Never had such a shock in my life." + +"I remember now you were there." + +"Rather. And I was dead certain from the first that he had never done +it. I always said so. And now at last the mystery is cleared up. And I +was proved right. He hadn't. But fancy shielding that old Marchesa with +her long teeth. Why, she was forty if she was a day. Who would ever have +thought of it!" + +"No one did," said Wentworth. + +"_I_ didn't. I may tell you frankly that I did _not_. The Marchesa! I +knew her. But it never so much as crossed my mind that she had massacred +her old hubby. 'Good God! The Marchesa!' Those were my exact words when +I heard a week ago. Is Carstairs in London? I should like just to shake +him by the hand." + +"He is not in town. He is still feeling the effects of his +imprisonment." + +"I should like to have seen him. It was my fault he was found you know. +I said 'Perhaps he's behind the screen.' Dreadfully sorry. Wish I +hadn't. Only my fun. Never thought he was there, or anyone. I've never +forgotten his coming out from behind the screen. But what I want to know +is," Lord John tapped Wentworth on the arm with his eyeglass, and +lowered his voice confidentially, "_why he ever went behind it_. That's +what has been puzzling me ever since I read the Marchesa's confession. +If he wanted to shield her, why the deuce did he hide at all? Why not +strike a noble attitude bang in the middle of the room--from the first?" + +Wentworth looked at him astonished. The vague suspicion of the last +weeks that Michael was concealing something from him was taking shape at +last. + +There was no doubt that Lord John had got hold of a listener. + +"No, no, Maine. When Carstairs was hiding behind the screen he was not +dying with anxiety to take the Marchesa's crime on his white +shoulders--not at that moment. That explanation don't wash. I believe I +know a better one." + +Wentworth became very red. + +"The Duchess's maid! Did you ever see her? No, evidently not. You've no +time for looking at young maids. Taken up with contemplating an old +maid in the glass. You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiest +little baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an iron +virtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't think +why. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints like +you. _I'm_ not, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? The +Marchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. +Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about the +house after everyone else had gone just for the same reason that I +was--to get a word with that little hussy?" + +At that moment a tall, middle-aged man came into the room, and Lord +John's roving eye fell upon him. He sprang to his feet. + +"Lossiemouth," he said, seizing the latter's unwilling hand. "Why, +you're the very man I wanted to see. Congratulations, my dear chap. All +my heart. Ship come in, and ancestral halls, and going to be married +too, all in one fell swoop. Know Miss Bellairs a little. Jumped with her +in the same skipping rope in childhood's happy hours, danced with her at +her first ball. Madly in love with her. Never seen her since." + +Wentworth escaped. + +The chamber of his soul had been long in readiness, swept and garnished +for the restless spirit that had returned to it--not alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + Est-il indispensable, qu'on s'élève à un point d'où le + devoir n'apparaisse plus comme un choix de nos sentiments + les plus nobles, mais comme une silencieuse nécessité de + toute notre nature. + + +The following afternoon Fay was sitting in the little morning-room at +Priesthope, trying to write a letter, a long, long letter. Wentworth's +last note to her, just arrived by the second post, was open before her, +telling her that he could not return for two days. And then the door +opened gently and he was before her. + +She turned a white, miserable face towards the door. Then as she +suddenly recognised him the colour rushed to her face, and she flew to +him with a cry and locked him in her arms, kissing his shoulder, his +coat, his hands. + +He was thunderstruck. Could a few days' absence so profoundly move these +delicate, emotional creatures, whom an all-wise Providence had made +almost too susceptible to masculine charm! He had never seen Fay like +this. But then, he had never seen anything like anything. She withdrew +herself suddenly, and stood a little apart, her face and neck one +carnation of soft shame. + +"But you are in London," she said, her lip quivering, her eyes falling +before his. "I have your own word for it that you are still in London." +And she pointed at his letter. "I was not expecting to see you." + +A joy so great that it was akin to pain laid its awakening hand on him. + +"I am glad you were not expecting me," he said, in a voice that he +hardly recognised as his own. "I'm thankful." + +And he drew her back into his arms more moved than he had ever been. + +Yes. He was loved. He loved and was loved. He had not known the world +contained anything as great as this. He had always thought that life at +its best was a solitary thing, that passion was a momentary madness with +which he did not care to tamper, that celibacy was a cheap price to pay +for his independence. But he and this woman were one. This was rest and +peace and joy and freedom. This was what he had always wanted, without +knowing he wanted it. One of the many barriers between them went down. +He thought it was the only one. + +They sat a long time in silence, his head against her breast. Her face +had become pinched and sharp, the lovely colour had faded. All its +beauty and youth had gone out of it. Her terrified eyes stared at the +wall. + +"Speak! Speak now," said the inner voice. "You were too late last time. +Speak now." + + * * * * * + +"I am very miserable, Fay," in a whisper against her cheek. + +Her arms tightened round him. + +"Not so miserable now I am with you, but----" + +It seemed to Fay that she was holding to her breast the point of the +sword that was to stab her to death. + +He raised his head, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. Twice +she had seen tears in those narrow grey eyes before: once when he had +talked to her of Michael in prison, and once when Michael was +exonerated. + +They had drawn a little apart. + +"When I came here I had not meant to tell you anything about it, I had +decided not to, but--Fay, I can't believe it, I haven't slept all night, +I have known for two days, I only found it out by the merest accident +that that has happened which I never thought could happen, something +impossible." Wentworth's lip quivered. "Michael has deceived me, not by +mistake, not just for a moment, but systematically, purposely--for +years." + +There was anger as well as pain in his voice. + +"It was about the murder of the Marchese," he said hoarsely, "but I +don't care what it was about. That is not the point. He has deceived me +for reasons of his own. I don't know what they were. And I am afraid, my +darling, he has not stopped there. I am afraid he has deceived you too. +I am afraid he hoodwinked you when he persuaded you to let him hide in +your room. Why did he hide if he wanted to shield the Marchesa? Don't +you see that there was no sense in his hiding, though I never thought of +it till--lately? I always believed in him implicitly, as you have done. +I thought him just the kind of person who _would_ sacrifice himself for +a woman. I can understand doing it. It appeals to a nature like mine. I +was deeply hurt by his reserve about it, since he came home, but I never +thought, it never struck me for one single second that it concealed +anything discreditable." + +"It does not," said Fay suddenly. + +"My dearest, I am afraid there is no doubt it _does_. What was Michael +doing in the garden at that time of night. You forget that. I am the +last person in the world to think him capable of anything disgraceful, +but I can't resist the conclusion that he was waiting--Oh! Fay, your +ears ought not to be polluted by such things--was waiting about in the +garden because he was attracted by someone in the house." + +He felt her hand quiver in his. + +How womanly she was, how pure. How could any man have had the heart to +throw dust in those innocent eyes. He kissed the cold hand reverently. + +"I hate to speak of such a thing to you, and it somehow seems out of the +question when I think of Michael's character. I had brought him up so +carefully. I had impressed on him my own high code of morals from the +first. And yet--and yet--I am afraid, dearest, that Michael must have +been hanging about to have a word with--don't start so, why do you +tremble?--with your maid." + +There was a moment's silence. Fay shook her head. She was unable to +articulate. + +"Then why was he there? You must have been very much surprised and +alarmed at his coming to your room so late. And unless he had given you +some reason, you would not have tried to hide him. We always come back +to that. Fay, why _did_ Michael hide?" + +Fay struggled to speak. Her white lips moved, but no sound came forth. + +"You and the Duke tried to save him from being discovered. We all know +that. The Duke told me so himself." + +Another silence. Fay's face became convulsed. + +"You are no diplomatist, Fay, thank God. I see very well, my darling, +that you know more than you will say. It is plain to me that in the +goodness of your soul you are trying to shield Michael--_for the second +time_." + +He kissed her on the forehead and rose to go. + +"Stop!" said Fay, almost inarticulately. "It isn't the second time. I +didn't shield him last time. I let him slide. But I will now ... I want +to tell you ... I must tell you ... Michael has been here, he came when +you were away in London. And he has begged me,--Oh, Wentworth, he has +implored me to--tell you everything." + +Wentworth became very red. His face hardened. + +"_He_ has begged you to tell me! He has gone behind my back and tried to +depute you to do it, to plead his cause for him. He has not even the +courage to come to me himself. No, Fay, I am going. It is no use +imploring me to stay. I'm not going to listen to you making excuses for +him. I don't blame you, but you ought not to have agreed to do it. +Whatever I ought to know I must hear from Michael himself. I shall go +over and see him to-morrow morning. Even you, dearest, must not come +between--Michael and me." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + Aimer quelqu'un, c'est à la fois lui ôter le droit, et lui + donner la puissance de nous faire souffrir. + + +The following morning the Bishop and Michael were sitting in the library +at Lostford Palace. The Bishop was reading a letter, while Michael +watched him, sunk in an arm-chair. + +Presently the Bishop thrust out his under lip, and gave back the letter +to Michael. + +"Wentworth has dipped his pen in gall instead of in his inkpot," he +said. "For real quality and strength give me the venom of a virtuous +person. The ordinary sinner can't compete with him. Evil doers are out +of the running in this world as well as in the next. I often tell them +so. That is why I took orders. What do you suppose Wentworth suspects +when he says Alington has suggested a discreditable reason for your +being in the di Collo Alto villa that night, and that he is not going to +allow you to skulk behind a woman any longer? He will be here directly +to extort what he is pleased to call 'the truth.' What are you going to +say?" + +"I don't know," said Michael. "That is the worst of me. I never know." + +The Bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. + +"I see one thing," continued Michael, "and that is that it's all +important that he should not break with Fay." + +"That will be his first step--if he knows the truth." + +"I am afraid it will, and yet--that's the pity of it, she will last +longer than I shall, and he does like her--a little--which is a great +deal for him. You don't believe it, but he really does. And he'll want +her more than ever--when I'm gone." + +The Bishop looked keenly at his godson. + +Michael had never before alluded to his precarious hold on life. It was +obvious that he was only considering it now in its bearings on +Wentworth's future. + +"Can a man who has grown grey looking at himself in the glass, and +recording his own microscopic experiences in a diary, can such a man +_forgive_?" said the Bishop. "Forgiveness is tough work. It needs +knowledge of human nature. It needs humility. I forgave somebody once +long ago. And it nearly was the death of me. I've never been the same +man since." + +"Wentworth will have his chance," said Michael. "It's about all we can +do for him." + +"We all know he says he can, but then he says such a lot of things. He +dares to say he loves his fellow men. But I've never yet found that +assertion coincide with any real _working_ regard for them. There are +certain things which those who care for others never say, and that is +one of them. The egoist on the contrary is always asserting of himself +what he ought in common decency to leave others to say of him,--only +they never do. Wentworth actually told me not so long ago that he was +intent on the service of others. I told him it was for those others to +mention that interesting fact, and that nobody had lied about him to +that extent so far in my diocese." + +"He always says that there is perfect confidence between us," said +Michael. "I've heard him say so ever since I can remember, and I've +heard him tell people that I always brought him my boyish troubles. But +I never did, even as a boy, even when I got into a scrape at Eton. My +tutor stood by me in that. Wentworth never could endure him. He said he +was such a snob. But snob or not, he was a firm friend to me. And I +never told him even at the first of my love for Fay. I somehow could +not. You simply can't tell Wentworth things. But he has got it into his +head that I always have, and that this is the first time I have kept +anything from him. If I had only Fay's leave to tell him! It is the only +thing to do." + +The door opened, and to the astonishment of both men, Fay and Magdalen +came in. Fay looked as exhausted, as hopeless, as she had done three +months ago when Magdalen had brought her to make her confession to the +Bishop in this very room. + +She evidently remembered it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him and +said, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Do +you think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy on +me again, like He did before?" + +"Do you mean by God having mercy, that Wentworth will still marry you if +he knows the truth?" + +She did not answer. That was of course what she meant. + +She looked from one to the other of her three friends with a mute +imploring gaze. Their eyes fell before hers. + +"I have not slept all night," she said to the Bishop. "Magdalen stayed +with me. And we came quite early because I had to come. Wentworth must +be told. It isn't because Magdalen says so. She hasn't said so, though I +know she felt he ought to be told from the first. And it isn't because +he's sure to find out. And oh! Michael, it isn't for your sake, to put +you right with him. It ought to be, but it isn't. But I can't let him +kiss me any more, and not say. It makes a kind of pain I can't bear. It +has been getting worse and worse ever since Michael came back, only I +did not know what it was at first, and yesterday----" she stopped short, +shuddering. "He came to see me yesterday," she said in a strangled +voice. "He was so dear and good, so wonderful. There never was anyone +like him. It is in my heart that he will forgive me. And he trusts me +entirely. I can't deceive him any more." + +The eyes of Michael and Magdalen met in a kind of shame. Those two who +had loved her as no one else had loved her, who had understood her as no +one else had understood her, saw that they had misjudged her. They had +judged her by her actions, identified her with them. And all the time +the little trembling "pilgrim soul" in her was shrinking from the pain +of those very actions, was growing imperceptibly apart from them, was +beginning to regard them with horror, not because they had caused +suffering to others, but because they had ended by inflicting anguish +upon herself. The red-hot iron of our selfishness with which we brand +others becomes in time hot at both ends. We don't know at first what it +is that is hurting us, why it burns us. But our blistered hands, cling +as they will, must needs drop it at last. Fay's cruel little white hand +had let go. + +Michael took it in his and kissed it. + +"Wentworth is coming here this morning," said the Bishop gently. "He may +arrive at any moment. Stay here and speak to him. And ask him to forgive +you, Fay. You need his forgiveness." + +"I don't know how to tell him," gasped Fay. "I tried yesterday, and I +couldn't." + +"Let me tell him," said Michael, and as he spoke, the door opened once +more, and Wentworth was announced. + +He had got ready what he meant to say. The venomous sentences which he +had concocted during a sleepless night were all in order in his mind. + +Who shall say what grovelling suspicions, what sordid conjectures, had +blocked his inflamed mind as he drove swiftly across the downs in the +still June morning? He meant to extort an explanation from his brother, +to have the whole subject out with him once for all. He should not be +suffered to make Fay his accomplice for another hour. His tepid spirit +burned within him when he thought of Michael's behaviour to Fay. He said +to himself that he could forgive that least of all. + +He had expected to find Michael alone, or possibly the Bishop only with +him, the Bishop who _knew_. He was disconcerted at finding Fay and +Magdalen there before him. + +A horrible suspicion that Magdalen also knew darted across his mind. + +It was obvious to him that he had broken up a conference, a conspiracy. +His bitter face darkened still more. + +"I don't know what you are all plotting about so early in the morning," +he said. "I must apologise for interrupting you. I seem to be always in +the way now-a-days. People are always whispering behind my back. But I +have come over to see Michael. I want a few plain words with him without +delay, and I intend to have them." + +"That is well," said the Bishop, "because you are about to have them. We +were speaking of you when you came in." + +"I wish to see Michael alone," said Wentworth, stung by the Bishop's +instant admission of being in his brother's confidence. + +He looked only at Michael, who, his eyes on the ground, was leaning +white as death against the mantelpiece. + +"Do you wish us to go, Michael?" said the Bishop. + +"I wish you all to stay," he said, raising his eyes for a moment. His +hand shook so violently that he knocked over a little ornament on the +mantelpiece, and it fell with a crash into the fireplace. His voice +shook, too, but his eyes were steady. His great physical weakness, +poignantly apparent though it was, seemed a thing apart from him, like a +cloak which he might discard at any moment. + +"I cannot say all I have to say before others," said Wentworth fiercely, +"even if they are all his confederates in trying to keep me in the dark, +all, that is, except Fay. We know by experience that she can shield a +man who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know by +experience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes." + +"You have been kept in the dark," said the Bishop with compassion; "you +have not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive." + +In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense of +impending calamity. He looked again at Michael. + +Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembled +impotently. + +Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depths +to see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by the +first sight of him in his convict's blouse. + +"I always trusted you," he said with a groan, putting up his hand so as +to shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secret +you're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't _that_ I mind. It is +that--whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have kept +it from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely, +Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you should +treat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend." + +No one spoke. + +"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It's +rather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, what +I've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well know +for these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of your +own accord, what you have been persuaded to by this--this"--Wentworth +looked at the Bishop--"this outsider, this middle man." + +A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middle +man." + +"You have got to hear," said Michael, and the trembling left him. + +He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand on +the mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalen +for the first time saw a likeness between them. + +"I have kept things from you. You are right there," said Michael, +speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceived +you till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years before +that, I fell in love." + +Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment for +Michael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims. +He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightly +attracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if there +had been any attraction he should have been the first to know of it. Yet +the incredible truth was being thrust at him that Michael had struggled +through his first love without drawing upon the deep wells of +Wentworth's knowledge. + +"The woman I fell in love with was Fay. She was seventeen. I was +nineteen." + +The room went round with Wentworth. + +"Fay," he said, in blank astonishment, "Fay!" Then a glare of light +broke in on him. + +"Then it was she," he stammered, "not her maid, as that brute Alington +said--it was she--she herself that----" + +"It was her I went to see the night I was arrested. I was deeply in love +with her." + +Michael paused a moment, and then added gently, "She never cared for +me. I did not see that clearly at the time, because I was blinded by my +own passion. I have seen it since." + +Wentworth made no movement. + +"I decided to leave Rome. Fay wrote to me that I ought to go. I went to +say good-bye to her in the garden the night the Marchese was murdered. +While I was in the garden, the murder was discovered and the place was +surrounded, and I could not get away. I hid in Fay's boudoir. The Duke +came in and explained to Fay what had happened. It was the first I knew +of it. Then, when they searched the house and I saw that I must be +discovered in another moment, I came out and gave myself up as the +murderer, because I could not be found hiding in Fay's rooms at night. +It was the only thing to do." + +Fay took a long breath. What a simple explanation it seemed after all. +Why had she been so terrified? Wentworth could not blame her seriously +now. + +"I never tried to shield the Marchesa," Michael went on. "That was her +own idea. I only wanted to shield Fay from being--misconstrued. The Duke +understood. He saw me hiding behind the screen, and tried to save me. He +told me so next day. The Duke was good to me from first to last." + +Wentworth turned a fierce, livid face towards his brother. + +"Have I really got at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? The +Duke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at your +romantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion, +that part of the story is not quite so well thought out as the rest, +though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he saw +you behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no need +of an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forced +your love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it, +wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then--_then_--yes, I begin +to see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies--then when by an evil +chance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of your +being discovered, then you persuaded her, the innocent, inexperienced +creature whom you would have wronged if you could--you worked upon her +feelings, you made her into your accomplice, you persuaded her to hide +you.... You mean cur!... You only sneaked out of your hole when escape +was absolutely impossible. And so the truth, or some garbled part of it, +is choked out of you at last. No wonder you were silent all these years. +No wonder you would not speak. No wonder you let your poor dupe of a +brother break his heart over your silence. Credulous fool that I have +been from first to last. So help me God, I will never speak to you +again." + +The violent, stammering voice ceased at last. + +Fay shivered from head to foot, and looked at her lover. + +Both men had forgotten her. Their eyes never left each other. +Wentworth's fierce face was turned with deadly hatred upon his brother. +Michael met his eye, but he did not speak. + +There was death in the air. + +Suddenly as in a glass she saw that Michael was saving her again, was +sacrificing himself for a second time at enormous cost, the cost of his +brother's love. + +"Michael!" said Fay with a sob, "Michael, I can't bear it. You are +trying to save me again, but I can't bear to be saved any more. I have +had enough of being saved. I won't be saved. It hurts too much. I won't +let you do it a second time. I have had enough of being silent when I +ought to speak, I have had enough of hiding things, and pretending, and +being frightened." + +Fay saw at last that the truth was her only refuge from that unendurable +horror which was getting up out of its grave again. She fled to it for +very life, and flung herself upon it. + +She took Michael's hand, and turning to Wentworth began to speak +rapidly, with a clearness and directness which amazed Magdalen and the +Bishop. + +It all came out, the naked truth; her loveless marriage, the great +kindness of her husband towards her, her determination bred of idleness +and vanity to enslave Michael anew when he came to Rome, his resistance, +his decision to leave Italy, her inveigling him under plea of urgency to +come to the garden at night, his refusal to enter the house, her frantic +desire to keep him, his determination to part from her. + +There was no doubt in the minds of those who listened in awed silence +that here was the whole truth at last. + +Fay looked full at Wentworth and then said: "He asked me why I had sent +for him, what it was that he could do for me. And I said--I said--'Take +me with you.'" + +"No," said Michael, wincing as under a lash, "No, you did not. Fay, you +never said that." + +"You did not hear it, but I said it." + +Michael staggered against the mantelpiece. + +Wentworth had not moved. His face had become frightful, distorted. + +"I am a wicked woman, Wentworth," said Fay. "I tried to make him in love +with me. I tried to tempt him. I could make him love me, but not do +wrong. And then I let him take the blame when he was trapped. I had +trapped him there first. He did not want to come. I forced him to come. +I let him spoil his life to save my wretched good name. He is right when +he told you just now that I never loved him. The love was all on his +side. He gave it all. I took it all, and I went on taking it. It was I +who kept him in prison quite as much as the Marchesa. It was I who let +him burn and freeze in his cell. A word from me would have got him out." + +Wentworth laughed suddenly, a horrible, discordant laugh. + +They had rotted down before his eyes to loathsome unrecognisable +corpses--the man and the woman he had loved. + +Fay looked wildly at him. + +"But you are good," she said faintly. "You won't, Wentworth, you won't +cast me off like--like I did Michael." + +He did not look at her. + +He took up his gloves and straightened the fingers as his custom was. + +"There is no longer anything which need detain me here," he said to the +Bishop, and he moved towards the door. + +"Nothing except the woman whose fate is in your hands," said the Bishop +gently. "What of her? She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden. +Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You can +repay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity even +greater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you? +Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves you +and is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crush +her if you will. But will you?" + +"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees. + +His face was as flint, as he looked down at her, and tried to push away +her hands. + +"Let him go, my child," said the Bishop sternly, and he took Fay's +hands, and held them. "It is no use trying to keep a man who does not +love you. Go, Wentworth. You are right. There is nothing to keep you +here. In this room there are two people, one of whom has sinned and has +repented, and both of whom love you and have spoken the truth to you. +But there is no love and truth in you to rise up and meet theirs. You do +not know what love and truth are, even when you see them very close. You +had better go." + +"I will go," said Wentworth, his eyes blazing. And he went out and shut +the door behind him. + +Fay's hands slipped out of the Bishop's, her head fell forward, and she +sank down on the floor. The Bishop and Magdalen bent over her. + +Michael looked a moment at her, and swiftly left the room. He overtook +Wentworth in the hall, groping blindly for his hat. + +"Come in here," said Michael, "I want a word with you," and he half +pushed Wentworth into a room leading out of the hall. It was a dreary +little airless apartment with a broken blind, intended for a +waiting-room but fallen into disuse, and only partially furnished, the +corners piled with great tin boxes containing episcopal correspondence. + +Michael closed the door. + +"Wentworth," he said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand. +Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were +acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He +seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting words towards +himself. + +"I see one thing," said Wentworth, "and that is that I'm not inclined to +marry your cast-off mistress." + +Michael closed with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the +lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, +airless little room with its broken blind. + +Wentworth knew Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands had +him by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay had +knitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers. +But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knew +he was trying to throw him, and break his back. + +Wentworth fought for his life, but he was over-matched. The awful, +murderous hands were feeling for his neck again, the sobbing breath was +on his face, the glaring eyes staring into his. The hands closed on his +throat once more, squeezing his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes out of +his head. He made a last frightful struggle to wrench the hands away. +But they remained clutched into his flesh, choking his life out of him. +There was a thin, guttural, sawing noise mixed in with the sobbing. Then +all in a moment the sobbing ceased, he felt the hands relax, and then an +avalanche of darkness crashed down on him, and buried him beneath it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + That game of consequences to which we all sit down, the + hanger-back not least.--R. L. STEVENSON. + + +Down, very deep down. Buried in an abyss of darkness, shrouded tightly +in a nameless horror that pressed on eyes and breath and hands and +limbs. + +At last a faint sound reached Wentworth. Far away in some other world a +clock struck. His numbed faculties apprehended the sound, and then +forgot it when it ceased. + +At last he felt himself stir. He found himself staring at a glimmer of +light. He could not look at it, and he could not look away from it. What +was it? It had something to do with him. It grew more distinct. It was a +window with a broken blind. + +Someone close at hand began to tremble. Wentworth sat up suddenly and +found it was himself. He was alone, lying crumpled up against the wall +where he had been flung down. He knew where he was. He saw the piles of +tin boxes. He remembered. + +He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after +wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried +to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. +For a long time he did not move. + +At last the clock struck again. + +He staggered to his feet as if he had been called, and looked with +intentness at a fallen book and upset inkstand. There was a quill pen +balancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the cane +bottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table. +He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, and +then got hold of it, and put it on. There was a little glass over the +mantelpiece. A ghastly face with a torn collar was watching him +furtively through it. He turned fiercely on the spy and found the face +was his own. He turned up his coat and buttoned it. Then he went to the +half-open door and looked out. + +His ear caught a faint sound. Otherwise the house was very still. + +A maid servant on her knees with her back to him was washing the white +stone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant, +also with her back to him, was watching her. + +"Then it is early morning," he said. And he walked out of the room, and +out of the house, through the wide open doors. A fine rain was falling, +but he did not notice it. He passed out through the gates and found +himself in the road. He stopped unconsciously, not knowing what to do +next. + +A fly dawdling back to the town from the station, passed him, and pulled +up, as he hesitated. + +"Station, sir?" said the driver. + +"No, Barford," said Wentworth, and he got in. The fly with its faded +cushions and musty atmosphere seemed a kind of refuge. He breathed more +freely when he was enclosed in it. + +As in the garden of Eden desolation often first makes itself felt as a +realisation of nakedness. We must creep away. We must hide. We have no +protection, no covering. + +Wentworth cowered in the fly. He passed without recognising them all the +old familiar landmarks, the twisting white road that branched off to +Priesthope, the dew ponds, the half hidden, lonely farms. He was in a +strange country. + +He looked with momentary curiosity at a weather-worn sign post which +pointed forlornly where four roads met. It was falling to pieces with +age, but yet it must have been put up there since the morning. He had +never seen it before. He shouted to the driver that he had taken the +wrong road. The man pointed with his whip to where, a mile away, the +smoke of Barford rose among its trees. The landscape suddenly slid into +familiar lines again. He recognised it, and sank back, confused and +exhausted. The effort of speaking had hurt his throat horribly. Was he +going mad? How could his throat hurt him like this--if it wasn't--if +Michael had not---- + +He thrust thought from him. He would wait till he got home, till his own +roof was safely over him, the familiar walls round him. + +This was his gate. Here was his own door, with his butler looking +somewhat surprised, standing on the steps. + +He found himself getting out, and giving orders. He listened to himself +telling the servant to pay the fly and to send word by it to his +dog-cart to return home. Of course he had gone to Lostford in the +dog-cart. He had forgotten that. + +Then he heard his own voice ordering a whiskey and soda to be brought +to him in the library. And he walked there. + +The afternoon post had arrived with the newspapers and he took up a +paper. But it was printed in some language unknown to him, though he +recognised some of the letters. + +How long had he been gone, an hour, a day, a year? + +He looked at the clock. + +Half-past two. But this great shock with which the air was still rocking +might have stopped it. He put his ear to it. Strange! It was going. And +it always stopped so easily, even if the housemaid dusted it. + +Was it half-past two in the afternoon or in the night? + +There was a band of sunshine across the floor and outside the gardens +and the downs were steeped in it. + +Perhaps it was day. + +The butler brought in a tray, and placed it near him. + +"Have you had luncheon, sir?" + +Wentworth thought a moment, and then said "yes." + +"And will Mr. Michael return to-day, sir?" + +Wentworth remembered some old, old prehistoric arrangement by which +Michael was to have come back with him to Barford this afternoon. + +"No," he said, the room suddenly darkening till the sunshine on the +floor was barely visible. "No. He is not coming back." + +The man hesitated a moment, and then left the room. + +Wentworth groped for the flagon of whiskey, poured out a quantity, and +drank it raw. Then he waited for the nightmare to lift. + +His mind cleared gradually. His scattered faculties came sneaking back +like defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disaster +and one only to tell. He must needs believe them. + +_Michael had tried to kill him._ Whatever else shifted that remained +true. + +Wentworth bowed his stiffening head upon his hands, and the sweat ran +down his face. + +Michael had tried to kill him, and had all but succeeded. Oh! if only he +had quite succeeded. If only his life had not come back to him! He had +died and died hard in that little room. And yet here he was still alive +and in agony. + +Michael first. That thought was torture. Then Fay. That thought was +torture. The woman he had so worshipped, on whom he had lavished a +wealth of love, far greater than most men have it in them to bestow, had +deceived him, had been willing to be his brother's mistress. + +Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitly +distrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gauged +life and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had he +made an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worse +than the rest. + +What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. What +was Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like other +women, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man like +other men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once his +passions were aroused. It was an old story, as old as the hills, that +men and women betray each other. It was as old as the psalms of David. + +Pah! what a fool he was to allow his heart to be wrung by what was only +the ordinary vulgar experience of those who were so silly as to mix +themselves up with their fellow creatures. + +He had only himself to thank. + +Well, at any rate, he was free now. He was awake now. He was not going +to put his hand in the fire a second time. + +He was going abroad immediately. He would start to-morrow morning. In +the meanwhile, he would go and see somebody, call somewhere, be in high +spirits somewhere with others. They (they were Fay and Michael) would +hear of that afterwards, would see how little he cared. + +He seized up his hat and went out. But when he had walked a few hundred +yards he sank down exhausted on a wooden seat in the alder coppice +overhanging the house, and remained there. The baby pheasants crept in +and out, all round him. Their little houses, each with an anxious +step-mother in it, were set at regular intervals along the grassy path. +Only yesterday he had walked along that path with the keeper, and had +thought that in the autumn he and Michael would be shooting together +once more. + +They would never shoot together again. + + * * * * * + +As the dusk fell he heard a sound of wheels. His dog-cart returning from +Lostford, no doubt. It did not turn into the court-yard, but came on up +to the house. Wentworth peered down through the leaves. + +It was the Bishop's dog-cart. He recognised the groom who drove it. To +his amazement he saw Lord Lossiemouth get out. After some parley he went +into the house. + +Why should he have come? + +Oh! of course, how dense he was. He had been sent over on an embassy by +Magdalen and the Bishop. They wanted to hush up the fight, and bring +about a reconciliation between him and Fay. He should be told Fay was +making herself ill with crying. His magnanimity would be appealed to by +that pompous prig. Well, he had had his journey for nothing. Wentworth +saw his servants looking for him, and hid himself in the coppice. + +A couple of hours later he left the wood, and went down the steep path +to the gardens. It was nearly dark now. Lights twinkled in the house. +The lamp in the library laid a pale finger of light upon the lawn, +through the open glass doors. + +Wentworth went up to it, and then as he was about to enter, shrank back +astonished. + +Lord Lossiemouth was sitting there with his back to the window. +Wentworth stood a long time looking at him. He was evidently waiting for +him to come in. He sat stolidly on as if he were glued to his chair, +smoking one cigarette after another. + +At last he got up. Surely he would go now. He walked to the bookshelves +that lined the walls, inspected the books, selected one, and settled +himself with a voluminous sigh in his arm-chair once more. + +Wentworth stole away across the grass as noiselessly as he had come, and +disappeared in the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + Age by age, + The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard + For its old, heavy, dull, and shapeless ease. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + +Wentworth never knew how he spent the night, if indeed that interminable +tract in which time stopped could have been one night. It was longer +than all the rest of his life put together. In later years, in peaceful +later years, confused memories came to him of things that he must have +seen then, but of which he took no heed at the time; of seeing the +breath of animals like steam close to the ground; of stumbling suddenly +under a hedgerow on a huddled, sleeping figure with a white face, which +struggled up unclean in the clean moonlight, and menaced him in a foul +atmosphere of rags. + +And once, many years later, when he was taking an unfamiliar short cut +across the downs, he came upon a little pool in an old chalk pit, and +recognised it. He had never seen it by day, but he knew it. He had +wandered to it on a night of moon and mist, and had seen a fox bring +down her cubs to drink just where that twisted alder branch made an arch +over the water. + +Wentworth sat by that chalk pit on the down utterly spent in body and +mind hour after hour, till the moon, which had been tangled in the alder +stooped to the violet west with one great star to bear her company. Who +shall say through what interminable labyrinths, through what sloughs, +across what deserts, his tortured mind had dragged itself all night? The +sun had gone down upon his wrath. The moon had gone down upon his wrath. + +The land was grey. The spectral horses moving slowly in the misty fields +were grey. A streak of palest saffron light showed where the dim earth +and dim sky met. + +A remembrance came to him of a summer dawn such as this, years and years +ago, when Michael had been dangerously ill, and how his whole soul had +spent itself in one passionate supplication that he might not be taken +from him. + + * * * * * + +A tender green transparent as the light seen through a leaf in May was +welling up the sky. Two tiny clouds floated in it like rafts of rose +colour upon a sea of glass. + + * * * * * + +A deep and bitter sense of injustice was growing within him with the +growing light. + +A hundred times during the night he had recalled in cold anger every +word of that final scene in the library, his own speech, his own +actions, his great wrongs, his unendurable pain. + +And yet again it returned upon him, always with Fay's convulsed face, +and clinging hands, always with the Bishop's scathing words of +dismissal. Their horrible injustice rankled in his mind, their +abominable cruelty to himself revolted him. Hideous crimes had been +committed against him, but _he_ had done no evil, unless to love and to +trust were evil. Why then was he to be thus thrust into the wrong, thus +condemned unheard, cast forth with scorn because he had not obediently +fallen in with the Bishop's preposterous demand on him to condone +everything? _It was not to be expected of him._ + +Suddenly the faces of the others watching him after Fay's confession +rose before him, the Bishop's, Magdalen's, Michael's. He saw that they +had not expected it of him either--not even Michael. Only in Fay's +up-raised eyes as she held him by the knees had there been one instant's +anguished hope. Only in hers. And that had been quickly extinguished. +_He had extinguished it himself._ + + * * * * * + +The little clouds turned to trembling flame. The whole sky flushed and +then paled. A thread of fire showed upon the horizon. It widened. It +drew into an arch. The sun rose swiftly, a sudden ball of living fire; +and in a moment the smallest shrub upon the down, the grazing horses, +the huddled sheep, were casting gigantic shadows across the whole world. + +A faint sound of wheels was growing clearer and nearer. + +Wentworth saw a dog-cart coming towards him along the great white road. +As he looked it pulled up and then stopped. A man got out and came +towards him. The raw sunlight caught only his face and shoulders. He +seemed to wade towards him waist deep through a grey sea. + +Lord Lossiemouth again! + +Lord Lossiemouth's heavy tired face showed sharp and white in the garish +light. + +"I have been looking everywhere for you," he said, not ungently. "I +waited half the night at Barford, and then went on to Saundersfoot +station, and then to Wrigley. Your servants thought you might possibly +have gone there. But you had not been seen there. Magdalen sent me to +tell you you must go back to the Palace. Your brother is very ill. He +had an attack of hæmorrhage apparently just after you and he parted in +the hall. I promised her not to go back without you. Shall we drive +on?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss.--GOETHE. + + +Michael was dying. All night Magdalen and the Bishop, with nurse and +doctor, fought for his life, vainly strove to stem the stream of blood +with which his life was ebbing away. + +He had been found by Lord Lossiemouth and a servant lying unconscious at +the foot of the staircase in the hall. He had been carried into a room +on the ground floor. Everything had been done, but without avail. +Michael was dying, suffocating in anguish, threshing his life out +through the awful hours, in wild delirium. + +He was in prison once more, beating against the bars of his narrow +window looking out over the lagoon. His hoarse strangled voice spoke +unceasingly. His hands plucked at his wrists, and then dropped exhausted +beneath the weight of the chains which dragged him down. + +Magdalen would fain have spared Fay the ordeal of that vigil. But the +Bishop was inexorable. He bade her remain. And shrunk away in a corner, +shivering to her very soul, Fay listened hour by hour to the wild feeble +voice of her victim, back once more in the cell where he had been so +silent, where the walls had kept his counsel so well. She saw +something--at last--of what he had endured for her, of what he had made +so light. + +At last the paroxysm passed. Michael pushed back the walls with his +hands, and then suddenly gave up the struggle. + +"They are closing in on me," he said. "I cannot keep them back any +longer." + +The contest ceased all in a moment. He lay back motionless with +half-closed eyes, his face blue against the white pillows. The blood had +ceased at last to flow from his colourless lips. Death was very near. + +He knew no one. Not the Bishop, not Magdalen who kept watch beside him, +listening ever for Wentworth's step outside. + +In the dawn Michael's spirit made as if to depart, but it seemed as if +it could not gain permission. + +The light grew. + +And with the light the laboured breathing became easier. He stirred +feebly, and whispered incoherently from time to time. He was still in +his cell. Wentworth's name, the Italian doctor's, rose to his lips. +Then, after a pause, he said suddenly: + +"The Duke is dead. She will come now." + +There was a long silence. He was waiting, listening. + +The Bishop and Magdalen held their breath. Fay knew at last what it is +to fail another. She had failed Michael. Wentworth had failed her. + +"Fay!" Michael said, "come soon." + +She had to bear it, the waiting, the faltered anguish, the suspense, the +faint reiterated call to deaf ears. + +The Bishop got up from his knees beside Michael, and motioned Fay to +take his place. She went timidly to the low couch and knelt down by it. + +"Speak to him," said the Bishop sternly. + +"Michael!" she said. + +He knew her. All other voices had gone from him, but hers he knew. All +other faces had faded from him, but hers he knew. He looked full at her. +Love stronger than death shone in his eyes. + +"Fay," he said in an awed voice--"at last." + +She had come to release him, after the Duke's death, as he knew she +would. + +She leaned her white cheek a moment against his in speechless +self-abasement. + +He whispered to her. + +"Have I served you?" + +She whispered back, "Yes." + +He whispered again, "Do you still love me?" The words were quite +inaudible. + +Again she said, "Yes." + +Again a movement of the lips, but no sound. + +He looked at her with radiant questioning eyes. + +Again she murmured, "Yes." + +It had to be like that. He had always known that this moment had to +come. Had he not foreseen it in some forgotten dream? + +A great trembling laid hold on Michael, and then a stillness of +exceeding joy. + +In the silence the cathedral bells chimed out suddenly for early +service. The sound of the bells came faintly to him as across wide +water, the river of death widening as it nears the sea. It was all part +of his dream. The bells of Venice were rejoicing with him, in this his +blessed hour. + +He was freed at last, free as he had never been, free as the seagull +seen through the bars that could no longer keep him back. Useless bars, +why had he let them hold him so long? He was out and away, sailing over +the sheening water in a boat with an orange sail; in a boat like a +butterfly with spread wings; sailing away, past the floating islands, +past that pale beautiful grief of sea lavender--he laughed to see it +shine so beautiful--sailing away into a pearly morning, under a luminous +sky. + +The prison was far away now. Left behind. There was a great knocking at +its gates, hurried steps upon the stairs, and a voice crying urgently +through the bars. + +But he could not stay to listen. He was too far away to hear. The voice +was to him but like the thin harsh cry of the sea-mew wheeling near, +blended in with the marvel of his freedom. He took no heed of it. He was +afloat on the great sea-faring tide. Far away before him, but nearer, +nearer, and yet nearer, the sea gleamed in trembling ecstasy. + + * * * * * + +"He does not know me. He does not hear me," said Wentworth, on his knees +beside Michael, raising a wild, desperate face to Magdalen. Was +Michael's last look of deadly hatred to remain with him through life? + +"Speak to him again, Fay," said Magdalen. "Tell him Wentworth is here." + +Fay was still kneeling on the other side. The two lovers' eyes met +across the man they had murdered. + +"Michael," the tremulous voice whispered. + +"Louder," said Wentworth hoarsely. + +"Michael," said Fay again. + +But Michael's face was set. He was sunk in a great rest, breathing deep +and slow, deeper and slower yet, his long arms faintly rising and +falling with each breath. + +"Oh, Fay. For God's sake make him hear," said Wentworth with a cry. + +The Bishop and Magdalen standing apart looked at each other. + +"He has forgiven her, though he does not know it," he said below his +breath. + +Fay stooped down. She raised Michael in her arms, and laid his head on +her breast, turning his fading face to his brother. + +"Michael," she whispered into his ear, with a passion which would have +cloven death itself. "Come back, come back and say one word to +Wentworth." + + * * * * * + +Very near the sea now. Very near the great peace and light. This was the +real life at last. All the rest had been a vain shadow, a prison where +he had dwelt a little while, not seeing that this great all-surrounding +water, which had seemed to hem him in, was but a highway of light. + +Who were these two with him in the boat? Who but the two he loved best! +Who but Fay and Wentworth! They were all floating on together in +exceeding joy. They were very near him. He felt them one on each side, +but the light was so great that he could not see them. His head was on +Fay's breast. His hand was in Wentworth's hand. It was all as in dim +dreams he had longed for it to be. + +Fay's voice reached him, pressed close to his ear, like the sound of the +sea, held in its tiniest shell. + +He opened his eyes and his brother's white face came to him for a +moment, like sea foam, blown in from the sea of love to which he was +going, part of the sea. + +"Wenty!" he said, and smiled at him. + +And like blown foam upon a breaking wave, the face passed. + +And like the whisper in the shell under the hush of the surge, the voice +passed. + +The shadow which we call life--passed. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + +***** This file should be named 18834-8.txt or 18834-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/3/18834/ + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Prisoners + Fast Bound In Misery And Iron + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18834] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<table border="0" summary=""> + <tr> + <td><img src="images/pillus01.jpg" width="380" height="550" alt="Cover" /></td> + <td><a name="illo1" id ="illo1"></a><img src="images/pillus02.jpg" width="340" height="550" alt=""HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE IT CONTAINED ... THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"" /></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<h1>PRISONERS</h1> +<h2>FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON</h2> +<h3>By</h3> +<h2>MARY CHOLMONDELEY</h2> +<h3><i>Author of</i> +<br /> +"Red Pottage"</h3> + +<div align="center">"But for failing of love on our<br /> +part, therefore is all our travail." +<br /> +<br /> +—<span class="smcap">Julian of Norwich</span>.<br /> +<br /><br /><br /> +DODD, MEAD & COMPANY<br /> +NEW YORK MCMVI<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1905, 1906, by</span><br /> +<br /> +COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY<br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1906, by</span><br /> +<br /> +MARY CHOLMONDELEY<br /> +<br /> +<i>Published, September, 1906</i><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +To<br /> +My Brother<br /> +Reginald<br /> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" summary="" width="80%"> + <tr> + <td align="left"><a href="#illo1">"Her eyes turned towards it mechanically +because it contained ... the man of +whom she was thinking"</a> </td> + <td colspan="2"> <i>Frontispiece</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="left"><a href="#illo2">"A deathlike silence followed the <i>delegato's</i> words"</a></td> + <td align="left"><i>Page</i></td><td align="right">36</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="left"><a href="#illo3">"'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden +passion"</a></td> + <td align="center">"</td><td align="right">46</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="left"><a href="#illo4">"'You are all blinder one than the other, that +it's Andrea I'm grieving for'"</a> </td> + <td align="center">"</td><td align="right">80</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="left"><a href="#illo5">"If Fay had come in then he would have killed +her, done her to death with the chains he +had worn so patiently for her sake"</a></td> + <td align="center">"</td><td align="right">146</td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="left"><a href="#illo6">"Fay noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders +were"</a></td> + <td align="center">"</td><td align="right">184</td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><div class="center"> +<table summary=""><tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"><p>Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you,<br /> +<span class="i2">And fairies brought their offerings at your birth;</span> + You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due,<br /> +<span class="i2">Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth.</span></p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—Arthur C. Legge.</p> +</div> + +<p>Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at +Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little +compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome.</p> + +<p>How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to be +represented by so stupendous a name!</p> + +<p>She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards it +mechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precincts +the man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking.</p> + +<p>It was easy to see that Fay—the Duchess of Colle Alto—was an +Englishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name.</p> + +<p>She had the look of perfect though not robust health, the reflection +over her whole being of a childhood spent much in the open air. She was +twenty-three, but her sweet fair face, with its delicate irregular +features, was immature, childish. It gave no impression of experience, +or thought, or of having met life. She was obviously not of those who +criticise or judge themselves. In how many faces we see the conflict, or +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> remains of conflict with a dual nature. Fay, as she was called by +her family, seemed all of a piece with herself. Her unharassed +countenance showed it, especially when, as at this moment, she looked +harassed. Anxiety was evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon her +smooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyes +were her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid, +limpid gaze, in which no guile existed, any more than steadfastness, any +more than unselfishness, any more than courage.</p> + +<p>Fay had come into the world anxious to please. She had never shown any +particular wish to give pleasure. If she had been missed out of her +somewhat oppressed and struggling home when she married, it is probable +that the sense of her absence was tinged by relief.</p> + +<p>She had never intended to marry the Duke of Colle Alto. It is difficult +to say why that sedate distinguished personage married her.</p> + +<p>Fay's face had a very sweet and endearing promise in it which drew men's +eyes after her. I don't know what it meant, and they did not know +either, but they instinctively lessened the distance between themselves +and it. A very thin string will tow a very heavy body if there is no +resistance, and the pace is slow. The duke looked at Fay, who was at +that moment being taken out for her first season by her grandmother, +Lady Bellairs. Fay tried to please him, as was her wont with all except +men with beards. She liked to have him in attendance. Her violet eyes +lighted up with genuine pleasure when he came to see her.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps difficult for the legions of women who do not please +easily, and for the handful whose interests<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> lie outside themselves, and +who are not desirous of pleasing indiscriminately, it is difficult for +either to realise the passionate desire to please which possesses and +saps the life of some of their sisters. Admiration with them is not a +luxury, any more than a hot-water bottle is a luxury to the aged, or a +foot rest to a gouty foot. It is a necessity of life. After a becoming +interval, the interstices of which had been filled with flowers, the +duke proposed to Lady Bellairs for Fay's hand. Fay did not wish to marry +him. He was not in the least her ideal. Neither did she wish to remain +unmarried, neither did she wish to part with her grave, distinguished +suitor who was an ornament to herself. And she was distinctly averse to +living any longer in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in a +Hampshire down. Poor women have only too frequently to deal with these +complicated situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds are +seldom in perfect sympathy.</p> + +<p>Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared for +her, and some had cared much. These last had as a rule torn themselves +away from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind, +and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her little +gilt-edged notes. But the duke did not break away. He had selected her, +she pleased him, he desired to marry an Englishwoman. He had the +approval of Lady Bellairs.</p> + +<p>The day came when Fay was suddenly and adroitly confronted with the fact +that she must marry him, or lose him.</p> + +<p>Many confirmed bachelors who openly regret that they have never come +across a woman to whom they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> cared to tie themselves for life might be +in a position to descant on the inability of wives to enter into their +husbands' inmost feelings, if only they—the bachelors—had known on a +past occasion how to act with sudden promptitude on the top of patience.</p> + +<p>The duke played the waiting game, and then hit hard. He had coolly +allowed himself to be trifled with, until the moment arrived when it did +not suit him to be trifled with any longer.</p> + +<p>The marriage had not proved a marked success, nor an entire failure. The +duke was an irreproachable husband, but, like many men who marry when +they are no longer young, he aged suddenly after marriage. He quickly +became bald and stout. His tact except in these two particulars remained +flawless. He never allowed his deep chagrin to appear when, three years +after his marriage, he still remained without a son to continue his +historic name.</p> + +<p>He was polite to his wife at all times, mildly sarcastic as to her +extravagance. Fay was not exorbitantly extravagant; but then the duke +was not exorbitantly rich. One of Fay's arts, as unconscious as that of +a kitten, was to imply past unhappiness, spoken of with a cheerful +resignation which greatly endeared her to others—and to herself. The +duke had understood that she had not had a very happy home, and he had +honestly endeavoured to make her new home happy. In the early days of +his marriage he made many small experiments in the hope of pleasing the +pretty creature who had thrown in her lot with his. Possibly also there +may have been other subtle, patient attempts to win somewhat from her of +another nature. Possibly there may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> have been veiled disappointments, +and noiseless retreats under cover of night.</p> + +<p>However these things may have been, after the first year Fay made the +discovery that she was unhappily married. The duke was kind, in kindness +he never failed; but he was easily jealous—at least she thought so; and +he appeared quite unable to see in their true light her amicable little +flirtations with his delightful compatriots. After one or two annoying +incidents, in which the compatriots had shown several distinctly +un-English characteristics, the duke became, in his wife's eyes, +tiresome, strict, a burden. Perhaps, also, she felt the Englishwoman's +surprise at the inadequate belief in a woman's power of guarding her own +virtue, which remains in some nations an hereditary masculine instinct. +She felt that she could take care of herself, which was, in reality, +just what she could not do, as her imperturbable, watchful husband was +well aware.</p> + +<p>But was he aware of the subject of her thoughts at this moment? It was +more than probable that he was. But Fay had not the faintest suspicion +that he had guessed anything.</p> + +<p>One of her many charms was a certain youthful innocence of mind, which +imputed no evil to others, which never suspected that others would +impute it to her. Her husband was wearisome. He looked coldly on her if +she smiled on young men, and she had to smile at them when they smiled +at her. But, she reasoned, of course all the time he really knew that he +could trust her entirely. There was no harm in Fay's nature, no venom, +there were no dark places, no strong passions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> with their awful +possibilities for good and evil. She had already given much pain in her +short life, but inadvertently. She was of that large class of whom it +may truly be said when evil comes, that they are more sinned against +than sinning. They always somehow gravitate into the places where people +<i>are</i> sinned against, just as some people never attend a cricket-match +without receiving a ball on their persons.</p> + +<p>And now trouble had come upon her. She had at last fallen in love. I +would not venture to assert that she had fallen in very deep, that the +"breakers of the boundless deep" had engulfed her. Some of us make +shipwreck in a teacup tempest, and when our serenity is restored—there +is nothing calmer than a teacup after its storm—our experience serves, +after a decent interval, as an agreeable fringe to our confidential +conversation.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, Fay had fallen in love. I feel bound to add that for some time +before that event happened life had become intolerably dull. The advent +to Rome of her distant connection, Michael Carstairs, had been at this +juncture a source of delight to her. She had, before her marriage, +flirted with him a very little—not as much as she could have wished; +but Lady Bellairs, who was fond of him, had promptly intervened, and the +young man had disappeared into his examinations. That was four years +ago.</p> + +<p>In reality Fay had half-forgotten him; but when she saw him suddenly, +pale, handsome, distinguished, across a ballroom in Rome, and, after a +moment's uncertainty, realised who he was, she felt the same pleasurable +surprise, soft as the fall of dew, which pervades<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> the feminine heart +when, in looking into an unused drawer, it inadvertently haps upon a +length of new ribbon, bought, carefully put away, and forgotten.</p> + +<p>Fay went gently up to Michael, conscious of her beauty and her wonderful +jewels, and held out her hand with a little deprecating smile.</p> + +<p>"And so we meet again at last," she said.</p> + +<p>He turned red and white.</p> + +<p>"At last," he said with difficulty.</p> + +<p>She looked more closely at him. The dreamy, poetic face had changed +during those four years. She became dimly aware that he had not only +grown from a youth into a man, but that some other transformation had +been painfully wrought in him.</p> + +<p>Instinctively her beaming face became grave to match his. She was slow +to see what others were feeling, but quick to reflect their mood. She +sighed gently, vaguely stirred, in spite of herself, by something—she +knew not what—in her companion's face.</p> + +<p>"It is four years since I saw you," she said.</p> + +<p>And from her lowered voice it seemed as if her life were rooted in +memory alone.</p> + +<p>"Four years," said Michael, who, promising young diplomat as he was, +appeared only able to repeat parrot-wise her last words after her.</p> + +<p>A pause.</p> + +<p>"Do you know my husband?"</p> + +<p>"I do not."</p> + +<p>"May I introduce him to you?"</p> + +<p>Fay made a little sign, and the duke approached, superb, decorated, +dignified, with the polished pallor as if the skin were a little too +tight, which is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>Charybdis of many who have avoided the Scylla of +wrinkles.</p> + +<p>The elder Italian and the grave, fair, young Englishman bowed to each +other, were made known to each other.</p> + +<p>That night as the duke drove home with his wife he said to her in his +admirable English:</p> + +<p>"Your young cousin is an enthusiast, a dreamer, a sensitive, what your +Tennyson calls a Sir Galahad. In Italy we make of such men a priest, a +cardinal. He is not an <i>homme d'affaires</i>. It was not well to put him +into diplomacy. One may make a religion of art. One may even for a time +make a religion of a woman. But of the English diplomacy one does not +make a religion."</p> + +<p>Fay lay awake that night. From a disused pigeon-hole in her mind she +drew out and unfolded to its short length that attractive remnant, that +half-forgotten episode of her teens. She remembered everything—I mean +everything she wished to remember. Michael's face had recalled it all, +those exquisite days which he had taken so much more seriously than she +had, the sudden ruthless intervention of Lady Bellairs, the end of the +daydream. Fay, whose attention had been adroitly diverted to other +channels, had never wondered how he took their separation at the time. +Now that she saw him again she was aware that he had taken it—to heart.</p> + +<p>During that sleepless night Fay persuaded herself that Michael had not +been alone in his suffering. She also had felt the parting with equal +poignancy.</p> + +<p>They met again a few days later by chance in an old cloistered, deserted +garden. How often she had walked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> in that garden as she was doing now +with English friends! His presence gave the place its true significance. +They met as those who have between them the bond of a common sorrow.</p> + +<p>"And what have you been doing all these four years?" she asked him, as +they wandered somewhat apart.</p> + +<p>"I have been working."</p> + +<p>"You never came to say good-bye before you went to that place in Germany +to study."</p> + +<p>"I was told I had better not come."</p> + +<p>"I suppose grandmamma told you that."</p> + +<p>"She did, most kindly and wisely."</p> + +<p>A pause.</p> + +<p>She was leaning in the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb of +carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced +inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying +death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to +wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept +its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white +gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than in memory. +She seemed at one with this wonderful, passionate southern spring, which +trembled between rapture and anguish. The red roses and the white irises +were everywhere. Even the unkept grass in which her light feet were set +was wild with white daisies.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember our last walk on the down that day in spring?" she said +suddenly.</p> + +<p>She had forgotten it until last night.</p> + +<p>"I remember it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It was May then. It is May again now."</p> + +<p>He did not answer. The roses left off calling to the dead, and suddenly +enfolded the two young grave creatures leaning against the tomb, in a +gust of hot perfume.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember," Fay's voice was tremulous, "how you gave me a bit of +pink may?"</p> + +<p>"I remember."</p> + +<p>"I was looking at it yesterday. It is not very pink now."</p> + +<p>It was true. In all shallow meanings, and when she had not had time to +get her mind into a tangle, Fay was perfectly truthful. She had +yesterday been turning over the contents of a little cedar box in which +she kept her childish possessions, and she had found in an envelope a +brown unsightly ghost of what had once been a may-blossom on a Hampshire +down. She had remembered the vivid sunshine, the wheeling seagull, the +soft south wind blowing in from the sea. Michael had kissed her under +the thin dappled shade of the flowering tree, and she had kissed him +back.</p> + +<p>Michael's eyes turned for a long moment to the yellow weather-stained +arches of the cloister, and then he looked full at Fay with a certain +peculiar detached glance which had first made her endeavour to attract +him. There is a look in a man's face which women like Fay cannot endure, +because it means independence of them.</p> + +<p>"I thought," he said, with the grave simplicity which apparently was +unchangeable in him whatever else might change, "that it was only I who +remembered. It has always been a comfort to me that any unhappiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> +which my want of forethought, my—my culpable selfishness may have +caused, was borne by myself alone."</p> + +<p>"I was unhappy too," she said, speaking as simply as he. She looked up +at him suddenly as she said it. There was a wet glint in her deep violet +eyes. She believed absolutely at that moment that she had been as +unhappy as he for four years. There was no suspicion in her mind that +she was not genuine. Only the sincere ever doubt their sincerity. Fay +never doubted hers. She felt what she said, and the sweet eyes turned on +Michael had the transparent fixity of a child's.</p> + +<p>They walked unsteadily back to the others and spoke no more to each +other that day. Conscience pricked Fay that night.</p> + +<p>"Leave him alone," it said. "You have both suffered. Let the dead past +bury its dead."</p> + +<p>Fay's conscience was a wonderfully adaptable one with a tendency to +poetic quotation. It showed considerable tact in adopting her point of +view. Nevertheless from that generally fallacious standpoint it often +gave her quite respectable advice. "Leave him alone," said the +hoodwinked monitor. "You are married and Andrea is easily jealous. +Michael is sensitive, and has been deeply in love with you. Don't stir +him up to fall in love with you again. <i>Leave him alone.</i>"</p> + +<p>The young British matron waxed indignant. Was she, Fay, the kind of +woman to forget her duty to her husband? Was Michael the kind of man to +make love to a married woman? Such an idea was preposterous, unjust to +both of them. And people would begin to talk at once if she and her +cousin (Michael was only a distant connection) were studiously to avoid +each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> other, if they could not exchange a few words simply like old +friends. No one had suggested an attitude of rigid avoidance; but +throughout life Fay had always convinced herself of the advisability of +a certain wished-for course by conjuring up, only to discard it, the +extreme and most obviously senseless opposite of that course—as the +only alternative.</p> + +<p>She imagined her husband saying: "Why won't you ask Mr. Carstairs to +dinner? He is your cousin and he is charming. What can the reason be +that you so earnestly refuse to meet him?" And then Andrea, who always +"got ideas into his head," would begin to suspect that there had been +"something" between them.</p> + +<p><i>No. No.</i> It would be far wiser to meet naturally now and then, and to +treat Michael like an old friend. Fay had a somewhat muffled conception +of what an old friend might be. After deep thought she came to the +conclusion that it was her duty to ask Michael frequently to the house. +When Fay once recognised a duty she performed it without delay.</p> + +<p>She met with an unexpected obstacle in the way of its adequate +performance. The obstacle was Michael.</p> + +<p>The young man came once, and then again after an interval of several +months, but apparently nothing would induce him to frequent the house.</p> + +<p>Fay did not recognise her boyish eager lover in the grave sedate man, +old of his age, who had replaced him. His dignified and quite +unobtrusive resistance, which had not indifference at its core, added an +intense, a feverish, interest to Fay's life. She saw that he still cared +for her, and that he did not intend to wound himself a second time. He +had had enough. She put out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> all her little transparent arts during the +months that followed. The duke watched.</p> + +<p>She had implied to her husband with a smile that she had not been very +happy at home. She implied to Michael with a smile that it was not the +duke's fault, but that she was not very happy in her married life, that +he did not care much about her, and that they had but few tastes in +common. Each lived their own life on amicable terms, but somewhat apart +from each other. She owned that she had hoped for something rather +different in marriage. She had, it seemed, started life with a very +exalted ideal of married life, which the duke's</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +coarse thumb<br /> +And finger failed to plumb.<br /> +</div> + +<p>Michael remained outwardly obdurate, but inwardly he weakened. His +tender adoration and respect for Fay, wounded and mutilated though they +had been, had nevertheless survived what in many minds must have proved +their death-blow. He still believed implicitly all she said.</p> + +<p>But to him her marriage was the impassable barrier, a barrier as +enfranchisable as the brown earth on a coffin lid.</p> + +<p>After many months Fay at last vaguely realised his attitude towards her. +She told herself that she respected it, that it was just what she +wished, was in fact the result of her own tactfully expressed wishes. +She seemed to remember things she had said which would have led him to +behave just as he had done. And then she turned heaven and earth to +regain her personal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> ascendency over him. She never would have regained +it if an accident had not befallen her. She fell in love with him during +the process.</p> + +<p>The day came, an evil day for Michael, when he could no longer doubt it, +when he was not permitted to remain in doubt. Who shall say what waves +of boundless devotion, what passionate impulses of protection, of +compassion, of intense longing to shield her from the fire which had +devastated his own youth, passed in succession over him as he looked at +the delicate little creature who was to him the only real woman in the +world—all the rest were counterfeits—and who now, as he believed, +loved him as he had long loved her.</p> + +<p>Michael was one of the few men who bear through life the common +masculine burden of a profound ignorance of women, coupled with an +undeviating loyalty towards them. He supposed she was suffering as he +had suffered, that it was with her now beside the fountain, under the +ilexes of her Italian garden, as it had been with him during these five +intolerable years.</p> + +<p>How Fay wept! What a passion of tears, till her small flower-like face +was bereft of all beauty, of everything except a hideous contraction of +grief!</p> + +<p>He stood near her, not touching her, in anguish far deeper than hers. At +last he took her clenched hand in his.</p> + +<p>"Do not grieve so," he said brokenly. "It is not our fault. It is +greater than either of us. It has come upon us against our wills. We +have both struggled. You don't know how I have struggled, Fay, day and +night since I came to Rome. But I have been in fault. I ought never to +have come, for I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> knew you were living near Rome. But I did not know it +had touched you, and for myself I had hoped—I thought—that it was +past—in as far as it could pass—that I was accustomed to it. Listen, +Fay, and do not cry so bitterly. I will leave Rome at once. I will not +see you again. My poor darling, we have come to a hard place in life, +but we can do the only thing left to us—our duty."</p> + +<p>Fay's heart contracted, and she suddenly ceased sobbing. She had never +thought of this horrible possibility that he would leave her.</p> + +<p>She drew the hand that clasped hers to her lips and held it tightly +against her breast.</p> + +<p>"Don't leave me," she stammered, trembling from head to foot, from sheer +terror at the thought; "I will be good. I will do what is right. We are +not like other people. We can trust each other. But I can't live without +seeing you sometimes, I could not bear it."</p> + +<p>He withdrew his hand. They looked wildly into each other's eyes. His +convulsed face paled and paled. Even as he stood before her she knew she +was losing him, that something was tearing him from her. It was as +certain that he was going from her as if she were standing by his +deathbed.</p> + +<p>He kissed her suddenly.</p> + +<p>"I shall not come back," he said. And the next moment he was gone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p> +Nous passons notre vie à nous forger des chaînes, et à +nous plaindre de les porter.</p> +<p class="sig">—Valtour.</p> +</div> + +<p>For a long time Fay had stood on her balcony looking out towards Rome, +while the remembrance of the last few months pressed in upon her.</p> + +<p>It was a week since she had seen Michael, since he had said, "I shall +not come back."</p> + +<p>And in the meanwhile she had heard that he had resigned his appointment, +and was leaving Rome at once. She had never imagined that he would act +so quickly, with such determination. She had vaguely supposed that he +would send in his resignation, and then remain on. In novels in a +situation like theirs the man never really went away, or if he did he +came back. Fay knew very little of Michael, but nevertheless she +instinctively felt and quailed before the conviction that he really was +leaving her for ever, that he would reconstruct a life for himself +somewhere in which she could not reach him, in which she would have no +part or lot. He might suffer during the process, but he would do it. His +yea was yea, and his nay, nay. She should see him no more. Some day, not +for a long time perhaps, but some day, she should hear of his marriage.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, without a moment's warning, her own life rose up before her, +distorted, horrible, unendurable. The ilexes, solemn in the sunset, +showed like foul shapes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> of disgust and nausea. The quiet Campagna with +its distant faintly outlined Sabine hills was rotten to the core.</p> + +<p>The duke passed across a glade at a little distance, and, looking up, +smiled gravely at her, with a slight courteous gesture of his brown +hand.</p> + +<p>She smiled mechanically in response and shrank back into her room. Her +husband had suddenly become a thing to shudder at, repulsive as a +reptile, intolerable. Her life with him, without Michael, stretched +before her like a loathsome disease, a leprosy, which in the +interminable years would gradually eat her away, a death by inches.</p> + +<p>The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probably +seldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws which +light the faggots round it.</p> + +<p>The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowing +whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough.</p> + +<p>"I cannot live without him," she sobbed to herself. "This is not just a +common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life! +It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have +been! We have both done our best, but—I can't go on. What is reputation +worth, the world's opinion of me?—<i>nothing</i>."</p> + +<p>It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worth +to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed with +love.</p> + +<p>To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and to +the worldly as the only real life, the only path. But if we disbelieve +in it, and framing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> our lives on other lines become voluntarily +bedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we—when that in which we +have not believed comes to pass—can we suddenly rise and follow Love up +his mountain passes? We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds. +We even go feverishly a little way with him. But unless we have learnt +the beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seem +to turn giddy, and lose our footing. Certain precipices there are where +only the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are the +piled bones of many passionate pilgrims.</p> + +<p>Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh, +to be added to that putrefying heap? But can we blame anyone, be they +who they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergo +a real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it?</p> + +<p>Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt to +meet it. It was not to be expected that the attempt would be quite wise +or quite sincere either. Still it was the best she could do. She would +sacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one would +ever speak to her again, but she did not care.</p> + +<p>Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat which +the duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She should +never wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was a +unique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now! They had served to +pass the time in the sort of waking dream in which she had lived till +Michael came. But she was awake now. She looked at herself in the glass +long and fixedly. Yes, she was beautiful. How dreadful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> it must be for +plain women when they loved! They must know that men could not really +care for them. They might, of course, respect and esteem them, and wish +in a lukewarm way to marry them, but they could never really love them. +She, Fay, carried with her the talisman.</p> + +<p>A horrible doubt seized her, just when she was becoming calm. Supposing +Michael would not! Oh! but he <i>would</i> if he cared as she did. The +sacrifice was all on the woman's side. No one thought much the worse of +men when they did these things. And Michael was so good, so honourable +that he would certainly never desert her. They would become legal +husband and wife directly Andrea divorced her.</p> + +<p>From underneath these matted commonplaces, Fay's muffled conscience +strove to reach her with its weak voice.</p> + +<p>"Stop, stop!" it said. "You will injure him. You will tie a noose round +his neck. You will spoil his life. And Andrea! He has been kind in a +way. And your marriage vows! And your own people at home! And Magdalen, +the sister who loves you. Remember her! Stop, stop! Let Michael go. You +were obliged to relinquish him once. Let him go again now."</p> + +<p>Fay believed she went through a second conflict. Perhaps there lurked at +the back of her mind the image of Michael's set face—set away from her; +and that image helped her at last to say to herself, "Yes. It is right. +I will let him go."</p> + +<p>But did she really mean it? For while she said over and over again, +"Yes, yes; we must part," she decided that it was necessary to see him +just once again, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> bid him a last farewell, to strengthen him to live +without her. She could not reason it out, but she knew that it was +absolutely essential to the welfare of both that they should see each +other just once more before they parted—<i>for ever</i>. The parting no +longer loomed so awful in her mind if there was to be a meeting before +it took place. She almost forgot it directly her mind could find a +staying point on the thought of that one last sacred interview, of all +she should say, of all they would both feel.</p> + +<p>But how to see him! He had said he would not come back. He left Rome in +a few days. She should see him officially on Thursday, when he was in +attendance on his chief. But what was the use of that? He would hardly +exchange a word with her. She might decide to see <i>him</i> alone; but what +if he refused to see <i>her</i>? Instinctively Fay knew that he would so +refuse.</p> + +<p>"We must part." Just so. But how to hold him? How to draw him to her +just once more? That was the crux.</p> + +<p>In novels if a woman needs the help of the chivalrous man ever kneeling +in the background, she sends him a ring. Fay looked earnestly at her +rings. But Michael might not understand if she sent him one, and if the +duke intercepted it he would certainly entirely misconstrue the +situation.</p> + +<p>Fay sat down at her writing-table, and got out her note-paper. Truth +compels me to state that it was of blue linen, that it had a little gilt +coronet on it, and that it was scented.</p> + +<p>She thought a long time. At least she bit the little silver owl at the +end of her pen for a long time. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> tore up several sheets. At last she +wrote in her large, slanting, dashing handwriting:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>I know that we must part. You are right and I wish it too. It is +all like a terrible dream, and what will the awakening be?</i>" (Fay +did not quite know what she meant by this, but it impressed her +deeply as she wrote it, and a tear dropped on "the awakening" and +made it look like "reckoning." She was not of those, however, who +having once written one word ever think it can be mistaken for +another; and really reckoning did quite as well as awakening.) +"<i>But I must see you once before you go. I have something of urgent +importance to say to you.</i>" (It was not clear to Fay what the +matter of importance was. But has not everyone in love laboured +daily under a burden as big as Christian's, of subjects which +demand instant discussion, or the bearer may fall into a state of +melancholia? Fay was convinced as she wrote that there was +something she ached to say to him: and also the point was to say +something that would bring him.) "<i>Don't fail me. You have never +failed me yet. You left me before when it was right we should part. +Did I try to keep you then? Did I say one word to hold you back?</i>" +(Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a +new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She +realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not +faltered then.) "<i>I did not falter then. I will not do so now, +though this time is harder than the first.</i>" (It certainly was.) +"<i>You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. +I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others</i> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span><i>have gone come back through the gardens. The door by the fountain +will be unlocked, and come up the balcony steps to my sitting-room. +The balcony window will be open. You know that I should not ask you +to do this unless it was urgent. Will you fail me at the last? For +we shall never meet again, Michael!</i>" </p></div> + +<p>Fay closed the note, directed it, pinned it into the lace of her inmost +vest—the wife of an Italian distrusts pockets and postal +arrangements—and then wept her heart out, her vain, selfish little +heart, which for the first time in her life was not wholly vain, nor +wholly selfish. Perhaps it was not her fault if she was cruel. It takes +many steadfast years, many prayers, many acts of humble service before +we may hope to reach the place where we are content to bear alone the +brunt of that pang, and to guard the one we love even from ourselves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"> +<p>There will no man do for your sake, I think,<br /> +<span class="i2">What I would have done for the least word said.</span> +I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink,<br /> +<span class="i2">Broken it up for your daily bread.</span></p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—A. C. Swinburne.</p> +</div> + +<p>A witty bishop was once heard to remark that one of the difficulties of +his social life lay in the fact that all women of forty were exactly +alike, and it was impossible to recall their individual label, to which +archdeacon, or canon, or form of spinster good works, they belonged. It +would be dangerous, irreverent, to pry further into the recesses of the +episcopal, or even of the suffragan, mind. There are snowy peaks where +we lay helpers should fear to tread. But it may be stated, without +laying ourselves open to a suspicion of wishing to undermine the Church, +that when the woman of forty in her turn acidly announces, as she not +infrequently does, that all young men seem to her exactly alike, she is +in a parlous condition.</p> + +<p>Yet many women had said that Michael was exactly like every other young +man. And to all except the very few who knew him well he certainly did +appear to be—not an individual at all—but only an indistinguished unit +of a vast army.</p> + +<p>His obvious good looks were like the good looks of others. He looked +well bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class as it is +rare in another. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, +square in the shoulders, and thin in the flank; he had the clear +weather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and the +self-effacing manner, which we associate with myriads of well-born, +machine-trained, perfectly groomed, expensively educated, uneducated +Englishmen. Our public schools turn them out by the thousand. The "lost +legion" is made up of them. The unburied bones of the pioneers of new +colonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never never +country," under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; they +fall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen and +craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. +They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from +them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which +they never showed in the business of cricket and football.</p> + +<p>They are essentially not of the stuff of which those dull persons, the +thinkers, the politicians, the educationalists, are made. No profession +knows them except the army. They have no opinions worth hearing. Only +the women who are to marry them listen to them. They are sometimes +squeezed into Parliament and are borne with there like children. About +one in a hundred of them can earn his own living, and then it is as a +land agent.</p> + +<p>They make adorable country squires, and picturesque, simple-minded, +painstaking men of rank. They know by a sort of hereditary instinct how +to deal with a labouring man, and a horse, and how to break in a dog. +They give themselves no airs. We have <i>millions</i> of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> men like this, and +it is doubtful whether the nation finds much use for them, except at +coronations, where they look beautiful; or on county councils, where +they can hold an opinion without the preliminary fatigue of forming it; +and on the bloodstained fringes of our empire, where they serenely meet +their dreadful deaths.</p> + +<p>In the ranks of that vast army I descry Michael, and I wonder what it is +in him that makes me able to descry him at all. He is like thousands of +other men. In what is he unlike?</p> + +<p>I think it must be something in his expression. Of many ugly men it has +been said with truth that one never observes their ugliness. Something +in the character redeems it. With Michael's undeniable good looks it was +the same. One did not notice them. They were not admired, except, +possibly, for the first moment, or across a room. His rather +insignificant grey eyes were the only thing one remembered him by, the +only part of him which seemed to represent him.</p> + +<p>It was as if out of the narrow window of a fortress <i>our friend</i> for a +moment looked out; that "friend of our infinite dreams" who in dreams, +but, alas! never by day, comes softly to us across the white fields of +youth; who, later on, in dreams but never by day, overtakes us with +unbearable happiness in his hand in which to steep our exhaustion on the +hillside; who when our hair is grey comes to us still in dreams but +never by day, down the darkening valley, to tell us that our worn out +romantic hopes are but the alphabet of his language.</p> + +<p>Such a look there was in Michael's eyes, and what it meant who shall +say? Once and again at long intervals we pass in the thoroughfare of +life young faces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> which have the same expression, as if they saw beyond, +as if they looked past their own youth across to an immortal youth, from +their own life to an unquenchable, upwelling spring of life. When +Michael spoke, which was little, his words verged on the commonplace. He +explained the obvious with modest directness. He had thought out and +made his own a small selection of platitudes. It is at first a shock to +some of us when we discover that a beautiful spiritual nature is linked +with a tranquil commonplace mind and narrow abilities.</p> + +<p>When Michael's eyes rested on anything his still glance seemed to pass +through it, into its essence. An inscrutable Fate had willed that his +eyes should not rest on any woman save Fay.</p> + +<p>Was her little hand to rend his illusions from him; or did he perhaps +see her as she was, as her husband, her shrewd old grandmother, her +sister even, had never seen her? Fay had revealed to Michael that of +which many men who write glibly of passion die in ignorance, the wonder +and awe of love, clothed in a woman's form, walking the earth. And in a +reverent and grateful loyalty Michael would have laid down his life for +her, as gladly as Dante would have done for "his lady." But Michael +would have laid down his in silence, as one casts off a glove. He had +never read the "New Life." It is improbable that it would have made any +impression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or books +or poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He was +unconsciously by nature that which others of the artistic temperament +consciously are in a lesser degree, and are doomed to try to express. +Michael never wanted to express anything, had no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>impulse of +self-revelation, no interest in his own mental experiences.</p> + +<p>While Fay was turning over her little <i>bric-a-brac</i> assortment of +feelings, her toy renunciations, her imitation convictions, Michael was +slowly making the great renunciation without even taking himself into +his confidence. To go away. To see her no more. This was death by +inches. As he sat hour after hour in his little room behind the Embassy +it seemed to him as if, by some frightful exertion of his will, he were +wading with incredible slowness out to sea, over endless flats in +inch-deep water, which after an interminable journey would be deep +enough to drown him at last.</p> + +<p>The nausea and horror of this slow death were upon him. Nevertheless, he +meant to move towards it. And where Michael's eye was fixed there his +foot followed. He was not of those who rend themselves by violent +conflict. If he had ever been asked to give his reason for any action of +his life, from the greatest to the smallest, he would have looked at the +questioner in mild surprise, and would have said: "It was the only thing +to do."</p> + +<p>To him vacillation and doubt were unknown. A certain wisdom could never +be his, for he saw no alternatives. He never balanced two courses of +action against each other.</p> + +<p>"There were no two ways about it," he said to his godfather, the Bishop +of Lostford, respecting a decision where there were several +alternatives, which he had endeavoured to set before Michael with +impartiality. But Michael saw only one course, and took it.</p> + +<p>And now again he only saw one course, and he meant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> to take it. He +sickened under it, but his mind was made up. Fay's letter which duly +reached him only made him suffer. It did not alter his determination to +go. Certainly, he would see her again, if she desired it so intensely, +and had something vitally important to tell him, though he disliked the +suggestion of a clandestine meeting. Still it was Fay's suggestion, and +Fay could do no wrong. But he knew that nothing she could do or say, +nothing new that she could spring upon him would have power to shake his +decision to leave Rome on Friday. <i>It was the only thing to do.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p> +L'on fait plus souvent des trahisons par faiblesse que +par un dessein formé de trahir.</p> +<p class="sig">—La Rochefoucauld.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Fay's evening-party was a success. Her parties generally were. It was a +small gathering, for as it was May but few of the residents had come +down to the villas. Some of the guests had motored out from Rome. My +impression is that Fay enjoyed the evening. She certainly enjoyed the +brilliancy which excitement had momentarily added to her beauty.</p> + +<p>All the time she was saying to herself, "If people only knew. What a +contrast between what these people think and what I really am. Perhaps +this is the last time I shall have a party here. Perhaps I shall not be +here to-morrow. Perhaps Michael will insist on taking me away with him, +from this death in life, this hell on earth."</p> + +<p>What large imposing words! How well they sounded! Yes, in a way Fay was +enjoying herself.</p> + +<p>Often during the evening she saw the grave, kindly eyes of the duke upon +her. Once he came up to her, and paid her a little exquisite compliment. +Her disgust and hatred of him were immediately forgotten. She smiled +back at him. She did not love him of course. A man like that did not +know what love was. But Fay had never yet felt harshly towards any man +who admired her. The husband who did not understand her watched her with +something of the indulgent, protecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> expression which we see on the +face of the owner of an enchanting puppy, which is ready to gallop on +india rubber legs after any pair of boots which appears on its low +horizon.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The guests had ebbed away by degrees. Lord John Alington, a tall, bald, +boring Englishman, and one or two others, remained behind, arranging +some expedition with the duke.</p> + +<p>Michael's chief had long since gone. Michael did not depart with him, +but took his leave a few moments later. Michael's departure from Rome +the following day on urgent affairs was generally known. The duke had +watched him bid Fay a mechanical farewell, and had then expressed an +urbane regret at his departure. The thin, pinched face of the young man +appealed to the elder one. The duke had liked him from the first.</p> + +<p>"It is time he went," he said to himself as he watched Michael leave the +room. As Michael left it Fay's excitement dropped from her, and she +became conscious of an enormous fatigue. A few minutes later she dragged +herself up the great pictured staircase to her little boudoir +overlooking the garden, and sank down exhausted on a couch. Her pretty +Italian maid was waiting for her in the adjoining bedroom, and came to +her, and began to unfasten her jewels.</p> + +<p>Fay dismissed her for the night, saying she was not going to bed yet. +She often stayed up late reading. She was of those who say that they +have no time for reading in the day, and who like to look up (or rather, +to say afterwards they looked up) to find the solemn moon peering in at +them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> + +<p>To-night there was no solemn or otherwise disposed moon.</p> + +<p>Fay's heart suddenly began to beat so wildly that it seemed as if she +would suffocate. What violent emotion was this which was flooding her, +sweeping away all landmarks, covering, as by one great inrolling tidal +wave, all the familiar country of her heart? Whither was she being swept +in the midst of this overwhelming roaring torrent? Out to sea? To some +swift destruction? Where? Where?</p> + +<p>She clutched the arm of the sofa and trembled. She had known so many +small emotions. What was this? And like a second wave on the top of the +first a sea of recklessness broke over and engulfed her. <i>What next?</i> +She did not know. She did not care. Michael, his face and hand. These +were the only realities. In another moment she should see him, feel him, +hold him, never, never let him go again.</p> + +<p>In the intense stillness a whisper came up through the orange blossom +below her balcony:</p> + +<p>"Fay."</p> + +<p>She was on the balcony in a moment. The scent of the orange blossom had +become alive and confused everything.</p> + +<p>"Come up," she said almost inaudibly.</p> + +<p>"I cannot."</p> + +<p>"You must. I must speak to you."</p> + +<p>"Come down here then. I am not coming up."</p> + +<p>She ran down, and felt rather than saw Michael's presence at the foot of +the little stair.</p> + +<p>He was breathing hard. He did not move towards her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You sent for me, so I came," he said. "Tell me quickly what I can do +for you, how I can serve you. I cannot remain here more than a moment. I +endanger your safety as it is."</p> + +<p>It was all so different from what she had expected, from what she had +pictured to herself. He was so determined and stern; and it had never +struck her as possible that he would not come up to her room, that the +interview would be so short.</p> + +<p>"I can't speak here," she said, angry tears smarting in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"You can and must. Tell me quickly, dearest, why you sent for me. You +said it was all-important. I am here, I will do your bidding, if you +will only say what it is."</p> + +<p>"Take me with you," she gasped inaudibly.</p> + +<p>She had not meant to say that. She was merely the mouthpiece of +something vast, of some blind destructive force that was rending her. +She swayed against the railings, clinging to them with both hands.</p> + +<p>Even as she spoke her voiceless whisper was drowned in a sound but very +little louder. There was a distant stir, a movement as of waking bees in +the house.</p> + +<p>He had not heard her. He was listening intently.</p> + +<p>"Go back instantly and shut the window," he said, and in a moment she +felt he was gone.</p> + +<p>She crept feebly up the stairs to her room and sank down again on the +couch, broken, half dead.</p> + +<p>"I shall see him no more. I shall see him no more," she said to herself, +twisting her hands. What a travesty, what a mockery that one hurried +moment had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> been! What a parting that was no parting! He had no heart. +He did not really love her.</p> + +<p>Through her stupor she felt rather than heard a movement in the house. +She stole out of her room to the head of the grand staircase. Nearly all +the lights had been put out. Close to a lamp in the saloon below, the +duke and Lord John were standing, looking at a map. "The Grotta Ferrata +road is the best," the duke was saying. And as he spoke a servant came +in quickly, and whispered to the duke, who left the saloon with him.</p> + +<p>Fay fled back to her own room. Something was happening. But what? Could +it have any connection with herself and Michael? No, that seemed +impossible. And Michael must by now have left the gardens, by the +unlocked door by which he had come in.</p> + +<p>Fay drew the reading lamp nearer to her, and opened the book of +devotions which Magdalen, her far off sister in England, had sent her. +Her eyes wandered over the page, her mind taking no heed.</p> + +<p>"<i>For it is the most pain that the soul may have, to turn from God any +time by sin.</i>"</p> + +<p>There certainly was a sort of subdued stir in the house. A nameless fear +was invading Fay's heart. The book shook in her hand. What <i>could</i> be +happening? And if it was, as it must be, something quite apart from her +and Michael, what did it matter, why be afraid?</p> + +<p>"<i>For sin is vile, and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to +no pain which is not sin. And to me was showed no harder hell than +sin.</i>"</p> + +<p>A low tap came at the window. Fay started violently, and the book +dropped on the floor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + +<p>The tap was repeated. She went to the window, and saw Michael's face +through the glass.</p> + +<p>She opened the glass door, and he came in. His clothes were smeared and +torn, and there was blood upon his hand.</p> + +<p>"Something has happened," he said. "I don't know what it is, but the +garden is surrounded, and there is someone watching at the door I came +in at. I have tried all the other ways. I have tried to climb the wall, +but there was glass at the top. I can't get out. And they are searching +the gardens with lanterns."</p> + +<p>Even as he spoke they saw lights moving among the ilexes.</p> + +<p>"They can't know," she said faintly.</p> + +<p>"It does not seem possible. They are probably looking for someone else, +but I can't be found here at this hour without raising suspicion. Is +there any way out through the house from here?"</p> + +<p>"Only down the grand staircase."</p> + +<p>"I must risk it. Show me the way."</p> + +<p>They went together down the almost dark corridor. Fay's heart sickened +at the thought that a belated servant might see them. But all was quiet. +At the head of the staircase they both peered over the balustrade. At +its foot in a narrow circle of light stood the duke and Lord John, and a +man with a tri-coloured sash. Even as they looked, the three turned and +began slowly to mount the staircase.</p> + +<p>Fay and Michael were back in her boudoir in a moment.</p> + +<p>"There is a way out here," he said, indicating the door into her +bedroom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It leads into my bedroom, and then through to Andrea's rooms. There is +no passage, and he has a dog in his room. It would bark."</p> + +<p>"I must go back to the garden again," he said, and instantly moved to +the window. Both saw two <i>carabinieri</i> standing with a lantern at the +foot of the balcony steps.</p> + +<p>"If you go down now," said Fay hoarsely, "my reputation goes with you."</p> + +<p>He looked at her.</p> + +<p>It was as if his whole life were focussed on one burning point; how to +save her from suspicion. If he could have shrivelled into ashes at her +feet he would have done it. She saw her frightful predicament, and +almost hated him.</p> + +<p>The animal panic of being trapped caught them both simultaneously. He +overcame it instantly, while she shook helplessly as in a palsy.</p> + +<p>He went swiftly back to the door leading to the staircase, and glanced +through it.</p> + +<p>"They are coming along the corridor," he said. "They will certainly come +in here."</p> + +<p>"Stand behind the screen," she gasped. "I will say no one has been here, +and they will pass through into the other room. As soon as they have +left the room go quickly out by the staircase."</p> + +<p>He looked round him once, and then walked behind a tall screen of +Italian leather which stood at the head of a divan.</p> + +<p>Fay took up her book from the floor, but her numb fingers refused to +hold it. She put it on the edge of the table near her, under the lamp, +hid her shaking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> hands in the folds of her long white chiffon gown, and +fixed her eyes upon the page.</p> + +<p>The words of the dead saint swam before her eyes:</p> + +<p>"<i>Yea, He loveth us now as well while we are here, as He shall do while +we are there afore His blessed face. But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail.</i>"</p> + +<p>There were subdued footsteps outside, a tap, the duke's voice.</p> + +<p>"May I come in?"</p> + +<p>"Come in," she said, but she heard no words.</p> + +<p>She made a superhuman effort.</p> + +<p>"Come in," she said again, and this time to her relief she heard the +words distinctly.</p> + +<p>The duke entered and held the door half closed.</p> + +<p>"I feared to disturb you, my child," he said, "but it is unavoidable +that I disturb you. It is a relief to find that you are not yet in bed +and asleep. A very grave, a very sad event has happened which +necessitates the presence of the police commissioner. Calm yourself, my +Francesca, and my good friend the <i>delegato</i> will explain."</p> + +<p>The official in the sash came in. Lord John stood in the doorway.</p> + +<p>"Duchess," said the official, "I grieve to say that one of your guests +of this evening, the Marchese di Maltagliala, has been assassinated in +the garden, or possibly in the road, and his dead body was dragged into +the garden afterwards. He was found just inside the east garden door, +which by some mischance had been left unlocked."</p> + +<p>A deathlike silence followed the <i>delegato's</i> words.</p> + +<div class="figleft"> +<a name="illo2" id ="illo2"></a><img src="images/pillus03.jpg" width="370" height="550" alt=""A DEATHLIKE SILENCE FOLLOWED THE DELEGATO'S WORDS"" /></div> +<p> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p><p>Fay turned her bloodless face towards him, and her eyes never left +him. She felt Michael listening behind the screen.</p> + +<p>"There was hardly an instant," continued the official, with a touch of +professional pride, "before the alarm was given. By a fortunate chance I +myself happened to be near. The garden was instantly surrounded. It is +being searched now. It seems hardly possible that the assassin can have +escaped. I entreat your pardon for intruding this painful subject on the +sensitive mind of a lady, and breaking in on your privacy."</p> + +<p>"I should think he has escaped by now," said Fay hoarsely.</p> + +<p>"It is possible, but improbable," said the official. Then he turned to +the duke. "This is, I understand from you, the only way into the house +from the garden?"</p> + +<p>"The only way that might possibly still be open," said the duke. "The +doors on the ground floor are both locked, as we have seen."</p> + +<p>"We greatly feared," continued the duke, turning to his wife, "that the +murderer if he were still in the garden, finding it was being searched, +might terrify you by rushing in here."</p> + +<p>"No one has been in here," said Fay automatically.</p> + + +<p>"Have you been in this room ever since you left the saloon?" said her +husband.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I have been reading here ever since."</p> + +<p>"Then it is impossible that anyone should have escaped into the house +through this room," said the duke. "The duchess must have seen him. It +is no longer necessary to search the house."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> + +<p>The <i>delegato</i> hesitated. He opened the glass door and spoke to the men +with the lantern.</p> + +<p>"They are convinced that it is not possible he is concealed in the +garden," he said. "Perhaps if the duchess were deeply engaged in study +he might have serpentinely glided through into the next room without her +perceiving him. It is, I understand, the duchess's private apartment. It +might be as well—where does the duchess's apartment lead into?"</p> + +<p>"Into my rooms," said the duke, "and my dog is there. He would have +given the alarm long ago if any stranger had passed through my room. If +he is silent no one has been near him."</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>Fay learned what suspense means.</p> + +<p>The <i>delegato</i> twirled his moustaches.</p> + +<p>He was evidently reluctant to give up the remotest chance, and yet +reluctant to inconvenience the duke further.</p> + +<p>"It is just possible," he said, "that the assassin may have taken refuge +in here before the duchess came back to her apartment. My duties are +grave, duchess. Have I your permission?"</p> + +<p>Fay bowed.</p> + +<p>The duke, still urbane, but evidently finding the situation unduly +prolonged, led the way into Fay's bedroom.</p> + +<p>This story would never have been written if Lord John had not remained +standing in the doorway.</p> + +<p>Did Michael know he was there? He had not so far spoken, or given any +sign of his presence.</p> + +<p>"Won't you go into my room, Lord John, and help<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> in the capture," she +said distinctly; and as she spoke she was aware that she was only just +in time.</p> + +<p>But Lord John would not go in, thanks. Lord John preferred to advance +heavily in her direction, and to sit down by her on the couch, telling +her not to look so terrified, that he would take care of her.</p> + +<p>She stared wildly at him, livid and helpless.</p> + +<p>A door was softly opened, and was instantly followed by the furious +barking of a dog.</p> + +<p>"Go and help them," said Fay to Lord John.</p> + +<p>But Lord John did not move. Like all bores he was conscious of his own +attractive personality. He only settled his eyeglass more firmly in his +pale eye.</p> + +<p>"You never spoke to me all evening," he said, with jocular emphasis. +"What have I done to deserve such severity?"</p> + +<p>In another moment the duke and the official returned, followed by +Sancho, a large Bridlington terrier, still bristling and snarling at the +official.</p> + +<p>Fay called the dog to her, and held it forcibly, pretending to caress +it.</p> + +<p>"No one has gone by that way," said the <i>delegato</i> to the duke. "The dog +proves that."</p> + +<p>"Sancho proves it," said the duke gravely.</p> + +<p>As he spoke he paused as if suddenly arrested. His eyes were fixed on a +small Florentine mirror which hung over Fay's writing-table in the angle +of the wall. The duke's face changed, as a man's face might change, who, +conscious of no enemy, feels himself stabbed from behind in the dark. +Then he came forward, and said with a firm voice:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + +<p>"We will now go once more into the gardens. Lord John, you will +accompany us."</p> + +<p>Lord John got heavily to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Take Sancho with you," said Fay, holding the dog with difficulty, who +was obviously excited and suspicious, its mobile nostrils working, its +eyes glued to the screen.</p> + +<p>The duke opened the glass door, and Sancho, his attention turned, rushed +out into the night, barking furiously.</p> + +<p>"You need have no further fear," said the duke to Fay, looking into her +eyes. "The assassin has certainly escaped."</p> + +<p>"No doubt," said Fay.</p> + +<p>"Unless he is hiding behind the screen all the time," said Lord John, +with his customary facetiousness. "It is about the only place in the +room he could hide in, except of course the wastepaper basket."</p> + +<p>The <i>delegato</i>, who was not apparently a man who quickly seized the +humorous side of a remark, at once stepped back from the window, and +glanced at the wastepaper basket.</p> + +<p>"I may as well look behind the screen," he said, and went towards it.</p> + +<p>But before he could reach it the screen moved, and Michael came out from +behind it.</p> + +<p>The four people in the room gazed at him spell-bound, speechless; Lord +John reeled against the wall. The duke alone retained his +self-possession.</p> + +<p>Michael advanced into the middle of the room, and for a moment his eyes +met Fay's. Who shall say what he read in their terror-stricken depths?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then he turned to the duke and said:</p> + +<p>"I ask pardon of you, duke, and of the duchess, my cousin, for the +inconvenience I have caused you. I confess to the murder of the Marchese +di Maltagliala, and sought refuge in the garden. When the garden was +surrounded I sought refuge here. I did not tell the duchess what I had +done, but I implored her to let me take shelter here, and to promise not +to give me up. She ought at once to have given me up. She yielded to the +dictates of humanity and suffered me to hide in this room. Duchess, I +thank you for your noble, your self-sacrificing but unavailing desire to +shield a guilty man."</p> + +<p>Michael went up to her, took her cold hand and kissed it. Then he turned +again to the duke.</p> + +<p>"I offer you my apologies for this intrusion," he said, and the two men +bowed to each other.</p> + +<p>"And now, signor," he said in Italian to the amazed official, "I am at +your service."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p> +Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser.</p> +<p class="sig">—Vauvenargues.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Michael was imprisoned for the night in a cell attached to the Court of +Mandamento, and the next day was sent to Rome to await his trial at the +<i>assise</i>.</p> + +<p>Early on the second day after he reached Rome the duke came to him. The +two men looked fixedly at each other. They exchanged no form of +greeting.</p> + +<p>The duke made a little sign with his hand, and the warder withdrew +outside the cell door, which he left ajar.</p> + +<p>Then the duke sat down by Michael.</p> + +<p>"I should have come yesterday," he said in English, "but it took time to +gain permission, and also"—he nodded towards the door—"to arrange."</p> + +<p>"For God's sake give me details," said Michael.</p> + +<p>The duke gave them in a low voice. He described in a careful sequence +the exact position of the dead body, the wound, caused by stabbing in +the back, the strong inference that the murdered man had been attacked +in the road, and then dragged just inside the Colle Alto garden door.</p> + +<p>"I don't see any reason why he should have gone outside the garden," +said Michael.</p> + +<p>"Neither do I. But the garden door was unlocked. It had been locked as +usual, my gardener swears, and the key left in the lock on the inside. +Who then opened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> it, if for some reason the marchese did not open it +himself?"</p> + +<p>Michael did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I saw the body before it was moved," continued the duke. "It was still +warm. I incline to think the marchese was murdered actually inside the +garden, and that he fell on his face where he stood, and was dragged +behind the hydrangeas. But the <i>delegato</i> thought differently. You will +remember, Carstairs, that the dead man had been dragged by the feet."</p> + +<p>"Did I put him on the right side or the left of the door as you go in?"</p> + +<p>"On the left."</p> + +<p>"On his face?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>"You had no quarrel with the marchese, I presume?" said the duke +significantly.</p> + +<p>"On the contrary," said Michael; "it is not known, but I had."</p> + +<p>"Just so. Just so. About a woman?"</p> + +<p>Michael winced.</p> + +<p>"About a horse," he said.</p> + +<p>"No," said the duke, with decision. "Think again. Your memory does not +serve you. It was about a woman. Was it not a dancing-girl?"</p> + +<p>"I am not like that," said Michael, colouring.</p> + +<p>"It is of no account what you are like, or what you are not like. What +matters is that which is quickly believed. A quarrel about a woman is +always believed, especially by women who think all turns on them. Were +you not in Paris at Easter?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I was."</p> + +<p>"Was not the marchese in Paris at Easter?"</p> + +<p>"He was. I saw him once at the Opera with the old Duke of Castelfranco."</p> + +<p>"Just so. A quarrel about a dancing-girl at Paris at Easter. That was +how it was."</p> + +<p>"You are right," said Michael, regaining his composure with an effort. +"I owed him a grudge. You will be careful to mention this to no one?"</p> + +<p>"I will mention it only to one or two women on whom I can rely," said +the duke; "and to them only in the strictest confidence."</p> + +<p>Michael nodded.</p> + +<p>Silence fell between them, and he wondered why the duke did not go. The +warder shifted his feet in the passage.</p> + +<p>Presently the duke began to speak in a low, even voice.</p> + +<p>"I owe you an apology," he said. "I saw you standing behind the screen, +reflected in a little mirror, and for one moment I thought you had done +me a great injury. It was only for a moment. I regained myself quickly. +I would have saved you if I could. But I owe you an apology for a +suspicion unworthy of either of us."</p> + +<p>"It was natural," said Michael. He was greatly drawn to this man.</p> + +<p>"I may in some matters be deceived," continued the duke, "for in my time +I have deceived others, and have not been found out. I don't know why +you were in my wife's rooms that night. Nevertheless, I clearly know two +things: one, that you did not murder the marchese,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and the other, that +there was nothing wrong between you and my wife. With you her honour was +safe. You and I are combining now to guard only her reputation before +the world."</p> + +<p>Michael did not answer. He nodded again.</p> + +<p>"At the price," continued the duke, "probably of your best years."</p> + +<p>"I am content to pay the price," said Michael. "It was the only thing to +do." Then he coloured like a girl, and raised his eyes to the duke's. "I +went to her that night to say good-bye," he said. "That was why the +garden door was unlocked. I love her. I have loved her for years."</p> + +<p>It seemed as if everything between the two men had become transparent.</p> + +<p>"I know it," said the duke. "She also, the duchess, is in love with +you."</p> + +<p>Michael drew back perceptibly. His manner changed.</p> + +<p>"A little—not much," continued the duke. "I watched her, when you gave +up yourself. She could have saved you. She could save you still—by a +word. But she will not speak it. She appeared to love me a little once. +I was not deceived. I knew. She loves you a little now. Why do you +deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has a +permanent and deep affection—for her very charming self."</p> + +<p>The words fell into the silence of the bare room. Michael's thin hands, +tightly clenched, shook a little.</p> + +<p>The duke bent towards him.</p> + +<p>"Is she worth it?" he said, with sudden passion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> + +<p>No answer. Michael hid his face in his hands.</p> + +<p>"Is she worth it?" said the duke again.</p> + +<p>Michael looked up suddenly at the duke, and the elder man winced at the +expression in his face. He looked through the duke, through his veiled +despair and disillusion, beyond him.</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is worth it," he said. "You do not understand her because you +only love her in part. I meant to serve her by leaving Rome, but now I +can't leave it. What I can do for her I will. It is no sacrifice—I am +glad to do it—to have the chance. I have always wished—to serve +her—to put my hands under her feet."</p> + +<p>The sudden radiance in Michael's face passed. He looked down +embarrassed, annoyed with himself.</p> + +<p>"There remains then but one other person to be considered," said the +duke, looking closely at him. "The beautiful heroine, the young lover, +these are now accommodated. All is <i>en régle</i>. But that dull elderly +person who takes the <i>rôle</i> of husband on these occasions! Is there not +a husband somewhere? What of him? Will he indeed fold his arms as on the +stage? Will he indeed stand by as serenely as you suppose and suffer an +innocent man to make this sacrifice for the sake of his—honour?"</p> + +<p>"He will, only because he must," said Michael, catching his breath. "I +had thought of that. He can do nothing. Have I not accused myself? And +his honour is also hers. They stand and fall together."</p> + +<div class="figleft"> +<a name="illo3" id ="illo3"></a><img src="images/pillus04.jpg" width="370" height="550" alt=""'IS SHE WORTH IT?' HE SAID WITH SUDDEN PASSION"" /></div> + +<p>"They stand and fall together," said the duke slowly. "Yes, that is +true. And he is old. He is finished. He is the head of a great house. +His honour is perhaps the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> <!-- Illustration originally here - moved +for readability --> only thing that still means anything to him. +Nevertheless, it is strange to me that you think he would consent to +keep it at so great a cost, the cost perhaps of twenty years. That were +impossible.... He could not permit <i>that</i>. But—one little year—at +most. That perhaps his conscience might permit. One little year! You are +young. Supposing he has within him," he laid his hand on his heart, +"that of which his wife does not know, which means that his release is +<i>sure</i>. Do you understand? Supposing it must come soon—very soon—her +release—and yours. Perhaps then——" There was a long pause. "Perhaps +then his conscience might suffer him to keep silence."</p> + +<p>Michael's hand made a slight movement. The duke took it in his, and held +it firmly.</p> + +<p>"Listen," he said at last. "Once when I was young, twenty years ago, I +loved. I too would fain have served a woman, would have put my hands +under her feet. There is always one such a woman in life, but only one. +She was to me the world. But I could only trouble her life. She was +married. She had children. I knew I ought to go. I meant to go. She +prayed me to go. I promised her to go—nevertheless I stayed. And at +last—inasmuch as she loved me very much—I broke up her home, her life, +her honour, she was separated from her children. She lost all, and then +when all was gone she died. The only thing which I could keep from her +was poverty, which would have been nothing to her. She never reproached +me. There is no reproach in love. But—she died in disgrace, and alone. +From the first to the last it was her white hands under my feet. That +was how I served the one woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> I have deeply loved, the one creature +who deeply loved me." The duke's voice had become almost inaudible. "You +have done better than I," he said.</p> + +<p>Then he kissed Michael on the forehead, and went out.</p> + +<p>They never met again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p class="center">The year slid like a corpse afloat.<span class="smcap">—D. G. Rossetti.</span></p> +</div> + +<p>And how did it fare with Fay during the days that followed Michael's +arrest?</p> + +<p>Much sympathy was felt for her. Lord John, wallowing in the delicious +novelty of finding eager listeners, went about extolling her courage and +unselfishness to the skies. Her conduct was considered perfectly natural +and womanly. No man condemned her for trying to shield her cousin from +the consequences of his crime. Women said they would have done the same, +and envied her her romantic situation.</p> + +<p>And Fay, shut up in her darkened room in her romantic situation—she who +adored romantic situations—what were Fay's thoughts?</p> + +<p>There is a travail of soul which toils with hard crying up the dark +valley of decision, and brings forth in anguish the life entrusted to +it. Perhaps it is the great renunciation. Perhaps it is only the loyal +inevitable deed which is struggling to come forth, to be allowed to live +for our healing and comfort.</p> + +<p>But there is another travail of soul, barren, unavailing, which flings +itself down, and tosses in impotent misery from side to side, from mood +to mood, as in a sickly trance.</p> + +<p>Such was Fay's.</p> + +<p>Her decision not to speak had been made in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>ment when she had let +Michael accuse himself, and she kept silence. But that she did not know. +She thought it was still to make.</p> + +<p>"I must speak. I must speak," she said to herself all through the +endless day after Michael's arrest, all through the endless night, until +the dawn came up behind the ilexes, the tranquil dawn that knew all, and +found her shuddering and wild-eyed.</p> + +<p>"I must speak. I cannot let Michael suffer for me, even to save my +reputation."</p> + +<p><i>Her reputation!</i> How little she had cared for it twenty-four hours ago, +when passion clutched the reins!</p> + +<p>But now—— The public shame of it—the divorce which in her eyes must +ensue—Andrea! Her courteous, sedate, inexorable husband, whose will she +could not bend, whom she could not cajole, whose mind was a closed book +to her; a book which had lain by her hand for three years, which she had +never had the curiosity to open!—Fay feared her husband, as we all fear +what we do not understand. He would divorce her—and then—— And +Magdalen at home—and——</p> + +<p>A flood of suffocating emotion swept over her, full of ugly swimming and +crawling reptiles, and invertebrate horrors, the inevitable scavengers +of the sea of selfish passion.</p> + +<p>Fay shrank back for very life. She could not pass through that flood and +live. Nevertheless she felt herself pushed towards it.</p> + +<p>"But I have no choice. I <i>must</i> speak. He is innocent. He is doing this +to shield me because he loves me. But I also love him, far, far more +than he loves me, and I will prove it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fay went in imagination through a fearful and melodramatic scene, in +which she revealed everything before a public tribunal. She saw her +husband's face darken against her, her lover's lighten as she saved him. +She saw her slender figure standing alone, bearing the whole shock, +serene, unshaken. The vision moved her to tears.</p> + +<p>Was it a prophetic vision?</p> + +<p>It was quite light now, and she crept to her husband's room. She had not +seen him during the previous day. He had been out the whole of it. She +felt drawn towards him by calamity, by the loneliness of her misery.</p> + +<p>The duke was not asleep. He was lying in bed with his hands clasped +behind his head. His sallow face, worn by a sleepless night, and perhaps +by a wounding memory, was turned towards the light, and the new day +dealt harshly with it. There were heavy lines under the eyes. The eyes +looked steadily in front of him, plunged deep in a past which had +something of the irrevocable tenderness of the dawn in it, the holy +reflection of an inalienable love.</p> + +<p>He did not stir as his wife came in. His eyes only moved, resting upon +her for a moment, focussing her with difficulty, as if withdrawn from +something at a great distance, and then they turned once more to the +window.</p> + +<p>A pale primrose light had risen above the blue tangled mist of ilexes +and olives. The cypresses stood half-veiled in mist, half-sharply clear +against the stainless pallor of the upper sky.</p> + +<p>"I am so miserable, Andrea."</p> + +<p>He did not speak.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I cannot sleep."</p> + +<p>Still no answer.</p> + +<p>"I am convinced that Michael is innocent."</p> + +<p>"It goes without saying."</p> + +<p>"Then they can't convict him, can they?"</p> + +<p>"They will convict him," said the duke, and for a moment he bent his +eyes upon her. "Has he not accused himself?"</p> + +<p>"They won't—hang him?"</p> + +<p>The duke shrugged his shoulders. He did not think fit to enlighten his +wife's ignorance of the fact that in Italy there is no capital +punishment.</p> + +<p>"But if he has not done it, and we know he has not," faltered Fay.</p> + +<p>"He is perhaps shielding someone," said the duke, "the real murderer."</p> + +<p>"I don't see how that could be."</p> + +<p>"He may have his reasons. The real murderer is perhaps a friend—or +a—woman. Your cousin is a romantic. It is always better for a romantic +if he had not been born. But generally a female millstone is in +readiness to tie itself round him, and cast him into the sea. The world +is not fitted to him. It is to egotistic persons like you and me, my +Francesca, to whom the world is most admirably adapted."</p> + +<p>"I don't see how the murderer could be a woman. Women don't murder men +on the high road."</p> + +<p>"No, not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty is +the high road! But I have known, not once nor twice, women to murder men +very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly—to let them die. I am much +older than you, but you will perhaps also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> live to see a woman do this, +Francesca. And now retire to your room, and let me counsel you to take +some rest. Your beauty needs it."</p> + +<p>She burst into tears.</p> + +<p>"How little you care!" she said between her sobs, "how heartless you +are! I will never believe they will convict him. He is innocent, and his +innocence will come to light."</p> + +<p>"I think the light will not be suffered to fall upon it," said the duke.</p> + +<p>Afterwards, years afterwards, Fay remembered that conversation with +wonder that its significance had escaped her. But at the time she could +see nothing, feel nothing except her own anguish.</p> + +<p>She left her husband's room. There was no help or sympathy in him. She +went back to her own room and flung herself face downwards on her bed. +Let no one think she did not suffer.</p> + +<p>A faint ray of comfort presently came to her at the thought that +Michael's innocence might after all come to light. It might be proved in +spite of himself.</p> + +<p>She would pray incessantly that the real murderer might give himself up, +or that suspicion should fall on him, and he should be dragged to +justice. And then, if—<i>after all</i>—Michael were convicted and his life +endangered, then she <i>must</i> speak. But—not till then. Not now when all +might yet go well without her confession.... And it was not as if she +were guilty of unfaithfulness. She had not done anything wrong beyond +imprudence. Yes, she had certainly been imprudent; that she saw. But she +had done nothing <i>wrong</i>. It could not be right to confess to what in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> +public opinion amounted to unfaithfulness on her part, and dishonourable +conduct on his, when it was not so. They were both innocent. It would be +telling a lie to let anyone think either of them could be guilty of such +a sordid crime. It looked sordid now. Why should she drag down his name +with hers into the mud—unless it were absolutely necessary.... And she +must remember how distressed Michael would be if she said a word, if she +flung her good name from her, which he had risked all to save. Some +semblance of calm returned to her, as she thus reached the only +conclusion which the bias of her mind would permit. The stream ran +docilely in the little groove cut out for it.</p> + +<p>During the days and weeks that followed Fay shut herself up, and prayed +incessantly for Michael.</p> + +<p>She prayed all through the interminable interval before the trial.</p> + +<p>"If it goes against him, I will speak," she said.</p> + +<p>Yet all the time Michael who loved her knew that she would not speak. +Her husband who could have loved her, and who watched her struggle with +compassion, knew that she would not speak. Only Fay who did not know +herself believed that she would speak.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The day came when the duke gravely informed her that Michael was found +guilty of murder.</p> + +<p>Fay's prayers it seemed had not availed. She prayed no more. There was +no help in God. Probably there was no God to pray to. Her sister +Magdalen seemed to think there was. But how could she tell? Besides, +Magdalen had such a calm temperament, and nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> had ever happened to +make her unhappy, or to shake her faith. It was different for Magdalen.</p> + +<p>Evidently there was no justice anywhere, only a blind chance. "The truth +will out," Fay had said to herself over and over again. She had tried to +have faith. But the truth had not come out. She was being pushed, pushed +over the edge of the precipice. Oh, why had Michael fallen in love with +her when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgust +those early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time of +primroses. It had brought her to <i>this</i>—to this horrible place of tears +and shame and shuddering—to these wretched days and hideous nights. Oh, +why, why, had he loved her! Why had she let herself love him!</p> + +<p>Suddenly she said to herself, "They may reprieve him yet. If his +sentence is not commuted to imprisonment I will speak, so help me God I +will."</p> + +<p>It could never be known whether she would have kept that oath, for the +next day she heard that Michael had been sentenced to fifteen years' +imprisonment. Why had Andrea been so cruel as to let her imagine for a +whole horrible night that Michael's would be a death sentence, when in +Italy it seemed there was no capital punishment as in England? It was +just like Andrea to torture her needlessly! When the sentence reached +her Fay drew breath. The horrible catastrophe had been averted. To a man +of Michael's temperament the living grave to which he was consigned was +infinitely worse than death. But what was Michael's temperament to Fay? +She shut her eyes to the cell of an Italian prison. Michael would live, +and in time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> the truth would come to light, and he would be released.</p> + +<p>She impressed this conviction with tears on his half-brother Wentworth +Maine, the kind, silent elder brother, Michael's greatest friend, who +had come out to Italy to be near him, and who heard sentence given +against him with a set face, and an unshaken belief in his innocence. +Even to Wentworth Michael had said nothing, could be induced to say no +word. He confessed to the murder. That was all.</p> + +<p>Wentworth, who had never seen Fay before, as she had married just before +he came to live at his uncle's place in Hampshire near Fay's home, saw +the marks of grief in her lovely face, and was unconsciously drawn +towards her. He was shy as only men can be; but he almost forgot it in +her sympathetic presence. She came into his isolated, secluded life at +the moment when the barriers of his instinctive timidity and apathy were +broken down by his first real trouble. And he was grateful to her for +having done her best to save Michael.</p> + +<p>"I shall never forget that," he said, when he came to bid her good-bye. +"There are very few women who would have had the courage and +unselfishness to act as you did."</p> + +<p>Fay winced and paled, and he took his leave, bearing away with him a +grave admiration for this delicate, sensitive creature, so full of +tender compassion for him and Michael.</p> + +<p>He made no attempt to see her again when he returned to Italy some +months later to visit Michael in prison. To visit Fay on that occasion +would have taken him somewhat out of his way, and Wentworth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> never went +out of his way, not out of principle, but because such a course never +occurred to him. He would have liked to see her, in order to tell her +about Michael's condition, and also to deliver in person a message which +Michael had sent to Fay by him. But when he realised that a detour would +be necessary in order to accomplish this, he wrote to Fay to tell her +with deep regret that it was impossible for him to see her, gave her +Michael's message, and returned to England by the way he came. +Nevertheless, he often thought of her, for she was inextricably +associated with the unspeakable trouble of his life, his brother's +living death.</p> + +<p>When all was over, and the last sod had—so to speak—been cast upon +that living grave, Fay tried to take up her life again. But she could +not. She had lost heart. She dared not be alone. She shunned society. At +her earnest request her sister Magdalen came out to her for a time, from +the home in England, into which she was wedged so tightly. But even +Magdalen's calm presence brought no calm with it, and the deepening +friendship between her sister and her husband only irritated Fay. +Everything irritated Fay. She was ill at ease, restless, feebly +sarcastic, impatient.</p> + +<p>There is a peace which passes understanding, and there is an unpeace +which passes understanding also. Fay did not know, would not know, why +she was so troubled, so weary of life, so destitute of comfort.</p> + +<p>Had she met the great opportunity of her life, the turning point, and +missed it? I do not think so. It was not for her.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A year later the duke died.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> + +<p>He made a dignified exit. An attack of vertigo to which he was liable +came on when he was on horseback. He was thrown and dragged, and only +survived a few days as by a miracle. His wife, who had seen little of +him during the last year, saw still less of him during the days of his +short illness. But when the end was close at hand he sent for her, and +asked her to remain in a distant recess of his room during the painful +hours.</p> + +<p>"It will be a happier memory for you," he said gently to her between the +paroxysms of suffering, "to think that you were there."</p> + +<p>And so propped high in a great carved bedstead in the octagonal room +where the Colle Altos were born, and where, when they could choose, they +died, the duke lay awaiting the end.</p> + +<p>He had received extreme unction. The chanting choir had gone. The priest +had closed his pale fingers upon the crucifix, when he desired to be +left alone with his wife.</p> + +<p>She drew near timidly and stood beside his bed.</p> + +<p>He bent his tranquil, kindly eyes upon her.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, my Francesca," he said. "May God and his angels protect you, +and give you peace."</p> + +<p>A belated compunction seized her.</p> + +<p>"I wish I had been a better wife to you, Andrea," she said brokenly, +laying her hand on his.</p> + +<p>He made the ghost of a courteous, deprecating gesture, and raised her +hand to his lips. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes and his +hand fell out of hers.</p> + +<p>Through the open window came a sudden waft of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> hot carnations, a long +drawn breath of the rapturous Italian spring.</p> + +<p>It reached the duke. He stirred slightly, and opened his eyes once more. +Once more they fell on Fay, and it seemed to her as if with the last +touch of his cold lips upon her hand their relation of husband and wife +had ceased. Even at that moment she realised with a sinking sense of +impotence how slight her hold on him from first to last had been. +Clearly he had already forgotten it, passed beyond it, would never +remember it again.</p> + +<p>"It is spring," he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and for +a moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sun +shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year +he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you keep your +cousin Michael in prison?"</p> + +<p>And thereupon the duke closed his eyes on this world, and went upon his +way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>A bachelor's an unfinished thing ... He wants somebody to listen to his +talk.</p> +<p class="sig">—Eden Phillpotts.</p> +</div> + +<p>Reader, do you know Barford, in Hampshire? If you don't, I can tell you +how to get to it. You take train from Victoria, and you get out at +Saundersfoot. There is nothing at Saundersfoot, except a wilderness of +lodgings and a tin station and a high wind. It need not detain an active +mind beyond the necessary moment of enquiring by which road it may be +most quickly left. I cannot tell you who Saunders was, nor why the +watering-place was called after his foot. But if you walk steadily away +from it for five miles inland, along the white chalky road between the +downs, you will arrive at the little village of Barford.</p> + +<p>There is only one road, so you cannot miss your way. Little twisty lanes +fretted with sheep-tracks drop down into it now and then from the +broad-shouldered downs on either side, but take no notice of them. If +you persevere, you will in due course see the village of Barford lying +in front of you, which, at a little distance, looks as if it had been +carelessly swept into a crease between the downs, while a few cottages +and houses on the hillside seem to have adhered to the ground, and +remained stuck where they were when the sweeping took place.</p> + +<p>After you have passed the pond and the post office, and before you reach +the school, you will see a lodge,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and an old Italian iron gateway, +flanked by a set of white wooden knobs planted in the ground on either +side, held together by chains. The white knobs are apparently there in +order to upset carriages as they drive in or out. But very few carriages +have driven in or out during the last two years, except those of the +owner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine. Wentworth, since he inherited +the place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhat +secluded life. But during the last two years, ever since his +half-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy, +Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of his +neighbours. He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as a +magistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin, +refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of long +tracts of solitary unhappiness. And the habit of solitude was growing on +him.</p> + +<p>The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny low +rooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of +ancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of the +place as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon its +surface. The patch, however, adroitly copied, is seen to be an +innovation.</p> + +<p>The old house, which had known so much, had sheltered so much, had kept +counsel so long, seemed to resent the artificial peace that its present +owner had somewhat laboriously constructed round himself, within its +mellow, ivied walls.</p> + +<p>There is a fictitious tranquillity which is always on the verge of being +broken, which depends largely on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> uninterrupted hours, on confidential, +velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of +the inharmonious or jarring elements which pervade daily life.</p> + +<p>Such an imitation peace, coy as a fickle mistress, Wentworth cherished. +Was it worth all the trouble he took to preserve it, when the real thing +lay at his very door?</p> + +<p>On this February morning, as he sat looking out across the down, white +in the pale sunshine, the current of his life ran low. He had returned +the night before from one of his periodical journeys to Italy to visit +Michael in his cell. He was tired with the clang and hurry of the long +journey, depressed almost to despair by the renewed realisation of his +brother's fate. Two years—close on two years, had Michael been in +prison.</p> + +<p>In Wentworth's faithful heart that wound never healed. To-day it bled +afresh. He bit his lip, and his face quivered.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Wentworth was not as handsome as Michael, but, nevertheless, he was +distinctly good to look at, and the half-brothers, in spite of the +fifteen years' difference between their ages, bore a certain superficial +resemblance to each other. Wentworth was of middle height, lightly and +leanly built, with a high bridge on a rather thin nose, and with narrow, +clean grey eyes under light eyelashes. He looked as if he had been made +up of different shades of one colour. His light brown hair had a little +grey in it, his delicately cut face and nervous hands were both tanned, +by persistent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> exposure to all kinds of weather, to nearly the same +shade of indeterminate brown as his hair.</p> + +<p>You could not look at Wentworth without seeing that he was a man who had +never even glanced at the ignoble side of life, for whose fastidious, +sensitive nature sensual lures had no attraction, a man who could not +lie, who could not stoop, whose mind was as clean as his hand, and, for +an Englishman, that is saying a good deal. He was manly in a physical +sense. He rode straight, he shot well. He could endure bodily strain +with indifference, though he was not robustly built. He was sane, +even-tempered, liable to petty resentments, mildly and resolutely +selfish, except where Michael was concerned, a conscientious and just +master—at least, just in intention—a patient and respectful son where +patience and respect had not been easy.</p> + +<p>The strain of scholar and student in him was about evenly mixed with +that of the country gentleman. The result was a certain innate sense of +superiority which he was not in the least aware that he showed. He had +no idea that he was considered "fine," and "thinking a good deal of +himself," by the more bucolic of his country neighbours. No one could +say that Wentworth was childlike, but perhaps he was a little childish. +He certainly had a <i>naïf</i> and unshakable belief that the impressions he +had formed as to his own character were shared by others. He supposed it +was recognised by his neighbours that they had a thinker in their midst, +and always tacitly occupied the ground which he imagined had been +conceded to him on that account.</p> + +<p>His mother, a beautiful, foolish, whimsical, hard-riding heiress, the +last of a long line, had married the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> youngest son—the one brilliant, +cultivated member—of a family as ancient, as uneducated, and as prosaic +as her own. Wentworth was the result of that union. His father had died +before his talents were fully recognised: that is to say, just when it +was beginning to be perceived that he was a genius only in his own +class, and that there were hordes of educated men in the middle classes +who could beat him at every point on his own ground, except in carriage +and appearance, and whom no one regarded as specially gifted. Still, in +his own county, among his own friends, and in a society where education +and culture eke out a precarious, interloping existence, and are +regarded with distrustful curiosity, Lord Wilfrid Maine lived and died, +and was mourned as a genius.</p> + +<p>After many years of uneasy, imprudent widowhood, the widow of the great +man had made a disastrous second marriage, and had died at Michael's +birth.</p> + +<p>No one had disputed with Wentworth over the possession of Michael. +Wentworth, a sedate, self-centred young man of three-and-twenty, of +independent means, mainly occupied in transcribing the nullity of his +days in a voluminous diary, had taken charge of him virtually from his +first holidays, during which Michael's father had achieved the somewhat +tedious task of drinking himself to death. Michael's father had +appointed Wentworth as his son's guardian. If it had been a jealous +affection on Wentworth's part, it had also been a deep one. And it had +been returned with a single-hearted devotion on Michael's part which had +gradually knit together the hearts of the older and the younger man, as +it seemed indissolubly. No one had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> come between them. Once or twice +Wentworth had become uneasy, suspicious of Michael's affection for his +tutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys, +and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few of +these incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case, +judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships he +had not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number was +Michael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael's +boyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. It had come about +during the last year of his great uncle's life at Barford, which was +within a few miles of Priesthope, Fay's home. Michael had spent many +weeks at Barford with the old man, who was devoted to him. Everyone had +expected that he would make Michael his heir, but when he died soon +afterwards, it was found he had left the place, in a will dated many +years back, to Wentworth. If Michael had never mentioned his first +painful contact with life to Wentworth, it was perhaps partly because he +instinctively felt that the confidence would be coldly received, partly +also because Michael was a man of few words, to whom speech had never +taken the shape of relief.</p> + +<p>There had no doubt been wretched moments in Wentworth's devotion to +Michael, but nevertheless it had been the best thing so far in his +somewhat colourless existence, with its hesitating essays in other +directions, its half-hearted withdrawals, its pigeon-holed emotions. He +had not been half-hearted about Michael. It is perhaps natural that we +should love very deeply those who have had the power to release us +momentarily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> from the airless prison of our own egotism. How often it is +a child's hand which first opens that iron door, and draws us forth into +the sunshine! With Wentworth it had been so. The pure air of the +moorland, the scent of the heather and the sea seem indissolubly mingled +with the remembrance of those whom we have loved. For did we not in +their company walk abroad into a new world, breathe a new air, while +Self, the dingy turnkey, for once slept at his post?</p> + +<p>One of the reasons of his devotion to Michael was that Michael's +character did not apparently or perceptibly alter. He was very much the +same person in his striped convict's blouse as he had been in his Eton +jacket. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had ever realised of what +materials that character consisted. Wentworth was of those who never get +the best out of men and women, who never divine and meet, but only come +into surprised uncomfortable contact with their deeper emotions. +Michael's passion of service for Fay would have been a great shock to +Wentworth had he suspected it. It remained for the duke to perceive the +latent power in Michael, and to be taken instantly into his confidence +on the matter, while Wentworth, unwitting, had remained for life outside +his brother's mind.</p> + +<p>Some men and women are half conscious that they are thus left out, are +companions only of "the outer court" of the lives of others. But +Wentworth never suspected this, partly because he regarded as friendship +a degree of intimacy which most men and all women regard as +acquaintanceship. He did not know there was anything more. Those from +whom others<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> need much, learn perforce, whether they will or no, to what +heights, to what depths human nature can climb and—fall. But Wentworth +was not a person on whom others made large demands. But if his love for +Michael had been his one tangible happiness, it had become now his one +real pain.</p> + +<p>Contrary to all his habits, he sat on, hour after hour, motionless, +inert, watching the cloud shadows pass across the down. He tried to +rouse himself. He told himself that he must settle back into his old +occupations. He must get forward with his history of Sussex, and write +up his diary. He must come to some decision about the allotment scheme +on his property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help Colonel +Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way +across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel +Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as +a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch +business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and +inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere +presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with +himself struggling in the middle.</p> + +<p>Wentworth must save the old autocrat from putting himself in the wrong, +when he was so plainly in the right. Wentworth must at any rate, if he +could do nothing else this morning, read his letters, which had +accumulated during his short absence.</p> + +<p>Without moving from his chair he turned over, with a groan, the pile of +envelopes waiting for him at his elbow. Invitations, bills, tenants' +complaints, an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>unexpected dividend. It was all one to him. The Bishop +of Lostford—so his secretary wrote—accepted Wentworth's invitation to +dine and sleep at Barford that night, after holding a confirmation at +Saundersfoot. Wentworth had forgotten he had asked him. Very well, he +must remember to order a room to be got ready. That was all. A +subscription earnestly solicited by the daughter of a neighbouring +clergyman for a parish library. Why could he not be left in peace? Oh! +what was the use of anything—of life, health, money, intellect, if +existence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this, +only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful of +bricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and sense +of being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form of +dissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as you +liked, <i>if you did not like it?</i> Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He +forgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michael +had been free and happy. Not quite, but nearly. Now he attributed the +whole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, to +his distress about his brother's fate.</p> + +<p>That wound, never healed, bled afresh. Who felt for him in his trouble? +Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood? No one. That was the +way of the world.</p> + +<p>Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rose +suddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had met +her walking in the woods near her father's house. She had gone back to +her old home after the duke's death. She, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> least, had grieved for him +and Michael with an intensity which he had never forgotten. Even in her +widowed desolation she had remembered Michael, and always asked after +him when Wentworth went over to Priesthope. And Wentworth was often +there, for one reason or another. Michael, too, had asked after her, and +had sent her a message by his brother. Should he go over to-day and +deliver it in person? Among his letters was a scrawling, illegible note, +already several days old, from Colonel Bellairs, Fay's father, about the +right of way. The matter, it seemed, was more urgent than Wentworth had +realised. Any matter pertaining to Colonel Bellairs was always, in the +opinion of the latter, of momentous urgency.</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs asked Wentworth to come over to luncheon the first day +he could, and to walk over the debatable ground with him.</p> + +<p>Wentworth looked at his watch, started up and rang the bell, and ordered +his cob Conrad to be brought round at once.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>Le plus grand élément des mauvaises actions secrètes, +des lâchetés inconnues, est peut-être un honheur incomplet.</p> +<p class="sig">—Balzac.</p> +</div> + + +<p>When Fay, in her panic-stricken widowhood, had fled back to her old home +in Hampshire, she found all very much as she had left it, except that +her father's hair was damply dyed, her sister Magdalen's frankly grey, +and the pigtail of Bessie, the youngest daughter, was now an imposing +bronze coil in the nape of her neck.</p> + +<p>But if little else was radically changed in the old home except the hair +of the family, nevertheless, the whole place had somehow declined and +shrunk in Fay's eyes during the three years of her marriage. The dear +old gabled Tudor house, with its twisted chimneys, looked much the same +from the outside, but within, in spite of its wealth of old pictures and +cabinets and china, it had contracted the dim, melancholy aspect which +is the result of prolonged scarcity of money. Nothing had been spent on +the place for years. Magdalen seemed to have faded together with the +curtains, and the darned carpets, and the bleached chintzes.</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs alone, a handsome man of sixty, had remained remarkably +young for his age. The balance, however, was made even by the fact that +those who lived with him grew old before their time. It had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> so +with his wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men as +superficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, +as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. But +Colonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapable +of even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy of +all decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggested +arrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "spring +cleaning" could never be mentioned in his presence. The thing itself +could only be achieved by stealth. A month at the seaside for the sake +of the children was a subject that could not be approached. All small +feminine social arrangements, dependent for their accomplishment on the +use of the horses, were mown down like grass. Colonel Bellairs hated +what he called "living by clockwork."</p> + +<p>You may read, if you care to do so, in the faces of many gentle-tempered +and apparently prosperous married women, an enormous fatigue. Wicked, +blood-curdling husbands do not bring this look into women's faces. It is +men like Colonel Bellairs who hold the recipe for calling it into +existence.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bellairs, a beautiful woman, with high spirits, but not +high-spirited, became more and more silent and apathetic year by year, +yielded more and more and more, yielded at last without expostulation +equally at every point, when she should have yielded and when she should +have stood firm, yielded at last even where her children's health and +well-being were concerned.</p> + +<p>Apathy and health are seldom housemates for long together. Mrs. Bellairs +gradually declined from her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> chair to her sofa. She made no effort to +live after her youngest daughter was born. She could have done so if she +had wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on any +other subject. There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in it +all the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs. Bellairs exemplified it. "It +is better to sit than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit. It is +better to sleep than to lie. It is better to die than to sleep."</p> + +<p>Fay had been glad enough, as we have seen, to escape from home by +marriage. No such way of escape had apparently presented itself for the +elder sister. As Magdalen and Fay sat together on the terrace in front +of the house, the contrast between the sisters was more marked than the +ten years' difference of age seemed to warrant.</p> + +<p>Magdalen was a tall, thin woman of thirty-five, who looked older than +her age. She had evidently been extremely pretty once. Perhaps she might +even have been young once. But it must have been a long time ago. She +was a faded, distinguished-looking person, with a slight stoop, and a +worn, delicately-featured face, and humorous, tranquil eyes. Her thick +hair was grey. She looked as if she had borne for many years the brunt +of continued ill health, or the ill health of others, as if she had been +obliged to lift heavy weights too young. Perhaps she had. Everything +about her personality seemed fragile except her peace of mind. You could +not look at Magdalen without seeing that she was a happy creature.</p> + +<p>But very few did look at her when Fay was beside her. Fay's beauty had +increased in some ways and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> diminished in others during the year of her +widowhood. She had become slightly thinner and paler, but not to the +extent when beauty suffers wrong. A very young face can bear a worn +look, and even have its charm enhanced thereby. The mark of suffering on +Fay's childlike face and in her deep violet eyes had brought with it an +expression which might easily be mistaken for spirituality, especially +by those—and they are very many—to whom a pallid and attenuated aspect +are the outward signs of spirituality.</p> + +<p>That she was miserable was obvious. <i>But why was she so restless?</i> +Magdalen had often silently asked herself that question during the past +year. Even Bessie, the youngest sister, had noticed Fay's continual +restlessness and had commented on it, had advised her sister to embark +on a course of reading, and to endeavour to interest herself in work for +others.</p> + +<p>She had also, with the untempered candour of eighteen, suggested to Fay +that she should cease to make a slave of Magdalen. It is hardly +necessary to add that Fay and Bessie did not materially increase the sum +of each other's happiness.</p> + +<p>As Magdalen and Fay were sitting together in the sun the door into the +garden opened, and Bessie stalked slowly towards them across the grass, +in a short cycling skirt.</p> + +<p>"It surely is not necessary to be quite so badly dressed as Bessie," +said Fay with instant irritation. "If she must wear one of those hideous +short skirts, it might at any rate be well cut. I have told her so often +enough."</p> + +<p>Since Bessie had been guilty of the enormity of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>suggesting a course of +reading, Fay had made many sarcastic comments on Bessie's direful +clothes.</p> + +<p>"I must advise her to take dress more seriously," said Magdalen +absently. She was depressed by a faint misgiving about Bessie. Bessie +was to have lunched to-day with congenial archæological friends, +intelligent owners of interesting fossils. Nevertheless, when +Wentworth's cob Conrad was seen courteously allowing himself to be +conducted to the stable she instantly decided to lunch at home, and to +visit her friends when they were not expecting her, in the afternoon. +<i>It could make no difference to them</i>, she had told Magdalen, who shook +her head over that well-known phrase, which Colonel Bellairs had long +since established as "a household word." Bessie was not to be moved by +Magdalen's disapproval, however. She retired to her chamber, donned a +certain enamel brooch which she only wore on Sundays, and appeared at +luncheon.</p> + +<p>It was not a particularly cheerful meal. Wentworth was silent and +depressed. Colonel Bellairs did not for an instant cease to speak about +the right of way during the whole of luncheon, even when his back was +turned while he was bending over a ham on the sideboard. And the moment +luncheon was over he had marched Wentworth off to the scene of the +dispute.</p> + +<p>Magdalen was vaguely uneasy at the tiny incident of Bessie's change of +plan, and was glad it had escaped Fay's notice. Most things about Bessie +did escape Fay's notice except her clothes. Bessie was not at eighteen +an ingratiating person. No one had ever called her the sunbeam of the +home. She had preserved throughout her solemn childhood and flinty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> +youth a sort of resentful protest against the attitude of her family at +her advent, namely, that she was not wanted. Her mother had died at her +birth, and for several years afterwards her father had studiously +ignored her presence in the house, not without a sense of melancholy +satisfaction at this proof of his devotion to her mother.</p> + +<p>"No, no. It may be unreasonable. It may be foolish," he was wont to say +to friends who had not accused him of unreasonableness, "but don't ask +me to be fond of that child. I can't look at her without remembering +what her birth cost me."</p> + +<p>Bessie was a fine, strong young woman, with a perfectly impassive +handsome face—no Bellairs could achieve plainness—and the manner of +one who moves among fellow creatures who do not come up to the standard +of conduct which she has selected as the lowest permissible to herself +and others. Bessie had not so far evinced a preference for anyone in her +own family circle, or outside it. Her affections consisted so far of a +distinct dislike of and contempt for her father. She had accorded to Fay +a solemn compassion when first the latter returned to Priesthope. +Indeed, the estrangement between the sisters, brought about by the +suggested course of reading, had been the unfortunate result of a +cogitating pity on Bessie's part for the lamentable want of regulation +of Fay's mind.</p> + +<p>Bessie liked Magdalen, though she disapproved of her manner of life as +weak and illogical. You could not love Bessie any more than you could +love an ironclad. She bore the same resemblance to a woman that an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> iron +building does to a house. She was not in reality harder than tin or +granite or asphalt, or her father; but it would not be an over-statement +to suggest that she lacked softness.</p> + +<p>She advanced with precision to the bench on which her sisters were +sitting.</p> + +<p>"I am now going to cycle to the Carters'," she said to Magdalen. "I +forgot to mention till this moment that I met Aunt Mary this morning at +the Wind Farm, and that she gave me a letter for father, and said that +she and Aunt Aggie were lunching with the Copes."</p> + +<p>"Poor Copes!" ejaculated Fay.</p> + +<p>"And would both come on here afterwards to an early tea," continued +Bessie, taking no notice of the interruption. "Aunt Mary desired that +you would not have hot scones for tea, as Aunt Aggie is always depressed +after them. She said there was no objection to them cold, and buttered, +but not hot."</p> + +<p>"I shall have tea in my own room then," once more broke in Fay. "I can't +stand Aunt Mary. She is always preaching at me."</p> + +<p>"It is a pity that Fay is disinclined to share the undoubted burden of +entertaining our relatives," said Bessie, addressing herself exclusively +to Magdalen, "as I do not feel able to defer my visit to the Carters any +longer."</p> + +<p>Magdalen struggled hard against a smile, and kept it under.</p> + +<p>"Possibly the aunts are coming over to consult father about a private +matter," she said. "The letter beforehand to prepare his mind looks like +it. So it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> would be best if you and Fay were not there. The aunts' +affairs generally require the deepest secrecy."</p> + +<p>"And then father lets it all out at dinner before the servants," said +Bessie over her shoulder as she departed.</p> + +<p>When she was out of hearing Fay said with exasperation, "You are not +wise to give way so much to Bessie, Magdalen. She is selfishness itself. +Why did not you insist on her staying and helping with the aunts? She +never considers you."</p> + +<p>Magdalen was silent.</p> + +<p>"I hate sitting here with the house staring at me," said Fay. "I can't +think why you are so fond of this bench. Let us go into the beech +avenue."</p> + +<p>For a long time past Magdalen had noticed that Fay always wanted to be +somewhere she was not.</p> + +<p>They went in silence through the little wood that bounded the gardens, +and passed into the great, bare, grey aisle of the beech avenue.</p> + +<p>In a past generation a wide drive had led through this avenue to the +house. It had been the south approach to Priesthope. But in these +impoverished days, the road, with its sweep of turf on either side, had +been neglected, and was now little more than a mossy cart-rut, with a +fallen tree across it.</p> + +<p>The two sisters sat down on a crooked arm of the fallen tree.</p> + +<p>It was a soft, tranquil afternoon, flooded with meek February sunshine. +Far away between the green-grey trunks of the trees, the sea glinted +like a silver ribbon. Everything was very still, with the stillness set +deep in peace of one who loves and awaits in awe love's next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> word. The +earth lay in the sunshine, and listened for the whisper of spring. Faint +birdnotes threaded the high windless spaces near the tree-tops.</p> + +<p>"Look!" said Magdalen, "the first crocus."</p> + +<p>What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peering +against the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like a +child's "soft absolving touch," the inflamed, aching, unrest of the +spirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reach +through with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy, +and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us?</p> + +<p>Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner, +absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two large +tears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. She shivered, +and crept a little closer to her sister. She felt alienated from she +knew not what, dreadfully cold and alone in the sunshine, with her cheek +against her sister's shoulder. Though she did not realise it, something +long frost-bound in her mind was yielding, shifting, breaking up. The +first miserable shudder of the thaw was upon her.</p> + +<p>She glanced up at Magdalen, who was looking into the heart of the +crocus, and a sudden anger seized her at the still rapture of her +sister's face. The contrast between her own gnawing misery and +Magdalen's serenity cut her like a knife. What right had Magdalen to be +so happy? Why should she have been exempted from all trouble? What had +she done that anguish could never reach her? Fay's love for Magdalen, +and at this time Magdalen was the only person for whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> she had any +affection—had all the violent recoils, the mutinous anger, the sudden +desire to wound on the one side, all the tender patience and grieved +understanding on the other which are the outcome of a real attachment +between a bond woman and a free one.</p> + +<p>The one craved, the other relinquished; the one was consumed with +unrest, the other had reached some inner stronghold of peace. The one +was imprisoned in self, the other was freed, released. The one made +demands, the other was willing to serve. It seems as if only the free +can serve.</p> + +<p>"I am very miserable," said Fay suddenly. She was pushed once more by +the same blind impulse that had taken her to her husband's room the +night after Michael's arrest.</p> + +<p>She used almost the same words. And as the duke had made no answer then, +so Magdalen made none now. She had not lived in the same house with Fay +for nearly a year for nothing.</p> + +<p>Magdalen's silence acted as a goad.</p> + +<p>"You think, and father thinks," continued Fay, her voice shaking, "you +are all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for. +It's not."</p> + +<p>"I know that," said Magdalen. "You never cared much about him. I have +often wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply."</p> + +<p>Fay winced. Magdalen had noticed something, after all.</p> + +<p>"I have sometimes feared,"—continued Magdalen with the deliberation of +one who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the opening +comes, and not to be silent when it does come—"I have sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> feared +that your heart was locked up in an Italian prison."</p> + +<p>"My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not very +astonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen. "My heart!" she laughed +bitterly. "Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gone +through, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or out +of it? I suppose you mean poor dear Michael. I hate men, and their +selfish, stupid, blundering ways."</p> + +<p>Fay had often alluded to the larger sex <i>en bloc</i> as blunderers since +the night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen.</p> + +<p>"There are two blunderers coming towards us now," said Magdalen, as the +distant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beech +avenue.</p> + +<p>Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief.</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind of +forcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family. +He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as a +pruning hook to their selfishness. But he had one great compensating +quality as a father. He never for one moment thought that any man, +however young, visited the house except for the refreshment and solace +of his own society. He never encouraged anyone to come with a view to +becoming acquainted with his daughters. His own problematic re-marriage, +often discussed in all its pros and cons with Magdalen, was the only +possible alliance that ever occupied his thoughts. In this respect he +was an ideal parent in his daughters' eyes, an inhumanly selfish one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +<!-- Illustration originally here - moved for readability --> according to his two sisters, Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs, at this +moment stepping out towards Priesthope from the north lodge.</p> + +<div class="figleft"> +<a name="illo4" id ="illo4"></a><img src="images/pillus05.jpg" width="390" height="550" alt=""'YOU ARE ALL BLINDER ONE THAN THE OTHER, THAT IT'S +ANDREA I'M GRIEVING FOR'"" /></div> + +<p>Wentworth had almost given up hope of a word with Fay until he saw her +sitting with Magdalen in the avenue. The world would be a much harder +place than it already is for women to live in if men concealed their +feelings. A reverent and assiduous study of the nobler sex leads the +student to believe that they imagine they conceal them. But it is women +who early in life are taught to acquire this art, at any rate when they +are bored. Half the happy married women of our acquaintance would be the +widows of determined suicides if women allowed it to appear when they +were bored as quickly as men do.</p> + +<p>Wentworth had no idea that he was not an impassable barrier of reserve. +He often said of himself: "I am a very reserved man, I know. It is a +fault of character. I regret it, but I can't help it. I have not the art +of chatting about my deepest feelings at five o'clock tea as a man must +do who lays himself out to be popular with women. What I feel it is my +nature to conceal."</p> + +<p>His reserve on this occasion was concentrated in his face, which +remained unmoved. But the lofty impassiveness on which he prided himself +did not reach down to his legs. Those members, which had been dragging +themselves in a sort of feeble semi-paralysis in the wake of the +ruthless Colonel Bellairs, now straightened themselves, and gave signs +of returning energy. Magdalen from a distance noted the change. +Wentworth for the first time was interested in what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> Colonel Bellairs +was saying. His own voice, which had become almost extinct, revived. +There was also a hint of spring in the air. Not being a person of much +self-knowledge, he mentioned that fact to Colonel Bellairs.</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to be +the one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore.</p> + +<p>"I said so half an hour ago," he remarked severely, "when we were +inspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it."</p> + +<p>"You were right all the same," said the younger man.</p> + +<p>What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertain +how many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limply +assured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is that +they are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know how +many infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we should +devour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt with +matters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, the +decadent poet, had said he was "a child of nature," how often, if ever, +the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate at +Salvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it was +true that an Archbishop had ever really said "I am sorry" without an +"if" after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelist +exists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticism +is a lost art.</p> + +<p>"Is the right-of-way dispute progressing?" said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> Magdalen to her father +as the two men came up and stopped in front of them.</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs implied that it would shortly be arranged, as his +intellect was being applied to the subject.</p> + +<p>Wentworth said emphatically, for about the thirtieth time, that the +right of a footpath, or church path across the domain was well +established and could not be set aside; but that whether it was also a +bridle path was the moot point; and whether Colonel Bellairs was +justified in his recent erection of a five-barred stile.</p> + +<p>(I may as well add here, for fear the subject should escape my mind +later on, that at the time of these pages going to press the dispute, +often on the verge of a settlement, had reached a further and acuter +stage, being complicated by Colonel Bellairs' sudden denial even of a +church path, to the legal existence of which he had previously agreed in +writing.)</p> + +<p>Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home.</p> + +<p>"We will walk back to the house with you," said Magdalen, and she led +the way with her father.</p> + +<p>"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary," he said to Magdalen as they +walked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood. +Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that +accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand +it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you."</p> + +<p>"I will tell her."</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> on Magdalen. She +was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. <i>On ne peut +s'appuyer que contre ce qui résiste.</i> Though Colonel Bellairs did not +know it, he was always wanting to <i>s'appuyer</i>. He had found in his +daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in +his wife, who had not resisted him.</p> + +<p>"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this +morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is +coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a +moment's peace?"</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, +upright hand, marked <i>Private</i>, at the top.</p> + +<p>"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage +mine," he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'"</p> + +<p>"Read it. Read it," said Colonel Bellairs irritably.</p> + +<p>Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as +she and her father walked slowly back to the house.</p> + +<p>It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with +Colonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalen +had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two +deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom.</p> + +<p>"Well! well!" said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested than +he wished to appear. "What do you think of it? We noticed in the papers +a week ago that he had succeeded his cousin."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections."</p> + +<p>"How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch as +light as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor old +Blore."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen's +joyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service.' That is very well +put, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him that +you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to +invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn +you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you +stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next. +Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leave +the Almighty in charge."</p> + +<p>"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat +surprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I +don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no +visible means of subsistence."</p> + +<p>"And no intention of making any."</p> + +<p>"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and—time slips by"—(it +had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost +none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall +shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in +introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on +my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house."</p> + +<p>"After forbidding him to come to it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper.</p> + +<p>"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this +house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away."</p> + +<p>"Ask him, in that case."</p> + +<p>"You agree that on the whole that would be best."</p> + +<p>"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that it +is a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by her +judgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till she +tried to coerce you into it."</p> + +<p>"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man in +petticoats," said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be here +directly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I <i>don't</i> ask him?... +She will be here directly."</p> + +<p>They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavily +in his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrug +near him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, he +nodded, and she dropped it in.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, Magdalen," said her father with dignity, "it would be just as +well if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these little +things best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anything +on that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would come +best from <i>you</i>, eh?"</p> + +<p>"I think so, father."</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye of +one about to drop off into an habitual nap.</p> + +<p>The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> a window is never +opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where +years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its +occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual +soporific charm.</p> + +<p>"Took Mary a long time to write," he said, with a sleepy chuckle, as the +last vestige disappeared of the laboriously constructed missive which +Lady Blore had sat up half the previous night, with gold-rimmed +pince-nez on Roman nose to copy out by her bedroom candle, and had sent +to pave the way before her strong destructive feet.</p> + +<p>The footman came in.</p> + +<p>"Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs are in the drawing-room."</p> + +<p>"Just pull the blinds half-way down before you go," said Colonel +Bellairs to Magdalen, "and remember other people have got letters to +write as well as her, and I'm not to be disturbed on any account."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en +prend point de second.</p> +<p class="sig">—La Rochefoucauld.</p> +</div> + +<p>The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room.</p> + +<p>When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been +brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small +square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated +oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the +Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what +they called supports to their brother's motherless children.</p> + +<p>They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of those +who lean on them.</p> + +<p>No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might +perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to +push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed +to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune +to be the object of their good offices.</p> + +<p>She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance—it +could hardly be called a marriage—with a general, distinguished in +India and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "The +Towers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place after +years of half-gratified reluctance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> on his part and indomitable crude +persistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a long +attachment," and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to the +hilt, that the sterner sex prefer to have their affairs of the heart +arranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once let +loose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour to +escape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputation +of all external interests will detain them within the sacred precincts +of <span class="smcap">THE HOME</span>.</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was no +tactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had only +been the first of the crushing defeats which she had inflicted upon him. +Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severely +tried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up his +sword.</p> + +<p>His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she considered +suitable amusements and occupations. He was told that he took an +interest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province rather +larger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out, +tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, and +hanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes.</p> + +<p>In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly the +same, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman, +with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariably +dressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The Towers +Aunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majestic +gardening the sun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satin +parasol.</p> + +<p>There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were +children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever +laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, +like the phœnix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or a +bugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes.</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary was no doubt one of these.</p> + +<p>Near her, on the edge of her chair, perhaps not so entirely on the edge +of it as at first appeared, sat Aunt Aggie. Aunt Aggie looked as if she +had been coloured by some mistake from a palette prepared to depict a +London fog.</p> + +<p>Her eyes were greyish yellow, like her eyelashes, like her hair,—at +least her front hair,—like her eyebrows, and her complexion. She was +short and stout. She called slender people skeletons. Her gown, which +was invariably of some greyish, drabbish, neutral-tinted material, +always cocked up a little in front to show two large, flat, soft-looking +feet.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie began quite narrow at the top. Her forehead was the thin edge +of the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first +indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her +cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave +the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part +of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a +religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back +seat, in the Divine consciousness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> + +<p>It would not be fair to Aunt Aggie to omit to mention, especially as she +continually made veiled allusions to the subject herself, that she also +had known the tender passion. There had been an entanglement in her +youth with a High Church archdeacon. But we all know how indefinite, how +inconclusive, how meagre in practical results archidiaconal conferences +are apt to be! After one of them it was discovered that the entanglement +was all on Aunt Aggie's side. The archdeacon remained unenmeshed. Under +severe pressure from Lady Blore, then an indomitable bride of forty, +flushed by recent victory, he even went so far as to say that his only +bride was the Church. It was after this disheartening statement that +Aunt Aggie found herself drawn towards an evangelical and purer form of +religion. The Archdeacon subsequently married, or rather became guilty +of ecclesiastical bigamy. But Aunt Aggie throughout life retained +pessimistic views respecting the celibacy of the clergy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Aunt Mary bestowed a strong businesslike peck, emphasized by contact +with the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggie +greeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Have +you ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to salute +Aunt Aggie's cheek.</p> + +<p>"Where are Fay and Bessie?" enquired Aunt Mary instantly. When the aunts +announced their coming, which was invariably at an hour's notice, they +always expected to find the whole family, including Colonel Bellairs, +waiting indoors to receive them. This expectation was never realised, +but the annoyance that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> invariably followed had retained through many +years the dew of its youth.</p> + +<p>"Bessie and Fay are out. I am expecting them back every moment."</p> + +<p>"They will probably be later than usual to-day," said Aunt Mary grimly, +with the half-conscious intuition of those whom others avoid. Did she +know that with the exception of Sir John, whose vanity had led him to +take refuge in a <i>cul-de-sac</i>, her fellow creatures rushed out by back +doors, threw themselves out of windows, hid behind haystacks, had +letters to write, were ordered by their doctors to rest, whenever she +appeared? Did she know? One thing was certain. Magdalen was one of the +very few persons who had never avoided her, who at times openly sought +her society. And Aunt Mary, though she would have been ashamed to own +it, loved Magdalen. She intended that Magdalen should live with her some +day at the Towers, as an unpaid companion, when Sir John and Aunt Aggie +had entered into peace.</p> + +<p>"And your father," continued Aunt Mary. "Did he get my letter? I intend +to have a serious conversation with him after tea."</p> + +<p>"Father has this moment come in, and he asked me to tell you that he had +business letters which he is obliged to write."</p> + +<p>"I know what <i>that</i> means."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Mary!" interpolated Aunt Aggie eagerly. "You forget that Algernon +always, from the time he was a young man, left his letters to the last +moment. All the Bellairs do."</p> + +<p>The Bellairs had other unique family characteristics,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> as peculiar to +themselves as their choice of time for grappling with their +correspondence, which Aunt Aggie was never tired of quoting. "Bellairs +are always late for breakfast. It is no kind of use finding fault with +Bessie about it. I was just the same at her age."</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, +which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner +small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of +existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between +contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could +not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not +appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, +of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird.</p> + +<p>"I intend to see your father after tea," repeated Aunt Mary, taking no +notice of her sister's remark.</p> + +<p>"Father is much worried about the right of way," continued Magdalen. "He +showed me your most kind letter about myself, and——"</p> + +<p>"Showed it to <i>you</i>!" said Aunt Mary, becoming purple. "It was not +intended for any eye except your father's."</p> + +<p>"Confidence between a father and his child," began Aunt Aggie, clasping +her stout little hands, and looking eagerly from her sister to her +niece.</p> + +<p>Magdalen went on tranquilly. "It only told me what I knew before, Aunt +Mary, that you have my welfare at heart. Father said that he thought it +would be best if you and I talked the matter over. I agreed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> with him. +It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be for +the first time."</p> + +<p>It would not indeed!</p> + +<p>"Aggie," said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your way +here to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom and +investigate them."</p> + +<p>"I think they are kept locked," said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed to +stay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a love +affair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach the +subject.</p> + +<p>"They are unlocked," said Aunt Mary with decision.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bitten +bun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed her +sister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage at +Saundersfoot to relations in need of sea air.</p> + +<p>An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's fine +countenance.</p> + +<p>"Magdalen," she said at once, "in the presence of that weak +sentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as it +is your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myself +whether anything has transpired about Everard Constable—Lord +Lossiemouth, as I suppose he now is."</p> + +<p>"Nothing," said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. If +she was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power of +concealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She +seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that +animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their +environment. A sole's eye (or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its +head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there +than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental +features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had +adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obvious +that she had almost nothing in common except her name.</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her the +discussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violently +mismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affection +had a little scent, but it was set round with thorns.</p> + +<p>"He has behaved disgracefully," she said, looking with anger and +disappointment at her niece's faded face.</p> + +<p>"We have discussed that before," said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as you +know, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and better +forgotten."</p> + +<p>"He was poor then. No one ever thought he would succeed with two lives +between. But it is different now that he is wealthy and in a position to +marry."</p> + +<p>"He has never been in a position to marry me," said Magdalen, "because +he never cared enough for me to make an effort on my behalf. That was +not his fault. He mistook a romantic admiration for love, and naturally +found it would not work. How could it? It was not necessary to turn +heaven and earth to gain me. But it <i>was</i> necessary to turn a few small +stones. He could not turn them."</p> + +<p>"Well, at any rate, he asked you, and you accepted him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> + +<p>"A hundred years ago."</p> + +<p>"And you have waited for him ever since."</p> + +<p>"Not at all. I am not waiting for him or for anyone."</p> + +<p>"You would have married Mr. Grenfell if it had not been for Everard."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I should have married Everard if it had not been for Everard," +said Magdalen.</p> + +<p>It seemed as if nothing could shake her dispassionate view of the +matter.</p> + +<p>"Your feelings were certainly engaged, Magdalen. There is no use in +denying that."</p> + +<p>"Have I ever denied it?"</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary was silent for a moment, but her under lip was ominously +thrust out. She was not thinking of what Magdalen had said. If she had +ever listened to the remarks of others when they differed from her, she +would not have become Lady Blore. She was only silent because she was +rallying her forces.</p> + +<p>"A woman's hands become talons when they try to hold on to a man when he +wants to get away," said Magdalen gently.</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary turned on her niece an opaque eye that saw nothing beyond the +owner's views.</p> + +<p>"Something ought to be done," she said with emphasis. "After all, your +father dismissed him. I shall advise your father to write to him, and if +he does not—I shall write to him myself."</p> + +<p>"I hope you will not do that," said Magdalen. "Do you remember what a +subject for gossip it was at the time? When father became angry with +Everard he told everyone, and it became a sort of loud turmoil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> The +servants knew, the parish knew, the whole county knew that I had had a +disappointment. I have remained ever since in the eyes of the neighbours +a sort of blighted creature, a victim of the heartlessness of man. A new +edition of that old story now that my hair is grey would be, I think, a +little out of place. I had hoped——"</p> + +<p>The door was suddenly thrown open, and Bessie marched into the room with +Aunt Aggie hanging nervously at her heels.</p> + +<p>"I came back as quickly as I could from the Carters' in order not to +miss you," said Bessie to Aunt Mary in her stentorian voice, and she +presented a glowing rose cheek to be kissed.</p> + +<p>Magdalen shot a grateful glance at her sister, and the conversation +became general.</p> + +<p>After the aunts had departed, Bessie said to Magdalen on their way +upstairs to dress, "I found when I reached the Carters' that they had +gone out with Professor Ridgway to see the Roman camp. Only old Mrs. +Carter was at home, and she was rather chilly, and said they had +expected me to luncheon. They had had a little party to meet the +Professor. I saw that my conduct called for an apology. I made one."</p> + +<p>"I am glad of that."</p> + +<p>"I see now that it would have been wiser to have gone over for luncheon +as arranged. I also thought how selfish it was of Fay not to help you +with the aunts. And then I perceived that there were not two pins to +choose between us, as I had been just as bad myself, so I hurried back +as quickly as I could."</p> + +<p>"I was most grateful to you when I saw you come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> in. And Aunt Mary was +pleased too. She never shows it much; but she was."</p> + +<p>"It is of secondary importance whether she was pleased or not. My object +in returning was twofold: to help you, and also for the sake of my own +character. I begin to see that unless I am careful I shall become as +selfish as father."</p> + +<p>Magdalen did not answer.</p> + +<p>"The aunts never do things like other people," continued Bessie. "I +found Aunt Aggie standing, eating a bun, just outside the drawing-room +door. She was quite flurried when I came up, and said she wanted to see +my fossils, but would rather look at them another day."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p class="center">La vie est un instrument dont on commence toujours par jouer faux.</p> +</div> + +<p>Wentworth and Fay did not follow Colonel Bellairs and Magdalen back to +the house. When they reached the end of the avenue they turned back +silently by mutual consent, and retraced their steps down it.</p> + +<p>Presently they reached the trunk of the tree where Fay had been sitting +with Magdalen.</p> + +<p>Fay sank down upon it once more, white and exhausted. He sat down at a +little distance from her.</p> + +<p>"How is Michael?" she said at last, twisting her ungloved hands +together.</p> + +<p>"I came to tell you about him; I only got back last night. I knew you +would wish to hear."</p> + +<p>"How is he?"</p> + +<p>"He has been ill. He has had double pneumonia. It started with +hæmorrhage, and some of the blood got into the lungs, and caused +pneumonia. He is better now, nearly well, in fact. The prison doctor +seemed a sensible man, and he spoke as if he were interested in Michael. +From what he said I gathered that he did not think Michael would survive +another winter there. The prison<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> stands in a sort of marsh. It is a +very good place to prevent prisoners escaping, but not a good place for +them to keep alive in. The doctor is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> pressing to have Michael moved. He +thinks he might do better at the 'colonia agricola,' where the labour is +more agricultural; or that even work in the iron mines of Portoferriao +would try his constitution less than the swamp where he now is."</p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The prison described has no counterpart in real life.</p></div> + +<p>"Was he still in chains?"</p> + +<p>"No. And the doctor said there was some talk of abolishing them +altogether. If not, he will be obliged to go back to them now he is +better. He is looking forward to the sea lavender coming out. He says +the place is beautiful beyond words when it is in flower: whole tracts +and tracts of grey lilac blossom in the shallows, and hordes of wild +birds. He asked me to tell you that you were to think of him as living +in fairyland."</p> + +<p>Fay winced as if struck.</p> + +<p>"You gave him my message?" she stammered.</p> + +<p>"Of course I did. And he said I was to tell you not to grieve for him, +for he was well and happy."</p> + +<p>"Happy!" echoed Fay.</p> + +<p>"Yes, happy. He said he had committed a great sin, but that he hoped and +believed that he was now expiating it, and that it would be forgiven."</p> + +<p>"I am absolutely certain," said Fay in a suffocated voice, "that Michael +did not murder the Marchese di Maltagliala."</p> + +<p>"That is impossible," said Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"Then what great sin can he be expiating?"</p> + +<p>Even as Fay asked the question she knew the answer. Michael believed he +was expiating the sin of loving another man's wife. In his mind that was +probably on a par with the murder he had not committed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I asked him that," said Wentworth, "but he would not say. He would only +repeat that his punishment was just."</p> + +<p>Two large tears ran down Fay's cheeks.</p> + +<p>"It is unjust, unjust, unjust!" she gasped. "Why does God allow these +dreadful things?"</p> + +<p>There was a long silence.</p> + +<p>For a time Wentworth had forgotten Fay. He saw again the great yellow +building standing in a waste of waters. He saw again the thin, +prematurely aged face of his brother, the shaved head, the coarse, +striped convict dress, the arid light from the narrow barred window. He +saw again Michael's grave smile, and heard the tranquil voice, "This +place is beautiful in autumn. Mind you come next when the sea lavender +is out."</p> + +<p>The remembrance of that meeting cut sharper than the actual pain of it +at the moment. He had gone through with it with a sort of stolid +endurance, letting Michael see but a tithe of what he felt. But the +remembrance was anguish unalloyed. For a time he could neither speak nor +see.</p> + +<p>A yellow butterfly that had waked too soon floated towards them on a +wavering trial trip. Close at hand a snowdrop drooped "its serious +head." The butterfly knew its own, and lit on the meek, nunlike flower, +opening and shutting its new wings in the pallid sunshine. It had +perhaps dreamed, as it lay in its chrysalis, "that life had been more +sweet." Was this chill sunshine that could not quicken his wings, was +this grim desert that held no goal for butterfly feet, was this one +snowdrop—<i>all</i>? Was this indeed the summer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> of his dreams, in the sure +and certain hope of which he had spun his cocoon, and laid him down in +faith?</p> + +<p>Fay looked at it in anguish not less than Wentworth's, whose dimmed eyes +saw it not at all. She never watched a poised butterfly open and shut +its wings without thinking of Michael. The flight of a seagull across +the down cut her like a lash. He had been free once. He who so loved the +down, the sea, the floating cloud, had been free once.</p> + +<p>When Wentworth had winked his steady grey eyes back to their normal +state, he looked furtively at Fay. She was weeping silently. He had seen +Fay in tears before, but never without emotion. With a somewhat halting +utterance he told her of certain small alleviations of Michael's lot. +The permission, urgently asked, had at last been granted that English +books might be sent him from time to time. The lonely, aching smart of +Wentworth's morning hours was vaguely soothed and comforted by Fay's +gentle presence.</p> + +<p>She appeared to listen to him, but in reality she heard nothing. She sat +looking straight in front of her, a tear slipping from time to time down +her white cheek. Except on one or two occasions Fay had that rarest +charm of looking beautiful in tears. She became paler than ever, never +red and disfigured and convulsed, with the prosaic cold in the head that +accompanies the emotions of less fortunate women.</p> + +<p>"How old is Michael?" she asked suddenly in the midst of a painstaking +account of certain leniencies as to diet, certain macaronis and soups +which the doctor had insisted on for Michael.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> + +<p>"He is twenty-seven."</p> + +<p>"And how long has he been in prison?"</p> + +<p>"Nearly two years."</p> + +<p>"And he has thirteen more," said Fay, looking at Wentworth with wide +eyes blank with horror.</p> + +<p>"No," said Wentworth, his voice shaking a little. "No, Michael will not +live long in that swamp, not many years, I think."</p> + +<p>"But they will move him to a better climate."</p> + +<p>"He does not want to be moved. I should not, either, in his case."</p> + +<p>Fay's hands fell to her sides.</p> + +<p>"When my mother died," said Wentworth, "I promised her to be good to +Michael. There was no need for me to promise to be good to him. I always +liked him better than anyone else. I taught him to ride and to shoot. He +got his gun up sharp from the first. It's easy to do things for anyone +you like. But what is hard is when the time comes"—Wentworth stopped, +and then went on—"when the time comes that you can't do anything more +for the person you care for most."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>The yellow butterfly was still feebly trying to open and shut his wings. +The low sun had abandoned him to the encroaching frost, and was touching +the bare overarching branches to palest gold, "so subtly fair, so +gorgeous dim"; so far beyond the reach of tiny wings.</p> + +<p>"I don't think," said Wentworth, "I would stick at anything. I don't +know of anything I would not do, anything I would not give up, to get +him back his freedom. But it's no use, I can do nothing for him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh! Why does not the real murderer confess?" said Fay with a sob, +wringing her hands. "How can he go on, year after year, letting an +innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his +horrible crime?"</p> + +<p>That mysterious murderer occupied a large place in Fay's thoughts. She +hated him with a deadly hatred. He was responsible for everything. That +one crooked channel of thought that persistently turned aside all blame +onto an unknown offender, had at last given a certain crookedness, a +sort of twist, to the whole subject in Fay's mind.</p> + +<p>"I begged Michael again for the twentieth time to tell me anything that +could act as a clue to discovering the real criminal," said Wentworth. +"I told him I would spend my last shilling in bringing him to justice, +but he only shook his head. I told him that some of his friends felt +certain that he knew who the murderer was, and was shielding him. He +shook his head again. He would not tell me anything the first day I went +to him after he was arrested. And still, after two years in prison, he +will not speak. Michael will never say anything."</p> + +<p>The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waning +afternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frosty +breath was stirring the dead leaves. The butterfly had closed his wings +for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. A +tiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death.</p> + +<p>Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I must go in," she said.</p> + +<p>They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods +from the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them +above the gathering sea mist.</p> + +<p>They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the +consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which +had drawn them together.</p> + +<p>"I will come again soon, if I may," he said diffidently, "unless seeing +me reminds you of painful things." His voice had lowered itself +involuntarily.</p> + +<p>"I like to see you," said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from +him like a shadow among the shadows.</p> + +<p>The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any +possible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, +which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them.</p> + +<p>He pondered over them as he rode home.</p> + +<p>How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been +a happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss +was still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had shown +towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to +shield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her +sorrowing compassion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she had +shown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds!</p> + +<p>Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women he +was aware were an enigma.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, +mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest +owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and +treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by +sudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow.</p> + +<p>But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above the +ordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level of +pettiness and vanity, by her simplicity and nobility and capacity for +devotion—<i>could such a woman love a second time?</i></p> + +<p>The thirst to be loved, to be the object of an exquisite tenderness, +what man has not, consciously or unconsciously longed for that? What +woman has not had her dream of giving that and more, full measure, +running over?</p> + +<p>To find favour in a woman's eyes a man need only do his stupid bungling +best. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had a best of any kind in him +to do.</p> + +<p>At twenty-five he would not have risked as much for love as even +cautious men of robuster fibre will still ruefully but determinedly risk +in the forties. And now at forty he would risk almost nothing.</p> + +<p>Where Michael was concerned Wentworth's love had reached the strength +where it could act, indefatigably, if need be. Michael had been so far +the only creature who could move his brother's egotism beyond the +refinements of bedridden sentiment.</p> + +<p>It was as well for Fay that she did not realise, and absolutely +essential for Wentworth that he did not realise either, that in spite of +an undoubted natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> attraction towards her he would have seen no more +of her unless she had come within easy reach.</p> + +<p>A common trouble had drawn them towards each other. A common interest, a +common joy or sorrow, a house within easy distance—these are some of +the match makers between the invalids of life, who are not strong enough +to want anything very much, or to work for what they want. For them +favourable circumstance is everything.</p> + +<p>Wentworth could ride four and a half miles down a picturesque lane to +see Fay. But he could not have taken a journey by rail.</p> + +<p>A few years before Wentworth met Fay he had been tepidly interested in +the youthful sister of one of his college friends and contemporaries, an +Oxford Don at whose house he stayed every year. The sister kept house +for her brother. It was the usual easy commonplace combination of +circumstances that has towed lazy men into marriage since the +institution was first formed. He saw her without any effort on his part. +He arrived at a kind of knowledge of her. He found her to be what he +liked. She was sympathetic, refined, shy, cultivated, unselfish, and of +a wild rose prettiness. After a time he kept up, mainly on her account, +a regular intercourse with the brother, who was becoming rather prosy, +as was Wentworth himself. Presently the brother married, and the sister +ceased to live with him.</p> + +<p>Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure. He +found his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, the +friend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> +of increasing frequency. The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund. But +it never entered his mind to enquire into the whereabouts of the sister, +and to continue his acquaintance with her independently. If he had +continued to meet her regularly he would almost certainly have married +her. She on her side seemed well disposed towards him. As it was he +never saw her again. He gradually ceased to think of her, except on +summer evenings, as a charming possibility which Fate had sternly +removed, as one lost to him for ever. He wrote a little poem about her, +beginning, "Where are you now?" (She was at Kensington all the time.) +Wentworth never published his verses. He said there was no room for a +new poet who did not advertise himself. There had been room for one of +his college friends, but that had been a case of log rolling.</p> + +<p>I do not know whether it was a fortunate or an unfortunate fate that had +prevented the gay little lady of the pink cheeks from being at that +moment installed at Barford as the wife of a poet who scorned publicity.</p> + +<p>If Wentworth had been riding home to his wife on that February evening +he would not have taken unconsciously another of the many steps which +entailed so many more, by saying to himself, thinking of Fay:</p> + +<p>"Could a woman like that love a second time?"</p> + +<p>Then he hastened his speed as he remembered that his old friend the +Bishop of Lostford had by this time arrived at Barford.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p> +If you feel no love, sit still; occupy yourself with things, +with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men.</p> + +<p class="sig">—Tolstoy.</p> +</div> + + +<p>In Wentworth's youth he had been attracted towards many, besides the +Bishop, among the bolder and less conventional of his contemporaries. +Their fire, their energies, their enthusiasm, warmed his somewhat +under-vitalized nature. He regarded himself as one of them, and his +refinement and distinction drew the robuster spirits towards himself. +But gradually, as time went on, these energies and enthusiasm took form, +and, alas! took forms which he had not expected—he never expected +anything—and from which his mind instinctively recoiled. He had +supposed that energy was energy. He had not realised that it was life in +embryo, that might develop, not always on lines of beauty, into a new +policy, or a great discovery, or a passion, or a vocation. He hated +transformations, new births, all change. His friends at first rallied +him unmercifully, then lost patience, and finally fell from him, one by +one. Some openly left him, the more good-natured among them forgot him, +and if by chance they found themselves in his society, hurried back with +affectionate cordiality to reminiscences of school and college life, +long-passed milestones before the parting of the ways.</p> + +<p>The Bishop when he plunged into his work also for a time lost sight of +Wentworth, but when he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>appointed to the See of Lostford, within +five miles of Barford, the two men resumed, at first with alacrity, +something of the old intercourse.</p> + +<p>Wentworth had an element of faithfulness in him which enabled him to +take up a friendship after a long interval, but it was on one condition, +namely that the friend had remained <i>planté là</i> where he had been left. +If in the meanwhile the friend had moved, the friendship flagged.</p> + +<p>It was soon apparent that the Bishop had not by any means remained +<i>planté là</i>, and the friendship quickly drooped. It would long since +have died a natural death if it had not been kept alive by the Bishop +himself, a man of robust affections and strong compassions, without a +moment to spend on small resentments. After Michael's imprisonment he +had redoubled his efforts to keep in touch with Wentworth, and the great +grief of the latter, silently and nobly endured, had been a bond between +the two men which even a miserable incident which must have severed most +friendships had served to loosen, not to break.</p> + +<p>The Bishop had in truth arrived at Barford, and was now sitting +apparently unoccupied by the library fire. To be unoccupied even for an +instant except during recuperative sleep was so unusual with the Bishop, +so unprecedented, that his daughter would have been terrified could she +have seen him at that moment. He had only parted from her and her +husband at mid-day, yet it was a sudden thought suggested by his visit +to them which was now holding him motionless by the fire, his lean +person bulging with unanswered letters.</p> + +<p>The Bishop was a small ugly man of fifty, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>unconventional to the core, +the younger son of a duke, and a clergyman by personal conviction. He +had been born in a hurry, and had remained in a hurry ever since. He had +neither great administrative capacities, nor profound scholarship, but +what powers he had were eked out by a stupendous energy. His Archbishop +said that he believed that the Bishop's chaplains died like flies, and +that he merely threw their dead bodies into the Loss, which flowed +beneath his palace windows, without even a burial service. His chaplains +and secretaries certainly worked themselves to the bone for him. They +could have told tales against him, but they never did. For it was a +strain to serve the Bishop, to get his robes thrown over him at the +right—I mean the last—second, to thrust him ruthlessly into his +carriage just in time to catch the tail ends of departing trains—he +generally travelled with the guard. His admirable life had been spent in +a ceaseless whirl. He had never had time to marry. He had hurried to the +altar when he was an eager curate with a pretty young bride who was a +stranger to him, whom his mother had chosen for him. During the years +that followed what little he saw of her at odd moments he liked. After +ten years of what he believed to be married life she died, leaving one +child; tactful to the last, pretty to the last, having made no claim +from first to last, kissing his hand, and thanking him for his love, and +for the beautiful years they had spent together.</p> + +<p>His friends said that he bore her loss with heroism, but in reality he +missed her but little. Her death occurred just after he had become an +ardent suffragan. His daughter grew up in a few minutes, and quickly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> +took her mother's place. She was her mother over again in character and +appearance. His wife had lived in his house for ten years, his daughter +for twenty. By dint of time he learned to know her as he had never known +her mother. At twenty she married his chaplain.</p> + +<p>The chaplain was a tall, stooping, fleckless, flawless, mannerless, +joyless personage, middle-aged at twenty-eight, with a voice like a +gong, with a metallic mind constructed of thought-tight compartments, +devoted body and soul to the Church, an able and indefatigable worker, +smelted from the choice ore of that great middle class from which, as we +know, all good things come. That he was a future ornament, or at any +rate an iron girder of the Church was sufficiently obvious.</p> + +<p>The Bishop saw his worth, and ruefully endured him until the chaplain, +in the most suitable language, desired to become his son-in-law, and +that at the most inconceivably awkward moment, namely, just when the +Bishop had presented him with a living. The marriage had to be. The +daughter wished it with an intensity that amazed her father. And +gradually the Bishop discovered that he detested his paragon of a +son-in-law. But why? It was not jealousy. He really was a paragon, not a +sham. To the Bishop it seemed, and with truth, that any other woman +would have done as well as his daughter, that her husband neither +understood her nor wished to understand her, that he accepted ruthlessly +without knowing that he accepted it, her selfless devotion, that he used +her as a cushion to make his rare moments of leisure more restful, that +her love was not even a source of happiness to him, only a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> solace. And +she, extraordinary to behold, was radiantly content.</p> + +<p>"<i>Just like her mother over again</i>," the Bishop had wrathfully said to +himself as he drove away from his daughter's door. And at that moment a +slide was drawn back from his mind, and he saw that the marriage was a +replica of his own, except in so far that his son-in-law, greatly +assisted by circumstances, had actually taken a little trouble to +arrange his marriage for himself, while the Bishop's—what there was of +it—had been done for him by his mother.</p> + +<p>Till this morning he had believed his marriage to have been an ideally +happy one, that he had felt all that man can feel; and he had been +inclined to treat as womanish the desperate desolation of men who had +after all only suffered the same bereavement as he had himself, and +which he had quickly overcome. He saw now that he had missed happiness +exactly as his son-in-law was missing it. The same thing had befallen +them both. Love could do there no mighty works because of their +unbelief. When he remembered his wife's face he realised that her joy +had been something beyond his ken. He had not shared it. He had not +known love, even when it had drawn very nigh unto him.</p> + +<p>As he waited motionless for Wentworth to come in, his strong, intrepid +mind worked. The Bishop at fifty went to school to a new thought. It was +that power of going to school at fifty to a new thought which had made +his Archbishop, who loved him, give him the See of Lostford, to the +amazement of the demurer clergy who were scandalised by his +unconventionality, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> fearful baldness of speech. They could only +account for the appointment by the fact that he was the son of a duke. +It was that power which made the Bishop seem a much younger man than +Wentworth, who was in reality ten years his junior. The Bishop was still +a learner. He still moved with vigour mentally. Wentworth, on the +contrary, had arrived—not at any place in particular, but at the spot +where he intended to remain. His ideas, and some of them had been rather +good ones at twenty-five, had suffered from their sedentary existence. +They had become rather stout. He called them progressive because in the +course of years he had perceived in them a slight glacier-like movement. +To others they appeared fixed.</p> + +<p>Wentworth's attitude towards life, of which he was so fond of speaking, +was perhaps rather like that of a shrimper who, in ankle-deep water, +watches the heavily freighted whale boats come towering in. He does not +quite know why he, of all men, with his special equipment for the +purpose, and his expert handling of the net, does not also catch whales. +That they seldom swim in two-inch water does not occur to him. At last +he does not think there are any whales. He has exploded that fallacy. +For, in a moment of adventurous enthusiasm, counting not the cost, did +he not once wade recklessly up to his very shoulders in deep water: <i>and +there were no whales</i>,—only pinching crabs. Crabs were the one real +danger, the largest denizens of the boundless main, whatever his former +playmates the whalers might affirm.</p> + +<p>When the shrimper and the whaler had dined together, and the Bishop had +heard with affectionate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>sympathy the little there was to hear +respecting Michael, and the conversation tended towards more general +topics, the radical antagonism between the two friends' minds threatened +every moment to make itself felt.</p> + +<p>The Bishop tried politics somewhat tentatively, on which they had +sympathised in college days, but it seemed they had widely diverged +since. Wentworth, though he frequently asserted that no one enjoyed more +than he "the clashing of opposite opinions," seemed nevertheless only +able to welcome with cordiality a mild disagreement, just sufficiently +defined to prove stimulating to the expression of his own views. A wide +divergence from them he met with a chilly silence. He did so now. The +Bishop looked at his neat ankle, and changed the subject.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen or heard anything of Everard Constable since he came into +his kingdom, such a very unexpected kingdom, too?"</p> + +<p>"No. I fancy he is still abroad. But I can't say that for some time past +I have found Constable's aims in life very sympathetic. His unceasing +struggle after literary fame appears to me somewhat undignified."</p> + +<p>"Oh! come. Give the devil his due. Constable can write."</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course. That is just what I am saying. But he and I +differ too widely in our outlook on life to remain really intimate. He +cares for the big things, ambition, popularity, a prominent position, +luxury. He will enjoy being a personage, and having wealth at his +command. For my part, I am afraid I care infinitely more for the small +things of life, love, friendship, sympathy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The <i>small</i> things! Good Lord!" said the Bishop, and his jaw dropped. +He also dropped the subject.</p> + +<p>"I ran up against Grenfell last week," he continued immediately. "Do you +see <i>him</i> now? You and he used to be inseparable at Cambridge."</p> + +<p>Wentworth became frigid.</p> + +<p>Grenfell had accused him at their last meeting of being an old maid, an +accusation which had wounded Wentworth to the quick, and which he had +never forgotten or forgiven. He had not in the least realised that +Grenfell was not alluding to the fact that he happened to be unmarried.</p> + +<p>"I can't say I care to see him now," he said. "He has become entirely +engrossed in his career. A simple life like mine, the life of thought, +no longer interests him. He is naturally drawn to people who are playing +big parts."</p> + +<p>"What nonsense! He is just the same as ever. A little vehement and +fiery, but not as much as he was. They say he will be the next +Chancellor of the Exchequer to a certainty."</p> + +<p>"I daresay he will. He has the art of keeping himself before the public +eye. Being myself so constituted—it is not any virtue in me, only a +constitutional defect—that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficult +for me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, can +bring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above that +kind of thing."</p> + +<p>"So he is. So he is. A blind man can see Grenfell's unworldliness. It +sticks a yard out of him. My dear Wentworth, if energetic elbows were, +as you imply, the key to success, how do you account for the fact that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> +hundreds of painful persons have triumphantly passed that preliminary +examination who never achieve anything beyond a diploma in the art of +pushing?"</p> + +<p>Wentworth did not answer.</p> + +<p>He firmly believed that in order to attain the things he had not +attained, had never striven for, of which he invariably spoke +disparagingly, but which he secretly and impotently desired, the +co-operation of certain ignoble qualities was essential, sordid allies +whom he would have disdained to use.</p> + +<p>"I don't blame Grenfell," he said at last. "He had his way to make. I +know how blinding the glamour of ambition is, how insidious and +insistent the claims of the world may become. I don't pretend to be +superior to certain temptations if they came in my way. But I happen to +have kept out of their way. That is all."</p> + +<p>"You have certainly kept out of the way of—nearly everything."</p> + +<p>"For my part, I daresay I am hopelessly out of date, but I value beauty +and peace and simplicity higher than a noisy success. But a noisy +success is the one thing that counts nowadays."</p> + +<p>"Does it?"</p> + +<p>"And Grenfell has taken the right steps to gain it. If a man craves for +popularity, if he really thinks the bubble worth striving for, he must +lay himself out for it. If he wants a place he must jostle for it. If he +wants power he must discard scruples. If he wants social success it can +be got—we see it every day—by pandering to the susceptibilities and +seeking the favour of influential persons. Everything has its price. I +don't say that everyone obtains these things who is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> ready to bid for +them. But some do. Grenfell is among those who have. I don't blame him. +I am not sure that I don't rather envy him."</p> + +<p>The Bishop could respect a conviction.</p> + +<p>"Are you not forgetting Grenfell's character?" he said gently, as one +speaks to a sick man. "Think of him, his nobility, his integrity, his +enthusiasm, his transparent unworldliness which so often in the old days +put us all to shame!"</p> + +<p>"That is just what makes it all so painful to me," said Wentworth, and +there was no possibility of doubting his sincerity. "That contact with +the world can taint even beautiful natures like his. He was my ideal at +one time. I almost worshipped him at Cambridge."</p> + +<p>"I love him still," said the Bishop. "A cat may look at a king, so I +suppose a poor crawler of a bishop may look at a man like Grenfell. +Don't you think, Wentworth, that sometimes a man who succeeds may have +worked as nobly as a man who fails—you always speak so feelingly of +failure, it is one of the many things I like about you. Don't you think +that perhaps sometimes success may be—I don't say it always is—as +high-minded as failure, that a hard-won victory may be as honourable as +defeat, that achievement may <i>sometimes</i> be the result not of chance or +interest, but of unremitting toil? Don't you think you may be +unconsciously cutting yourself adrift from Grenfell's friendship by +attributing his success to unworthy means which a man like him could +never have stooped to?"</p> + +<p>"It is he who has cut himself adrift from me," said Wentworth icily. "I +have not changed."</p> + +<p>"That is just it. A slight change, shall we say <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>expension on your part, +might have enabled you to"—the Bishop chose his words as carefully as a +doctor counts drops into a medicine glass—"to keep pace with him?"</p> + +<p>"I do not regard friendship as a race or a combat of wits," said +Wentworth. "Friendship is to my mind something sacred. I hope I can +remain Grenfell's friend without believing him to be absolutely +faultless. If he is so unreasonable as to expect that of me, which I +should not for a moment expect of him, why then——" Wentworth shrugged +his shoulders.</p> + +<p>One of the few friends who had not drifted from him looked at him with +somewhat pained affection.</p> + +<p>Why does a life dwelt apart from others tend to destroy first generosity +and then tenderness in man and woman? Why does one so often find a +certain hardness and inhumanity encrusting those who have withdrawn +themselves behind the shutters of their own convenience, or is it, after +all, their own impotence?</p> + +<p>"Has he always been hard and cold by nature?" said the Bishop to +himself, "and is the real man showing himself in middle age, or is his +meagre life starving him?"</p> + +<p>He tried again.</p> + +<p>"You nearly lost my friendship a year ago by attributing a sordid motive +to me, Wentworth."</p> + +<p>Wentworth understood instantly.</p> + +<p>"That is all past and forgotten," he said quickly. "I never think of it. +Have I ever allowed it to make the slightest difference?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the Bishop, looking hard at him, "and for that matter neither +have I. We have never talked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> the matter out. Let us do so now. I don't +suppose you have forgotten the odium I incurred over the living of +Rambury. It had been held for generations by old men. It had become a +kind of clerical almshouse. When it fell vacant there was of course yet +another elderly cleric——"</p> + +<p>"My uncle," said Wentworth, "a most excellent man."</p> + +<p>"Just so, but in failing health. Rightly or wrongly I was convinced that +it was my duty to give the place a chance by putting there a younger +man, of energy and capacity for hard work. I gave it to my future +son-in-law as you know."</p> + +<p>Wentworth nodded. "Everyone said at the time he was an excellent man," +he said with evident desire to be fair.</p> + +<p>"I daresay, but that is not the point. The point is that I had no idea +that iron traction engine wanted to marry my daughter or anybody's +daughter. The tactless beast got up steam and proposed for her the day +after I had offered him the living. He had never given so much as a +preliminary screech on the subject, never blown a horn to show what his +horrid intentions were—I only hope that if I had known I should still +have had the moral courage to appoint him. The Archbishop assures me I +should—but I doubt it. I was loudly accused of nepotism, of course. +Your uncle, who died soon afterwards, forgave me in the worst of taste +on his deathbed. I had no means of justifying myself. The Archbishop and +Grenfell and a few other old friends believed. <i>Why were you not among +those old friends, Wentworth?</i>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I <i>was</i> among them," said Wentworth, meeting the Bishop's sombre eyes. +"You never answered it, so I suppose you never received it, but at the +time I wrote you a long letter assuring you that I for one had not +joined in the cry against you, even though my uncle did. I frankly owned +that, while I regarded the appointment as an ill-considered one, I took +for granted that Mr. Rawlings was suited for the place. I said that I +knew you far too well to suppose even for a moment that you would have +given the post to a man, even if he were your son-in-law, unless he had +been competent to fill it. You never answered the letter, so I suppose +it failed to reach you."</p> + +<p>"I received it," said the Bishop slowly. "I felt it to be an +illuminating document, but it did not seem to call for an answer. It was +in itself a response to a tacit appeal."</p> + +<p>There was a pause, and then he continued cheerfully. "Rawlings has +proved himself dreadfully competent as you prophesied, and Lucy is very +happy in her new home. I came on from there this morning. My son-in-law, +with the admirable promptitude and economy of time which endeared him to +me as my chaplain, had arranged that every moment of my visit should be +utilised; that I should christen their first child, dedicate a +thank-offering in the shape of a lectern, consecrate the new portion of +the churchyard, open a reading-room, and say a few cordial words at a +drawing-room meeting before I left at mid-day. I told him if he went on +like this he would certainly come to grief and be made a bishop some +day. But he only remarked that he was not solicitous of high +preferment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> I think you would like Rawlings if you knew him better. You +and he have a certain amount in common. I must own that I am glad that +it is Lucy who has to put up with him and not I. I should think even God +Almighty must find him rather difficult to live with at times. And now, +Wentworth, if I am to be up and away at cock-crow, I must go to bed."</p> + +<p>But the Bishop did not go to bed at once when Wentworth had escorted him +to his room.</p> + +<p>"It was no use," he said to himself. "It was worth trying, but it was no +use. He never saw that he had misjudged me. He met my eye. He has a +straight, clean eye. He is sincere as far as he goes, but how far <i>does</i> +he go? He has never made that first step towards sincerity of doubting +his own sincerity. He mistakes his moods for convictions. He has never +suspected his own motives, or turned them inside out. He suspects those +of others instead. He is like a crab. He moves sideways by nature, and +he thinks that everyone else who moves otherwise is not straightforward, +and that he must make allowances for them. According to his lights he +has behaved generously by me. Has he! Damn him! God forgive me. Well, I +must stick to him, for I believe I am almost the only friend he has left +in the world."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p class="center"> +Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?<span class="smcap">—D. G. Rossetti.</span></p> +</div> + +<p>Fay did not sleep that night.</p> + +<p>For a long time past, she seemed to have been gradually, inevitably +approaching, dragging reluctant feet towards something horrible, +unendurable. She could not look this veiled horror in the face. She +never attempted to define it to herself. Her one object was to get away +from it.</p> + +<p>It had not sprung into life full grown. It had gradually taken form +after Michael's imprisonment. At first it had been only an uneasy ghost +that could be laid, a spectre across her path that could be avoided; but +since she had come home it had slowly attained gigantic and terrifying +proportions. It loomed before her now as a vague but insistent menace, +from which she could no longer turn away.</p> + +<p>A great change was coming over Fay, but she tacitly resisted it. She did +not understand it, nor realise that the menace came from within her +gates, was of the nature of an insurrection in the citadel of self. We +do not always recognise the voice of the rebel soul when first it begins +to speak hoarsely, unintelligibly, urgently from the dark cell to which +we have relegated it.</p> + +<p>Some of us are so constituted that we can look back at our past and see +it as a gradation of steps, a sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> of sequence, and can thus gain a +kind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are even +now striking our feet.</p> + +<p>But poor Fay saw her life only as shattered, meaningless fragments, +confused, mutilated masses without coherence. The masses and the gaps +between them were of the same substance in her eyes. She wandered into +her past as a child might wander among the rubbish heaps of its old home +in ruins. She was vaguely conscious that there had been a design once in +those unsightly mounds, that she had once lived in them. On that remnant +of crazy wall clung a strip of wall-paper which she recognised as the +paper in her own nursery; here a vestige of a staircase that had led to +her mother's room. And as a child will gather up a little frockful of +sticks and fallen remnants, and then drop them when they prove heavy, so +Fay picked up out of her past tiny disjointed odds and ends of ideas and +disquieting recollections, only to cast them aside again as burdensome +and useless.</p> + +<p>The point to which she wandered back most frequently—to stare blankly +at it without comprehension—was her husband's appeal to her on his +deathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. +She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures and +twisted memories towards that particular place.</p> + +<p>She saw again the duke's dying face, and the tender fixity of his eyes. +She could almost hear his difficult waning voice saying:</p> + +<p>"The sun shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. +Since a year he does not see them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> Francesca, how much longer will you +keep your Cousin Michael in prison?"</p> + +<p><i>Since a year he does not see them.</i></p> + +<p>It was two years now.</p> + +<p>The shock to Fay at the moment those words were spoken had been that her +husband had known all the time. That revelation blotted out all other +thoughts for the time being. It even blotted out all considerations of +her own conduct towards Michael, which it might conceivably have +rendered acute. It made her mind incapable of receiving the impression +that the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make on +it; that surely she would not, after his death, still keep Michael in +his cell. Throughout the early weeks of her widowhood Fay remained as +one stunned. Even Magdalen, who hurried out to her, supposed at first +that she was stunned by grief.</p> + +<p>"Then Andrea knew all the time." That was the constant refrain of her +bewildered, half-paralysed mind.</p> + +<p>Gradually in the quiet monotonous life at Priesthope the question made +itself felt. "<i>How did he know?</i>"</p> + +<p>That question was never answered by Fay, deeply though she pondered over +it. It remained a mystery to her all of her life. She recalled little +scraps of his conversation, tiny incidents which might have shown her +that he knew. But she had noticed nothing at the time. Her cheek burned +when she recalled his tranquil, sarcastic voice.</p> + +<p>"Not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty, is +the high road! But I have known, not once, nor twice, women to murder +men very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly—to let them die."</p> + +<p>When first she remembered those words of her dead husband, a horrible +revulsion of feeling against him seized her. She had been vaguely +miserable and remorseful at his death until those words, so tranquilly +spoken in a primrose dawn, came back to her.</p> + +<p>Then she was suddenly glad he was dead, gone for ever. She almost hated +him once more. It was dreadful to live with people whom she did not +understand, who knew things they kept secret, whose minds and thoughts +and motives were incomprehensible to her, who believed horrible untrue +things of her. It had been a fixed idea with Fay during her husband's +lifetime that he believed horrible untrue things about her. But what +they were she would have found it difficult to say.</p> + +<p>Fay's was not a suspicious nature in its normal state, but most persons +of feeble judgment become suspicious when life becomes difficult. They +cannot judge, and consequently cannot trust. Fay had never learnt even +so much of her husband as that she might have trusted him entirely. Now +that he was gone without betraying her, the knowledge that he had known +her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a +flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal +he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear +and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of +the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when +it has been generously and humanely dealt with.</p> + +<p>When Fay had somewhat recovered from the shock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> of her husband's dying +speech she had turned with all her might to Magdalen, had cast herself +upon her, clung to her in a sort of desperation. Magdalen at any rate +believed in her.</p> + +<p>For many months after she came to Priesthope, her mind remained in a +kind of stupor, and it seemed at first as if she were regaining a sort +of calm, caught as it were from Magdalen's presence.</p> + +<p>But gradually miserable brooding memories returned, and it seemed at +last as if something in Magdalen's gentle serenity irritated instead of +soothing Fay as heretofore. Was Magdalen a sort of unconscious ally of +that fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words of +Magdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any rate +something stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrink +from Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moody +intervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at the +housekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later she +would be humbly and hysterically affectionate once more, asking to be +forgiven for her waywardness. She could not live without the comfort of +Magdalen's tenderness. And at times she could not live with it. Magdalen +preserved an unmoved front. She ignored her sister's petulance and +spasmodic fault-finding. She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill, +but what that ill was she did not know. She kept the way open for Fay's +sudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited.</p> + +<p>Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow +to take offence. It was not that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> she did not perceive a slight, or a +rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up +the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led +her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should +touch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that +she lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the natural +instincts of animals.</p> + +<p>Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months at +Priesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to her +life by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent. +His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partially +blurred, persistently pushed aside—the memory of Michael in prison. The +figure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other figure in its +cell.</p> + +<p>But now the remembrance of Michael, continually stirred up by poor +Wentworth, with his set, bereaved face, was never suffered to sleep. +With every week of her life it seemed to Fay some new pain came.</p> + +<p>Magdalen could not comfort her. Magdalen, who was so fond of Michael.</p> + +<p><i>If Magdalen knew!</i></p> + +<p><i>Magdalen must never, never know.</i> She could not live without Magdalen. +Magdalen was not like Andrea in that. She at any rate was concealing +nothing, could know nothing. Now that Andrea was dead, only one living +person beside herself <i>knew</i>—Michael. Fay was unconsciously growing to +hate the thought of that one other person, to turn with horror from the +remembrance of Michael: his sufferings, his patient life in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> death +filled her with nausea, disgust. Her vehement selfish passion for him +had been smothered by the hideous débris which had been cast upon it.</p> + +<p>She had never loved him, as the duke well knew, and now the shivering +remembrance of him, constantly renewed by Wentworth, had become like a +poignard in a wound that would not heal. Wentworth had to-day yet again +unconsciously turned the dagger in the wound, and her whole being +sickened and shuddered. Oh! if she could only tear out that sharp-bladed +remembrance and cast it from her, then in time the aching wound in her +life might heal, and she might become happy and well and at peace once +more;—at peace like Magdalen. An envious anger flared up in her mind +against Magdalen's calm and happy face.</p> + +<p>Oh, if poor Michael could only die! He wanted to die. If only he could +die and release her. <i>Release her from what?</i></p> + +<p>From her duty to speak and set him free? Those were the words which she +never permitted the rebel voice within to say. Still, they were there, +silenced for the time, but always waiting to be said. Their gagged +whisper reached her in spite of herself.</p> + +<p>Oh! if only Michael were dead and out of his suffering, then she would +never be tortured by them any more. Then, too, her husband's words would +lose their poisoned point, and she could thrust them forth from her mind +for ever.</p> + +<p>"Francesca, how much longer will you keep your cousin Michael in +prison?"</p> + +<p>Oh! Cruel, cruel Andrea, vindictive to the very gates of death.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> + +<p>Down the empty, whispering gallery of ghostly fears in which her life +crouched, Michael's voice spoke to her also. She could hear his grave, +low tones. "Think of me as in fairy-land."</p> + +<p>That tender, compassionate message had a barbed point which pierced +deeper even than the duke's words.</p> + +<p>Her lover and her husband seemed to have conspired together to revenge +themselves upon her.</p> + +<p>Fay leaned her pretty head against the window-sill and sobbed +convulsively.</p> + +<p>Poor little soul in prison, weeping behind the bars of her cell, that +only her own hands could open!</p> + +<p>Were not Fay and Michael both prisoners, fast bound: she in misery, he +only in iron.</p> + +<p>The door opened gently and Magdalen came in in a long white wrapper, +with a candle in her hand.</p> + +<p>She put down the candle and came towards Fay. She did not speak. Her +face quivered a little. She bent over the huddled figure in the window +seat, and with a great tenderness drew it into her arms. For a moment +Fay yielded to the comfort of the close encircling arms, and leaned her +head against Magdalen's breast.</p> + +<p>Then she wrenched herself free, and pushed her sister violently from +her.</p> + +<p>"Why do you come creeping in like that?" she said fiercely. "You only +come to spy upon me."</p> + +<p>Magdalen did not speak. She had withdrawn a pace, and stood looking at +her sister, her face as white as her night-gown.</p> + +<p>Fay turned her tear-drenched face to the window and looked fixedly out. +There was a faint movement in the room. When she looked round Magdalen +was gone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fay, worn with two years of partially eluded suffering, restless with +pain, often sick at heart, was at last nearing the last ditch:—but she +had not reached it yet.</p> + +<p>Many more useless tears, many more nights of anguish, many more days of +sullen despair still lay between her and that last refuge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p> +Il n'y a point de passé vide ou pauvre, il n'y a point +d'événements misérables, il n'y a que des événements +misérablement accueillis.</p> +<p class="sig">—Maeterlinck.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Magdalen went back to her own room, and set down her candle on the +dressing-table with a hand that trembled a little.</p> + +<p>"I ought not to have gone," she said half aloud, "and yet—I knew she +was awake and in trouble. And she nearly spoke to me to-day. I +thought—perhaps at last—the time had come like it did with Mother. But +I was wrong. I ought not to have gone."</p> + +<p>The large room which had been her mother's, the elder Fay's, seemed +to-night crowded with ghostly memories: awakened by the thought of the +younger Fay sobbing in the room at the end of the passage.</p> + +<p>In this room, in that bed, the elder Fay had died eighteen years ago.</p> + +<p>How like the mother the child had become who had been named after her.</p> + +<p>Magdalen saw again in memory the poor pretty apathetic mother who had +taken so long to die; a grey-haired Fay, timid as the present Fay, +unwise, inconsequent, blind as Fay, feebly unselfish, as alas! Fay was +not.</p> + +<p>There is in human nature a forlorn impulse, to which Mrs. Bellairs had +yielded, to speak at last when the great silence draws near, of the +things that have long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> cankered the heart, to lay upon others part of +the unbearable burden of life just when death is about to remove move +it. Mrs. Bellairs had always groped feebly in heavy manacles through +life, in a sort of twilight, but her approaching freedom seemed towards +the last to throw a light, faint and intermittent but still a light, on +much that had lain confused and inexplicable in her mind. Many whispered +confidences were poured into Magdalen's ears during those last weeks, +faltered disjointed revelations, which cut deep into the sensitive +stricken heart of the young girl, cutting possibly also new channels for +all her after life to flow through.</p> + +<p>Did the mother realise the needless anguish she inflicted on the spirit +of the grave, silent girl of seventeen. Perhaps she was too near the +great change to judge any longer—not that she had ever judged—what was +wise or unwise, what was large or small. Trivial poisoned incidents and +the deep wounds of life, petty unreasonable annoyances and acute +memories were all jumbled together. She had never sorted them, and now +she had ceased to know which was which. The feeble departing spirit +wandered aimlessly among them.</p> + +<p>"You must stand up to your father, Magdalen, when I'm gone. I never +could. I was too much in love with him at first, and later on when I +tried he had got the habit of my yielding to him, and it made a +continual wretchedness if I opposed him. He always thought I did not +love him if I did not consent to everything he wished, or if I did not +think him right whatever he did. I did try to stand up about the +children, but at last I gave up that too. I was not fit to have +children, if I sacrificed their wellbeing to his caprice and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> his whim, +but that was what I did. I have been a poor mother, and an unfaithful +friend, and an unjust mistress. Women like me have no business to +marry....</p> + +<p>"You don't remember Annie, do you? She was second housemaid, the best +servant I ever had. She was engaged to William, the footman with the +curly hair. He is butler now at Barford. She cared for him dreadfully, +poor soul. But your father could not bear her because she had a squint, +and he never gave me any peace till I parted with her. I did part with +her—and I got her a good place—but—I spoilt her marriage. It did not +take much spoiling perhaps, for after she was gone he soon began to walk +with the kitchen maid, but—she had been kind to me. So good once when I +was ill, and my maid was ill. She did everything for me. I have often +cried about that at night since."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Mother always used to tell me and I never believed it, but it is +true—men are children and it is no good thinking them different. They +never grow up. I don't know if there are any grown up men anywhere. I +suppose there must be—but I have never met one. I don't know any Prime +Ministers or Archbishops, but I expect they are just the same as your +father in home life."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"I daresay your father will be sorry when I'm gone. People like your +father are always very fond of someone who is dead, who has no longer +any claim upon them: a mother or a sister, whom they did not take much +trouble about when they were alive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Of course I am going to die first, but I sometimes used to think if +your father died before me and if he were allowed to come back after +death—such things do happen—I had a friend who saw a ghost +once—whether he would be as vexed then at any little change as he is +now. You know, Magdalen, it has always been a cross to me that the +writing-table in my sitting-room is away from the light. My eyes were +never strong. I moved it near the window when I first came here, but +your father was annoyed and had it put back where it is now, because his +mother always had it there. But I really could not see to write there. +And I have often thought if he came back after he was dead whether he +would mind if he found I had moved it nearer the window."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"The Bishop of Elvaston married us. I daresay you don't remember him, my +dear. He died a few years later. He had a wart on his chin and he once +shook hands with baby's feet. But he was good. He told me I must +sacrifice all to love. But what has been the use of all my sacrifices, +first of myself and then of others? Your father has not been the happier +or the better for it, but the worse. I have let him do so many cruel +little things for which others have suffered. It was not exactly that he +did not see what he was doing. He would not see. Some people are like +that. They won't look, and they become dreadfully angry if they are +asked to look. I gave it up at last. Oh, my poor husband! I knew I had +failed everybody else, but at any rate not him. But I see now,"—the +weak voice broke—"I see now that I have failed him, too. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> ought +never to have married. Love is not any guide to happiness. Remember +that, Magdalen. We were both weak. He was weak and domineering. I was +weak and yielding. I don't know which is the worst."</p> + +<p>As the shadows deepened all the tacit unforgiveness of a weak, +down-trodden nature which has been vanquished by life whispered from the +brink of the grave.</p> + +<p>"I have never been loved. I have given everything, and I have had +nothing back. Nothing. Nothing. Don't marry, Magdalen. Men are all like +that. Lots of women say the same. They take everything and they give +nothing. It is our own fault. We rear them to it from their cradles. +From their schooldays we teach them that everything is to give way to +them, beginning with the sisters. With men it is Take, Take, Take, until +we have nothing left to give. I went bankrupt years ago. There is +nothing left in me. I <i>have</i> nothing and I <i>am</i> nothing. I'm not dying +now. I have been dead for years."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"You say I am going to be at peace, Magdalen, but how do you know? I +daresay I'm not. I daresay I am going to hell, but if I do I don't care. +I don't care where I go so long as it is somewhere where there aren't +any more husbands, and housekeeping, and home, weary, weary home, and +complaints about food. I don't want ever to see anything again that I +have known here. I am so tired of everything. I am tired to death."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Poor mother and poor daughter.</p> + +<p>Who shall say what Magdalen's thoughts were as she supported her +mother's feeble steps down to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> grave. Perhaps she learned at +seventeen what most of us only learn late, so late, when life is half +over.</p> + +<p>Bitterness, humiliation, the passionate despair of the heart which has +given all and has received nothing,—these belong not to the armed band +of Love's pilgrims, though they dog his caravan across the desert.</p> + +<p>These are only the vultures and jackal prowlers in Love's wake, ready to +pounce on the faint hearted pilgrim who through weakness falls into the +rear, where fang and talon lie in wait to swoop down and rend him.</p> + +<p>If we adventure to be one of Love's pilgrims we must needs be long +suffering and meek, if we are to win safe with him across the desert, +and see at last his holy city.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Tears welled up into Magdalen's eyes as one piteous scene after another +came back to her, enacted in this very room.</p> + +<p>Poor little mother, who had seemed to Magdalen then so old and forlorn, +who, when she died, had only been a year or two older than Magdalen +herself was now.</p> + +<p>And poor little wavering life sobbing in the room at the end of the +passage over some mysterious trouble.</p> + +<p>The elder Fay lived on in the younger Fay. Was she also to be vanquished +by life, to become gradually embittered and resentful? There seemed to +be nothing in her lot to make her so. What was it, what could it be that +was casting a blight over Fay's life?</p> + +<p>How to help her, how to release her from the self-imposed fetters in +which her mother had lived and—died.</p> + +<p>Just as some persons have the power of making something new out of +refuse—paper out of rags—so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Magdalen seemed to have the power of +cherishing and transforming the weaker, meaner elements of the +characters with which she came in contact. Certain qualities in those we +are inclined to love daunt us. Insincerity, callousness, selfishness, +treachery in its more refined aspects, these are apt to arouse at first +incredulity and at last scorn in us. But they aroused neither in +Magdalen. She saw them with clearness, and dealt tenderly with them.</p> + +<p>What others discarded as worthless, she valued. To push aside the feeble +and intermittent affection of a closed and self-centred nature, +believing it is giving its best, what is that but to push aside a poor +man's little offering. Many years ago Magdalen had accepted not without +tears, one such offering from a very poor man indeed.</p> + +<p>Loving-kindness, tenderness, have their warped, stunted shoots as well +as their free-growing, stately blossoms. It is the same marvellous, +fragrant life struggling to come forth through generous or barren soil. +There are some thin, dwarfed, almost scentless flowers of love and +friendship, of which we can discern the faint fragrance only when we are +on our knees. But some of us have conscientious scruples about kneeling +down except at shrines. Magdalen had not.</p> + +<p>She knew that Fay cared but little for her in reality. But she also knew +that she did care a little. Fay had turned to her many times, and had +repulsed and forgotten her not a few times.</p> + +<p>Magdalen had a good memory.</p> + +<p>"When she really wants me she will turn to me again," she said +tranquilly to herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p class="center"> +Toute passion a son chemin de croix. +</p></div> + + +<p>And Michael?</p> + +<p>What of him during these two endless years?</p> + +<p>What did he think about during his first year in prison: what was the +first waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradual +discovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside his +window to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn, +how did he bear them?</p> + +<p>His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. The +egoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his. +He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not +thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did +he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he +accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through +the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against +him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one, +minister to him in his great need?</p> + +<p>Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was suffering +voluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept hold +of the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot what +he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> eyes as he had emerged +from behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that moment +in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love.</p> + +<p>Or perhaps he had <i>not</i> forgotten, and had realised that her love for +him was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that +realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before +the trial, that she would not speak.</p> + +<p>Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his +love for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He saw +that she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that she +was not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice which +would have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he saw +that. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she might +make it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had to +be gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she <i>did</i> love him +in her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a <i>small</i> +sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into a +smaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too much +distress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that if +a slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she would +indubitably have made it.</p> + +<p>After a year in prison the news tardily reached Michael through his +friend, the doctor, that the duke was dead.</p> + +<p>The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive. +He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to each +other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> + +<p>But now, <i>now</i>, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to her +to do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have to +endure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which her +delicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that made +all the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. A +little courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a small +sacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other had +been too much to expect. <i>But this</i>——</p> + +<p>Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, and +sobbed for joy.</p> + +<p>Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. He +knew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength.</p> + +<p>Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death of +his friend had brought him.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy ever +rose and rose afresh within him.</p> + +<p>Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving for +her was no longer a sin.</p> + +<p>It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a +floating gossamer tangle of sound across the water.</p> + +<p>Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him.</p> + +<p>He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of his +narrow window.</p> + +<p>How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice!</p> + +<p>He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each with +its little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boats +from Chioggia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in the +pearl haze of the lagoon.</p> + +<p>How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyes +from them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into the +man in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him, +and break him upon its wheel.</p> + +<p>He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at him +like a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air; +free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under a +luminous sky.</p> + +<p>He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleaming +islands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an orange sail.</p> + +<p>For Fay would come to him. The one woman in the world of counterfeits +would come to him, and set him free. She would take him in her arms at +last, and lay her cool healing touch upon his aching life. And he would +lean his forehead against her breast, and his long apprenticeship to +love would be over. It seemed to Michael that she was here already, her +soft cheek against his.</p> + +<p>He pressed his face to the stone wall, and whispered as to her:</p> + +<p>"Fay, have I served you?"</p> + +<p>He almost heard her tremulous whisper, "Yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you still love me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"We may love each other now."</p> + +<p>Again Fay's voice very low. "Yes."</p> + +<p>It had to be like that. This moment was only a faint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> foreshadowing of +that unendurable joy, which inevitably had to come.</p> + +<p>A great trembling laid hold on Michael. He could not stand. He fell on +his knees, but he could not kneel. He stretched himself face downwards +on his pallet. But it was not low enough. He flung himself on the floor +of his cell, but it was not low enough. A grave would hardly have been +low enough. The resisting stone floor had to do instead.</p> + +<p>And through the waves of awe and rapture that swept over him came +faintly down to him, as from some dim world left behind, the bells of +Venice, and the thin cry of the sea-mew rejoicing with him.</p> + +<p>Can we call a life sad which has had in it one such blessed hour?</p> + +<p>Luminous day followed luminous day, and the nights also were full of +light. His work was nothing to him. The increasing heat was nothing to +him. His chains were nothing to him.</p> + +<p>But at last when the weeks drew into a month, two months, a chill doubt +took up its abode with him. It was resolutely cast out. But it returned. +It was fought against with desperation. It was scorned as want of faith. +Michael's strength waned with each conflict. But it always returned. At +last it became to him like a mysterious figure, always present with him.</p> + +<p>"Fay," he whispered over and over again through the endless burning +nights of summer. "Dear one, come soon."</p> + +<p>There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn.</p> + +<p>The shadow deepened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p> + +<p>A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael.</p> + +<p>What could have happened?</p> + +<p>Was she ill?</p> + +<p>Was she dead?</p> + +<p>He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still.</p> + +<p>Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known what +it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn +into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the +unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns +into a forest tree,—for a word which does not come.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of the +duke—Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall—he received a +letter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year.</p> + +<p>He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all the +time that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust.</p> + +<p>With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each +other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the +retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had +married his chaplain—a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been able +to resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridges +had done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. But +he did not care to shoot without Michael.</p> + +<p>He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Your cousin, the Duchess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthope +for good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally. +At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rather +more cheerful as time passes on."</p> + +<p>The letter fell out of Michael's hand.</p> + +<p>"<i>Rather more cheerful as time passes on.</i>"</p> + +<p>Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh.</p> + +<p>Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was he +who had laughed.</p> + +<p>"<i>Rather more cheerful as time passes on.</i>"</p> + +<p>He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behind +him,—during which the time had passed on. He saw them pieced together +into a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in the +midst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him, +under a blinding sun.</p> + +<p>That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. He +had touched the goal.</p> + +<p>She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; not +lately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke's +death, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as the +sick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italy +for good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must have +made up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake. +She had decided to leave him to his fate.</p> + +<p>She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief over +its rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to love +him—he felt still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> her hands holding his hands against her breast—had +never loved him. She did not know what love was.</p> + +<p>She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last.</p> + +<p>There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at +its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot +love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later +that shudder has to come.</p> + +<p>Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. +We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can +teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. +Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, +tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us +and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking +and faithful God?</p> + +<p>Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us?</p> + +<p>The duke's words came back to Michael.</p> + +<p>"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for +whom she has a permanent and deep affection—for her very charming +self."</p> + +<p>He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days.</p> + +<p>Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He +broke his teeth against his chains.</p> + +<p>If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with +the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake.</p> + +<div class="figleft"> +<a name="illo5" id ="illo5"></a><img src="images/pillus06.jpg" width="330" height="550" alt=""IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE +HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"" /></div> +<p> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> + +<p>And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild +outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake +a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, +and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilité des +femmes? Qui sait jusq'où peut aller l'inconstance de ce +sable mouvant?</p> +<p class="sig">—Alfred de Musset.</p> +</div> + +<p>The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold.</p> + +<p>Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate too +narrow for him?</p> + +<p>After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with the +walls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep or +eat. He was absorbed in one idea.</p> + +<p>Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, +rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive +feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by +reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he +learned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled up +against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage.</p> + +<p>He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind of +pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes he +got up, and pushed them back with his hands.</p> + +<p>The sun had shifted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a few +minutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. He +looked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p> + +<p>He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything.</p> + +<p>The doctor came to see him, and looked closely at him, and spoke kindly +to him. He was interested in the young Englishman, and, like several of +the warders, was convinced of his innocence.</p> + +<p>Michael took no notice of him, barely answered his questions. He was +impatient of any interruption.</p> + +<p>He was absorbed in one thought.</p> + +<p>He had loved Fay for a long time. How long was it? Five years? Ten +years? Owing to his peculiar fate love had usurped in Michael's life too +large a place, the place which it holds in a woman's life, but which is +unnatural in a man's. He did not know it, but he had travelled a long +way on the road towards an entire oblivion of Fay when he came to Rome. +But the one great precaution against her he had not taken. He had not +replaced her, and "Only that which is replaced is destroyed." He had +grown accustomed to loving her.</p> + +<p>In these days he went over, slowly, minutely, every step of his long +acquaintanceship with her, from the first day, when he was nineteen and +she was seventeen, to the last evening six years later, when he had +kissed the cold hand that could have saved him, and did not.</p> + +<p>Old people, wise old learned people, smoke-dried Dons and genial bishops +sitting in their dignified studies, had spoken with guarded frankness to +him in his youth on the temptations of life. They had told him that +love, save when it was sanctified by marriage, was only a physical +passion, a temporary madness, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> fever which all men who were men +underwent, but to which a man of principle did not succumb, and which if +vigorously suppressed soon passed away.</p> + +<p>Why had it not been so with him? He had never had to contend with the +coarse forms of temptation of which his elders had spoken, as if they +were an integral part of his youth.</p> + +<p>Why, then, had he loved this pretty, false, selfish woman so long? Why +had he allowed himself to be drawn back into her toils after he had +known she was false? Why was he more weak, more credulous, more +infatuated than other men?</p> + +<p>The duke had actually been her husband, had actually possessed that +wonderful creature, and yet he, under the glamour of her personal +presence, which it made Michael gasp to think of, he, the duke, had not +been deceived.</p> + +<p>Why had he, Michael, been deceived?</p> + +<p>He remembered the exhortations of his tepid-minded, painlessly married +tutor at Oxford, who read the vilest French novels as a duty, and took a +walk with his wife on fine afternoons; and whose cryptic warnings on the +empire of the passions would have made a baboon blush.</p> + +<p>Michael laughed suddenly as he recalled the mild old-maidish face. What +was the old prig talking about? What did he know, dried up and +shrivelled like a bit of seaweed between the leaves of a folio.</p> + +<p>Everyone had told him wrong.</p> + +<p>Why had they decried this awful power, why had they so confused it with +sensual indulgence that he had had to disentangle it for himself? Why +had they not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> warned him, on the contrary, that the love of woman was a +living death, a pitfall from which there was no escape, from the depths +of which you might stare at the sky till you starved to death, as he was +doing now.</p> + +<p>With all their warnings they had not warned him, these grave men, these +instructors of youth, who had never known any world except their little +world of books, who ranged women into two camps, one in which they held +a docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, +mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of his +demure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgar +temptresses, on a level with the wine cup and the gambling table.</p> + +<p>Why had he allowed himself to be duped and hoodwinked by his elders and +by his own shyness, into chastity? They had entreated him to believe it +was the only happy life. <i>It was not.</i> To be faithful to his future +wife. Ha! Ha! That was the beginning of the trap, the white sand neatly +raked over the hidden gin.</p> + +<p>If he had only lived like other men! If he had only listened to the +worst among them, if he had only torn the veil early from every limb of +that draped female figure, that iron maiden, if he had only seen it in +its horror of nudity, with its sharp nails for eyes, and its jagged +knives where the bosom should be, he should not be pressed to death in +its embrace now.</p> + +<p>He had been deceived, betrayed, fooled. That was why he was shut up. He +had believed in a woman, had believed that the cobra's bite was only a +wasp's sting. Good Lord, what an imbecile! He was insane of course,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> +raving mad. And he had been here eighteen months and only saw the joke +now.</p> + +<p>Michael laughed again, shouted with laughter.</p> + +<p>The sun was setting again. It was always setting now. It set in the +mornings as well. The red thong of light was on the wall again. Blood +red! He rocked to and fro shaking with laughter.</p> + +<p>The doctor and a warder came in. It was just like them. They were always +coming in when they were not wanted.</p> + +<p>He pointed at the bar of light, stumbled to it, and tried to tear it +from the wall. It had been there long enough. Too long. And as he tore +at it with hands dyed crimson, something that was pressing upon him +lightened suddenly, and the blood gushed forth from his mouth, flooding +the sun-stained wall.</p> + +<p>"I have put out that damned sunset at last," he said to himself as he +fell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"> +<p>So we must keep apart,<br /> +You there, I here,<br /> +With just the door ajar<br /> +That oceans are,<br /> +And prayer,<br /> +And that pale sustenance<br /> +Despair! +</p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—Emily Dickenson.</p> +</div> + + +<p>It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice +of his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness that +Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did +not lavish on him.</p> + +<p>Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and +closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer +together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift +when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was +aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days +passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor had +been in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made him +drink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. +How clear everything was becoming. He raised his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> hand to his head. He +had not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at his +wasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these marks +on the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he had +forgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he should +know numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, and +held it close to his eyes.</p> + +<p>These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. And +here over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deep +sore once.</p> + +<p><i>When?</i></p> + +<p>If only he could remember!</p> + +<p>The mist in his mind cleared a little.</p> + +<p><i>Those bruises were made by chains.</i></p> + +<p>A deadly faintness came over him.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back into +his feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what he +had done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a long +time, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious, +crouching in the back of his mind.</p> + +<p>The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, and +he shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want to +have the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest to +please the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. The +doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the +early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate +grey lilac.</p> + +<p>"I remember," said Michael, whitening.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> + +<p>It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering +and the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon his +brain.</p> + +<p>"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it +is a purple brown."</p> + +<p>The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, +looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gently +and took it away.</p> + +<p>Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which he +should see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the very +edge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's last +desertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterflies +this time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind, +and he feared for his brain. He was too weak to read. He might perhaps +like to look at pictures.</p> + +<p>The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immense +butterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay, +but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee.</p> + +<p>Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it had +been looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender.</p> + +<p>Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousands +once in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he had +been abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in the +sun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>shine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like an +army of fairies.</p> + +<p>How heavy the book was on his knee.</p> + +<p>He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor +would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when +he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf.</p> + +<p>Were there English butterflies here as well?</p> + +<p>Yes. Here was a sheet of them.</p> + +<p>He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common +enough in the south of England.</p> + +<p>He looked idly at it.</p> + +<p>And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal +screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop.</p> + +<p>He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly like +that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening +and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed +how beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards +it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, +and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed +over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its +wings, one by one, because they were so pretty.</p> + +<p>He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and +almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly +thing with struggling legs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> + +<p>The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain.</p> + +<p>"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand."</p> + +<p>And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look +into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had +put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had +cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But +nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had done +it on purpose to that other poor creature of God. <i>She did not +understand.</i></p> + +<p>Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came +back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's +face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he +had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with +her pretty hand.</p> + +<p>Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she +would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now +at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more +deeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of grief +came, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted had +been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt.</p> + +<p>An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in all +the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid +heart.</p> + +<p>Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p> + +<p>Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the +death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always +enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place.</p> + +<p>A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It +shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child +against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love +that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, +and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had +strength from her to wander away from her—back into her arms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"><div class="poem"> +<p>And no more turn aside and brood<br /> +<span class="i2">Upon Love's bitter mystery.</span></p></div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—W. B. Yeats.</p> +</div> + + +<p>It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the +embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties +have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is +callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell +in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that +was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in +the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the +ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand. +Old age ceases to understand.</p> + +<p>But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond +youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and +gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their +zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. +Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind +them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the +world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, +call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might +wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they +are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only +be loved and served. They cannot love—as yet. They exact love and miss +it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, +frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyse +it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is +nothing to be got out of it after all.</p> + +<p>They seem inhuman because they are not human—as yet. They seem +variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's +body and brain must so seem. They are not sane—as yet.</p> + +<p>And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth +and beauty and tenderness may not come forth—as yet.</p> + +<p>We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them +now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like +half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes.</p> + +<p>Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived +unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days +that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was +supported by the illusion—was it an illusion—that it was Fay really +who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her +place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, +unless he helped her through.</p> + +<p>He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well +enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once +more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> that +they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh?</p> + +<p>When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it +was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go—at +last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's.</p> + +<p>His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its +exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p> +What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was +a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the +easiest.</p> +<p class="sig">—Edith Wharton.</p> +</div> + + +<p>On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awake +listening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distance +away from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorb +her, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for so +many years past.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearing +wind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listen +intently.</p> + +<p>Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the passage +to Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none that +could be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over the +groaning old house.</p> + +<p>She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over the +dim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay.</p> + +<p>Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out her +arms.</p> + +<p>Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly:</p> + +<p>"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms.</p> + +<p>Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost as +much as Fay.</p> + +<p>Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane. +Within, another storm had broken in a passion of tears.</p> + +<p>Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing.</p> + +<p>"I was coming to you, Magdalen,—I was trying to come—and I couldn't—I +had pushed you away when you came before—and I thought perhaps you +would push <i>me</i> away—no—no—I didn't, but I said to myself you would. +I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the same +because—because,"—Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into a +strangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more."</p> + +<p>"Tell me about it."</p> + +<p>But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself face +downwards on the bed.</p> + +<p>"I can't," she gasped. "I must and I can't. I must and I can't."</p> + +<p>Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that the +breaking moment had come and she waited.</p> + +<p>She waited a long time.</p> + +<p>The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself.</p> + +<p>At last Fay sat up.</p> + +<p>Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, she +blew the dim embers to a glow.</p> + +<p>Fay watched her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p> + +<p>Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes +fixed upon it.</p> + +<p>"I have done something very wicked," said Fay in a hollow voice from the +bed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me +that you will never tell anybody?"</p> + +<p>"I promise," said Magdalen after a moment.</p> + +<p>"Swear it."</p> + +<p>"I swear."</p> + +<p>Fay made several false starts and then said:</p> + +<p>"I was very unhappy with Andrea."</p> + +<p>Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red.</p> + +<p>"He never cared for me," continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and +kneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who +does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too +selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know +anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me."</p> + +<p>Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passage +she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful +weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to +love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in +silence then so she listened in silence now.</p> + +<p>"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully +disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real +confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, +those whom God has joined together. Andrea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> never seemed to remember +that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to +care for him, and—he brought it on himself—I'm not excusing myself, +Magdalen—I see now that I was to blame too—I ended by caring for +someone else—someone who <i>did</i> love me, who always had since we were +boy and girl together."</p> + +<p>"Not Michael!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It +never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. +I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared +at last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me."</p> + +<p>Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so +far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her +confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking +the whole truth and nothing but the truth.</p> + +<p>"Of course he found it out at last and—and we agreed to part. We +decided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to say +good-bye. Was it <i>very</i> wrong of me to let him come once,—just once?"</p> + +<p>"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not +he leave Rome?"</p> + +<p>"He was arrested the same night," faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to him +in the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they were +looking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out. +And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hid +behind the screen in my room. And then—you know the rest—the police<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> +came in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to the +murder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing to +do to save my reputation, and he did it."</p> + +<p>"And what did you say?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak."</p> + +<p>"And later on when you were not too faint?"</p> + +<p>"I never said anything later on either." Fay's voice had become almost +inaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess."</p> + +<p>"But when he did not confess?"</p> + +<p>"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that he +might still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen."</p> + +<p>There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures in +Magdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefully +safeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in the +process.</p> + +<p>At last she said, "Did Andrea <i>know</i> that Michael was innocent of the +murder?"</p> + +<p>"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he said +something cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence for +certain, had known it from the first."</p> + +<p>"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do you +suppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight, +after he had ostensibly left the house?"</p> + +<p>Fay stared at her sister aghast.</p> + +<p>"I never thought of that," she said.</p> + +<p>"What <i>can</i> Andrea have thought of that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Andrea was very secretive," faltered Fay. "You never could tell what he +was thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. Roman +Catholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of the +wife."</p> + +<p>There was another silence.</p> + +<p>Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given +time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents +that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken +refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, but +they don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse to +weigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quickly +confused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all they +remember that upholds their own view of the situation and—discard the +rest.</p> + +<p>Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could only +restate her own view of her husband's character.</p> + +<p>Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others if +they had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waited +a moment, and then said:</p> + +<p>"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment between +yourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had not +guessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew it +<i>then</i>—for certain. <i>For certain</i>, Fay. Remember that is settled. There +was no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if you +bar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea is +concerned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect for +Michael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which would +have ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did not +understand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me he +acted towards you with great nobility and delicacy."</p> + +<p>Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husband +must not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have any +fixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the whole +tightly wedged fabric in position.</p> + +<p>"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed," she +said. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the least +hint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he hoped—hoped against hope—that——" Magdalen did not finish +her sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them, +and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, she +went on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without a +word to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I see +now that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italian +hereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such a +height as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicions +he might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael if +he had not followed a very noble instinct, that of entire trust in you +both in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Dear Fay, the +proof was overwhelming."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fay was silent.</p> + +<p>"Just as we all believed in Michael's innocence of the murder, so Andrea +believed in your innocence of a crime even greater, never faltered in +his belief, and went to his grave without a word of doubt. Oh! Fay, Fay, +do you suppose there are many men like that?"</p> + +<p>And Magdalen, who so seldom wept, suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps the +thought forced itself through her mind, "If only once long ago I had met +with one little shred of such tender faith!"</p> + +<p>"Andrea was better than I thought," Fay faltered. The admission made her +uneasy. She wished he had not been better, that her previous view of him +had not been disturbed.</p> + +<p>Magdalen's tears passed quickly. She glanced again at Fay through a veil +of them, looking earnestly for something she did not find.</p> + +<p>"And Michael," she went on gently. "Dear, dear Michael. He gave himself +for you, spent in one moment, not counting the cost, his life, his +future, his good name—for your sake. And he goes on day by day, month +by month, year in year out, enduring a living death without a word—for +your sake. How long has Michael been in prison?"</p> + +<p>"Two years." Fay's voice was almost inaudible.</p> + +<p>"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But if +his strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was any +man since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and your +lover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish and +could not love. I have heard many women say the same. But <i>you</i>! How can +<i>you</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> say such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love and +serve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever find +anything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material of +men's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to have +stood between two such men who must have crushed you between them if +either of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentary +selfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and—where would +<i>you</i> have been?"</p> + +<p>"No one knows how good Michael is better than I do," said Fay, "but what +you don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been for <i>me</i>. +He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. +No, I don't <i>think</i> it, I <i>know</i> it. He can't have suffered as much as I +have."</p> + +<p>Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a +tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always +tender.</p> + +<p>"You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain +things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the +loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years? +What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!"</p> + +<p>Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's +knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone +to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she +loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but +had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a +more prominent red, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able +to tell her sister everything.</p> + +<p>The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of +the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, +when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the +rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. +Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about +ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive +anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines +of our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister +ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up +from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one +whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly +for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our +meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the +world what only Love may safely know concerning us?</p> + +<p>Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless +bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. She +heard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much that +Fay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that it +was misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yet +repentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of our +prisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cells +bolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business of +leaving our cells when only misery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> urges us forth. I think that +Magdalen's heart must have sunk many times, but whenever Fay looked up +she met the same tender, benignant look bent down upon her.</p> + +<p>"Oh! why didn't I tell you before?" she said at last. "I always wanted +to, but I thought—at least I felt—I see I did you an injustice—I +thought you might press me to—to——"</p> + +<p>"<i>To confess</i>," said Magdalen, her low voice piercing to Fay's very +soul.</p> + +<p>"Y-yes, at least to say something to a policeman or someone, so that +Michael might be let out. I was afraid if I told you you would never +give me any peace till Michael was released."</p> + +<p>"Have you <i>had</i> any peace since he was put into prison?"</p> + +<p>Fay shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Make your mind easy, Fay, I shall never urge you to"—Magdalen +hesitated—"to go against your conscience."</p> + +<p>"What would you have done in my place?" said Fay hastily.</p> + +<p>"I should have had to speak."</p> + +<p>"You are better than me, Magdalen, more religious. You always have +been."</p> + +<p>"I should have had to speak, not because I am better or worse than you, +but simply because I could not have endured the misery of silence. It +would have broken me in two. And if I had not had the courage to speak +in Andrea's lifetime, I would have spoken directly he was dead, and have +released Michael and married him. You have not told me why you did not +do that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I never thought of it. I somehow regarded it as all finished. And I +have never even <i>thought</i> of marrying Michael or anyone when I was left +a widow. I was much too miserable. I had had enough of being married."</p> + +<p>There was a difficult silence.</p> + +<p>"I should never have a moment's peace if—if I <i>did</i> speak," said Fay at +last.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you would," said Magdalen with sudden intensity. "That is where +peace lies."</p> + +<p>Fay raised herself to her knees and looked into Magdalen's eyes. The +dawn had come up long ago, and in its austere light Magdalen's face +showed very sharp and white in a certain tender fixity and compassion. +She had seen that look once before in her husband's dying eyes. Now that +she was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood it +for the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might be +given peace!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""><tr><td> +<div class="poem"> +<p>There is no wild wind in his soul,<br /> +<span class="i2">No strength of flood or fire;</span> +He knows no force beyond control,<br /> +<span class="i2">He feels no deep desire.</span></p> +<p>He knows no altitudes above,<br /> +<span class="i2">No passions elevate;</span> +All is but mockery of love,<br /> +<span class="i2">And mimicry of hate.</span></p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> + +<p class="sig">—Edgar Vine Hall.</p> +</div> + + + +<p>The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library at +Barford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down lay +Priesthope, where Fay was.</p> + +<p>He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulated +existence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade him +only in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid his +purpling beeches.</p> + +<p>Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those mornings +sacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagant +surmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards a +thing or person—in what he called his point of view—than in the thing +viewed.</p> + +<p>He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with his +feelings about her than with herself. It was these which were now +engrossing him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> + +<p>For some time past he had been working underground—digging out the +foundations—and as a rule invisible as a mole within them—of a tedious +courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is +much more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was not +to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously +diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large +battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon +themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. He +had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance +meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed +by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves +across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine +violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex; +and that when he met the <i>right</i> woman she would set to work like the +others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be +conveniently arrived at.</p> + +<p>But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent +grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain +turn which affairs might one day take.</p> + +<p>At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one +of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further +masculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, +almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings +under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. He +was aware—at least, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> told himself that he was aware—that +extraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how he +reconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. The +chance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions, +and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with much <i>naïf</i> +dignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other old +friend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposed +but earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grappling +with the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was of +estrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning and +found he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at the +correct moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by the +comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He +shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with +himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the +meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild +emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a +little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was +delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse.</p> + +<p>I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the verge +of being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails from +the abyss by a certain <i>naïveté</i> and uprightness of character. The +Bishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact that +dolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond of +him.</p> + +<p>Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> unconsciously +meditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancing +furtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary, +self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman, +however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining him +with her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by looking +back.</p> + +<p>Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he did +propose he would be accepted—she in short must commit herself—and +then—after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still—at any +rate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of Pilgrim +Road. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would be +an entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "short +cut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of his +return journey from Lostford.</p> + +<p>It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down Pilgrim +Road feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth was +breathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking in +the vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossy +track dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on the +boles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze of +myriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. There +was a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself.</p> + +<p>At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on a +fallen tree near the track.</p> + +<p>For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he should +ride past, just taking off his hat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> But he had ridden past in life, +just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. He +almost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismounted +and walked up to Fay, bridle in hand.</p> + +<p>"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way."</p> + +<p>This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its +obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet +anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a +foot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and +left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the +actual facts. The moral is—morals cluster like bees round certain +individuals—that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like +Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get +some palm."</p> + +<p>She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on +them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he +looked at them with grave attention.</p> + +<p>The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, +suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head +slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut.</p> + +<p>"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us."</p> + +<p>Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig.</p> + +<p>Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in his +strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, +though of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> doubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfect +rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere +of exquisite manners.</p> + +<p>Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came +back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He +had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something +striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much.</p> + +<p>A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a +choice of subject.</p> + +<p>From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of +mouse talk, intermittent, <i>affairé</i>, accompanied by sudden rustlings and +dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and +bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of +life in a new soft silken coat!</p> + +<p>Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time +to time.</p> + +<p>"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in +these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says."</p> + +<p>"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?"</p> + +<p>"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not +our morbid craving for a listener."</p> + +<p>"Do you think—I mean really and truly—that they are talking about +themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of +his on the subject would be considered final.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more +like a cavalier than ever.</p> + +<p>Then he actually noticed how pale she was.</p> + +<p>"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you +awake."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, and hung her head.</p> + +<p>Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her +more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with +recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than +those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling +new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing +him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality +been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The +elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this +and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day, +toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some +unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night.</p> + +<p>He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never +considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously +about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman +of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart.</p> + +<p>He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no +surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really +nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go +forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything +before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it +passed away again, leaving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> a great tranquillity behind, together with a +mounting sense of personal power.</p> + +<p>If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did +not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him +through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood +it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking +the reed for music!</p> + +<p>Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain things +exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to +whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we +sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands?</p> + +<p>The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth +had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a +reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might +be ready when the time came.</p> + +<p>"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret.</p> + +<p>"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always assented +to what was said.</p> + +<p>"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I +sit here any longer I shall never get home at all."</p> + +<p>"Let me take you home on Conrad."</p> + +<p>Fay hesitated.</p> + +<p>"I am frightened of horses."</p> + +<p>"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse. +And I will lead him."</p> + +<p>Fay still hesitated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> + +<p>He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She +was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope.</p> + +<p>Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for +anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came.</p> + +<p>Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling +foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it.</p> + +<p>She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timidity +was reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking +beside her, with his hand on the rein.</p> + +<p>The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part.</p> + +<p>Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind +wandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them very +often.</p> + +<p>Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his +mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to +indicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point of +view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have +lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with +childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that +he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering +swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own +freedom from ambition, his devotion—unlike other men—to the <i>small</i> +things of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had +been struck by that sentence when he first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> said it to the Bishop, and +he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more +sympathetic listener than the Bishop.</p> + +<p>I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse +said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his +brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of +vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the <i>débris</i> +of last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired +her. <i>He</i> did not know anything uncomfortable about her—<i>as Magdalen +did</i>. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person +who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he +talked! What a wide-minded, generous man!</p> + +<p>The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was +reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, +stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of +Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt +instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. +She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She +was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more +robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they +required assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy +of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well +enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwart +figure warded off from her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> the sympathy to which her severe cramps +undoubtedly entitled her.</p> + +<p>"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that +the good hour was over.</p> + +<p>Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her +cheek.</p> + +<p>Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a +favourite walk of yours?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon."</p> + +<p>"I have to pass that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut +to Lostford."</p> + +<p>He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom +used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed +the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with +because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said +the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener +minds had had to fight against in dealing with him.</p> + +<p>For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense of +regret and loss.</p> + +<p>Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen who +was so good, and so safe, such a comforter—<i>but who knew</i>. Fay shrank +back instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs to +her own room, and had tea there.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="figleft"> +<a name="illo6" id ="illo6"></a><img src="images/pillus07.jpg" width="360" height="550" alt=""FAY NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW LIGHTLY WENTWORTH +WALKED, HOW SQUARE HIS SHOULDERS WERE"" /></div> + +<p>Wentworth rode home feeling younger that he had done for years. What is +thirty-nine? No age for a thin man. (He was in reality nearly +forty-one.) He was pleased with himself. How quaintly amusing he had +been about the mouse. He regretted, not for the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> <!-- +Illustration originally here - moved for readability --> time, that he did +not write novels, for little incidents like that, which the conventional +mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving, would +intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he had +rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her—he +did not know exactly what—but something larger than to-day. Any fool, +any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. He +would like to do something which another person could <i>not</i> do, +something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time place +him in a magnanimous light.</p> + +<p>We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness to +the one we love. We need not trouble ourselves to seek for such an +occasion, for though many things fail us in this life the opportunity so +to act has never yet failed to arrive, and has never arrived alone, +always hand in hand with some prosaic hideously difficult circumstance, +which, if we are of an artistic temperament, may appear to us too ugly.</p> + +<p>Wentworth had never wished to do anything for the gay little lady who, a +few years ago, had crossed his path. The principal subject of his +cogitations about her had been whether she would be able to adapt +herself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided wayward +nature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on the +contrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag on +his soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelings +for her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind of +compassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in it +the possibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> of growth, of some expansion. And what other feeling in +Wentworth's clean, well-regulated, sterilized mind had shown any power +of growth?</p> + +<p>The worst of growth is that a small acorn does not grow into a large +acorn as logical persons expect. It ought to, but it does not. It grows +instead into something quite unrecognisable from its small beginnings, +something for which, perhaps, beyond a certain stage, there is no +room,—not even a manger.</p> + +<p>Those who love must discard much. Wentworth had not yet felt the need of +discarding anything, and he had not the smallest intention of doing so. +He intended instead to make a small ornamental addition, a sort of +portico, to his life. His mind had got itself made up this afternoon, +and he contemplated the proposed addition with some complacency as +already made.</p> + +<p>There is, I believe, a method of planting an acorn in a bottle, +productive of the happiest results—for those who love small results. +You only give the acorn a little water every day,—no soil of course. +The poor thing will push up a thin twig of stem through the bottle neck, +and in time will unfold a few real oak leaves. Men like Wentworth would +always prefer the acorn to remain an acorn, but if it shews signs of +growth, some of them are wise enough, take alarm early enough, to +squeeze it quickly down a bottle neck before it has expanded too much to +resist the passage.</p> + +<p>Had Fate in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or +would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his own +convenience a great possibility?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p class="center"> +Look through a keyhole, and your eye will be sore.</p></div> + + +<p>During the weeks which followed Fay's confession Magdalen became aware +that she watched her, and aware also that she avoided her, was never +alone with her if she could help it.</p> + +<p>At this time Fay began to do many small kindnesses, and to talk much of +the importance of work for others, of the duty of taking an interest in +our fellow creatures. This was a new departure. She had not so far +evinced the faintest interest in the dull routine of home duties which +are of the nature of kindnesses, and had often reproached Magdalen for +spending herself in them. To play halma with zest all the evening with a +parent who must always win, to read the papers to him by the hour, not +while he listened, but while he slept—Fay scorned these humble efforts +of Magdalen's. She shewed no disposition to emulate them; but she did +shew a feverish tendency towards isolated acts of benevolence outside +the home life, which precluded any claim upon her by arousing a hope of +their continuance, which tied her to nothing. Fay began to send boxes of +primroses to hospitals, to knit stockings for orphans, to fatigue +herself with enormous walks over the downs with illustrated papers for +the Saundersfoot work-house.</p> + +<p>It was inevitable at this juncture that she should feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> some shocked +surprise at the supineness of those around her. Her altruistic efforts +were practically single-handed. She had hoped that when she inaugurated +them, Magdalen at any rate would have followed suit, would have worked +cheerfully under her direction. But Magdalen, whose serene cheerfulness +had flagged of late, fell painfully below her sister's expectation. Fay +came to the conclusion that it was more lack of imagination than +callousness on her sister's part which held her back.</p> + +<p>Many careworn souls besides Fay have discovered that the irritable +exhaustion, the continual ache of egotism can be temporarily relieved by +taking an inexpensive interest in others. The remedy is cheap and +efficacious, and it is a patent. Like Elliman applied to a rheumatic +shoulder it really does do good—I mean to the owner of the shoulder. +And you can stop rubbing the moment you are relieved. Perhaps these +external remedies are indispensable to the comfort of those who dwell by +choice, like Fay, in low-lying swampy districts, and have no thought of +moving to higher ground.</p> + +<p>Magdalen knew these signs, and sometimes her heart sank.</p> + +<p>Was Fay unconsciously turning aside to busy herself over little things +that were not required of her, in order to shut her eyes to the one +thing needful—a great act of reparation?</p> + +<p>If Fay was watching Magdalen, someone else was watching Fay. Bessie's +round, hard, staring eyes were upon her, and if Bessie did anything she +did it to some purpose.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> + +<p>One afternoon in the middle of April Bessie came into Magdalen's sitting +room and sat down with an air of concentration.</p> + +<p>"I have reason to be deeply ashamed of myself," she said. "I <i>am</i> +ashamed of myself. If I tell you about it it is not in order that you +may weakly condone and gloss over my conduct."</p> + +<p>Magdalen reflected that Bessie had inherited her father's graceful way +of approaching a difficulty by finding a preliminary fault in his +listener.</p> + +<p>Bessie shut her handsome mouth firmly for a moment, and then opened it +with determination.</p> + +<p>"I thought that whatever faults I had I was at any rate a lady, but I +find I am not. I discovered something by the merest chance a short time +ago, and since then, for the last fortnight I have been acting in a +dishonourable and vulgar manner, in short, spying upon another person."</p> + +<p>"That must have made you miserable."</p> + +<p>"It has. I am miserable. But I deserve that. I did not come to talk +about that. The point is this——"</p> + +<p>"Bessie, I don't want to hear what you evidently ought not to know."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you must, because someone else needs your advice."</p> + +<p>"We won't trouble our minds about the someone else."</p> + +<p>Bessie had, however, inherited another characteristic trait of her +father's. She could ignore when she chose. She chose now.</p> + +<p>"I may as well put you in possession of the facts," she continued. "A +few weeks ago I was coming home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> by Pilgrim Road. I was not hurrying +because I was struck, as I always am struck—I don't suppose I am +peculiar in this—by the first appearance of spring. Pilgrim Road is a +sheltered place. Spring always comes early there."</p> + +<p>"It does."</p> + +<p>"I will even add that I was recalling to myself verses of poetry +connected with the time of year, when I saw a couple in front of me. +They were walking very slowly with their backs towards me, taking +earnestly together. They were Fay and Wentworth."</p> + +<p>Magdalen made no movement, but her face, always pale, became suddenly +ashen grey.</p> + +<p>If Fay were seriously attracted by Wentworth would she ever confess, +ever release Michael!</p> + +<p>"There was no harm in their walking together," she said tremulously.</p> + +<p>"There was one harm in it," retorted Bessie. "It made me so angry that I +did not know how to live. They did not see me, and I struck up into the +wood, and I had to stay an hour by myself holding on to a little tree, +before I could trust myself to come home."</p> + +<p>"It does not help matters to be angry, Bessie. I was angry once for two +years. I said at the time like Jonah that I did well, but I see now that +I might have done better."</p> + +<p>"I don't particularly care what helps matters and what does not. I now +come to my own disgraceful conduct. I have spied upon Fay steadily for +the last fortnight. She is so silly she never even thinks she is +watched. And she meets Wentworth in Pilgrim Road nearly every afternoon. +I once waylaid her as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> if by accident, on her way home, and asked her +where she had been, and she said she had been on her way to Arleigh +wood, but had not got so far, as she was too tired. Too tired! She had +been walking up and down with Wentworth for over an hour. I timed them. +She never meant to go to Arleigh wood. And when they said Good-bye, +he—he kissed her hand. Since Fay has come back to live here I have +gradually formed the meanest opinion of her. She is not truthful. She is +not sincere. She is absolutely selfish. I was inclined to be sorry for +her at first, but I soon saw through her. She did not really care for +Andrea. She only pretended. Everything she does is a kind of pretty +pretence. She does not really care for Wentworth. She is only leading +him on for her own amusement."</p> + +<p>"I think it is much more likely that she is drifting towards marriage +with him without being fully aware of what she is doing. But women like +you and me are not in the same position towards men as Fay is. +Consequently it is very difficult for us to judge her fairly."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean."</p> + +<p>"You and I are not attractive to men. Fay is. You saw Wentworth kiss her +hand. You naturally infer, but you are probably wrong, that Fay had been +leading him on, as you call it."</p> + +<p>"It will take a good deal to disabuse me of that at any rate. I believe +my own eyes."</p> + +<p>"I should not if I were you. If anyone kissed your hand or mine it would +not only be an epoch in our lives, but also the sign manual of some +ponderous attachment which you, my dear, would carefully weigh, and +approximately value. But do you suppose for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> one moment that Fay +attaches any importance to such an everyday occurrence!"</p> + +<p>"I see what you are driving at, that Fay is not responsible for her +actions. But she is. She must know when she does things or lets them be +done, that will make others suffer."</p> + +<p>"If you could look into Fay's heart, Bessie, you would find that Fay is +suffering herself and attributing her pain to others. As long as we do +that, as long as we hold the stick by the wrong end, we must inflict +pain in some form or other. Fay is not happy. You cannot look at her +without seeing it."</p> + +<p>"I would not mind so much if it were not for Wentworth," said Bessie +with dreadful courage. "I know it is partly jealousy, but it is not only +jealousy. There are a few crumbs of unselfishness in it. I thought at +first—I reasoned it out with myself and it appeared a logical +conclusion—that father was the ostensible but not the real object of +Wentworth's frequent visits. I took a great interest in his +conversation; it is so lucid, so well informed, so illuminative. I do +not read novels as a rule, but I dipped into a few, studying the love +scenes, and the preliminary approaches to love scenes in order to aid my +inexperience at this juncture. I am sorry to say I fell into the error +that he might possibly reciprocate the growing interest I felt in him, +in spite of the great disparity in age. It was a mistake. I have +suffered for it."</p> + +<p>The two roses of Bessie's cheeks bloomed on as unflinchingly as ever.</p> + +<p>Magdalen's eyes were fixed on her own hands.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You would not have suited each other if he had cared for you," she said +after a moment, "for you would not have done him justice when you got to +know him better, any more than you do Fay justice now that you <i>do</i> know +her better. Wentworth is made of words, just as other men are made of +flesh and blood. How would you have kept any respect for him when you +had become tired of words? You are too straightforward, too +sledge-hammer to understand a character like his."</p> + +<p>"In that case Fay ought to suit him," said Bessie grimly. "No one, not +even you, can call her straight-forward. But I begin to think, Magdalen, +that you actually wish for the marriage."</p> + +<p>"I had never thought of it as possible on her side until a few minutes +ago, when what you said took me by surprise. Of course I had noticed the +attraction on his side, but it appeared to me he was irresolute and +timid, and it is better to ignore the faint emotions of half-hearted +people. They come to no good. If you repel them they are mortally +offended and withdraw, and if you welcome them they are terrified and +withdraw."</p> + +<p>"I don't think Wentworth intends withdrawing."</p> + +<p>"No. These meetings look as if he had unconsciously drifted with the +current till the rowing back would be somewhat arduous." There was a +moment's silence, in which Magdalen recalled certain lofty sentiments +which Wentworth had aired with suspicious frequency of late. She knew +that when he talked of his consciousness of guidance by a Higher Power +in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> important decisions of his life he always meant following the +line of least resistance. In this case the line of least resistance +<i>might</i> tend towards marriage.</p> + +<p>"It never struck me as possible till now," she said aloud, "that Fay +would think seriously of him."</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose she is. She is only keeping her hand in. Don't you +remember how cruel she was to that poor Mr. Bell."</p> + +<p>"I am convinced that she is not keeping her hand in."</p> + +<p>"Then you actually favour the idea of a marriage." Bessie got up and +stalked slowly to the door. "You will help it on?" she said over her +shoulder.</p> + +<p>"No." Magdalen's voice shook a little. "I will do nothing to help it, or +to hinder it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""><tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"> +<p>The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul—<br /> +No hill-crown's heavenly aureole,<br /> +But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal.</p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—D. G. Rossetti.</p> +</div> + + + +<p>If Fay's progress through life could have been drawn with a pencil it +would have resembled the ups and downs, like the teeth of a saw, of a +fever chart.</p> + +<p>To Magdalen it appeared as if Fay could undergo the same feelings with +the same impotent results of remorse or depression a hundred times. They +seemed to find her the same and leave her the same. But nevertheless she +did move, imperceptibly, unconsciously—no, not quite unconsciously. The +sense—common to all weak natures—not of being guided, but of being +pushed was upon her.</p> + +<p>Once again she tried to extricate herself from the pressure of some +mysterious current. There seemed no refuge left in Magdalen. There +seemed very few comfortable people left in the world, to whom a +miserable woman might turn. Only Wentworth. <i>He did not know.</i></p> + +<p>Perhaps Fay would never have turned to him if she had not first confided +in and then shrunk from Magdalen. For the second time in her life she +longed feverishly to get away from home, the home to which only a year +ago she had been so glad to hurry back,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> when she had been so restlessly +anxious to get away from Italy. Wentworth was beginning to look like a +means of escape. The duke had at one time worn that aspect. Later on +Michael had looked extremely like it for a moment. Now Wentworth was +assuming that aspect in a more solid manner than either of his +predecessors. She was slipping into love with him, half unconsciously, +half with <i>malice prepense</i>. She told herself continually that she did +not want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea of +marriage.</p> + +<p>But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflection +of these inward communings. And why did she conceal from Magdalen her +now constant meetings with him?</p> + +<p>Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimate +knowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to work +out quite smoothly.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay's +demeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to his +intentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm. (How he had set +her mind at rest on that occasion he knew best.) It seemed this +exquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance to +respond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances. +He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, on +the theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to how +he, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to feminine +charm; how he, the determined celibate—Wentworth always called himself +a celibate—had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> taken captive after all. To judge by the letters +which Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially one +to Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellect +that he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex to +have remained a bachelor—a celibate, I mean—so long.</p> + +<p>We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves. In the composition of +these imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the +postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in +London hospitals.</p> + +<p>Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and over +again. They were a kind of anodyne.</p> + +<p>On a blowing afternoon in the middle of April she made her way across +the down with her basket to a distant hazel coppice to which she had not +been as yet.</p> + +<p>A fever of unrest possessed her. She had thought when she confessed to +Magdalen that her misery had reached its lowest depths. But it had not +been so. Her wretchedness, momentarily relieved, had since gone a step +deeper, that was all. She had endeavoured to allay her thirst with a cup +of salt water, which had only increased it to the point of agony.</p> + +<p>As she walked a bare tree stretched out its naked arms to waylay her. It +was the very tree under which Michael and she had kissed each other, six +spring-tides ago. She recognised it suddenly, and turned her eyes away, +as if a corpse were hanging in chains from one of its branches. Her +averted eyes fell upon a seagull<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> wheeling against the blue, the +incarnation of freedom and the joy of life. She turned away her eyes +again and hurried on, looking neither to right nor left.</p> + +<p>A light wind went with her, drawing her like a "kind constraining hand."</p> + +<p>She stumbled across the bare shoulder of the down to the wood below.</p> + +<p>Magdalen came by the same way soon afterwards, but not to gather +primroses. Magdalen usually so serene was becoming daily more troubled. +The thought of Michael in prison ground her to the earth. Fay's obvious +wayward misery, which yet seemed to bring her no nearer to repentance, +preyed upon her. She was crushed beneath her own promise of secrecy. +Every day as it passed seemed to cast yet another stone on the heap +under which she lay.</p> + +<p>Could she dare to keep that promise? How much longer could she dare to +keep it? And yet if she broke it, what would breaking it avail? +Certainly not Michael's release. No creature would believe her +unsupported word. She had not even been in Italy at the time. She would +only appear to be mad. The utmost she might achieve would be to cast a +malignant shadow over her sister. Even if Fay herself confessed the +difficulties of obtaining Michael's release after this lapse of time +would be very great. Unless the confession came from her they would be +insuperable.</p> + +<p>As Magdalen walked her strong heart quailed within her. Long ago in her +passionate youth she had met anguish and had vanquished it alone. But +how to bear the burden of another's sin without sharing the sin? How to +help Fay and Michael? Fay had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>indeed cast her burden upon her. She knew +not how to endure it, she who had endured so much.</p> + +<p>She reached the wood, and entered one of the many aimless paths that +wandered through it. The uneven ground sloped downwards to the south, +and through the manifold branches of the undergrowth of budding hazels +the sea lay deeply blue, far away. The primroses were everywhere among +the trees. A winding side path beckoned to her. She walked a few steps +along it, and came suddenly upon a clearing in the coppice.</p> + +<p>She stood still, dazed.</p> + +<p>The primroses had taken it for their own, had laid tender hold upon that +little space, cleared and forgotten in the heart of the wood.</p> + +<p>Young shoots of hazel and ash pricked up here and there from ivy-grown +stumps, moss gleamed where it could, through the flood of primroses. The +wild green of the mercury, holding its strong shield to the sun, the +violets, and the virgin white of the anemones were drowned in the uneven +waves and billows and shallows of that sea of primroses. They who come +in meekness year by year to roadside hedgerow and homely meadow had come +in power. The meek had inherited the earth.</p> + +<p>The light wind impotently came, and vainly went. Overhead a lark sang +and sang in the blue. But none heeded them. The wind and the song were +but a shadow and an echo. They that are the very core of spring hung +forgotten on her garments' fringe. All the passion of the world was +gathered into the still, upturned faces of the primroses, glowing with a +pale light from within. All the love that ever had been, or could be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> +all rapture of aspiration and service and self-surrender were mirrored +there.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Magdalen wept for Fay, as once in bygone years she had wept for Everard: +as perhaps some woman of Palestine may have wept when Jesus of Nazareth +passed by, speaking as never man spake, and her lover went with him a +little way and then turned back.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"There is no sorrow," said the primroses. "There is neither sorrow nor +sin. You are of one blood with us. You have come through into light, as +we have done, and those others are coming, too. There is no sorrow, only +a little pressure through the brown earth. There is no sin, only a +little waking and stirring in the dark. Why then grieve, oh little +faith! They are all waking and coming. For the Hand that made us made +them. The Whisper that waked us, wakes them. The Sun that draws us, +draws them. The Sun will have us come."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Fay had already passed by that way, had picked a few primroses, and had +gone on. <i>Was she never to be at peace again?</i> Was she never to know +what it is to lie down in peace at night, never to know what it is to be +without fear. Her whole soul yearned for peace, as the sick man yearns +for sleep. Andrea had prayed that she might find peace. Magdalen had +told her where peace lay. But all that she had found was despair.</p> + +<p>On her way homewards she came again upon the clearing and stopped short. +The place seemed to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> undergone some subtle change. A tall figure +was standing motionless in it. The face was turned away, but Fay +recognised it instantly. As she came close Magdalen turned. For a moment +Fay saw that she did not recognise her, that she was withdrawn into a +great peace and light.</p> + +<p>Then recognition dawned in Magdalen's eyes and with it came a look of +tenderness unspeakable.</p> + +<p>"Fay," she said in a great compassion. "How much longer will you torture +yourself and Michael? How much longer will you keep him in prison?"</p> + +<p>Fay was transfixed.</p> + +<p>Those were the same words that Andrea had said on his deathbed. Those +words were alive, though he was dead. Never to any living creature, not +even to Magdalen, had she repeated them. Yet Magdalen was saying them. +She could not withstand them any longer. The very stones would shriek +them out next.</p> + +<p>She fell at Magdalen's feet with a cry.</p> + +<p>"I will speak," she gasped in mortal terror. "I will speak." And she +clung for very life to her sister's knees, and hid her face in her +gown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""><tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"> +<p>To-day unbind the captive,<br /> +So only are ye unbound.</p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—Emerson.</p> +</div> + + +<p>The following afternoon saw Magdalen and Fay driving together to +Lostford, to consult the Bishop as to what steps it would be advisable +to take in the matter of Michael's release. Magdalen felt it would be +well-nigh impossible to go direct to Wentworth, even if he had been at +Barford. But he had been summoned to London the day before on urgent +business. And with Fay even a day's delay might mean a change of mind. +It was essential to act at once.</p> + +<p>But to Magdalen's surprise Fay did not try to draw back. When the +carriage came to the door she got into it. She assented to everything, +was ready to do anything Magdalen told her. She was like one stunned. +She had at last closed with the inevitable. She had found it too strong +for her.</p> + +<p>Did Fay realise how frightfully she had complicated her position by her +own folly? She lay back in her corner of the brougham with her eyes +shut, pallid, silent. Magdalen held her hand, and spoke encouragingly +from time to time.</p> + +<p>You had to be constantly holding Fay's hand, or kissing her, or taking +her in your arms if you were to make her feel that you loved her. The +one light austere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> touch, the long grave look, that between reserved and +sympathetic natures goes deeper than any caress, were nothing to Fay.</p> + +<p>It was a long drive to Lostford, and to-day it seemed interminable.</p> + +<p>The lonely chalk road seemed to stretch forever across the down. Now and +then a few heavily-matted, fatigued-looking sheep, hustled by +able-bodied lambs, got in the way. The postman, horn on shoulder, passed +them on his way to Priesthope with the papers.</p> + +<p>Once a man on a horse cantered past across the grass at some distance. +Magdalen recognised Wentworth on Conrad. She saw him turn into the +bridle path that led to Priesthope. He had then just returned from +London.</p> + +<p>"He is on his way to see Fay," said Magdalen to herself, "and he is +actually in a hurry. How interested he must be in the ardour of his own +emotions at this moment. He will have a delightful ride, and he can +analyse his feelings of disappointment at not seeing her, on his way +home to tea."</p> + +<p>Magdalen glanced at Fay, but she still lay back with closed eyes. She +had not seen that passing figure.</p> + +<p>Magdalen's mind followed Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"Does she realise the complications that must almost certainly ensue +with Wentworth directly her confession is made?</p> + +<p>"Will her first step towards a truer life, her first action of +reparation estrange him from her?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The Bishop was pacing up and down in the library at Lostford, waiting +for Magdalen and Fay, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> servant brought in the day's papers. He +took them up instantly with the alertness of a man who can only make +time for necessary things by seizing every spare moment.</p> + +<p>"Oh! you two wicked women," he said as he opened the <i>Times</i>. "Why are +you late? Why are you late?"</p> + +<p>They were only five minutes late.</p> + +<p>His swift eye travelled from column to column. Suddenly his attention +was arrested. He became absorbed. Then he laid down the paper, and said +below his breath "Thank God."</p> + +<p>At that moment Magdalen and Fay were announced.</p> + +<p>For a second it seemed as if the Bishop had forgotten them. Then he +recollected and went forward to meet them. He knew that only a matter of +supreme urgency could have made Magdalen word her telegram as she had +worded it, and when he caught sight of Fay's face he realised that she +was in jeopardy.</p> + +<p>All other preoccupations fell from him instantly. He welcomed them +gravely, almost in silence.</p> + +<p>The sisters sat down close together on a sofa. Fay's trembling hand put +up her long black veil, and then sought Magdalen's hand, which was ready +for it.</p> + +<p>There was a short silence. Magdalen looked earnestly at her sister.</p> + +<p>Fay's face became suddenly convulsed.</p> + +<p>"Fay is in great trouble," said Magdalen. "She has come to tell you +about it. She has suffered very much."</p> + +<p>"I can see that," said the Bishop.</p> + +<p>"I wish to confess," said Fay in a smothered voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That is a true instinct," said the Bishop. "God puts it into our hearts +to confess when we are unhappy so that we may be comforted. When we come +to see that we have done less well than we might have done—then we need +comfort."</p> + +<p>Fay looked from him to Magdalen with wide, hardly human eyes, like some +tiny trapped animal between two executioners.</p> + +<p>The Bishop's heart contracted.</p> + +<p>Poor, poor little thing!</p> + +<p>"Would you like to see me alone, my child?" he said, seeing a faint +trembling like that of a butterfly beginning in her. "All you say to me +will be under the seal of confession. It will never pass my lips."</p> + +<p>It was Magdalen's turn to become pale.</p> + +<p>"Shall I go?" she said, looking fixedly at her sister.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Fay, her eyes on the floor.</p> + +<p>Magdalen went slowly to the door, feeling her way as if half blind.</p> + +<p>"Come back," shrieked Fay suddenly. "Magdalen, come back. I shall never +say it all, I shall keep back part unless you are there to hold me to +it. Come back. Come back."</p> + +<p>Magdalen returned and sat down. The Bishop watched them both in silence.</p> + +<p>"I have confessed once, already," said Fay in a low hurried voice, +"under the promise of silence. Magdalen promised not to say, and I told +her everything, weeks ago. I thought I should feel better then, but it +wasn't any good. It only made it worse."</p> + +<p>"It is often like that," said the Bishop. "We try to do something right +but not in the best way, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> just the fact of trying shows us there is +a better way—only harder, so hard we don't know how to bring ourselves +to it. Isn't that what you feel?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"But there is no rest, no peace till we come to it."</p> + +<p>"No," whispered Fay. "Never any rest."</p> + +<p>"That is God's Hand drawing you," said the Bishop, his mind seeming to +embrace and support Fay's tottering soul. "There are things He wants +done, which He needs us to do for Him, which perhaps only we can do for +Him. At first we don't understand that, and we are so ignorant and +foolish that we resist the pressure of His Hand. Then we suffer."</p> + +<p>Fay shivered.</p> + +<p>"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, the +only real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. And +it is no manner of use to resist Him, for God is stronger than we are, +and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, +ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don't understand that He can't +do without us, and that we can't do without Him. And at last, when we +feel God's need of us, then it becomes possible"—the Bishop paused—"to +say the difficult word, to do the difficult deed."</p> + +<p>Did she understand? Who shall say! Sometimes it seems as if no actual +word reaches us that Love would fain say to our unrest and misery. But +our troubled hearts are nevertheless conscious by some other channel, +some medium more subtle than thought and speech, that Love and Peace +have drawn very near to us. It is only reflected dimly through dear +human faces that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> some of us can catch a glimpse of "the light that +lighteth every man that cometh into the world."</p> + +<p>The small tortured face relaxed between the two calm ones. The sunny +room was quite still. Fear shrank to a shadow.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the fire drew itself together with a little encouraging sound.</p> + +<p>Fay started slightly, looked at it, and began to speak rapidly in a low +clear voice.</p> + +<p>As Magdalen listened she prayed with intensity that Fay might really +tell the Bishop the whole story, as she had told it to herself, that +stormy night in March, half a life-time ago.</p> + +<p>The little voice went on and on. It faltered, sank, and then struggled +up again. One point after another was reached in safety, was passed. +Nothing that Fay had already admitted was left out. Gradually, as +Magdalen listened, a faint shame laid hold of her. Her whole life had +for the time centred in one passionate overwhelming desire that Fay +should make to the Bishop as full a confession as she had made to +herself. Now she realised that Fay was saying even more than she had +done on that occasion, was excusing herself less, was blaming others +less.</p> + +<p>Fay herself saw no discrepancy between her first and second account of +the tragedy. But then she never did see discrepancies. Her mind had +shifted a little towards the subject, that was all. This mysterious +unconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who had +felt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm had +had no effect on Fay's mind. She had never seen till now a vestige of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> +an effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that was +all.</p> + +<p>Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, if +made to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regenerating +repentance is entirely powerless with a different class of mind. But +although an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being, +and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless the +weaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortable +appeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressing +to its <i>amour propre</i> than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay had +retained in her mind Magdalen's vivid description of the love her +husband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon the +remembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weeks +when she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrance +had worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towards +her husband, drawing her towards compassion on Michael.</p> + +<p>Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who had +blamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them no +longer. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the real +murderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so far +aroused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind.</p> + +<p>Fay had passed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen's +anxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardily +seen, only partially realised, had helped her at last.</p> + +<p>The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>forward, his eyes on +the floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fay +reached Michael's arrest, but he quickly recovered himself.</p> + +<p>The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end. +The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison.</p> + +<p>"I have kept him there two years," said Fay, and was silent.</p> + +<p>How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband's dying words. What +passionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them. +Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resist +them, and the sting had gone clean out of them.</p> + +<p>"Two years," said the Bishop. "Two years. Fast bound in misery and iron. +You in misery and he only in iron. You two poor children."</p> + +<p>His strong face worked, and for a moment he shaded it with his hand.</p> + +<p>Then he looked keenly at Fay.</p> + +<p>"And you have come to me to ask me to advise you how to set Michael and +yourself free?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," whispered Fay.</p> + +<p>"It was time to come."</p> + +<p>There was a short silence.</p> + +<p>"And you understand, my dear, dear child, that you can only rescue +Michael by taking heavy blame upon yourself, blame first of all for +having a clandestine meeting with him, and then blame for letting him +sacrifice himself for your good name, and lastly blame for keeping an +innocent man in prison so long."</p> + +<p>Fay shook like a leaf.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Bishop took her lifeless hands in his, and held them. He made her +meet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a glint +of tears in them.</p> + +<p>"You are willing to bear the cross, and endure the shame?" he said.</p> + +<p>Two large tears gathered in Fay's wide eyes, and rolled down her +bloodless cheeks.</p> + +<p>You could not look at her, and think that the poor thing was willing to +endure anything, capable of enduring anything.</p> + +<p>The Bishop looked at her, through her.</p> + +<p>"Or would you rather go home and wait in misery a little longer, and +keep him in his cell a little longer: another week—another +month—another <i>year</i>! You know best how much longer you can wait."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"And Michael can wait, too."</p> + +<p>"Michael must come out," said Fay, with a sob. "He was always good to +me."</p> + +<p>"Thank God," said the Bishop, and he rose abruptly and went to the +window.</p> + +<p>Magdalen and Fay did not move. They leaned a little closer together. +Fay's timid eyes sought her sister's like those of a child which has +repeated its lesson, and looks to its teacher to see if it has done +well.</p> + +<p>Magdalen kissed her on the eyes.</p> + +<p>"I have said everything, haven't I?"</p> + +<p>"Everything."</p> + +<p>"I wish I was dead."</p> + +<p>Magdalen had no voice to answer with.</p> + +<p>The Bishop came back, and sat down opposite them.</p> + +<p>"Fay," he said, "as long as you live you will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> thankful that you came +to me to-day, that you were willing to make atonement by this great act +of reparation. The comfort of that remembrance will sink deep into your +troubled heart, and will heal its wounds. But the sacrifice is not to be +exacted of you. I had to ask if you were willing to make it. But there +is no longer any necessity for you to make it. Do you understand?"</p> + +<p>The Bishop spoke slowly. The two women looked at him with dilated eyes.</p> + +<p>"Is Michael dead?" said Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"No. Michael is, I believe, well. The murderer of the Marchese di +Maltagliala has confessed. It is in to-day's papers. The Marchese was +murdered by his wife. It was quite sudden and unpremeditated, the work +of an instant of terror. She has made a full confession on her deathbed. +It exonerates Michael entirely. She implores his forgiveness for her +long silence."</p> + +<p>The Bishop's last words reached Fay from a great distance. The room with +its many books, and the tall mullioned window with the bare elm branches +across it, were all turning gently together in a spreading dimness. The +only thing that remained fixed was Magdalen's shoulder, and even that +shook a little. Fay leaned her face against it, and let all the rest go. +The window with its tree quivered for a moment across the dark and then +flickered out. The consciousness of tender hands and voices lingered a +moment longer and then vanished too.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p class="center"> +All the heavy days are over.<span class="smcap">—W. B. Yeats.</span></p> +</div> + + +<p>It was very late when Magdalen and Fay reached home.</p> + +<p>Bessie was on the lookout for them, and met them in the hall.</p> + +<p>"Wentworth has been here," she said. "He arrived about an hour after you +had started. As you were both out he asked to see me. He was greatly +excited. He had come to tell us that Michael's innocence has suddenly +been proved. He goes to Italy to-morrow. He said he would call here on +his way to the station a little before eleven, to tell you both about +it."</p> + +<p>And punctually at a few minutes to eleven Wentworth appeared, and was +ushered into the little white morning-room where Fay was waiting for +him.</p> + +<p>The room was full of sunshine. The soft air came gently in, bringing +with it a breath of primroses.</p> + +<p>Delight was in the room, tremulous, shining in Fay's eyes. Delight was +in the whole atmosphere. An enormous boundless relief overflowed +everything.</p> + +<p>Wentworth was excited, softened, swept out of himself.</p> + +<p>He held her soft hand in his. He tried to speak, but he could not. His +eyes filled with tears. He was ashamed.</p> + +<p>And when he looked up he saw Fay's eyes were wet, too. His heart went +out to her. She was rejoicing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> with him. He pulled himself together, and +told her what little he knew; not much more than the bare facts +contained in the papers. It was now known by the Marchesa's confession +that the murder took place inside the Colle Alto gardens. Everyone, +including the police, had believed that the murder took place in the +road, and that the assassin took advantage of the accident of the garden +door being unlocked to drag the body into the garden, and hide it there. +But the Marchesa stated that she stabbed her husband in the garden +suddenly without premeditation, but with intent to kill him, because of +his determination to marry their seventeen year old daughter to a friend +of his, a <i>roué</i>, the old Duke of Castelfranco, who drank himself to +death soon afterwards.</p> + +<p>The Marchesa stated that she dragged the body behind a shrub, walked +back through the garden to the house with the front of her gown covered +with blood without being noticed, found no attendant in the cloak room, +wrapped herself in a long cloak not belonging to her, told her servants +that the Marchese would follow later, and drove home, partially burned +her gown and the cloak as if by accident, and then awaited events. The +first news she received of her husband's death next morning was +accompanied by the amazing information that Michael had confessed to the +murder.</p> + +<p>The Marchesa in her tardy confession stated that she believed Michael, +who had always shown her great sympathy, must have actually witnessed +the crime, and out of a chivalrous impulse towards her, had immediately +taken the guilt of it upon himself.</p> + +<p>"That accounts for his extraordinary silence," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> Wentworth, "not +only to others, but to myself. He never would say a word pro or con, +even when I told him it was no use trying to persuade me he was guilty. +The mystery is cleared up at last. I shall reach Milan to-night, and I +shall see him to-morrow. And I suppose we may be able to start home the +following day. I say these things, but I don't believe them. I can't +believe them. It all seems to me like some wonderful dream. And you are +like a person in a dream, too, as if a fairy wand had passed over you?"</p> + +<p>As he spoke Wentworth suddenly realised that this marvellous, radiant +transformation which he beheld in Fay, which seemed to flow even to the +edges of her lilac gown, was happiness, and that he had never seen her +happy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful, +listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released from +some great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Her +beauty had taken on a new magic.</p> + +<p>There is no joy so rapturous, so perfect as the moment of relief from +pain. There was, perhaps, no creature in the world on this particular +April morning whose happiness approached Fay's. She raised her white +eyelids and smiled at Wentworth.</p> + +<p>His well-conducted heart nudged him suddenly like a vulgar, jocular +friend.</p> + +<p>"Is all your gladness for Michael?" he said boldly. "Have you none to +spare for me?"</p> + +<p>He was in for it.</p> + +<p>"You must forgive me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate," he said, +"but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go." He rose and came +towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felt +himself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You have +known for a long time that I love you," he said. "Won't you tell me that +you love me a little, too?"</p> + +<p>A delightful sense of liberty and newness of life were flowing in +regenerating waves over Fay's spirit.</p> + +<p>Wentworth seemed a part of this all-pervading joyousness and freedom. +She made a little half unconscious movement towards him, and in a +moment, that intrepid man, that dauntless athlete of the emotions had +taken her in his arms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p> +He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the +rest no longer in his power.</p> +<p class="sig">—Jean Paul.</p> +</div> + + +<p>The Marchesa's confession made a great and immediate sensation +throughout Italy. Everyone who had known Michael, and a great many who +had not, proclaimed with one consent that his innocence was no news to +them. The possibility that he might be shielding someone had been +discussed at the time of the trial, but had found no shred of +confirmation.</p> + +<p>And now the mystery was solved at last, and in the most romantic manner. +Michael had come out with flying colours.</p> + +<p>To many minds the romance was enhanced by the fact that the Marchesa was +a gentle, middle-aged, grey-haired woman in no way attractive, whose +whole interest in life centred in her daughter. Michael's transcendent +act of chivalry towards the Marchesa, dramatically acknowledged by her +at last upon her deathbed, appealed even to the most unimaginative +natures. He became the hero of the hour. Telegrams of congratulation +poured in from every quarter. Letters snowed in on him. Even before +Wentworth could reach him enthusiastic strangers had tried to force +their way into his cell. Determined young reporters came out in +gondolas, and it was all the warders and the doctor could do to protect +Michael from invasion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> + +<p>He sat apparently stunned in his cell, the only person unmoved. Every +servant and warder in that dreary establishment had come to offer him +their congratulations. The other convicts had sent messages. The man in +the next cell, slowly dying of gangrene, had crawled from his pallet to +beat a tattoo on the wall. The doctor was beside himself with joy.</p> + +<p>"You must keep calm," he kept saying in wild excitement. "Your brother +will be here to-morrow morning. I implore you to be calm."</p> + +<p>And he brought Michael his best pipe, and some of his most cherished +tobacco, and a weird suit of black clothes, and urged him to spend the +evening with him in his own sitting-room.</p> + +<p>But Michael shook his head. He had no hatred of his striped blouse. He +was accustomed to it. He said he would prefer to await his brother's +arrival in his cell. He was accustomed to that, too. He felt as if he +could not bear to have everything torn from him at once, as if he should +be lost if all his landmarks were changed. He sat hour by hour, smoking, +and every now and then reading Wentworth's telegram.</p> + +<p>He tried to realise it. He said to himself over and over again: "I am +free. I am going away. Wentworth is coming to take me home." But it was +no good. His mind would not take hold.</p> + +<p>He looked for the twentieth time at Wentworth's telegram. Wentworth was +hurrying towards him at this moment, would be travelling all night, +would reach him in the morning. Dear, dear Wenty, he would be happy +again now.</p> + +<p>Michael groaned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It's no kind of use. I <i>can't</i> believe it."</p> + +<p>He tried to think of Fay. He should see <i>her</i> soon, touch her hand, hear +her voice. Poor little darling! She had not the courage of a mouse. +Perhaps she was a little glad at his release. Yes. No doubt she had been +pleased to hear it. He hoped she would not feel shy of him at seeing him +again. He hoped she would not thank him.</p> + +<p>The door, no longer locked, was suddenly opened, and the head warder +deferentially ushered in a visitor.</p> + +<p>A tall, dark man in a tri-coloured sash came in, and the warder +withdrew.</p> + +<p>The man bowed and looked with fixity at Michael, who stared back at him, +dazed and confused. Where had he seen that face before?</p> + +<p>Ah! <i>He remembered!</i></p> + +<p>"I perceive that you have not forgotten me," said the Delegato. "It was +I who arrested you. It was to me that you confessed to the murder of the +Marchese di Maltagliala."</p> + +<p>"I remember."</p> + +<p>"I never was able to reach any certainty that you were really guilty," +continued the Delegato. "I was not even convinced that you had had a +quarrel with the Marchese."</p> + +<p>"I had no quarrel with him."</p> + +<p>"I knew that. That you might be shielding someone occurred forcibly to +my mind. <i>But who?</i>"</p> + +<p>Michael looked steadily at the official.</p> + +<p>"And there was blood upon your hand and sleeve when you confessed."</p> + +<p>"There was."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It was not the Marchese's blood," said the Delegato, drawing a sallow +finger across a blue chin. "It remained a mystery. I will own that it +had not crossed my mind that that fragile and timid lady had killed her +husband, and that as she at last confesses you were shielding her." The +Delegato looked piercingly at Michael.</p> + +<p>Michael was silent.</p> + +<p>"You have always been silent. Is not the moment come to speak?"</p> + +<p>Michael shook his head.</p> + +<p>The Delegato bowed.</p> + +<p>"I came to ask you to discuss the affair openly," he said, "to relieve +my perplexity as a matter of courtesy. But you will not speak. Then I +will speak instead. When first I read the Marchesa's confession it came +into my mind that the Marchesa, who I believe was your friend, might for +some reason, possibly the sentimental devotion of an older woman for a +young man—such things have been—that she <i>might</i> have confessed on her +deathbed to a crime which she had not committed in order to save you +from—<i>this</i>"—he touched the wall of the cell. "I doubted that she +really murdered her husband. <i>But she did.</i> I sought out the maid who +had been with her when the Marchese died, and she, before the confession +was published, informed me that she had not undressed the Marchesa on +her return from the Colle Alto party. And that next morning part of the +cloak which was not hers, and part of her gown were found to be burnt as +stated in her confession. It was indeed necessary to burn them. The +Marchesa murdered the Marchese."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> + +<p>There was a long silence.</p> + +<p>"I cannot tell whether you witnessed the crime or not. At first I +thought the blood on your hands and clothes might have come from helping +her to drag the body into the garden. But it was not so. At the time I +attached a great importance to the garden door being unlocked. Too +great. It led me astray. The gardener, in spite of his oath that he had +locked it, had probably left it unlocked. We now know from the Marchesa +that the murder took place within the garden, and the locking and +unlocking of the door was an accident which looked like a clue.... But, +if you witnessed the murder, and wished to retire without raising an +alarm, or denouncing that unhappy lady, I ask myself why did you not +open the garden door from within—the key was in the lock, I saw it—and +pass out on to the high road. Why did you, instead, try so hard to +escape over the wall behind the ilexes that you tore your hands on the +cut glass on the top? I found the place next day. There was blood on it. +When you were struggling to escape over that wall you were not anxious +to take the Marchesa's guilt upon yourself. When you were hiding behind +the screen in the Duchess' apartment you were not—<i>at that +moment</i>—very determined to shield the Marchesa from the consequences of +her deed. All Italy is ringing with your quixotic, your chivalrous, your +superb action. <i>Nevertheless</i>, if I had quitted the Duchess' apartment, +if my natural and trained acuteness had not made one last effort +respecting the screen, <i>I do not think you would have followed me into +the garden to denounce yourself</i>."</p> + +<p>The Delegato paused.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> + +<p>Michael was quite unmoved. Everything reached him dimly as through a +mist. He partly saw the difficulty in the official's mind, but it did +not interest him. He was cleared. That was enough.</p> + +<p>"In two years much is forgotten," said the Delegato, sententiously, "and +it is, perhaps, I alone who recall the more minute details of the case, +because I was present and my interest was overwhelming. I have not +spoken of this to anyone but yourself. I shall not speak of it again. I +have taken a journey to discuss it with you because I had hoped you +would understand my professional interest in unravelling that which +remains still obscure, a mystery, which is daily becoming to me a +greater mystery than before the Marchesa's confession. You have it in +your power to gratify my natural desire for elucidation by an +explanation which can no longer injure you in any way. You are innocent. +It is proved. But even now you will not speak. You prefer to preserve +your attitude of silence to the end. Good! I will intrude on you no +longer. I offer you my congratulations. I deplore your inevitable +imprisonment. I withdraw."</p> + +<p>The Delegato bowed yet again and went to the door.</p> + +<p>"That of which you will not speak was known to your friend the Duke of +Colle Alto," he said. "<i>The Duke knew.</i>"</p> + +<p>"The Duke is dead," said Michael.</p> + +<p>"I am aware of that," said the Delegato, frigidly. He bowed for the last +time, and left the cell, gently closing the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>Est-ce donc une monnaie que votre amour, pour qu'il +puisse passer ainsi de main en main jusqu'à la mort? Non, +ce n'est pas même une monnaie; car la plus mince pièce d'or +vaut mieux que vous, et dans quelques mains qu'elle passe +elle garde son effigée.</p> +<p class="sig">—A. de Musset.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Wentworth came in the morning, tremulous, eager, holding Michael by the +shoulders, as he used to do when Michael was a small boy, as he had +never done since.</p> + +<p>The brothers looked long at each other with locked hands, water in their +eyes.</p> + +<p>"Wenty," said Michael at last, with his grave smile.</p> + +<p>And that was all.</p> + +<p>They sat down together in silence on the little bed. Wentworth tried to +speak once or twice, but it was no use.</p> + +<p>"Fay cried with joy at the news," he said at last, looking with shy +hungry love at his brother. "If you could have seen her radiant face. I +never saw any creature so changed, so transfigured."</p> + +<p>A faint flush rose to Michael's face.</p> + +<p>"I know how she grieved over your imprisonment. She is the most +tender-hearted woman in the world. I never knew anyone so sympathetic." +Wentworth hesitated. Then he added tremulously. "My great grief has been +her grief, too. She helped me to bear it."</p> + +<p>"I did not know she had—minded so much," said Michael, almost +inaudibly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You might have guessed it," said Wentworth, "knowing her to be what she +is. She has always been so pale and sad, as if bowed down by trouble. +But directly the news came that you were cleared—I went to see her at +once—if you could only have seen her face, her tears of joy, her +delight."</p> + +<p>"Did she send a message, or a note? Just a line. Perhaps you have a +letter with you."</p> + +<p>"No, she did not write," said Wentworth, self conscious, but beaming. +"There was not time. There was time for nothing. It was all such a rush. +I only saw her on my way to the station. But I know she won't mind my +telling you, Michael—you ought to know first of anyone—it all seems so +wonderful. But I daresay—no, I see you have guessed it—I daresay I +have said things in my letters that showed you it was coming—it was the +grief about you that first drew us together. Fay and I are going to be +married."</p> + +<p>Michael put his hand to his head.</p> + +<p>"Everything has come at once," said Wentworth. "I have you again. And I +have her. I've nothing left to wish for."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Michael did not leave the prison in the gondola which had brought +Wentworth, and which was waiting to take them both away. The excitement +of his brother's arrival had proved too great, and he fell from one +fainting fit into another. Wentworth was greatly alarmed, but the doctor +was reassuring and cheerful. He said that Michael had borne the news +with almost unnatural calmness, but that the shock must have been great, +and a breakdown was to be expected. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> laughed at Wentworth's anxiety +even while he ministered to Michael, and assured him that no one in his +experience had died of joy.</p> + +<p>But later in the evening when Wentworth, somewhat pacified, had returned +to Venice for the night, the doctor felt yet again for the twentieth +time that the young Englishman baffled him.</p> + +<p>It seemed to him that he was actually relieved when the kind, awkward, +tender elder brother had reluctantly taken his departure, promising to +come back early in the morning.</p> + +<p>"Do not distress yourself, you will be quite well enough to leave +to-morrow," the doctor said to him many times. "I expected this +momentary collapse. It is nothing."</p> + +<p>Michael's eyes dwelt on the kind face and then closed. There was that in +them which the doctor could not fathom.</p> + +<p>He took the food that was pressed on him, and then turned his face to +the wall, and made as if he slept.</p> + +<p>And the walls bent over him, and whispered to him, "Stay with us. We are +not so cruel as the world outside."</p> + +<p>And that night the dying convict in the next cell, nearly as close on +freedom as Michael, heard all through the night a low sound of strangled +anguish that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth +anew, from dark to dawn.</p> + +<p>The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm and +wan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately at +him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>Les caractères faibles ne montrent de la décision que +quand il s'agit de faire un sottise.</p> +<p class="sig">—Daniel Darc.</p> +</div> + + +<p>A week or two after the news of Michael's proved innocence had convulsed +Hampshire, and before Michael and Wentworth had returned to Barford, +Aunt Aggie might have been seen on a fine May afternoon walking slowly +towards "The Towers." She had let her cottage at Saundersfoot for an +unusually long period, and was marking time with the Blores. Whatever +Aunt Mary's faults might be she was always ready to help her sister in +this practical manner, when Aunt Aggie was anxious to add to the small, +feebly frittered away income, on which her muddled, impecunious +existence depended.</p> + +<p>In spite of the most pertinent remarks to the contrary from her sister, +Aunt Aggie believed herself to be an unsurpassed manager of restricted +means. She constantly advised young married couples as to the judicious +expenditure of money, and pressed on Magdalen the necessity of +retrenching in exasperating directions, namely, where a minute economy +entailed a colossal inconvenience.</p> + +<p>In her imagination she saw herself continually consulted, depended on, +strenuously implored to give her opinion on matters of the utmost +delicacy, fervently blessed for her powerful spiritual assistance of +souls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> in jeopardy, and always gracefully attributing the marvellous +results of her intervention to a Higher Power of which she was but the +unworthy channel.</p> + +<p>These imaginary scenes were the unfailing solace of Aunt Aggie's +somewhat colourless life, and the consciousness of them in the +background gave her a certain meek and even patient self-importance, the +basis of which was hidden from Lady Blore.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie had also another perennial source of chastened happiness in +recalling the romance of her youth, those halcyon days before the +Archdeacon had been unsuccessfully harpooned and put to flight by Lady +Blore.</p> + +<p>Her clerical love affair perfumed her conversation, as a knife which has +once associated with an onion inevitably reveals, even in estrangement, +that bygone intimacy.</p> + +<p>No one could breathe the word Margate without Aunt Aggie remarking that +she had had a dear friend who had evinced a great partiality for +Margate. Were the clergy mentioned in her presence with the scant +respect with which the ministry and other secular bodies have to put up, +Aunt Aggie vibrated with indignation. <i>She</i> had known men of the highest +talents holding preferment in the Church.</p> + +<p>But in her imagination her affair of the heart had passed beyond +reminiscence. Far from being buried in the past it remained the chief +factor in her life, colouring and shaping the whole of her future.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie could at any moment dip into a kind of sequel to that early +history. In the sequel the Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to die; +but, owing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> circumstances which Aunt Aggie had not yet thoroughly +worked out, that unhappy lady was first to undergo tortures in some +remote locality, nursed devotedly—poor thing—by Aunt Aggie. The result +of her ministrations was never in doubt from the first. The Archdeacon's +wife was, of course, to succumb, calling down blessings on the devoted +stranger at her bedside, with the enigmatical smile which spoke of some +sacred sorrow.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie had shed many delicious tears over that deathbed scene, and +the chastened grief of the saintly Archdeacon, quite overshadowed by his +boundless gratitude to herself. At this crisis his overwhelming +desolation wrung from him—with gross disloyalty to the newly dead—a +few disjointed sentences which revealed only too clearly how unsuited to +him his wife had been, how little she had understood him, how lonely his +wedded life had been. She had evidently been one of those tall thin +maypoles of women who have but little tenderness in them.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie, after giving the children a sample of what a real mother +could be, was to retire to her little home at Saundersfoot. Here the +real joy of the situation was to begin.</p> + +<p>After a decent interval the Archdeacon was to be constantly visiting +Saundersfoot, was to be observed visiting Aunt Aggie at Saundersfoot, +singling her out from among the numerous spinsters of that +watering-place to make her the object of reverent attentions. Others +younger and better looking than Aunt Aggie—especially Miss Barnett, the +doctor's sister, who, it was whispered, wore an artificial cushion from +Doug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>las's under her hair—were to set their caps or cushions at the +dignified Archdeacon, seen pacing the sands. But it was all of no avail. +He had eyes for no one but the gentle, retiring Miss Bellairs. Aunt +Aggie was to become the object of burning jealousy and detraction on the +part of the female—that is to say almost the whole—population of +Saundersfoot. But she herself, while envious calumny raged round her, +went on her way calm and grave as ever.</p> + +<p>But the proposal long warded off could not be parried forever. The +frenzied passion of the Archdeacon was at last not to be restrained. +Aunt Aggie had in her mind a set of proposals, all good, out of which it +became harder and harder as time went on to select one. But her answer +was ever the same, a pained but firm refusal. She was happy in her lot. +She was greatly needed where she was. She did not wish to marry. She was +no longer young. This last reason was an enormous concession to realism +on Aunt Aggie's part.</p> + +<p>Then came the cream of the whole story. The Archdeacon was to pine +secretly. His work was to be neglected. He was to be threatened with a +nervous breakdown. He was to confide his sorrow to the paternal bosom of +his Bishop. When Aunt Aggie was in her normal state it was the Bishop in +whom the Archdeacon was to confide. But sometimes in the evenings after +a glass of cowslip wine, her imagination took a bolder flight. The +Archbishop himself was to be the confidant of the distracted cleric. +This presented no real difficulty after the first moment, for the +Archbishop was in the flower of his age—the Archdeacon's age—and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +might easily have been at school with him. Aunt Aggie had once seen +Lambeth from a cab window as she passed over Westminster Bridge. Under +that historic tower she heard the first subject of the King urge his +brother prelate to take heart, promising assistance.</p> + +<p>We will pass over Aunt Aggie's amazed reception of a cordial invitation +to stay at Lambeth, her hesitating acceptance, her arrival, the +magnificent banquet, crowded with ministers and bishops, the fact that +the Archbishop himself singled her out as the object of courtly though +somewhat anxious attentions. And then after dinner Aunt Aggie, in her +plum-coloured satin, was to be unconsciously but skilfully withdrawn +from the glittering throng by the Archbishop. And in his study he was to +make a great, a fervent appeal to her. Aunt Aggie had bought a +photograph of him in order to deaden the shock of this moment. But +nevertheless whenever she reached this point she was always really +frightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask her +with tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify the +labours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfish +predilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powers +of a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowing +colours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spite +of her marvellous self-control to course down her cheek. The eye of an +Archbishop misses nothing. With an ejaculation of profound relief he +beckons to a distant figure which appears in a doorway. The Archdeacon +in his evening gaiters rushes in. Aunt Aggie gives way!</p> + +<p>After this final feat of the imagination Aunt Aggie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> generally felt so +worn out by emotion that food was absolutely necessary to her.</p> + +<p>On this occasion she sat down quivering on a heap of stones by the +roadside, and drew forth a biscuit which she had secreted at luncheon at +the Vicarage an hour before. It must be owned that she was fond of food, +though not in the same way that most of us are addicted to it. She liked +eating buns out of paper bags at odd moments in the open air, and +nibbling a sponge cake half forgotten and suddenly found in a drawer +with her handkerchiefs. But in justice to her it ought to be added that +she seemed only to care for the kind of provender which yielded the +largest increment in the way of crumbs.</p> + +<p>As she sat and nibbled an uneasy recollection stole across her mind.</p> + +<p>This recollection was becoming more disconcerting day by day. And yet +she had acted for the best. That fact did not insure to her immunity +from blame on the part of that awful personage, her sister Mary. Good +intentions had never yet received their due as extenuating circumstances +in Lady Blore's sweeping judgments.</p> + +<p>If a certain secret chivalrous action of Aunt Aggie's "turned out +wrong," she knew well the intonation in which Lady Blore would ask her +why she had been such a fool. Nevertheless she, Aunt Aggie, had only +done with consummate tact what Mary herself had contemplated doing in +her rough way, and had been persuaded not to do.</p> + +<p>Some weeks ago Aunt Aggie had concocted in secret, recopied about twenty +times, and had finally despatched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> a letter to Lord Lossiemouth anent +Magdalen. It had been the boldest action of her life. At first, even +after she had seen that she was the only person able to deal adequately +with so delicate a matter, she had feared that she would not have the +strength to perform her mission. But strength had apparently been lent +to her for the occasion. The letter had actually been posted.</p> + +<p>The moment it was irrevocably gone Aunt Aggie fell into a panic. +Supposing it failed in its object, and that Algernon or Mary discovered +what she had done. She could not even face such a possibility. But then, +supposing on the other hand that her missive united two loving, +estranged hearts, and that dear Magdalen owed her happiness—and a +titled happiness—to her. Then Algernon and Mary would be forced to +admit that she had shown a courage and devotion greater than theirs. "We +only talked, you acted," they would both say, and she would thenceforth +be recognised in her true light, as an incomparable counsellor, and a +judicious, far-seeing friend.</p> + +<p>But three weeks had elapsed since Aunt Aggie, stealing out alone, had +dropped that momentous letter into the village post-box. Nothing had +happened. She had not even received an answer. She was becoming +frightened and anxious. <i>Was he secretly married?</i> She wished she had +thought of that possibility before she posted the letter.</p> + +<p>Many simple-minded men of disengaged affections, cheerfully pursuing +their virtuous avocations, would be thunderstruck if they knew the dark +suspicions harboured against them in spinster bosoms, that they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +concealing some discreditable matrimonial secret, which alone can +account for their—well—their <i>extraordinary</i> behaviour in not coming +forward!</p> + +<p>It has actually been said that real life is not always like a novel. +This feebly false assertion was disproved forever in Aunt Aggie's mind +by the sight of a dog-cart coming rapidly toward her from the direction +of Lostford. She glanced indifferently at it as it approached, and then +her pale eyes became glued to it. In the dog-cart sat Everard Constable, +now Lord Lossiemouth. She had not seen him for fifteen years, but +nevertheless she recognised him instantly. There was no doubt it was he: +thickened and coarsened, but still he. He whirled past leaning back in +his seat, looking neither to right nor left.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie's heart gave a thump that nearly upset her equilibrium. The +biscuit dropped onto the road, with a general upheaval of crumbs from +all parts of her agitated person.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth!</p> + +<p>Going in the direction of Priesthope!</p> + +<p>Her letter!</p> + +<p>She nearly swooned with joy and pride.</p> + +<p>Now Mary and Algernon, now everyone would believe in her.</p> + +<p>She raised herself from the heap of stones and with trembling legs +hurried towards "The Towers." She must tell Mary at once.</p> + +<p>She found Lady Blore seated at her writing-table in the drawing-room, +which was choked by the eastern and Japanese impedimenta, the draperies, +the krises, the metal bowls, the ivory boxes, which an Indian career<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> +seems so inevitably to entail. Sir John had brought back crates of the +kind of foreign <i>bric-à-brac</i> cheap imitations of which throng London +shop windows. The little entrance hall was stuffy with skins. Horned +skulls garnished the walls, pleading silently for decent burial. Even +the rugs had once been bears.</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary was bored with her drawing-room, which looked like a stall at +a bazaar, but, to her credit be it said, that she had never made any +change in it, except to remove a brass idol from the writing-table, at +which she was at this moment sitting.</p> + +<p>By one of those sudden instincts which make people like Aunt Aggie the +despair of those with whom they live, she instantaneously conceived the +idea (for no reason except that she was thinking of her own letter) that +her sister was at that moment writing to Lord Lossiemouth.</p> + +<p>She "had a feeling" that this was the case. The feeling became in a +second a rooted conviction. The butler came in, arranged an +uncomfortable Indian table, placed a brass tray with tea things on it +before Lady Blore, and asked if there were any more letters for the +post. Aunt Mary was in the act of giving him one when Aunt Aggie +intervened.</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said in wild agitation, clasping her hands. "Mary, I beg of +you, I conjure you not to post that letter."</p> + +<p>"Why not? I have resolved to give him another chance."</p> + +<p>"Keep it back one post, I implore you. I have a reason."</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary looked attentively at her sister, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> took back the letter. +It was not like her to give way. She seemed less overbearing than usual.</p> + +<p>"Well? Why not employ him again?" she said wearily. "The Irish butter is +the cheapest after all. Why do you make such a point of my leaving him."</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie was entirely nonplussed. A thousand similar experiences had +never lessened the shock of the discrepancy between what she expected +her sister to say, and what she actually said.</p> + +<p>"I thought, I thought," she stammered, "I felt sure that, I see now I +was wrong, but I had a conviction that that letter—you see I knew you +were thinking of writing—was to, was in short to Lord Lossiemouth."</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary's face became magenta colour.</p> + +<p>"To Lord Lossiemouth! Why should you think I was writing to him?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I could not help knowing—don't you remember how you discussed +the subject with me and dear Magdalen some weeks ago?—that the subject +of a judicious and dignified letter was in your mind."</p> + +<p>"I was careful not to mention the subject to Magdalen in your presence. +I see now that you must have listened outside the door."</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie experienced a second shock. How did Mary always spy out these +things?</p> + +<p>"I can't think," continued Lady Blore, "how you can lower yourself to +eavesdrop in the way you do; and if you must do these underhand actions, +why you don't conceal them better. When you read a private letter of +mine the other day, because I inadvertently left it for a moment on my +writing-table——"</p> + +<p>"You always say you lock up your private letters,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> you do, indeed, Mary. +<i>Be</i> fair. I could not <i>tell</i> it was private."</p> + +<p>"You would have been wiser not to have alluded next day to its contents. +If you had not done so I might not have known you had read it."</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie burst into tears.</p> + +<p>"The truth is I am not secretive like you, Mary," she said between her +sobs. "It is as natural to me to be open and trustful with those I love +as it is for you to be the reverse. Whatever I do you think wrong. But +perhaps some day—and that before long—you will be forced to admit——"</p> + +<p>At this moment the drawing-room door opened and Colonel Bellairs came +in. He often came to tea at "The Towers," though the meeting seldom +passed off without a sharp brush with Lady Blore.</p> + +<p>"Draw up that chair, Algernon," said that lady, with grim but instant +cordiality. "The tea will be ready in a moment."</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs looked more floridly handsome than usual. He was +evidently in a state of supreme self-satisfaction.</p> + +<p>"Fine day," he said, "for the time of year."</p> + +<p>At this moment a small parchment face, and bent figure leaning on a +stick, might have been seen peering in through the closed windows. Sir +John looked dispassionately at the family group, and shook his head. +Then he hobbled back to his chair under the cedar. Tea was evidently a +meal to be dispensed with this afternoon.</p> + +<p>"I have news for you," said Colonel Bellairs, expanding his chest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lady Blore held the tea-pot suspended.</p> + +<p>"Everard Constable—Lossiemouth, I should say—is at this moment sitting +in the drawing-room at Priesthope, alone with Magdalen."</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs was not disappointed in the effect of his words on his +audience.</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie trembled and looked proudly guilty. Lady Blore put down the +tea-pot suddenly, and said, "Thank God!"</p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie, her mouth open to speak, began to choke. She looked +piteously from her brother to her sister, struggling in vain to +articulate. It was too cruel that she should be bereft of speech at this +supreme moment.</p> + +<p>Lady Blore turned putty pale and magenta colour alternately. A great +relief softened her hard face. There were actually tears in her eyes. +Then she said majestically, but with a tremor in her metallic voice:</p> + +<p>"I am not surprised."</p> + +<p>"It is my doing," shrieked Aunt Aggie, in the strangled squeak in which +we always explain that it is "only a crumb" gone wrong. And she relapsed +into a fresh spasm.</p> + +<p>Lady Blore sternly bade her be silent. Colonel Bellairs was slightly +annoyed.</p> + +<p>"It is no use, Mary, your saying you are not surprised, for you are," he +said judicially, "and really," relapsing into complacency, "so am I in a +way. It is fifteen years since I forbade Everard the house. I fear that +I was unduly harsh. I dismissed him, so it was for me to recall him. Now +that the cat is out of the bag I don't mind telling you that I wrote to +him a few weeks ago."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You—wrote—to—him!" said Aunt Mary in great agitation. "Algernon, you +sent me word by Magdalen that you refused to meddle in the matter."</p> + +<p>"I daresay I did. I may not have liked the tone you took about it, Mary. +You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you that +I was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after mature +consideration—I turned the matter over in my mind—I was not the least +influenced by your long-winded epistle—that in fact rather put me off +than otherwise—still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforward +letter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if his +feelings were unchanged—mark that—as I had reason to believe +Magdalen's were—he was at liberty to come to Priesthope and resume +cordial relations with us all. You observe that I only asked him to come +if his feelings were unchanged. <i>He is there now.</i>"</p> + +<p>It would be impossible to describe the varying emotions which devastated +Lady Blore, as her brother made his announcement. Her hands trembled so +much that she was obliged to give up any pretence of holding her cup. It +chattered against its saucer.</p> + +<p>"When did you write?" she asked at last.</p> + +<p>"About three weeks ago."</p> + +<p>Aunt Mary seemed to make a mental calculation.</p> + +<p>"It is my doing. I wrote a month ago," gasped Aunt Aggie. "Algernon, you +must not take the credit of it. I waited till you and Mary had decided +not to write—you know, Mary, you told Magdalen you would not—and +then—and then—I could not stand by and see that dear child's happiness +slip away for want of one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> bold word, one brave friend to say for her +what she could not say for herself,—I have seen so many lives wrecked +for want of a sympathetic hand to draw two severed hearts +together,—that I wrote. I wrote a month ago. A week before you did."</p> + +<p>"I might have known you would do some folly," said Colonel Bellairs with +contempt. "I am glad this did not come to my ears earlier, or I should +have been very angry. It was most unsuitable, most undignified, that you +and I should both write. But," it was evidently impossible for him to be +seriously annoyed by anything on this particular afternoon, "all's well +that ends well. We will say no more about it, Aggie. Don't cry. You +can't help being a fool. But don't do anything of that kind, or of any +kind again. I might not be so easy going next time."</p> + +<p>Lady Blore drank down a large cup of tea. Her black silk bosom heaved. +Contrary to all precedent she did not turn on her quaking sister.</p> + +<p>"Where are Fay and Bessie?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Fay is spending the afternoon with the Carters, and Bessie is out +somewhere, I don't know where. But I saw her start after luncheon."</p> + +<p>"How fortunate! Then you knew he was coming?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I had a telegram from him this morning saying he was in the +neighbourhood, and would come over this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Of course you warned Magdalen?"</p> + +<p>"Not I. I knew better than that. She has a cold, so I knew she could not +go out. So directly I had seen him drive up I came off here. I did not +think I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> particularly wanted at home. Two is company and three's +none."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Algernon, what tact! Most men would never have thought of that," +said Aunt Aggie.</p> + +<p>"Have another cup, Algernon," said Lady Blore graciously.</p> + +<p>Colonel Bellairs stroked his moustache. He had another cause, a secret +one, for self-complacency. At last, after many rebuffs from charming +women, thirty years his junior, he was engaged to be married. Should he +mention it? Was not this a most propitious moment? Yes? No. Perhaps +better not. Another time! The lady had accepted him some weeks ago, but +had expressed altruistic doubts as to whether she could play a mother's +part to daughters as old as herself, whether in short, much as she +craved for their society, <i>they</i> might not feel happier, more +independent in a separate establishment, however modest. It was on a +sudden impulse of what he called "providing for the girls," that Colonel +Bellairs had written to Lord Lossiemouth.</p> + +<p>The renewal of his engagement to Magdalen would pave the way to Colonel +Bellairs's marriage. He had already decided that Bessie would live with +Magdalen, who would take her out. Fay had her jointure. But he had a not +unfounded fear that his second nuptials would be regarded with profound +disapproval, even with execration, by his sisters.</p> + +<p>Magdalen alone knew about it as yet. She had taken the news, which her +father had feared would crush her to the earth, very tranquilly. She was +a person of more frigid affections than he had supposed. He had already +asked her to break the news to Fay and Bessie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> Perhaps it would be +better to let her break it to his sisters too. If he did it himself they +might, at the first moment, say things they might afterwards regret. +Yes, he would leave the announcement to Magdalen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""><tr><td> +<div class="poem"> +<p><span class="i4">Our chain on silence clanks.</span> +Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs.</p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—George Meredith.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth had come into his kingdom. He was rich, but not +vulgarly so. He had a great position, and what his artistic nature +valued even more, the possession of one of the most beautiful places in +England. The Lossiemouth pictures and heirlooms, the historic house with +its wonderful gardens—all these were his.</p> + +<p>He had at first been quite dazed by the magnitude of his good fortune. +When it came to him it found him somewhat sore and angry at a recent +rebuff which had wounded his vanity not a little. But the excitement of +his great change of fortune soon healed what little smart remained.</p> + +<p>A few months before he succeeded, he had fallen in love, not for the +first time by many times, with a woman who seemed to meet his +requirements. She was gentle, submissive, pretty, easily led, refined, +not an heiress, but by no means penniless.</p> + +<p>To his surprise and indignation she had refused him, evidently not +without a certain tepid regret. He discovered that the mother had other +views for her daughter, and that the daughter, though she inclined +towards him, was quite incapable or even desirous of opposing her +mother. She was gentleness and pliability itself. These qualities, so +admirable in domestic life, have a tendency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> of which he had not thought +before to make their charming owner, if a hitch occurs, subside into +becoming another man's wife. If only women could be adamant until they +reach the altar, and like wax afterwards.</p> + +<p>When everything bitter that could be said at the expense of women had +been ably expressed, Lord Lossiemouth withdrew. A month later, when he +was making an angry walking tour in Hungary, he learned from an English +paper, already many days old, of the two deaths which effected his great +change of fortune. He communicated with his lawyer, arranged to return +by a certain date, and continued his tour for another month.</p> + +<p>On his return he had gone at once to Lossiemouth, which he had visited +occasionally as a poor and peppery and not greatly respected relation. +Business of all kinds instantly engulfed him. He was impatient, +difficult, <i>distrait</i>, slightly pleased with himself at showing so +little gratification at his magnificent inheritance.</p> + +<p>On the third day he sorted out the letters which looked like personal +ones, from among a heap of correspondence, the accumulation of many +weeks.</p> + +<p>Quantities of envelopes were torn open, and the contents thrown aside, +begging letters, decently veiled congratulations from "old friends" who +had not so far shown any particular desire to make their friendship a +joy to him.</p> + +<p>Presently he came upon a long, closely written letter of several sheets, +in a slanting hand, which he was about to dismiss as another begging +letter when his eye fell on the signature. Bellows? Bulteel? Buller? +<i>Bellairs?</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> + +<p>Aunt Aggie's signature was quite illegible. It was an arranged squiggle +painfully acquired in youth, which through life had resulted in all +kinds of difficulties with tradespeople, and in continual annoyance and +inconvenience to herself. Letters and parcels were frequently directed +to her as A. Buller, Esq. She could only account for this mistake by the +business-like nature of her style and handwriting. She often told her +friends that, unless people knew her personally, her letters were +generally believed to be a man's.</p> + +<p>It had never struck Aunt Aggie that Lord Lossiemouth might possibly, in +an interval of fifteen years, have forgotten who <i>A.</i> Bellows might be.</p> + +<p>But the words "my beloved niece Magdalen" strongly underlined, and the +postmark on the envelope, showed him who A. Bellairs was. He thought he +remembered an old aunt who lived near Priesthope.</p> + +<p>He read the long sentimental effusion and bit his lip.</p> + +<p>Ah, me! Was that half-forgotten, dim-in-the-distance boyish love of his +to be raked up again now!</p> + +<p>He sighed impatiently. Why had Fate parted him and Magdalen? He still +regretted her in a way, when he was depressed or harassed, or disgusted +with the world in general; and he was often depressed and harassed and +disgusted.</p> + +<p>More letters. What business had people to give him the trouble of +reading them? The floor was becoming strewn with his correspondence. The +empty fireplace had become a target for crumpled balls of paper.</p> + +<p>A short one in a large, scrambling, illiterate hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> with a signature +that might mean anything. That tall capital, shaped like a ham, was +perhaps a B.</p> + +<p>The letter was written on Priesthope notepaper. "<i>My daughter +Magdalen.</i>"</p> + +<p>This, then, was from Colonel Bellairs.</p> + +<p>It was not such a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. +When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made his +precarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that Lord +Lossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it in +his mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not had +time. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that sentence he had felt, not +without pride, that it covered the ground of his fifteen years' silence, +and also showed that Lord Lossiemouth's wealth had nothing to do with +his recall. For the letter was a recall.</p> + +<p>"Blundering old idiot," said Lord Lossiemouth, but he had become very +red.</p> + +<p>All kinds of memories were surging up in him; Magdalen's crystal love +for him, her indefinable charm, her gaiety, her humility, her shyness, +her exquisite beauty.</p> + +<p>Life had never brought him anything so marvellous, so enchanting, as +that first draught of April passion. And he had quenched his thirst at +many other cups since then. His lips had been blistered and stained at +poisoned brims. Why had that furious old turkey-cock parted him and +Magdalen! His heart sank for a moment at the remembrance of his first +love.</p> + +<p>But what was the use! The Magdalen he had loved had ceased to exist. The +wand-like figure with its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> apple-blossom face faded, faded, and in its +place rose up the image of the thin, distinguished-looking grey-haired +woman who had supplanted that marvel. He had met Magdalen accidentally +once or twice in London of late years, and had felt dismayed anger at +the change in her, an offended anger not wholly unlike that with which +he surveyed himself at his tailors', and inspected at unbecoming angles, +through painfully frank mirrors, a thick back and a stout neck and jaw +which cruelly misrepresented his fastidious artistic personality.</p> + +<p>He returned to his letters.</p> + +<p>Three sheets in a firm, upright hand.</p> + +<p>"I do not suppose you remember me," it began, "but I intend to recall +myself to your memory, which I believe to be none of the best. I am the +wife of Sir John Blore, and aunt to Magdalen Bellairs."</p> + +<p>He flung the letter down. But this was intolerable, a persecution. And +what fools they were <i>all</i> to write. Had Magdalen set them on?</p> + +<p>He groaned with sudden self-disgust. What unworthy thought would come to +him next? Of course she knew nothing of this.</p> + +<p>He looked at the date of each letter carefully. Aunt Aggie's according +to her wont had only the day of the week on it, just Tuesday, or it +might be Thursday—but Colonel Bellairs's and Lady Blore's were fully +dated, and about a fortnight apart. Colonel Bellairs had written last.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth divined that each of the three believed him or herself +to be the only one to tackle the subject.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> + +<p>How ghastly! What a cruelly good short story it would make for a +magazine!</p> + +<p>Then he read Lady Blore's letter. Apparently it was not pleasant +reading. It seemed to prick somewhat sharply. He winced once or twice, +and spoke angrily to it.</p> + +<p>"My good woman, as if I did not <i>know</i> that! Men are always behaving +heartlessly to women in their opinion. It is the normal male state. It +is an established fact that we are all brutes. Why do you want me to +marry your paragon if you have such a low opinion of me?"</p> + +<p>Still he could not put the letter down.</p> + +<p>"It is possible though improbable," wrote that dauntless woman, "that +your vacillating and selfish character may have improved sufficiently in +the course of years for you to have become aware that you have behaved +disgracefully to a woman, who, if she had had any sense, ought never to +have given you a second thought, who was and still is deeply attached to +you; probably the only person on this earth who has the misfortune to +care two pins about you."</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth tried to feel sarcastic. He tried to laugh. But it was +no use. Lady Blore's arrow had penetrated a joint in his harness.</p> + +<p>After all he need take no notice of any of these monstrous effusions.</p> + +<p>He was disgusted with opening letters. Nevertheless he hurried on. +Perhaps he should find others less intolerable.</p> + +<p>A somewhat formal letter from his cousin the Bishop of Lostford, who had +never been cordial to him since his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> engagement to Magdalen had been +broken off. The Bishop pointed out certain grave abuses connected with +house property at Lostford, at which the late Lord Lossiemouth had +persistently connived, but which he hoped his successor might enquire +into personally and redress.</p> + +<p>Quantities of other letters were torn open and aimed in balls at the +empty grate. But at last he came to a long one which he read +breathlessly.</p> + +<p>It was from the mother of the girl who had so recently refused him, an +involved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriously +attached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again he +would not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, +nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. +The mother had evidently made her write.</p> + +<p>A very venomous expression settled on Lord Lossiemouth's heavy face. He +suddenly took up a Bradshaw and looked out the trains for Lostford.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p class="center">Tard oublie qui bien aime.</p></div> + + +<p>On this momentous afternoon Magdalen was sitting alone in the +morning-room at Priesthope somewhat oppressed by an oncoming cold. It +had not yet reached the violent and weeping stage. That was for +to-morrow. She, who was generally sympathetically dressed, was +reluctantly enveloped in a wiry red crochet-work shawl which Bessie had +made for her, and had laid resolutely upon her shoulders before she went +out.</p> + +<p>She tried to read, but her eyes ached, and after a time she laid down +her book, and her mind went back, as it had a way of doing—to Fay.</p> + +<p>Fay had told her as "a great secret" that she had accepted Wentworth. +She was so transfigured by happiness, so radiant, so absolutely unlike +her former listless, colourless, carping self that Magdalen could only +suppose that two shocks of joy had come simultaneously, the discovery +that she loved her prim suitor, and the overwhelming relief to her +tortured conscience of Michael's release.</p> + +<p>Wentworth and Michael were still at Venice. Michael, it seemed, had been +prostrated by excitement, and had been too weak to travel immediately. +But they would be at Barford in a few days' time.</p> + +<p>When Magdalen saw Fay entirely absorbed in trying on a succession of new +summer hats, sent for from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> London in preparation for Wentworth's +return, she asked herself for the twentieth time whether Fay had +entirely forgotten her previous attraction for Michael, or that there +might be some awkwardness in meeting her faithful lover and servant +again, especially as the future wife of his brother.</p> + +<p>Two years had certainly elapsed since that sudden flare-up of disastrous +passion, and in two years much can be forgotten. But after two years +everything may still be remembered, as Magdalen knew well. And she +feared that Michael was among those who remember.</p> + +<p>Magdalen had that day told Fay of her father's intention of marrying +again, but she took almost no notice of the announcement. To use one of +Aunt Aggie's metaphors, the news "seemed to slide off her back like a +duck."</p> + +<p>She only said, "Really! How silly of him!"</p> + +<p>As Magdalen thought of Fay the door opened and Bessie, who was supposed +to have gone for a walk, came in.</p> + +<p>She had a spray of crab-apple blossom in her hand. She held it towards +Magdalen as if it were a bill demanding instant payment. These little +amenities were a new departure on Bessie's part.</p> + +<p>Magdalen's pleasure in the apple blossom seemed to her somewhat +exaggerated, but she made allowances for her, as she had a cold.</p> + +<p>"Are you going out again?" asked Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Then I should like to have a little talk with you. I have something to +tell you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bessie sat down.</p> + +<p>"I am prepared for the announcement you have to make. I have seen it +coming. It is about Fay."</p> + +<p>"No, it is about Father. He has asked me to tell you that he is engaged +to be married."</p> + +<p>"Father!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is not given out yet."</p> + +<p>"Father!"</p> + +<p>"It is to a Miss Barnett. You may have seen her. The doctor's sister at +Saundersfoot."</p> + +<p>"I know her by sight, a tall, showy-looking woman of nearly forty, with +amber hair and a powdered nose."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Father has sunk very low," said Bessie, judicially. "He must have been +refused by a lot of others, younger and better-looking, and ladies, to +be reduced to taking her. And fancy anyone in their senses being willing +to take Father, with his gout, and his tendency to drink, and his total +disregard of hygiene. Well, she looks a vulgar pushing woman, but I am +sorry for her. And I must own that I am disappointed that if there was +to be an engagement in our family it should be Father. There is not +likely to be more than one going for a home like ours. It is just like +him to grab it."</p> + +<p>Magdalen tried not to laugh.</p> + +<p>"I've looked round," continued Bessie. "I don't say that at present I +could entertain the thought of marriage myself. I can't just yet, but I +mean to in the future. It's merely a question of time. Marriage is the +higher life. Besides, if one remains unmarried people are apt to think +it is because one can't help<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> it. It would certainly be so in my case. +And I have looked round. There is not a soul in the neighbourhood for +any of us to marry that I can see except Wentworth, who is of course +extremely elderly. Hampshire seems absolutely bare of young men. And if +there are a few sons in some of the houses, they are never accessible. +And the really superior ones like Lord Alresford's only son would never +look at me. It would be waste of time to try. There is positively no +opening in Hampshire unless I marry the curate."</p> + +<p>"That reminds me that he is to call this afternoon about the +boot-and-shoe club. I wish, my dear, in the intervals between your +aspirations towards the higher life, you would go through the accounts +with him. My head is so confused with this cold."</p> + +<p>"I will. And where on earth are you going to live when Father marries +again? Of course, I shall graduate at Cambridge. He won't oppose that +now. Magdalen, why don't you marry, too?"</p> + +<p>"I can't, dear Bessie. No one wants me."</p> + +<p>"May I go on?"</p> + +<p>"No. Please don't."</p> + +<p>"I think I will all the same. Why not marry Lord Lossiemouth after all? +Don't speak. I want to place the situation dispassionately before you. I +have thought it carefully over. You are an extremely attractive woman, +Magdalen. I don't know what it is about you, I fail to analyse it, but +one becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if a +man once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care just +because you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact that +there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> certainly has been a mutual attachment. I then ask myself——"</p> + +<p>At this moment the door opened and the footman announced "Lord +Lossiemouth."</p> + +<p>The shock to both women was for the moment overwhelming.</p> + +<p>Magdalen recovered herself almost instantaneously and welcomed him with +grave courtesy, but she was unable to articulate.</p> + +<p>He had seen the amazement in the four eyes turned on him as he came in, +and cursed Colonel Bellairs in his heart. Why had not the old idiot +warned Magdalen of his coming?</p> + +<p>He had felt doubtful of his reception. A simulated coldness on +Magdalen's part was, perhaps, to be expected. But for her blank +astonishment he was not prepared.</p> + +<p>"This is Bessie," she said in a shaking voice.</p> + +<p>Bessie! This tall, splendid young woman. Could this be the tiny child of +three who used to sit on his knee, and blow his watch open.</p> + +<p>"I cannot be expected to remember you," said Bessie, advancing a limp +hand. She fixed a round dispassionate eye on his heavy, irritable face, +and found him unpleasant looking.</p> + +<p>He instantly thought her odious.</p> + +<p>And they all three sat down simultaneously as if by a preconcerted +signal.</p> + +<p>"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" asked Magdalen, as a paralysed +silence became imminent. A faint hectic colour burnt in her cheeks.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth pulled himself together, and came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> to her assistance. +Together they held back the silence at arm's length.</p> + +<p>Yes, he was staying in the neighbourhood—at Lostford in fact. House +property near the river. Liable to floods.</p> + +<p>Did he mention the word floods?</p> + +<p>Yes. Floods at certain seasons of the year. Time to take measures now +before the autumn, etc.</p> + +<p>Magdalen was glad to hear of some measures being taken. Long needed.</p> + +<p>Yes, culpable neglect.</p> + +<p>A wall?</p> + +<p>Yes, a wall. Certainly a wall.</p> + +<p>Bessie rose, marched to the door, opened it, hit her body against it, +and went out.</p> + +<p>A certain degree of constraint went with her.</p> + +<p>"I had your Father's leave to come," he said after a moment. "I should +not have ventured to do so otherwise."</p> + +<p>"I wish Father had warned me," she said.</p> + +<p>They looked away from each other. Here in this room fifteen years ago +they had parted. Both shivered at the remembrance.</p> + +<p>Then they looked long at each other.</p> + +<p>Magdalen became very pale. She saw as in a glass what was passing +through his mind; and for a moment her heart cried out against those +treacherous deserters, her beauty and her youth, that they should have +fled and left her thus, defenceless and unarmed to endure his cruel +eyes. But she remembered that he had left her before they did. They had +not availed to stay him. They had only slipped away from her in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> +wake. And at the time she had hardly noticed their departure, as he was +no longer there to miss them.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth had come determined to propose to Magdalen, his +determination screwed "to the sticking point" by a deliberately recalled +remembrance of the change the years had wrought in her. He had told +himself he was prepared for that. Nevertheless, now that he was actually +face to face with her, in spite of his regard and respect for her, a +horrid chasm seemed to yawn between them, which only one primitive +emotion can span, an emotion which, like a disused bridge, had fallen +into the gulf years ago.</p> + +<p>And yet how marvellously strong, how immortal it had seemed once—in +this same room with this same woman. It had seemed then as if it could +not break, or fall, or fade.</p> + +<p>It had broken, it had fallen, it had faded.</p> + +<p>As he looked earnestly at her he became aware that though she had been +momentarily distressed a great serenity was habitual to her. The eyes +which now met his had regained their calm. It seemed as if her life had +been steeped in tranquil sunshine, as if the free air of heaven had +penetrated her whole delicate being, and had left its clear fragrance +with her.</p> + +<p>Oh! if only they had been married fifteen years ago! What happiness they +might have given each other. How perfect to have owed it all to each +other. How fond he would still be of her. How tender their mutual regard +would still be. Then his present feeling for her would not be amiss. +They ought to be sitting peacefully together at this moment, not in this +intolerably embarrassing personal relation towards each other,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> but at +ease with each other, talking over their boy at Eton, and the new pony +for their little daughters. He did not want to <i>begin</i> being married to +her now.</p> + +<p>She knew what he felt.</p> + +<p>"Magdalen," he said, "I am distressed that I have taken you by surprise. +I had hoped that you were prepared to see me. But my coming is not, I +trust, painful to you."</p> + +<p>A pulse fluttered in her cheek.</p> + +<p>"I am glad to see you," she said. "If I did not seem so the first moment +it was only because I was taken aback."</p> + +<p>"A great change has come over my fortunes," he continued, anxious to +give her time, and yet aware that no conversation except on the object +of his visit was really possible. "I am at last in a position to marry."</p> + +<p>"When I heard the news I thought that you would probably marry soon."</p> + +<p>"Our engagement was broken off solely for lack of means," he continued. +Her eyes dropped. "Now that that obstacle is removed I have come to ask +you, to beg you most earnestly to renew it."</p> + +<p>"It is very good of you," she said almost inaudibly. "I appreciate +your—kindness."</p> + +<p>He saw that she was going to refuse him. But he was prepared for that +contingency. It was a natural feminine method of readjusting the balance +between them. He would certainly give her the opportunity. He owed it to +her. Besides, the refusal would not be final. He knew from her relations +that she still loved him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p> + +<p>"If your feeling towards me is unchanged will you marry me?"</p> + +<p>The door opened, and the footman announced "Mr. Thomson."</p> + +<p>The new curate came slowly into the room, his short-sighted eyes peering +about him, a little faggot of papers girdled by an elastic band, clasped +in his careful hand against his breast.</p> + +<p>Magdalen started violently, and Lord Lossiemouth experienced a furious +exasperation.</p> + +<p>Magdalen mechanically introduced the two men to each other, and they all +three sat down, with the same sudden automatic precision as when Bessie +had been present.</p> + +<p>"The days are beginning to lengthen already," said Mr. Thomson. "I have +noticed it, especially the last few days, and the rooks are +clamourous—very clamourous."</p> + +<p>"It was to be expected," faltered Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"The accounts are, I am glad to say, in perfect order. I am proud to +add, though I fear a statement so unusual may lay me open to a charge of +romancing, that we have a small balance in hand."</p> + +<p>How he had looked forward to saying these words. With what a flash of +surprised delight he had expected this astounding, this gratifying +announcement would be received.</p> + +<p>He paused a moment to let his words sink in—evidently Miss Bellairs had +not heard.</p> + +<p>"Three pounds five and nine," he said.</p> + +<p>"It is wonderful," said Magdalen emphatically.</p> + +<p>"Quite wonderful. I never heard of a boot-and-shoe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> club which was not +in debt. Have you?" And she turned to Lord Lossiemouth.</p> + +<p>But Lord Lossiemouth's temper was absent. He found the situation +intolerable. He only answered, "Never."</p> + +<p>"Bessie is waiting to hear all about it in the schoolroom," continued +Magdalen. "I have asked her to go over the papers with you. She will be +as surprised and delighted as I am. Shall we go and tell her?"</p> + +<p>And without waiting for an answer she rose and led the way to the +schoolroom, followed by Mr. Thomson. Bessie was sitting alone there, +staring in front of her, paralysed by Lord Lossiemouth's arrival, and +indignant at the possibility that Magdalen might marry that "horrid old +thing," who was not the least like the charming photograph of him in her +sister's album. However, she grasped the situation, and after an +imploring glance from Magdalen, grappled with all her might with the +boot-and-shoe club.</p> + +<p>Magdalen hurriedly tore off the little red shawl and returned to the +morning-room, and closed the door. It was a considerable effort to her +to close it, and by doing so to invite a renewal of Lord Lossiemouth's +offer. But it could not be left open.</p> + +<p>"It was not poor Mr. Thomson's fault," she said, "but I wish I could +have saved you this annoyance."</p> + +<p>He struggled to recover his temper. Her quivering face shewed him that +she was suffering from the miserable accident of the interruption even +more than he was.</p> + +<p>"I was asking you to marry me," he said with courage, but with visible +irritation. "Will you?"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I cannot."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I knew you would say that. I expected it. But I beg you to reconsider +it, that is if—if your feeling for me is still unchanged."</p> + +<p>"It is unchanged."</p> + +<p>"Then why not marry me?"</p> + +<p>"Because you do not care for me."</p> + +<p>"I felt certain you would say that. But I <i>do</i> care for you. Should I be +here if I did not? We are two middle-aged people, Magdalen. The old +raptures and roses would be out of place, but I have always cared for +you. Surely you know that. Have you forgotten the old days?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Neither have I. All we have to do is to forget the years between." As +he spoke he felt that the thing could hardly have been better put.</p> + +<p>"I have no wish to forget them."</p> + +<p>He had made a great effort to control his temper, but he found her +unreasonable. His anger got the upper hand.</p> + +<p>"It is one of two things that makes you refuse me. Either you can't +forgive me, and I daresay I don't deserve that you should, I am not +posing as a faultless character—or you have ceased to love me. Which is +it?"</p> + +<p>"I have not ceased to love you," she replied. "Have I not just told you +so? But you would find yourself miserable in the—lop-sided kind of +marriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to make bricks +without straw."</p> + +<p>"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me, +why was I sent for?" he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>stammered, white with anger. He struck the +table with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if I +was to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately planned +rebuff directly I set foot in the house!"</p> + +<p>"Why were you <i>sent for</i>?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your own +accord. <i>Sent for!</i> <i>Who</i> sent for you?"</p> + +<p>She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint.</p> + +<p>"<i>Who</i> sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?"</p> + +<p>He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands. +Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, the +desire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated. +Others could be humiliated as well as himself.</p> + +<p>"Read them," he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood by +the window with his back to her.</p> + +<p>Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's, +Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped the +sweat from her forehead.</p> + +<p>Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw them +creep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring, +their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they to +rend her again?</p> + +<p>She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away. +They could not reach her. They could not touch her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> + +<p>She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seen +him stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind his +back, looking out to the sea.</p> + +<p>She went softly to him, and stood beside him.</p> + +<p>"I am more grieved that I can say about these," she said, touching the +letters. "I did not know the poor dears had written. It was good of you +to come back at the call of these unhappy letters. Will you not burn +them, Everard, and forget them? There is a fire waiting for them."</p> + +<p>She put them into his hand. She had not spoken to him by his Christian +name before. His anger sank suddenly. He took them in a shamed silence, +and dropped them into the fire. Magdalen sat down by the hearth, and he +sat down near her. Together they watched them burn.</p> + +<p>"I ought to have burnt them yesterday," he said remorsefully.</p> + +<p>"I am glad you did not. I am so thankful to see you again, and that +these foolish letters brought you. I have often longed to have a talk +with you.</p> + +<p>"It seems unreasonable," continued Magdalen, her clear eyes meeting his, +"but the fact of your asking me to marry you makes it possible for me to +tell you what I have long wished to tell you. I have often thought of +writing it. I did write it once, but I tore it up. It seems as if a +woman <i>can't</i> say certain things to a man till he has said, 'Will you +marry me?' Then it is easy, because then nothing she may say can rouse a +suspicion in his mind that she wants to make him say it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I have proposed to you twice, Magdalen. Is not that enough?" His voice +was very bitter. "I venture to prophesy that you will be safe from my +pestering you with a third offer."</p> + +<p>"I am sure of it. I never dreamed that you would ask me this second +time. I never thought we should meet again except by chance, as we did a +year ago. But I have had you in my mind, and I have often +feared—often—that I was a painful remembrance to you; that when you +thought of me it was with regret that you had perhaps—it is not so easy +to say after all—that you had spoilt my life."</p> + +<p>"I did reproach myself bitterly with having made love to you when you +were so very young and inexperienced, and when I ought to have +remembered that I was not in a position to marry. Your father did rub +that in. As if I could help my poverty."</p> + +<p>"Father is not a reasonable person. You were nearly as young as I was. +Looking back now it seems as if we had both been almost children."</p> + +<p>"It was a great misfortune for both of us," he said, colouring. He had +not felt it great after the first.</p> + +<p>"Not for me," she said. "That is what I have long wished to tell you. It +has been my great good fortune. Not at first—but after a time. I should +never have known love—of that I am sure—unless it had been for you. +You were the only person who could waken it in me. The power to love is +the great gift; to be permitted to know that marvel, to be allowed once +in one's life to touch the infinite. Love opens all the doors. Some +opened in pain, but they did open.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> I never knew, I never guessed until +long after you had come into my life, and gone away again, how much I +owed to you. Then I began to see, first in gleams, and then plainly. +Your momentary attraction towards me was a tiny spark of the Divine +love, a sort of little lantern leading me home through the dark."</p> + +<p>He stared at her amazed. Her transparency transfixed him. What is +superficial is also often deep in clear natures such as Magdalen's, like +a water lily whose stem goes down a long way.</p> + +<p>"Love releases us from ourselves, our hard proud selves, and makes +everything possible to flow in to us, happiness, peace, joy, gratitude. +I thank God for having let me know you, for having made me love you. I +might have missed it. I see others miss it. I might have gone through +life not knowing. I might have had to bear the burden of life, without +the one thing that makes it easy. I see other people toiling and +moiling, and getting hopeless and miserable and exhausted till my heart +aches for them. After the first I have never toiled, never grieved, +never despaired. I have been sustained always. For there are not two +kinds of love, Everard, but only one. The love of you is the cup of +water, and the love of God is the well it is taken from.... You had +better go now before anyone else comes in, but I want you to remember +when you think of me that I bless and thank you, and am grateful to you. +I have been grateful for years."</p> + +<p>She took his leaden hand in both of hers, and held it for a moment to +her lips.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth's face was pinched and aged. His hand fell out of +hers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then his face became suddenly convulsed, frightful to behold, like that +of a man being squeezed to death.</p> + +<p>"I never loved you," he said in a fierce, suffocated voice. "I was a +little in love with you, that was all, and that was not much. I soon got +over it."</p> + +<p>"I know," she said.</p> + +<p>"I felt pain for a time. You were very beautiful, and you were the +first. I was the same as you then. But I found other beautiful women. I +took what I could get out of life, and out of women. I rubbed out my +pain that way. It was not your father who parted us, it was myself. I +would not own it, I was always bitter against him, but it was my fault. +I did not mean to work, and tie myself to an office stool: I had the +chance, but I wanted to travel and see the world. It was not lack of +means that parted us. I said a few minutes ago that it had been the only +obstacle to our marriage, and your eyes dropped. You have known better +all the time, but you wouldn't say. All these years I have put it down +to that. But it was <i>not</i>. We were parted by lack of love."</p> + +<p>"I know," she said again.</p> + +<p>"On my side."</p> + +<p>"It was not your fault. We can't love to order, or by our own will. It +is a gift."</p> + +<p>"Some of us can't love at all," he said fiercely. "That is about it. We +have not got any room for it if—if it <i>is</i> given us. It could not get a +foothold. It was crowded out. I was often glad afterwards that I did not +tie myself to you. <i>Glad!</i> Do you hear, Magdalen? It left me free to—it +did give me pain when I thought of you. I knew what I had done to you. +I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> used to tell myself that you gave me up very easily, that you did not +really want me. But I knew in my heart that you did. But it only made me +bitter, and I put the thought away. That time, it is ten years ago; good +God! it is all so long ago, when you nearly died of scarlet fever in +London, I heard of it by chance when you were at your worst, I was +shocked, but I did not really care, for I had long ceased to want you. I +used to visit a certain woman every day in that street, and I once asked +her who the straw was down for, and she said it was for a 'Miss Magdalen +Bellairs.' I was in love with her at the moment, if you can call it +love. I have dragged myself through all kinds of sordid passions +since—we parted."</p> + +<p>Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He looked at her through them. It +seemed as if no wounding word under heaven would be left to say by the +time he had finished.</p> + +<p>"And I did not come back in order to make amends," he went on. "You know +me very little if you think that. I came back solely out of pique. It +was not those absurd letters which brought me, or held me back. It was +another woman. I wanted to pay her out."</p> + +<p>"I thought perhaps it was something like that," said Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"It was a virtuous attachment this time. I am nearly forty. I am getting +grey and stout. Young women have a difficulty in perceiving my +existence. It was high time to settle, and to live on some attractive +woman's money. There are thousands of women who must marry someone. So +why not me? I found the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> attractive woman. I walked into love with her," +he stammered with anger. "I regarded it as a constitutional. But the +attractive woman, though she liked me a little, weighed the pros and +cons exactly as I had done, and decided not to take her constitutional +in my impecunious company. She refused me when I was poor, and +<i>now</i>—now that I am rich—she is willing."</p> + +<p>The harsh voice ceased suddenly. Magdalen looked for a moment at the +savage, self-tortured face, and her heart bled.</p> + +<p>"That is how I have treated you," he said, choking with passion. "Now +you know the truth of me—for the first time. That is the kind of man I +am, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you have +idealised, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years."</p> + +<p>"I have known always the kind of man you were," she said steadily. "I +never idealised you, as you call it. I loved you knowing the worst of +you. Otherwise my love could not have endured through. A foolish +idealism would have perished long ago."</p> + +<p>"And then I come down here, on a sudden despicable impulse, intending to +use you as a weapon to strike her with, not that she is worth striking, +poor feeble pretty toy. And I encouraged myself in a thin streak of +patronising sentiment for you. I wrote a little cursed sonnet in the +train how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets blooming +in autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temper +is aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enough +to try to humiliate you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> by shewing you those letters, to try to revenge +myself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! On you!"</p> + +<p>She did not speak nor move. Her face was awed, as the face of one who +watches beside the pangs of death or—birth.</p> + +<p>Outside in the amber sunset a thrush piped.</p> + +<p>"Magdalen," he said almost inarticulately, "you have never repulsed me. +Don't repulse me now, for I am very miserable. Don't pour your love into +the sand any more. Give it me instead. I am dying of thirst. Give me to +drink. You can live without me, but I can't live without you. I have +tried—I have tried everything. I am not thinking of you, only of +myself. I am only asking for myself, only impelled towards you by my own +needs. Does not that prove to you that I am at last speaking the truth? +Does not that force you to believe me when I tell you that I want you +more than anything in the world. I have wanted you all my life without +knowing it. I don't want to make amends to you for the past. I want you +yourself, for myself, as my wife. I swear to God if you won't marry me I +will marry no one. You are the only woman I can speak to, the only one +who does not fail, who holds on through thick and thin, the only one who +has ever really wanted me. I daresay I shan't make you happy. I daresay +I shall break your heart. God help me, I daresay I shall put my +convenience before your happiness, my selfish whims before your health. +I have always put myself first. But risk it. Risk it, Magdalen. Take me +back. Love me. For God's sake marry me."</p> + +<p>Each looked into the other's bared soul.</p> + +<p>Something in his desperate face which she had always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> sought for, which +had always been missing from it—she found.</p> + +<p>"I will," she said.</p> + +<p>They made no movement towards each other. They had reached a spiritual +nearness, a passion of surrender each to each, which touch of hand or +lip could only at that moment have served to lessen.</p> + +<p>"You are not taking me out of pity? You are sure you can still love me a +little?"</p> + +<p>"More than in the early days," she said. "For you have not only come to +me, Everard. You have come to yourself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"> +<p>Me, too, with mastering charm<br /> +<span class="i2">From husks of dead days freeing,</span> +The sun draws up to be warm<br /> +<span class="i4">And to bloom in this sweet hour.</span> +<span class="i2">The stem of all my being</span> +<span class="i4">Waited to bear this flower.</span></p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—Laurence Binyon.</p> +</div> + + +<p>It would be hardly possible to describe the unholy, the unmeasured +rejoicing to which Magdalen's engagement gave rise in her family. It is, +perhaps, enough to say that the twenty years of her cheerful, selfless +devotion to the domestic hearth had never won from her father and her +two aunts anything like the admiring approval which her engagement at +once elicited. The neighbourhood was interested. Lord Lossiemouth was a +brilliant match for anyone (if you left out the man himself). The +announcement read impressively in the <i>Morning Post</i>. The neighbours +remembered that there had been a youthful attachment, an early +engagement broken off owing to lack of means. And now it seemed the +moment he was rich he had come flying back to cast his faithful heart +once more at her feet. It was a real romance. Magdalen was considered an +extraordinarily fortunate woman by the whole countryside, but Lord +Lossiemouth was placed on a pedestal. What touching constancy. What +beautiful fidelity. What a contrast to "most men." "Not one man in a +hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> would have acted in that chivalrous manner," was the feminine +verdict of Hampshire.</p> + +<p>A wave of cheap sentiment overflowed the Bellairs family, in which +Colonel Bellairs floated complacently like a piece of loose seaweed, and +in which even Aunt Mary underwent a dignified undulation.</p> + +<p>Bessie alone was unmoved.</p> + +<p>"You said, 'Yes' too soon," she remarked to Magdalen in private. "I +should never have thought you would be so lacking in true dignity. He +goes away for fifteen years and I should not wonder a bit if he had +thought of someone else in the interim for all you know to the +contrary—men are like that—and then he just lounges in and says 'Marry +me,' and you agree in a second. You might at any rate have made him wait +for his answer till after tea. In my opinion you have made yourself +cheap by such precipitate action. He thinks he has only got to ask, and +he can have."</p> + +<p>Magdalen did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you," continued the pained monitor. "I have always +had a certain respect for you, Magdalen, and when he came back I +supposed you would give in to him in time if he pressed you without +intermission, and was constant for a considerable period—say a couple +of years; but I never thought it possible you would collapse like this. +I fear you have not taken his character sufficiently into consideration. +If I were in your place I should be afraid that Everard would not allow +my nature free scope, or take an interest in my mental development, and +that the sacrifices which make domestic life tolerable might have to be +all on my side. He is absolutely unworthy of you, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> nose is quite +thick. I daresay you have not remarked it, but I did at once. And in my +opinion he ought for his own good to have been made to <i>realise</i> it. +Even Aunt Mary, though she says she entirely approves of the marriage, +admits that you have shown too much eagerness."</p> + +<p>Fortunately for Magdalen the interest of the neighbours, and even of her +own family, was speedily diverted to another channel by the return of +Wentworth and Michael to Barford. The enthusiastic welcome which Michael +received from all classes, and from distant families who had never +evinced much cordiality to his elder brother, astonished Wentworth, +touched him to the quick.</p> + +<p>"I had no idea we had so many friends," he said repeatedly.</p> + +<p>Michael smiled vaguely and took everything for granted. Wentworth was so +anxious to shield him from fatigue and excitement that at first he was +only too thankful that Michael took everything so quietly. But after a +few days he became uneasy at his brother's inertness of mind and body. A +great doctor, however, explained Michael's state very much as the +Italian doctor had done. He was in an exhausted condition. What was +essential to him was rest. He must not be made to see anyone or do +anything he did not like.</p> + +<p>"Your brother will regain his health entirely," the great man had said, +"if he is left in peace, and nothing happens to overexcite him. He is +worn to a shadow by that accursed prison. Many men in his condition +can't rest. Then they die. He can. He has the temperament that +acquiesces. He will cure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> himself if he is left alone. Let him lie in +the sun, and give nature a chance."</p> + +<p>In spite of his anxiety Wentworth saw that Michael's bodily strength was +slowly returning. Every afternoon he left him half asleep in the sun, +and rode over to see Fay. Since she had accepted him it had become a +necessity to him to see her every day.</p> + +<p>Wentworth had long been bent to the dust under the pain of Michael's +imprisonment. Fay had been bent with anguish to the dust by the weight +of her own silence which had kept him there.</p> + +<p>And now in the twinkling of an eye they both stood erect, freed. Life +was transfigured for both at the same instant.</p> + +<p>This marvellous moment found them both just when they were deciding +mildly to love each other. It took them and flung them together in a +common overwhelming joy. It almost seemed as if the shock might make a +man of Wentworth.</p> + +<p>Did he half know (he was certainly always tacitly guarding himself +against the assumption of such an idea in the minds of others) that he +had so far been left out, not only from the whirl of life—he had +deliberately withdrawn from that—but from the weft of life itself. The +great loom had not swept him in. It had not appeared to need him. Some +of us seem to hang on the fringe of life, of thought, of love, of +everything. We are not for good or ill interwoven into the stuff, part +of the pattern.</p> + +<p>Wentworth felt young for the first time in his life, happy for the first +time in his life, really energetic for the first time. A certain languid +fatigue which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> had been with him from boyhood, which had always lain +mournfully on its back waving its legs in the air like a reversed +beetle, had now been jolted right side upper-most, and was using those +legs, not as proofs of the emptiness of the world, but as a means of +locomotion.</p> + +<p>He had at first been enormously raised in his own self-esteem by his +engagement to a young and beautiful woman. He was permanently relieved +from the necessity of accounting to his friends for the fact that he was +still unmarried, reminding them that it was his own fault. Perhaps at +the bottom of his heart a fear lurked, implanted by the brutal Grenfell, +that he was going to be an old maid. That fear was now dispelled. It was +mercifully hidden from Wentworth that Grenfell and the Bishop and most +of his so-called friends would still so regard him even if he were +married.</p> + +<p>But gradually and insensibly the many petty reasons for satisfaction +which his engagement to Fay had given him, and even the delight in being +loved, were overshadowed by a greater presence.</p> + +<p>At first they had never been silent together. Wentworth liked to hear +his own voice, and prosed stolidly on for hours with exquisite enjoyment +and an eye to Fay's education at the same time, about his plans, his +aspirations, his past life (not that he had had one), the hollowness of +society (not that he knew anything about it), a man's need of solitude, +and the solace of a woman's devotion, its softening effect on a life +devoted hitherto, perhaps, too entirely to intellectual pursuits.</p> + +<p>Fay did not listen to him very closely. She felt that his mind soared +beyond her ken. But she was greatly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> impressed, and repeated little bits +of what he had said to Magdalen afterwards. And she looked at him with +rapt adoration.</p> + +<p>"Wentworth says that consideration in little things is what makes the +happiness of married life," she would announce pontifically.</p> + +<p>"How true!"</p> + +<p>"And he says social life ought to be simplified."</p> + +<p>"Indeed! Does he happen to mention how it is to be done?"</p> + +<p>"He says it ought to be regulated, and that everyone ought to be at +liberty to lead their own life, and not to be expected to attend cricket +matches and garden parties, if you are so constituted that you don't +find pleasure in them. I used to think I liked garden parties, Magdalen, +but I see I don't now. I care more for the big things of life now. Does +Everard ever talk to you like that when you and he are alone?"</p> + +<p>"Never. Never."</p> + +<p>"And Andrea never did, either. Wentworth is simply wonderful. You should +hear him speak about fame being shallow, and how the quiet mind looking +at things truly is everything, and peace not being to be found in the +market place, but in a walk by a stream, and how in his eyes a woman's +love outweighs the idle glitter of a social success. Oh! Magdalen, I'm +beginning to feel I'm not worthy of Wentworth. I've always liked being +admired, so different from him. I did not know there were men so +high-minded as he. He makes me feel very petty beside him. And he is so +humble. He says I must not idealise him, that he does not <i>wish</i> it, for +though he may not be worse or better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> than I think he is only too +conscious of his many deficiencies. But I can't help it. Who could?"</p> + +<p>And Fay let fall a tear.</p> + +<p>"We needs must love the highest when we see it."</p> + +<p>But the highest some of us can see is the nearest molehill.</p> + +<p>What Michael and the Duke had failed to do for Fay Wentworth was +accomplishing.</p> + +<p>"You are made for each other," said Magdalen, with conviction. "Every +day shows me that you and Wentworth bring out the best in each other. +Perhaps, gradually, you will keep nothing back from each other, tell +each other everything."</p> + +<p>"He tells me everything now," said Fay. "He trusts me entirely."</p> + +<p>"And you?" said Magdalen. "Do you tell him everything?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Wentworth, too, had reached the conviction that he and Fay were made for +each other. He might have starved out the deeper love, the truth and +tenderness of a sincerer nature, if it had been drawn towards him. He +had often imagined himself as being the recipient of the lavished +devotion of a woman beautiful, humble, exquisite and noble, whose truth +was truth itself, and had vaguely wondered why she had not come into his +life. But perhaps if he had met such a woman, and if she had loved him +as he pined to be loved, he would have become suspicious of her, and +would have left her after many vacillations. He did not instinctively +recognise humility and nobility when he met them, because they bore but +slight resemblance to the stiff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> lay figures which represented those +qualities in his mind. To meet them in reality would have been to him +bewilderment, disappointment, disillusion.</p> + +<p>Fay was not only what he seemed to want, what he had feebly longed for. +She was more than this. Her nature was the complement of his. A lack of +shrewdness, of mental grasp, a certain silliness were absolutely +essential to the maintenance of a lifelong devotion to him. Wentworth +had found the right woman to give him what he wanted. Fay had found the +right man.</p> + +<p>Love, which had been knocking urgently at their doors for so many futile +years, heard at last a movement as of someone stirring within, and a +hand upon the disused latch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td> +<div class="poem"> +<p>O Yanna, Adrianna,<br /> +<span class="i2">They buried me away</span> +In the blue fathoms of the deep,<br /> +<span class="i2">Beyond the outer bay.</span></p> + +<p>But in the Yule, O Yanna,<br /> +<span class="i2">Up from the round dim sea</span> +And reeling dungeons of the fog<br /> +<span class="i2">I am come back to thee!</span></p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—Bliss Carman.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Wentworth stood at the open window of the library watching Michael.</p> + +<p>Michael was lying on a deck chair on the terrace playing with a puppy. +His face was losing a certain grey drawn look which it had worn since he +had left prison. He looked more like himself since his hair had time to +grow. Wentworth felt that he ought to be reassured about him, but a +vague anxiety harassed him.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the puppy fell asleep. Michael +made a movement to reach it, but it was just beyond his grasp.</p> + +<p>In an instant Wentworth was beside him, lifting the sleeping mass of +sleek fat on to Michael's knee. Michael's long hands made a little crib +for it.</p> + +<p>"He will sleep now for a bit," he said contentedly.</p> + +<p>"Do <i>you</i> sleep better?" said Wentworth. He had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> not forgotten those +first nights at Venice when Michael's feeble step had dragged itself to +and fro in the next room half the night.</p> + +<p>"I sleep like a top. I'm asleep half the time."</p> + +<p>"You are much better the last few days."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I'm all right."</p> + +<p>"All Hampshire has been to call. I knew you would be bored, so I did not +let them disturb you."</p> + +<p>"Thanks."</p> + +<p>"Is there anyone you would like to see?"</p> + +<p>"No one that I know of."</p> + +<p>"No one at <i>all</i>?"</p> + +<p>Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"I should like very much to see—presently—if it could be done——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Wentworth eagerly. "Of <i>course</i> it can be done, my dear boy. +You would like to see?"</p> + +<p>"Doctor Filippi," said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "He +was so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all the +time. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for his +holiday. He generally takes it in June. And—let me see—it's May now, +isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousy +was of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of the +two emotions was jealousy.</p> + +<p>"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present," he said coldly. +"I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose at +your wish a week ago."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Y-yes."</p> + +<p>"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his own +friends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be putting +him to expense."</p> + +<p>Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer.</p> + +<p>Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, +callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed—egotism revolted +Wentworth—that he would <i>never</i> ask to see Wentworth's future wife, the +woman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michael +himself.</p> + +<p>"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devoted +friend of yours, whom you might like to see again."</p> + +<p>Wentworth spoke with deliberation.</p> + +<p>"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense," said Michael +in a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had not +left the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had not +penetrated to it.</p> + +<p>Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part of +the sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurred +faculties.</p> + +<p>"An old friend of mine," he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?"</p> + +<p>"Fay," said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fay +<i>entirely</i>? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Her +great goodness to you? And what she is to <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>"No," said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> goodness to me. How she +tried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget."</p> + +<p>"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning. +You need not see Magdalen unless you like."</p> + +<p>"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as if +I had heard someone say so."</p> + +<p>"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, +ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not +care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. +But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart +from the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank that +it is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its way +of looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered her +superficial. But I never thought her mercenary—till now. But Fay——"</p> + +<p>"I will see her, too," said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thought +of Fay as—as—but my mind gets so confused—as at a great distance, +quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in +England. Left Italy for good."</p> + +<p>"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told you +so over and over again. I go and see her every day."</p> + +<p>"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can go +by Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as time +passes on."</p> + +<p>Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctor +had most solemnly assured him that his mind was only muffled and +deadened by his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> physical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworth +as if his brother's brain were softening.</p> + +<p>He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont to +grip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-blooded +shadow; was this all that was left of his brother?</p> + +<p>A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protective +tenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother's +emaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coarse labour, and +scarred and discoloured at the wrist.</p> + +<p>"Get well, Michael," he said huskily.</p> + +<p>Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily.</p> + +<p>Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the grass, +and Wentworth took back his hand instantly.</p> + +<p>"The Duchess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library."</p> + +<p>"Are you quite sure that you <i>really</i> wish to see them—that it will not +tire you?" said Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"Quite sure."</p> + +<p>"I will bring them out."</p> + +<p>"No. Send one at a time. Fay first."</p> + +<p>Michael lay back and closed his eyes.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, +Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, she +had got over that, but with something more like fear.</p> + +<p>The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by its +appearance of brittleness. To <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>Magdalen Fay's present joy seemed like a +bit of Venetian glass on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child's +elbow.</p> + +<p>It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand the +<i>insouciance</i> which looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative. +The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay's +spirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem to +disturb her growing love for him.</p> + +<p>Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. The +whortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of pale +golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines.</p> + +<p>Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this +underfoot forest.</p> + +<p>Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a +spray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it.</p> + +<p>"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest with +eggs in it," she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds, +Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. I +shall hurt it unless I'm careful."</p> + +<p>She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmering +whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly still +clinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it the +butterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, +opening and shutting its wings.</p> + +<p>It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's +heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose to +her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> +use, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf +ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace?</p> + +<p>The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may +not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes.</p> + +<p>As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the tree +trunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon between +the blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed from +the sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that it +is laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears an +overflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant, +perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first spring +tide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now in +that little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked but +yesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bitter +tides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now that +at last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, the +seeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tide +of white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presently +inundate her heart.</p> + +<p>Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals from +without—all would go well.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminent +Fay's <i>insouciance</i> began, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs of +collapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Come out with me," she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at her +sister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for a +few minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely and +resolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had been +obliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair.</p> + +<p>Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, but +Michael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, however +light, that has trodden on our heart.</p> + +<p>The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes.</p> + +<p>Fay was standing before him.</p> + +<p>And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. She +looked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the last +verge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. +She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquil +steady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, of +the Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And his +hands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was going +to look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fay +experienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking in +long, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearly +fallen over a dead body.</p> + +<p>The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him without +a word, shrinking, transfixed.</p> + +<p>He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, +that he might keep suffering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> from her. Fay's self torture, her +protracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it were +anew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during the +heedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock of +Michael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggard +lines of remorse and despair.</p> + +<p>He had not been able to shield her from pain after all.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered."</p> + +<p>"No one knows what it has been," she said hoarsely, sinking into a +chair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. +I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it."</p> + +<p>"You will never have to bear it again," he said with compassion. "It is +over and done with. You are going to be happy now."</p> + +<p>"You have suffered too," she said, reddening.</p> + +<p>"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you had +felt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have."</p> + +<p>"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. +"Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?"</p> + +<p>The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?" +But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, +but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, +that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, +feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. The +excuses, the lies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> these shadows of the mind will vanish the moment +Love lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, their +semblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark.</p> + +<p>Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spirit +was alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could not +follow.</p> + +<p>"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?" +said Fay again, wounded to the quick.</p> + +<p>She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long +look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at +being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of +compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting +between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that +they have never met.</p> + +<p>"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free," he said tranquilly, +smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant she +looks!"</p> + +<p>When Magdalen and Fay had departed, and Wentworth had seen them to the +carriage, he came back and sat down by Michael.</p> + +<p>"Not over-tired?" he said, smiling self-consciously, and poking holes in +the turf with his stick.</p> + +<p>"Not in the least."</p> + +<p>"She was looking a little pale to-day." It was obvious that he wished to +talk about Fay.</p> + +<p>"She is more beautiful than ever," said Michael, willing to give his +brother a leg-up.</p> + +<p>"Isn't she!" said the affianced lover expansively. "But it isn't her +beauty I love most, it is her <i>character</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> She is so feminine, so +receptive, so appreciative of the deeper side of life, so absolutely +devoted. Her heart has been awakened for the first time, Michael. She +has, I feel sure, never been loved before as I loved her."</p> + +<p>"I imagine not."</p> + +<p>"I can't believe she ever cared for the Duke. I saw him once, and he +gave me the impression of a very cold-blooded individual."</p> + +<p>"I don't think he was cold-blooded."</p> + +<p>"Evidently not the kind of man capable of drawing the best out of a +woman like Fay."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not."</p> + +<p>The man who felt himself capable of this feat prodded a daisy and then +went on:</p> + +<p>"You used to see a good deal of them in Rome before—while you were +<i>attaché</i> there. Did you gather that it was a happy marriage, a true +union?"</p> + +<p>"Not very happy."</p> + +<p>"I daresay he was selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the crux +in married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shall +find my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object to +guard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculine +impulse to shield and protect is very strongly developed in me."</p> + +<p>"It is sometimes difficult to guard people," said Michael half to +himself.</p> + +<p>"I hope some day," Wentworth went on shyly, colouring under his tan, +"your turn may come, that you may meet the right woman, and feel as I do +now. It will be a revelation to you. I am afraid it may seem exaggerated +in a person like myself, who am essentially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> a man's man. (This was a +favourite illusion of Wentworth's.) But some day you will understand, +and you will find as I have done that love is not just slothfully +accepting a woman's slavish devotion."</p> + +<p>"Indeed!"</p> + +<p>"No, Michael, believe me, it is something far greater. It is living not +only for self, but as for her sake. To take trouble to win the smile of +one we love, to gladly forego one's momentary pleasures, one's +convenience, in order to serve her. That is the best reward of life."</p> + +<p>Michael's eyes filled with tears. He felt a hundred years older than +Wentworth at that moment. A tender pained compassion welled up within +him. And with it came a new protective comprehension of the man beside +him who had cherished him from his childhood onwards.</p> + +<p>He put out his hand and gripped Wentworth's.</p> + +<p>"God bless you, Wenty," he said.</p> + +<p>And for a moment they who were so far apart seemed very near together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"> +<div class="poem"> +<p><span class="i2">She sees no tears,</span> +Or any tone<br /> +Of thy deep groan<br /> +<span class="i2">She hears:</span> +<span class="i2">Nor does she mind</span> +Or think on't now<br /> +That ever thou<br /> +<span class="i2">Wast kind.</span></p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—Herrick.</p> +</div> + + +<p>It quickly became plain to Magdalen that Fay's peace of mind had been +shaken by her interview with Michael. She had vouchsafed no word +concerning it on her way home. But in the days that followed she +appeared ill at ease, and a vague and increasing unrest seemed to +possess her. Magdalen doubted whether she had as yet asked herself what +it was that was disturbing her tranquillity. But it was at any rate +obvious that she shrank from seeing Michael again, and that she was at +times dejected in Wentworth's presence.</p> + +<p>Wentworth perceived the change in her, and attributed it to a most +natural and pardonable jealousy of Michael to which, while he made the +fullest allowance for it, he had no inclination to yield.</p> + +<p>Michael had for a moment seemed to take more interest in life after +Fay's visit, and although he had quickly relapsed into apathy Wentworth +told himself that he was anxious to foster this nascent interest by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> +another meeting between him and Fay. At the same time he desired to +rehearse the part of central figure poised between two great devotions +which was to be his agreeable <i>rôle</i> in the future. For Michael would of +course live with them after his marriage with Fay. And if there were any +ebullitions of jealousy between Fay and Michael—Wentworth dwelt with +complacency on the possibility—he felt competent to deal with them with +tact and magnanimity, reassuring each in turn as to their equal share in +his affections.</p> + +<p>Michael at any rate showed no disinclination to meet Fay again, and even +evinced something verging on a desire to see Magdalen. And presently +Wentworth arranged to drive him over to luncheon at Priesthope. +Throughout life he had always liked to settle, even in the most trivial +matters, what Michael should do, with whom he should associate. The +situation was not new, nor was there any novelty in Michael's +pliability.</p> + +<p>But when the day came Wentworth arrived without his brother, and +evidently out of temper. Magdalen asked if Michael were less well, and +was curtly assured that he was steadily improving. The luncheon dragged +through somehow as under a cloud. Colonel Bellairs was fortunately +absent on a visit to Miss Barnett at Saundersfoot. His absence was the +only silver lining to the cloud. Fay hardly spoke. Magdalen was thankful +that her prickly Lord Lossiemouth had departed the day before.</p> + +<p>After luncheon, when they were sitting on the terrace over their coffee, +Bessie left them, and Magdalen was about to do the same, when Wentworth +said suddenly:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I left Michael with the Bishop of Lostford. That is why he is not here +now. The Bishop is inducting the new Rector of Wrigley this afternoon, +and he sent a wire this morning—he is always doing things at the last +moment—he never considers others—to say that he would call at Barford +on his way to see Michael. Michael is his godson, and he has always been +fond of him. I left them together."</p> + +<p>Magdalen and Fay sipped their coffee in silence.</p> + +<p>"Michael had been as inert and apathetic as usual," continued Wentworth +sullenly, "until the Bishop appeared. The Bishop took him off into the +garden, though I said I did not like his going out so soon after +dressing—he was only just up—and it was perfectly plain they did not +want me. I believe that was why they went out. I was of no account. The +Bishop has always been like that, your friend one day, and oblivious of +you the next. But he and Michael seemed to have a great deal to say to +each other. I watched them from the library walking up and down. Michael +can walk quite well when he wants to. Then when the victoria came +round—I thought he would find that less fatiguing than the dogcart—I +went to tell him that it was time to start, but he only stared vaguely +at me, and the Bishop took his arm and said that you must excuse him for +this once, as he did not mean to let him go at that moment. So I came +away without him."</p> + +<p>"There will be many more opportunities of seeing us, and one must clutch +what few chances one can of seeing the Bishop," said Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"When I went to warn Michael that the carriage was there," continued +Wentworth, "he did not see me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> till I was quite near—there was a bush +between—and I could not help hearing him say, 'That was half an hour +before I was arrested.'"</p> + +<p>There was an uneasy silence.</p> + +<p>"It seems," said Wentworth with exceeding bitterness, "that I have not +Michael's confidence. The Bishop has it, but I, his only brother. Oh, +no. He can talk to the Bishop about his imprisonment, but to me—not a +word, not a single word. At first when we were together at Venice I +asked him quietly about it once or twice. I asked him why he had never +said a word to <i>me</i> about it at the time, why he had not confided to me +at any rate that he was shielding the Marchesa, but I soon saw that the +subject distressed him. He always became confused, and he never would +reply. Once, since we were back at Barford, when he seemed clearer, I +asked him most earnestly to tell me one thing, whether he actually +witnessed the murder of the Marchese by his wife, as she supposed, and +what had first put it into his head to take the blame on himself. But it +seemed that any allusion to the subject exhausted and worried him. I +said to him at last: 'Do you still hate talking of it as much as ever?' +And he said 'yes.' I could understand that, and from that day to this I +never alluded to it again. But though he won't say a word to me, it +seems he can to others."</p> + +<p>The miserable jealousy in Wentworth's face touched Magdalen.</p> + +<p>"He knew you had strained every nerve to save him," said Wentworth, +turning to Fay. "Has he ever shown his gratitude for what you tried to +do for him?"</p> + +<p>"N-no," stammered Fay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + +<p>"His imprisonment has changed his nature, that is what it is. He went in +alive, and he has come out dead. He has ceased to care for anything or +anyone. He has been killed by inches. He was so affectionate as a boy. I +was father and mother to him. He used to trot after me like a little +dog. And if anyone had his whole confidence I had. I was everything to +him. My one fear of marrying has always been that he might feel pained +at seeing another person first with me." (Wentworth had never had this +altruistic misgiving, but he stated it with conviction.) "But now he is +not the same. I suppose he still has some affection for me. He shows it +sometimes by a kind of effort. He seemed to wake up a bit after you came +over, Fay. I think he had a sort of glimpse from things I said to him of +what love can be, and just for a moment he was more like his old self, +and appeared to enter into my feelings. But he soon sank back again. As +often as not he seems to shrink from any real conversation. We sometimes +sit whole evenings together without speaking. He does not really want me +any more, or anyone. He talked at first a little about the Italian +doctor, but he never mentions him now. And as for my marriage, as for +being distressed by my caring for someone else," resentfully, "he is +absolutely indifferent. You would think that Fay and I, the two people +of all others who have done most for him, who have grieved most over +him, who have shown him most affection, were nothing to him."</p> + +<p>There was a ghastly silence.</p> + +<p>"I don't blame him," said Wentworth with something nearer passion than +he had ever experienced <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>before, in which even his petty jealousy was +momentarily extinguished. "At least, I can't look at him and remain +angry with him. It breaks my heart to see him like this, so callous, so +regardless of all I have suffered on his account. I don't blame him. He +is not himself. His brain is weakened by his poor body. No. The person I +do blame is that accursed woman who allowed him to suffer for her, who +skulked behind him for two endless years, who let him sacrifice his life +for hers, who never had the courage to say the word, and take her crime +upon herself, and get him out of his living grave."</p> + +<p>Fay became cold as death in the May sunshine. What ghost was this which +was taking form before her? What voice was this, how could it be +Wentworth's voice, which was saying at last aloud with passion what that +other accusing voice within had so hoarsely, so persistently whispered +from its cell, during the long years? Her brain reeled.</p> + +<p>"The Marchesa did repent," said Magdalen.</p> + +<p>Wentworth laughed harshly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. On her deathbed, in order to save her soul. She wanted to be +right with the next world. But how could she go on, year in year out, +letting him burn and freeze alternately in that vile cell? She must have +known, someone must have told her, what his life was like. How well I +remember, Fay, your saying: 'Why does not the real murderer confess? How +can he go on letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, +bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?' How little we both knew. +I always supposed the assassin was a man, a common criminal of the +lowest order.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> Yet it seems there are women in the world, educated, +refined women, who can remorselessly pinch a man's life out of him with +their white hands. The Marchesa has murdered two people, first her +husband, and then my boy, my foolish, quixotic, generous Michael. May +God forgive her! I never will!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.</p> +<p class="sig">—W. B. Yeats.</p> + +<p><br />Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir.</p> +<p class="sig">—A. de Musset.</p> +</div> + + + +<p>In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signs +of reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and with +fatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But his +languid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His face +took on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly saw +something with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a look +sometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, when +an echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they once +lived, which they have well nigh forgotten.</p> + +<p>Michael's body, which had so far profited by the inertness of his +faculties, resented the change, and gave unmistakable signs of +relinquishing the slight degree of strength it had regained.</p> + +<p>Wentworth became suddenly frantically anxious once more, and in a moment +the wrongs on which he was brooding were forgotten. He decided to go to +London the same day under the guise of business, and to consult the +great doctor privately about Michael, perhaps arrange to bring him back +with him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I wish you would drive oftener," he said to Michael before he left. +"It's much better for you than walking up and down. Why not, if you feel +inclined, as you will be alone all day, drive over to Priesthope this +afternoon. I said you would come the first day you could. It's only four +miles, just an easy little drive."</p> + +<p>An indefinable change passed over Michael's vacant face at the mention +of Priesthope. His eyes became fixed. He looked gravely at his brother, +as if the latter had solved some difficult problem.</p> + +<p>"It's a good idea," he said slowly. "I ought to have gone before, +but——"</p> + +<p>"The Bishop stopped you most inconsiderately last time."</p> + +<p>"Did he? I don't remember being stopped. Oh! yes, yes, I do. But if I +<i>had</i> gone that day—— But anyhow I will go to-day."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending to +read, when Michael was announced.</p> + +<p>When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness +and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked +ill, and as if she had not slept.</p> + +<p>"I ought to have come before," he said mechanically, making a great +mental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, +but——" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what he +intended to say.</p> + +<p>"The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you," said +Fay drearily. Every word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> that Wentworth had said that afternoon was +still echoing discordantly in her brain.</p> + +<p>"That's it. The Bishop," said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had a +long talk"—his mind was clearing rapidly—"how you meant to save me."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. +"But the Marchesa, the same day—it was in the papers."</p> + +<p>"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you +had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, +and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware +you—had thought of it."</p> + +<p>"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me +a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And—oh, Michael, +you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you—you +<i>could</i>, you know—to stop my marrying Wentworth?"</p> + +<p>Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn.</p> + +<p>"When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, +"do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all +over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then +I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not +forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another +man's wife. Now that we meet again—<i>the position is the same</i>."</p> + +<p>Fay looked at Michael.</p> + +<p>The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish +that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him +first as a lad, which she had <i>twice</i> extinguished, was in his eyes +again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when +they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something +exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through +her, beyond her.</p> + +<p>"And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for +then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to +marry a man you—Oh! Fay, you <i>do</i> care for Wentworth, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I would not have kept <i>him</i> in prison for a day," she said, and hid her +face in her hands.</p> + +<p>If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her +with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her +agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill +to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her +heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for +her, for Michael possibly, but not for her.</p> + +<p>"Wentworth is worth caring for," said Michael. "Not worth caring for in +part, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring for +<i>altogether</i>. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyone +in the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop his +marrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid of +his marriage with you being stopped."</p> + +<p>Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him.</p> + +<p>"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen +about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has +always waited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> to see whether things will come to him of themselves, and +then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them +away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all +the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away +from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over +again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out +for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people <i>do</i>; he +has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop +stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth +has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The +Bishop said we must remember that, and that if—anything happened to +shake his—his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it +would be cruelly hard on him."</p> + +<p>"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?"</p> + +<p>"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since—since +the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know +what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid +and muddle-headed since I've been in—in <i>Italy</i> that I <i>can't</i> remember +what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in +absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such +odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He +often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, +all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I +think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> he'll get it out +of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?"</p> + +<p>"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done for +you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a +lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only +one, that perhaps there may be some more?"</p> + +<p>There was a long pause.</p> + +<p>"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'm <i>sure</i> he +will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a +great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him."</p> + +<p>Fay turned her quivering face towards him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm so +thankful it was <i>you</i>, and not him."</p> + +<p>"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked with +your own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs—to +<i>himself</i>."</p> + +<p>In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things about +the man she loved.</p> + +<p>"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let me +stay—in Italy."</p> + +<p>"I'd give anything I have," she said with a sob; "I'd give both my +hands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinks +so much of, I'd give anything if only I had not—done that, if I could +only undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't done +it, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. And +then the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> was doing. +But since you came back I've <i>seen</i>; since I loved Wentworth I've +<i>seen</i>—what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got in +the way, and left you to die."</p> + +<p>He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguished +realisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her through +love for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawn +her, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his.</p> + +<p>"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out for +his sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while you +were shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I only +tried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of it +any longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself—till now. I see +now that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentle +and loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael. +You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael, <i>must +Wentworth pay too</i>?"</p> + +<p>Michael looked at her with compassion. "I am afraid he must. But do not +let him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in your +power to save him part of the—the expense. Let him pay the lesser price +instead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out."</p> + +<p>Silence.</p> + +<p>"It is the only thing to do, Fay."</p> + +<p>No answer.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid you do not love him after all," said the inexorable voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p> + +<p>Again silence.</p> + +<p>Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenched +hands between both of his.</p> + +<p>"Love him a little more," he said. "Take the risk and tell him +everything—while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgive +me if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enough +to risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because you +found the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, +because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me," Michael's voice shook, +"it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed." +His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. You +wouldn't if you—if you knew what it was like."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face on +the sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretched +arms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucified +anew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or of +fear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death.</p> + +<p>Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, to +pierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so late +but come at last, to help her in her sore need?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p class="center"> +His own thought drove him like a goad.<span class="smcap">—Tennyson.</span></p></div> + +<p>"Now," said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustled +down here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. I +calculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that's +worrying you?"</p> + +<p>Michael did not answer.</p> + +<p>The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly.</p> + +<p>"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We are +all in the same steam launch."</p> + +<p>"I don't want anything, thanks."</p> + +<p>"In love?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Quite sure? I have always observed that people who are in love are +desperately offended at the bare supposition that such a thing is +possible. Things might be arranged, you know. Young women aren't +intended by nature to live single any more than you are. Would a few +weeks in London meet the case? The season's just beginning. No theatres, +of course, and no late hours. Your brother here seems made of money, +though he will soon be ruined if he goes on sending for me. For I always +charge double if I'm sent for unnecessarily. Come, sir, what <i>do</i> you +want?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Michael, half amused. He was still exhausted by his +expedition to Priesthope of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> previous day. "I don't want anything, +thanks. I'm—all right."</p> + +<p>"What do you say to a change?"</p> + +<p>"I had not thought of that," said Michael with a flicker of interest. +"Now you mention it—yes. That's the very thing. I should like—a +change."</p> + +<p>Wentworth came forward at once.</p> + +<p>"Norway?" he said eagerly, "or Switzerland. We must be guided by you, +doctor. Or a yacht? You used to be fond of yachting, Michael. We will go +anywhere you like."</p> + +<p>Michael's face fell.</p> + +<p>The doctor leaned back and examined his finger tips. He had seen what he +wanted.</p> + +<p>"The yacht won't do," he said with decision. "And Norway's out of the +question. Much too far. In fact, there's only one place that will do."</p> + +<p>"Where is that?" said Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"I don't know yet. Where is it, Mr. Carstairs?"</p> + +<p>"I should like," said Michael, colouring painfully, for he knew he was +going to hurt Wentworth, "I should like to go to Lostford; not for long, +just for a little bit."</p> + +<p>"Lostford!" exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. "Lostford, down in that hole. +Oh! no."</p> + +<p>"Well, and why not Lostford?" said the doctor with asperity. "Mr. +Carstairs shows his sense. He is not up to a long journey. Quite near. +Interesting cathedral. Cultivated society. I should have suggested +Lostford myself if he had not."</p> + +<p>"I will ride over and take rooms at the 'Prince Consort' to-day," said +Wentworth meekly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You will do no such thing. Are you taking leave of your senses. Your +brother is not fit to stay in a rackety hotel."</p> + +<p>"The Bishop has asked me," said Michael faintly, "to spend a week or two +with him whenever I like. I believe—it's very quiet there."</p> + +<p>"The Bishop!" said Wentworth. "It would be far from quiet at the Palace. +Worse than an hotel. The Bishop lives in a perpetual turmoil."</p> + +<p>Then he suddenly stopped short, and became very red. Michael preferred +the Bishop to himself.</p> + +<p>"It's a good idea," said the doctor. "I know the Bishop. Splendid man. +The best of company." He got up with decision. "My orders are, Mr. +Carstairs, that you proceed to Lostford without delay. How far is it? +Six miles. Go to-morrow." Then he turned to Wentworth. "You will go over +and see him in a week's time, and report to me."</p> + +<p>"You think him worse," said Wentworth nervously to the doctor in the +hall.</p> + +<p>"No," said the doctor emphatically, watching his motor sliding to the +door, "but he is not better. He is anxious about something, and he can't +afford to be anxious. He is not in a fit state to have a finger ache +with impunity."</p> + +<p>"He has nothing to be anxious about," said Wentworth. "And if he had a +trouble I should be the first to hear of it. I have his entire +confidence—at least, I had till lately. I must own he has become very +changed of late. Of course, I never appear to notice it, but——"</p> + +<p>"Quite right. Quite right. I wish others were as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> sagacious as you are. +Let him go to Lostford for a week or two—and get you off his nerves," +the doctor added to himself as the motor shot down the beech avenue.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A few days later Wentworth was sitting idly watching the stream of +Piccadilly from the windows of his club. The same day that Michael had +gone to Lostford he had discovered that he had business in London. He +would have found it difficult to say what his business there was. But +one of Wentworth's many theories about himself was that he was a very +busy man. He had so constantly given "urgent business" as a reason for +evading uncongenial social engagements that he had finished by believing +himself to be overwhelmed with arduous affairs. So he went to London, +and visited a publisher anent his forthcoming history of Sussex, and +dined with a man whom he met at Lord's, whom he had not seen for years, +and wrote daily to Fay, expressing ardent but vague hopes that he might +be able to "get away" from London by the end of the week.</p> + +<p>He was in no hurry to return.</p> + +<p>A vague fear of something grievously amiss with Michael, he knew not +what; an unformulated anxiety weighed upon him. And he was jealous. +Jealousy had brought him up to London. He was not going to remain +deserted at Barford. Jealousy was keeping him there now. He had seen +that Michael was glad to get away from him, that he had caught at the +doctor's suggestion of a change. His sullen heart was very sore about +Michael. Why did he <i>want</i> to leave him? Where would he meet anyone more +devoted to him than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> himself? What could any man do for another that he +had not done for Michael? Was it true then, after all, what he had so +often heard was the fate of men of deep affections like himself, that +they give all, and are given nothing in return.</p> + +<p>A sudden exclamation made him look up.</p> + +<p>"Why, Maine, is it you?"</p> + +<p>A tall, bald man was holding out his hand to him. For a moment Wentworth +did not recognise him. Then he remembered him. Lord John Alington.</p> + +<p>He shook hands with tepid civility, but Lord John always mistook a +pained recognition for an enthusiastic welcome. He drew up a chair at +once.</p> + +<p>"Now this is what I call luck," he said, his red face beaming. "And so +your brother is freed at last. Only heard the news when I landed from +Norway a week ago. I congratulate you with my whole heart. I never was +so glad about anything before." And Lord John sawed Wentworth's limp +hand up and down.</p> + +<p>"I was present, you know," he went on. "Made a great impression on me. +Sobered me for a long time I can tell you. I saw Carstairs come forward +and give himself up. Never had such a shock in my life."</p> + +<p>"I remember now you were there."</p> + +<p>"Rather. And I was dead certain from the first that he had never done +it. I always said so. And now at last the mystery is cleared up. And I +was proved right. He hadn't. But fancy shielding that old Marchesa with +her long teeth. Why, she was forty if she was a day. Who would ever have +thought of it!"</p> + +<p>"No one did," said Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> didn't. I may tell you frankly that I did <i>not</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> The Marchesa! I +knew her. But it never so much as crossed my mind that she had massacred +her old hubby. 'Good God! The Marchesa!' Those were my exact words when +I heard a week ago. Is Carstairs in London? I should like just to shake +him by the hand."</p> + +<p>"He is not in town. He is still feeling the effects of his +imprisonment."</p> + +<p>"I should like to have seen him. It was my fault he was found you know. +I said 'Perhaps he's behind the screen.' Dreadfully sorry. Wish I +hadn't. Only my fun. Never thought he was there, or anyone. I've never +forgotten his coming out from behind the screen. But what I want to know +is," Lord John tapped Wentworth on the arm with his eyeglass, and +lowered his voice confidentially, "<i>why he ever went behind it</i>. That's +what has been puzzling me ever since I read the Marchesa's confession. +If he wanted to shield her, why the deuce did he hide at all? Why not +strike a noble attitude bang in the middle of the room—from the first?"</p> + +<p>Wentworth looked at him astonished. The vague suspicion of the last +weeks that Michael was concealing something from him was taking shape at +last.</p> + +<p>There was no doubt that Lord John had got hold of a listener.</p> + +<p>"No, no, Maine. When Carstairs was hiding behind the screen he was not +dying with anxiety to take the Marchesa's crime on his white +shoulders—not at that moment. That explanation don't wash. I believe I +know a better one."</p> + +<p>Wentworth became very red.</p> + +<p>"The Duchess's maid! Did you ever see her? No, evidently not. You've no +time for looking at young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> maids. Taken up with contemplating an old +maid in the glass. You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiest +little baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an iron +virtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't think +why. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints like +you. <i>I'm</i> not, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? The +Marchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. +Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about the +house after everyone else had gone just for the same reason that I +was—to get a word with that little hussy?"</p> + +<p>At that moment a tall, middle-aged man came into the room, and Lord +John's roving eye fell upon him. He sprang to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Lossiemouth," he said, seizing the latter's unwilling hand. "Why, +you're the very man I wanted to see. Congratulations, my dear chap. All +my heart. Ship come in, and ancestral halls, and going to be married +too, all in one fell swoop. Know Miss Bellairs a little. Jumped with her +in the same skipping rope in childhood's happy hours, danced with her at +her first ball. Madly in love with her. Never seen her since."</p> + +<p>Wentworth escaped.</p> + +<p>The chamber of his soul had been long in readiness, swept and garnished +for the restless spirit that had returned to it—not alone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<p>Est-il indispensable, qu'on s'élève à un point d'où le +devoir n'apparaisse plus comme un choix de nos sentiments +les plus nobles, mais comme une silencieuse nécessité de +toute notre nature.</p> +</div> + + +<p>The following afternoon Fay was sitting in the little morning-room at +Priesthope, trying to write a letter, a long, long letter. Wentworth's +last note to her, just arrived by the second post, was open before her, +telling her that he could not return for two days. And then the door +opened gently and he was before her.</p> + +<p>She turned a white, miserable face towards the door. Then as she +suddenly recognised him the colour rushed to her face, and she flew to +him with a cry and locked him in her arms, kissing his shoulder, his +coat, his hands.</p> + +<p>He was thunderstruck. Could a few days' absence so profoundly move these +delicate, emotional creatures, whom an all-wise Providence had made +almost too susceptible to masculine charm! He had never seen Fay like +this. But then, he had never seen anything like anything. She withdrew +herself suddenly, and stood a little apart, her face and neck one +carnation of soft shame.</p> + +<p>"But you are in London," she said, her lip quivering, her eyes falling +before his. "I have your own word for it that you are still in London." +And she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> pointed at his letter. "I was not expecting to see you."</p> + +<p>A joy so great that it was akin to pain laid its awakening hand on him.</p> + +<p>"I am glad you were not expecting me," he said, in a voice that he +hardly recognised as his own. "I'm thankful."</p> + +<p>And he drew her back into his arms more moved than he had ever been.</p> + +<p>Yes. He was loved. He loved and was loved. He had not known the world +contained anything as great as this. He had always thought that life at +its best was a solitary thing, that passion was a momentary madness with +which he did not care to tamper, that celibacy was a cheap price to pay +for his independence. But he and this woman were one. This was rest and +peace and joy and freedom. This was what he had always wanted, without +knowing he wanted it. One of the many barriers between them went down. +He thought it was the only one.</p> + +<p>They sat a long time in silence, his head against her breast. Her face +had become pinched and sharp, the lovely colour had faded. All its +beauty and youth had gone out of it. Her terrified eyes stared at the +wall.</p> + +<p>"Speak! Speak now," said the inner voice. "You were too late last time. +Speak now."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"I am very miserable, Fay," in a whisper against her cheek.</p> + +<p>Her arms tightened round him.</p> + +<p>"Not so miserable now I am with you, but——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p> + +<p>It seemed to Fay that she was holding to her breast the point of the +sword that was to stab her to death.</p> + +<p>He raised his head, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. Twice +she had seen tears in those narrow grey eyes before: once when he had +talked to her of Michael in prison, and once when Michael was +exonerated.</p> + +<p>They had drawn a little apart.</p> + +<p>"When I came here I had not meant to tell you anything about it, I had +decided not to, but—Fay, I can't believe it, I haven't slept all night, +I have known for two days, I only found it out by the merest accident +that that has happened which I never thought could happen, something +impossible." Wentworth's lip quivered. "Michael has deceived me, not by +mistake, not just for a moment, but systematically, purposely—for +years."</p> + +<p>There was anger as well as pain in his voice.</p> + +<p>"It was about the murder of the Marchese," he said hoarsely, "but I +don't care what it was about. That is not the point. He has deceived me +for reasons of his own. I don't know what they were. And I am afraid, my +darling, he has not stopped there. I am afraid he has deceived you too. +I am afraid he hoodwinked you when he persuaded you to let him hide in +your room. Why did he hide if he wanted to shield the Marchesa? Don't +you see that there was no sense in his hiding, though I never thought of +it till—lately? I always believed in him implicitly, as you have done. +I thought him just the kind of person who <i>would</i> sacrifice himself for +a woman. I can understand doing it. It appeals to a nature like mine. I +was deeply hurt by his reserve about it, since he came home, but I never +thought, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> never struck me for one single second that it concealed +anything discreditable."</p> + +<p>"It does not," said Fay suddenly.</p> + +<p>"My dearest, I am afraid there is no doubt it <i>does</i>. What was Michael +doing in the garden at that time of night. You forget that. I am the +last person in the world to think him capable of anything disgraceful, +but I can't resist the conclusion that he was waiting—Oh! Fay, your +ears ought not to be polluted by such things—was waiting about in the +garden because he was attracted by someone in the house."</p> + +<p>He felt her hand quiver in his.</p> + +<p>How womanly she was, how pure. How could any man have had the heart to +throw dust in those innocent eyes. He kissed the cold hand reverently.</p> + +<p>"I hate to speak of such a thing to you, and it somehow seems out of the +question when I think of Michael's character. I had brought him up so +carefully. I had impressed on him my own high code of morals from the +first. And yet—and yet—I am afraid, dearest, that Michael must have +been hanging about to have a word with—don't start so, why do you +tremble?—with your maid."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's silence. Fay shook her head. She was unable to +articulate.</p> + +<p>"Then why was he there? You must have been very much surprised and +alarmed at his coming to your room so late. And unless he had given you +some reason, you would not have tried to hide him. We always come back +to that. Fay, why <i>did</i> Michael hide?"</p> + +<p>Fay struggled to speak. Her white lips moved, but no sound came forth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You and the Duke tried to save him from being discovered. We all know +that. The Duke told me so himself."</p> + +<p>Another silence. Fay's face became convulsed.</p> + +<p>"You are no diplomatist, Fay, thank God. I see very well, my darling, +that you know more than you will say. It is plain to me that in the +goodness of your soul you are trying to shield Michael—<i>for the second +time</i>."</p> + +<p>He kissed her on the forehead and rose to go.</p> + +<p>"Stop!" said Fay, almost inarticulately. "It isn't the second time. I +didn't shield him last time. I let him slide. But I will now ... I want +to tell you ... I must tell you ... Michael has been here, he came when +you were away in London. And he has begged me,—Oh, Wentworth, he has +implored me to—tell you everything."</p> + +<p>Wentworth became very red. His face hardened.</p> + +<p>"<i>He</i> has begged you to tell me! He has gone behind my back and tried to +depute you to do it, to plead his cause for him. He has not even the +courage to come to me himself. No, Fay, I am going. It is no use +imploring me to stay. I'm not going to listen to you making excuses for +him. I don't blame you, but you ought not to have agreed to do it. +Whatever I ought to know I must hear from Michael himself. I shall go +over and see him to-morrow morning. Even you, dearest, must not come +between—Michael and me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p> +Aimer quelqu'un, c'est à la fois lui ôter le droit, et lui +donner la puissance de nous faire souffrir.</p></div> + + +<p>The following morning the Bishop and Michael were sitting in the library +at Lostford Palace. The Bishop was reading a letter, while Michael +watched him, sunk in an arm-chair.</p> + +<p>Presently the Bishop thrust out his under lip, and gave back the letter +to Michael.</p> + +<p>"Wentworth has dipped his pen in gall instead of in his inkpot," he +said. "For real quality and strength give me the venom of a virtuous +person. The ordinary sinner can't compete with him. Evil doers are out +of the running in this world as well as in the next. I often tell them +so. That is why I took orders. What do you suppose Wentworth suspects +when he says Alington has suggested a discreditable reason for your +being in the di Collo Alto villa that night, and that he is not going to +allow you to skulk behind a woman any longer? He will be here directly +to extort what he is pleased to call 'the truth.' What are you going to +say?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Michael. "That is the worst of me. I never know."</p> + +<p>The Bishop frowned and rubbed his chin.</p> + +<p>"I see one thing," continued Michael, "and that is that it's all +important that he should not break with Fay."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That will be his first step—if he knows the truth."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid it will, and yet—that's the pity of it, she will last +longer than I shall, and he does like her—a little—which is a great +deal for him. You don't believe it, but he really does. And he'll want +her more than ever—when I'm gone."</p> + +<p>The Bishop looked keenly at his godson.</p> + +<p>Michael had never before alluded to his precarious hold on life. It was +obvious that he was only considering it now in its bearings on +Wentworth's future.</p> + +<p>"Can a man who has grown grey looking at himself in the glass, and +recording his own microscopic experiences in a diary, can such a man +<i>forgive</i>?" said the Bishop. "Forgiveness is tough work. It needs +knowledge of human nature. It needs humility. I forgave somebody once +long ago. And it nearly was the death of me. I've never been the same +man since."</p> + +<p>"Wentworth will have his chance," said Michael. "It's about all we can +do for him."</p> + +<p>"We all know he says he can, but then he says such a lot of things. He +dares to say he loves his fellow men. But I've never yet found that +assertion coincide with any real <i>working</i> regard for them. There are +certain things which those who care for others never say, and that is +one of them. The egoist on the contrary is always asserting of himself +what he ought in common decency to leave others to say of him,—only +they never do. Wentworth actually told me not so long ago that he was +intent on the service of others. I told him it was for those others to +mention that interesting fact, and that nobody had lied about him to +that extent so far in my diocese."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<p>"He always says that there is perfect confidence between us," said +Michael. "I've heard him say so ever since I can remember, and I've +heard him tell people that I always brought him my boyish troubles. But +I never did, even as a boy, even when I got into a scrape at Eton. My +tutor stood by me in that. Wentworth never could endure him. He said he +was such a snob. But snob or not, he was a firm friend to me. And I +never told him even at the first of my love for Fay. I somehow could +not. You simply can't tell Wentworth things. But he has got it into his +head that I always have, and that this is the first time I have kept +anything from him. If I had only Fay's leave to tell him! It is the only +thing to do."</p> + +<p>The door opened, and to the astonishment of both men, Fay and Magdalen +came in. Fay looked as exhausted, as hopeless, as she had done three +months ago when Magdalen had brought her to make her confession to the +Bishop in this very room.</p> + +<p>She evidently remembered it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him and +said, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Do +you think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy on +me again, like He did before?"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean by God having mercy, that Wentworth will still marry you if +he knows the truth?"</p> + +<p>She did not answer. That was of course what she meant.</p> + +<p>She looked from one to the other of her three friends with a mute +imploring gaze. Their eyes fell before hers.</p> + +<p>"I have not slept all night," she said to the Bishop.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> "Magdalen stayed +with me. And we came quite early because I had to come. Wentworth must +be told. It isn't because Magdalen says so. She hasn't said so, though I +know she felt he ought to be told from the first. And it isn't because +he's sure to find out. And oh! Michael, it isn't for your sake, to put +you right with him. It ought to be, but it isn't. But I can't let him +kiss me any more, and not say. It makes a kind of pain I can't bear. It +has been getting worse and worse ever since Michael came back, only I +did not know what it was at first, and yesterday——" she stopped short, +shuddering. "He came to see me yesterday," she said in a strangled +voice. "He was so dear and good, so wonderful. There never was anyone +like him. It is in my heart that he will forgive me. And he trusts me +entirely. I can't deceive him any more."</p> + +<p>The eyes of Michael and Magdalen met in a kind of shame. Those two who +had loved her as no one else had loved her, who had understood her as no +one else had understood her, saw that they had misjudged her. They had +judged her by her actions, identified her with them. And all the time +the little trembling "pilgrim soul" in her was shrinking from the pain +of those very actions, was growing imperceptibly apart from them, was +beginning to regard them with horror, not because they had caused +suffering to others, but because they had ended by inflicting anguish +upon herself. The red-hot iron of our selfishness with which we brand +others becomes in time hot at both ends. We don't know at first what it +is that is hurting us, why it burns us. But our blistered hands, cling +as they will, must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> needs drop it at last. Fay's cruel little white hand +had let go.</p> + +<p>Michael took it in his and kissed it.</p> + +<p>"Wentworth is coming here this morning," said the Bishop gently. "He may +arrive at any moment. Stay here and speak to him. And ask him to forgive +you, Fay. You need his forgiveness."</p> + +<p>"I don't know how to tell him," gasped Fay. "I tried yesterday, and I +couldn't."</p> + +<p>"Let me tell him," said Michael, and as he spoke, the door opened once +more, and Wentworth was announced.</p> + +<p>He had got ready what he meant to say. The venomous sentences which he +had concocted during a sleepless night were all in order in his mind.</p> + +<p>Who shall say what grovelling suspicions, what sordid conjectures, had +blocked his inflamed mind as he drove swiftly across the downs in the +still June morning? He meant to extort an explanation from his brother, +to have the whole subject out with him once for all. He should not be +suffered to make Fay his accomplice for another hour. His tepid spirit +burned within him when he thought of Michael's behaviour to Fay. He said +to himself that he could forgive that least of all.</p> + +<p>He had expected to find Michael alone, or possibly the Bishop only with +him, the Bishop who <i>knew</i>. He was disconcerted at finding Fay and +Magdalen there before him.</p> + +<p>A horrible suspicion that Magdalen also knew darted across his mind.</p> + +<p>It was obvious to him that he had broken up a conference, a conspiracy. +His bitter face darkened still more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't know what you are all plotting about so early in the morning," +he said. "I must apologise for interrupting you. I seem to be always in +the way now-a-days. People are always whispering behind my back. But I +have come over to see Michael. I want a few plain words with him without +delay, and I intend to have them."</p> + +<p>"That is well," said the Bishop, "because you are about to have them. We +were speaking of you when you came in."</p> + +<p>"I wish to see Michael alone," said Wentworth, stung by the Bishop's +instant admission of being in his brother's confidence.</p> + +<p>He looked only at Michael, who, his eyes on the ground, was leaning +white as death against the mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>"Do you wish us to go, Michael?" said the Bishop.</p> + +<p>"I wish you all to stay," he said, raising his eyes for a moment. His +hand shook so violently that he knocked over a little ornament on the +mantelpiece, and it fell with a crash into the fireplace. His voice +shook, too, but his eyes were steady. His great physical weakness, +poignantly apparent though it was, seemed a thing apart from him, like a +cloak which he might discard at any moment.</p> + +<p>"I cannot say all I have to say before others," said Wentworth fiercely, +"even if they are all his confederates in trying to keep me in the dark, +all, that is, except Fay. We know by experience that she can shield a +man who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know by +experience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You have been kept in the dark," said the Bishop with compassion; "you +have not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive."</p> + +<p>In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense of +impending calamity. He looked again at Michael.</p> + +<p>Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembled +impotently.</p> + +<p>Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depths +to see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by the +first sight of him in his convict's blouse.</p> + +<p>"I always trusted you," he said with a groan, putting up his hand so as +to shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secret +you're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't <i>that</i> I mind. It is +that—whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have kept +it from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely, +Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you should +treat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend."</p> + +<p>No one spoke.</p> + +<p>"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It's +rather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, what +I've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well +know for these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of +your own accord, what you have been persuaded to by +this—this"—Wentworth looked at the Bishop—"this outsider, this middle +man."</p> + +<p>A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middle +man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You have got to hear," said Michael, and the trembling left him.</p> + +<p>He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand on +the mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalen +for the first time saw a likeness between them.</p> + +<p>"I have kept things from you. You are right there," said Michael, +speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceived +you till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years before +that, I fell in love."</p> + +<p>Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment for +Michael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims. +He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightly +attracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if there +had been any attraction he should have been the first to know of it. Yet +the incredible truth was being thrust at him that Michael had struggled +through his first love without drawing upon the deep wells of +Wentworth's knowledge.</p> + +<p>"The woman I fell in love with was Fay. She was seventeen. I was +nineteen."</p> + +<p>The room went round with Wentworth.</p> + +<p>"Fay," he said, in blank astonishment, "Fay!" Then a glare of light +broke in on him.</p> + +<p>"Then it was she," he stammered, "not her maid, as that brute Alington +said—it was she—she herself that——"</p> + +<p>"It was her I went to see the night I was arrested. I was deeply in love +with her."</p> + +<p>Michael paused a moment, and then added gently,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> "She never cared for +me. I did not see that clearly at the time, because I was blinded by my +own passion. I have seen it since."</p> + +<p>Wentworth made no movement.</p> + +<p>"I decided to leave Rome. Fay wrote to me that I ought to go. I went to +say good-bye to her in the garden the night the Marchese was murdered. +While I was in the garden, the murder was discovered and the place was +surrounded, and I could not get away. I hid in Fay's boudoir. The Duke +came in and explained to Fay what had happened. It was the first I knew +of it. Then, when they searched the house and I saw that I must be +discovered in another moment, I came out and gave myself up as the +murderer, because I could not be found hiding in Fay's rooms at night. +It was the only thing to do."</p> + +<p>Fay took a long breath. What a simple explanation it seemed after all. +Why had she been so terrified? Wentworth could not blame her seriously +now.</p> + +<p>"I never tried to shield the Marchesa," Michael went on. "That was her +own idea. I only wanted to shield Fay from being—misconstrued. The Duke +understood. He saw me hiding behind the screen, and tried to save me. He +told me so next day. The Duke was good to me from first to last."</p> + +<p>Wentworth turned a fierce, livid face towards his brother.</p> + +<p>"Have I really got at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? The +Duke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at your +romantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion, +that part of the story is not quite so well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> thought out as the rest, +though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he saw +you behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no need +of an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forced +your love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it, +wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then—<i>then</i>—yes, I begin +to see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies—then when by an evil +chance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of your +being discovered, then you persuaded her, the innocent, inexperienced +creature whom you would have wronged if you could—you worked upon her +feelings, you made her into your accomplice, you persuaded her to hide +you.... You mean cur!... You only sneaked out of your hole when escape +was absolutely impossible. And so the truth, or some garbled part of it, +is choked out of you at last. No wonder you were silent all these years. +No wonder you would not speak. No wonder you let your poor dupe of a +brother break his heart over your silence. Credulous fool that I have +been from first to last. So help me God, I will never speak to you +again."</p> + +<p>The violent, stammering voice ceased at last.</p> + +<p>Fay shivered from head to foot, and looked at her lover.</p> + +<p>Both men had forgotten her. Their eyes never left each other. +Wentworth's fierce face was turned with deadly hatred upon his brother. +Michael met his eye, but he did not speak.</p> + +<p>There was death in the air.</p> + +<p>Suddenly as in a glass she saw that Michael was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> saving her again, was +sacrificing himself for a second time at enormous cost, the cost of his +brother's love.</p> + +<p>"Michael!" said Fay with a sob, "Michael, I can't bear it. You are +trying to save me again, but I can't bear to be saved any more. I have +had enough of being saved. I won't be saved. It hurts too much. I won't +let you do it a second time. I have had enough of being silent when I +ought to speak, I have had enough of hiding things, and pretending, and +being frightened."</p> + +<p>Fay saw at last that the truth was her only refuge from that unendurable +horror which was getting up out of its grave again. She fled to it for +very life, and flung herself upon it.</p> + +<p>She took Michael's hand, and turning to Wentworth began to speak +rapidly, with a clearness and directness which amazed Magdalen and the +Bishop.</p> + +<p>It all came out, the naked truth; her loveless marriage, the great +kindness of her husband towards her, her determination bred of idleness +and vanity to enslave Michael anew when he came to Rome, his resistance, +his decision to leave Italy, her inveigling him under plea of urgency to +come to the garden at night, his refusal to enter the house, her frantic +desire to keep him, his determination to part from her.</p> + +<p>There was no doubt in the minds of those who listened in awed silence +that here was the whole truth at last.</p> + +<p>Fay looked full at Wentworth and then said: "He asked me why I had sent +for him, what it was that he could do for me. And I said—I said—'Take +me with you.'"</p> + +<p>"No," said Michael, wincing as under a lash, "No, you did not. Fay, you +never said that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You did not hear it, but I said it."</p> + +<p>Michael staggered against the mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>Wentworth had not moved. His face had become frightful, distorted.</p> + +<p>"I am a wicked woman, Wentworth," said Fay. "I tried to make him in love +with me. I tried to tempt him. I could make him love me, but not do +wrong. And then I let him take the blame when he was trapped. I had +trapped him there first. He did not want to come. I forced him to come. +I let him spoil his life to save my wretched good name. He is right when +he told you just now that I never loved him. The love was all on his +side. He gave it all. I took it all, and I went on taking it. It was I +who kept him in prison quite as much as the Marchesa. It was I who let +him burn and freeze in his cell. A word from me would have got him out."</p> + +<p>Wentworth laughed suddenly, a horrible, discordant laugh.</p> + +<p>They had rotted down before his eyes to loathsome unrecognisable +corpses—the man and the woman he had loved.</p> + +<p>Fay looked wildly at him.</p> + +<p>"But you are good," she said faintly. "You won't, Wentworth, you won't +cast me off like—like I did Michael."</p> + +<p>He did not look at her.</p> + +<p>He took up his gloves and straightened the fingers as his custom was.</p> + +<p>"There is no longer anything which need detain me here," he said to the +Bishop, and he moved towards the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Nothing except the woman whose fate is in your hands," said the Bishop +gently. "What of her? She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden. +Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You can +repay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity even +greater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you? +Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves you +and is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crush +her if you will. But will you?"</p> + +<p>"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees.</p> + +<p>His face was as flint, as he looked down at her, and tried to push away +her hands.</p> + +<p>"Let him go, my child," said the Bishop sternly, and he took Fay's +hands, and held them. "It is no use trying to keep a man who does not +love you. Go, Wentworth. You are right. There is nothing to keep you +here. In this room there are two people, one of whom has sinned and has +repented, and both of whom love you and have spoken the truth to you. +But there is no love and truth in you to rise up and meet theirs. You do +not know what love and truth are, even when you see them very close. You +had better go."</p> + +<p>"I will go," said Wentworth, his eyes blazing. And he went out and shut +the door behind him.</p> + +<p>Fay's hands slipped out of the Bishop's, her head fell forward, and she +sank down on the floor. The Bishop and Magdalen bent over her.</p> + +<p>Michael looked a moment at her, and swiftly left the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> room. He overtook +Wentworth in the hall, groping blindly for his hat.</p> + +<p>"Come in here," said Michael, "I want a word with you," and he half +pushed Wentworth into a room leading out of the hall. It was a dreary +little airless apartment with a broken blind, intended for a +waiting-room but fallen into disuse, and only partially furnished, the +corners piled with great tin boxes containing episcopal correspondence.</p> + +<p>Michael closed the door.</p> + +<p>"Wentworth," he said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand. +Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were +acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He +seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting words towards +himself.</p> + +<p>"I see one thing," said Wentworth, "and that is that I'm not inclined to +marry your cast-off mistress."</p> + +<p>Michael closed with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the +lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, +airless little room with its broken blind.</p> + +<p>Wentworth knew Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands had +him by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay had +knitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers. +But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knew +he was trying to throw him, and break his back.</p> + +<p>Wentworth fought for his life, but he was over-matched. The awful, +murderous hands were feeling for his neck again, the sobbing breath was +on his face,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> the glaring eyes staring into his. The hands closed on his +throat once more, squeezing his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes out of +his head. He made a last frightful struggle to wrench the hands away. +But they remained clutched into his flesh, choking his life out of him. +There was a thin, guttural, sawing noise mixed in with the sobbing. Then +all in a moment the sobbing ceased, he felt the hands relax, and then an +avalanche of darkness crashed down on him, and buried him beneath it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2> + +<div class="headquot"><p> +That game of consequences to which we all sit down, the +hanger-back not least.</p> +<p class="sig">—R. L. Stevenson.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Down, very deep down. Buried in an abyss of darkness, shrouded tightly +in a nameless horror that pressed on eyes and breath and hands and +limbs.</p> + +<p>At last a faint sound reached Wentworth. Far away in some other world a +clock struck. His numbed faculties apprehended the sound, and then +forgot it when it ceased.</p> + +<p>At last he felt himself stir. He found himself staring at a glimmer of +light. He could not look at it, and he could not look away from it. What +was it? It had something to do with him. It grew more distinct. It was a +window with a broken blind.</p> + +<p>Someone close at hand began to tremble. Wentworth sat up suddenly and +found it was himself. He was alone, lying crumpled up against the wall +where he had been flung down. He knew where he was. He saw the piles of +tin boxes. He remembered.</p> + +<p>He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after +wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried +to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. +For a long time he did not move.</p> + +<p>At last the clock struck again.</p> + +<p>He staggered to his feet as if he had been called, and looked with +intentness at a fallen book and upset<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> inkstand. There was a quill pen +balancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the cane +bottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table. +He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, and +then got hold of it, and put it on. There was a little glass over the +mantelpiece. A ghastly face with a torn collar was watching him +furtively through it. He turned fiercely on the spy and found the face +was his own. He turned up his coat and buttoned it. Then he went to the +half-open door and looked out.</p> + +<p>His ear caught a faint sound. Otherwise the house was very still.</p> + +<p>A maid servant on her knees with her back to him was washing the white +stone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant, +also with her back to him, was watching her.</p> + +<p>"Then it is early morning," he said. And he walked out of the room, and +out of the house, through the wide open doors. A fine rain was falling, +but he did not notice it. He passed out through the gates and found +himself in the road. He stopped unconsciously, not knowing what to do +next.</p> + +<p>A fly dawdling back to the town from the station, passed him, and pulled +up, as he hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Station, sir?" said the driver.</p> + +<p>"No, Barford," said Wentworth, and he got in. The fly with its faded +cushions and musty atmosphere seemed a kind of refuge. He breathed more +freely when he was enclosed in it.</p> + +<p>As in the garden of Eden desolation often first makes itself felt as a +realisation of nakedness. We must creep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> away. We must hide. We have no +protection, no covering.</p> + +<p>Wentworth cowered in the fly. He passed without recognising them all the +old familiar landmarks, the twisting white road that branched off to +Priesthope, the dew ponds, the half hidden, lonely farms. He was in a +strange country.</p> + +<p>He looked with momentary curiosity at a weather-worn sign post which +pointed forlornly where four roads met. It was falling to pieces with +age, but yet it must have been put up there since the morning. He had +never seen it before. He shouted to the driver that he had taken the +wrong road. The man pointed with his whip to where, a mile away, the +smoke of Barford rose among its trees. The landscape suddenly slid into +familiar lines again. He recognised it, and sank back, confused and +exhausted. The effort of speaking had hurt his throat horribly. Was he +going mad? How could his throat hurt him like this—if it wasn't—if +Michael had not——</p> + +<p>He thrust thought from him. He would wait till he got home, till his own +roof was safely over him, the familiar walls round him.</p> + +<p>This was his gate. Here was his own door, with his butler looking +somewhat surprised, standing on the steps.</p> + +<p>He found himself getting out, and giving orders. He listened to himself +telling the servant to pay the fly and to send word by it to his +dog-cart to return home. Of course he had gone to Lostford in the +dog-cart. He had forgotten that.</p> + +<p>Then he heard his own voice ordering a whiskey and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> soda to be brought +to him in the library. And he walked there.</p> + +<p>The afternoon post had arrived with the newspapers and he took up a +paper. But it was printed in some language unknown to him, though he +recognised some of the letters.</p> + +<p>How long had he been gone, an hour, a day, a year?</p> + +<p>He looked at the clock.</p> + +<p>Half-past two. But this great shock with which the air was still rocking +might have stopped it. He put his ear to it. Strange! It was going. And +it always stopped so easily, even if the housemaid dusted it.</p> + +<p>Was it half-past two in the afternoon or in the night?</p> + +<p>There was a band of sunshine across the floor and outside the gardens +and the downs were steeped in it.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was day.</p> + +<p>The butler brought in a tray, and placed it near him.</p> + +<p>"Have you had luncheon, sir?"</p> + +<p>Wentworth thought a moment, and then said "yes."</p> + +<p>"And will Mr. Michael return to-day, sir?"</p> + +<p>Wentworth remembered some old, old prehistoric arrangement by which +Michael was to have come back with him to Barford this afternoon.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, the room suddenly darkening till the sunshine on the +floor was barely visible. "No. He is not coming back."</p> + +<p>The man hesitated a moment, and then left the room.</p> + +<p>Wentworth groped for the flagon of whiskey, poured out a quantity, and +drank it raw. Then he waited for the nightmare to lift.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> + +<p>His mind cleared gradually. His scattered faculties came sneaking back +like defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disaster +and one only to tell. He must needs believe them.</p> + +<p><i>Michael had tried to kill him.</i> Whatever else shifted that remained +true.</p> + +<p>Wentworth bowed his stiffening head upon his hands, and the sweat ran +down his face.</p> + +<p>Michael had tried to kill him, and had all but succeeded. Oh! if only he +had quite succeeded. If only his life had not come back to him! He had +died and died hard in that little room. And yet here he was still alive +and in agony.</p> + +<p>Michael first. That thought was torture. Then Fay. That thought was +torture. The woman he had so worshipped, on whom he had lavished a +wealth of love, far greater than most men have it in them to bestow, had +deceived him, had been willing to be his brother's mistress.</p> + +<p>Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitly +distrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gauged +life and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had he +made an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worse +than the rest.</p> + +<p>What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. What +was Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like other +women, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man like +other men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once his +passions were aroused. It was an old story, as old as the hills, that +men and women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> betray each other. It was as old as the psalms of David.</p> + +<p>Pah! what a fool he was to allow his heart to be wrung by what was only +the ordinary vulgar experience of those who were so silly as to mix +themselves up with their fellow creatures.</p> + +<p>He had only himself to thank.</p> + +<p>Well, at any rate, he was free now. He was awake now. He was not going +to put his hand in the fire a second time.</p> + +<p>He was going abroad immediately. He would start to-morrow morning. In +the meanwhile, he would go and see somebody, call somewhere, be in high +spirits somewhere with others. They (they were Fay and Michael) would +hear of that afterwards, would see how little he cared.</p> + +<p>He seized up his hat and went out. But when he had walked a few hundred +yards he sank down exhausted on a wooden seat in the alder coppice +overhanging the house, and remained there. The baby pheasants crept in +and out, all round him. Their little houses, each with an anxious +step-mother in it, were set at regular intervals along the grassy path. +Only yesterday he had walked along that path with the keeper, and had +thought that in the autumn he and Michael would be shooting together +once more.</p> + +<p>They would never shoot together again.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>As the dusk fell he heard a sound of wheels. His dog-cart returning from +Lostford, no doubt. It did not turn into the court-yard, but came on up +to the house. Wentworth peered down through the leaves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was the Bishop's dog-cart. He recognised the groom who drove it. To +his amazement he saw Lord Lossiemouth get out. After some parley he went +into the house.</p> + +<p>Why should he have come?</p> + +<p>Oh! of course, how dense he was. He had been sent over on an embassy by +Magdalen and the Bishop. They wanted to hush up the fight, and bring +about a reconciliation between him and Fay. He should be told Fay was +making herself ill with crying. His magnanimity would be appealed to by +that pompous prig. Well, he had had his journey for nothing. Wentworth +saw his servants looking for him, and hid himself in the coppice.</p> + +<p>A couple of hours later he left the wood, and went down the steep path +to the gardens. It was nearly dark now. Lights twinkled in the house. +The lamp in the library laid a pale finger of light upon the lawn, +through the open glass doors.</p> + +<p>Wentworth went up to it, and then as he was about to enter, shrank back +astonished.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth was sitting there with his back to the window. +Wentworth stood a long time looking at him. He was evidently waiting for +him to come in. He sat stolidly on as if he were glued to his chair, +smoking one cigarette after another.</p> + +<p>At last he got up. Surely he would go now. He walked to the bookshelves +that lined the walls, inspected the books, selected one, and settled +himself with a voluminous sigh in his arm-chair once more.</p> + +<p>Wentworth stole away across the grass as noiselessly as he had come, and +disappeared in the darkness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2> + +<div class="headquot"> +<div class="center"> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td> +<div class="poem"> +<p><span class="i8">Age by age,</span> +The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard<br /> +For its old, heavy, dull, and shapeless ease.</p> +</div> +</td></tr></table> +</div> +<p class="sig">—W. B. Yeats.</p> +</div> + + +<p>Wentworth never knew how he spent the night, if indeed that interminable +tract in which time stopped could have been one night. It was longer +than all the rest of his life put together. In later years, in peaceful +later years, confused memories came to him of things that he must have +seen then, but of which he took no heed at the time; of seeing the +breath of animals like steam close to the ground; of stumbling suddenly +under a hedgerow on a huddled, sleeping figure with a white face, which +struggled up unclean in the clean moonlight, and menaced him in a foul +atmosphere of rags.</p> + +<p>And once, many years later, when he was taking an unfamiliar short cut +across the downs, he came upon a little pool in an old chalk pit, and +recognised it. He had never seen it by day, but he knew it. He had +wandered to it on a night of moon and mist, and had seen a fox bring +down her cubs to drink just where that twisted alder branch made an arch +over the water.</p> + +<p>Wentworth sat by that chalk pit on the down utterly spent in body and +mind hour after hour, till the moon, which had been tangled in the alder +stooped to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> violet west with one great star to bear her company. Who +shall say through what interminable labyrinths, through what sloughs, +across what deserts, his tortured mind had dragged itself all night? The +sun had gone down upon his wrath. The moon had gone down upon his wrath.</p> + +<p>The land was grey. The spectral horses moving slowly in the misty fields +were grey. A streak of palest saffron light showed where the dim earth +and dim sky met.</p> + +<p>A remembrance came to him of a summer dawn such as this, years and years +ago, when Michael had been dangerously ill, and how his whole soul had +spent itself in one passionate supplication that he might not be taken +from him.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A tender green transparent as the light seen through a leaf in May was +welling up the sky. Two tiny clouds floated in it like rafts of rose +colour upon a sea of glass.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>A deep and bitter sense of injustice was growing within him with the +growing light.</p> + +<p>A hundred times during the night he had recalled in cold anger every +word of that final scene in the library, his own speech, his own +actions, his great wrongs, his unendurable pain.</p> + +<p>And yet again it returned upon him, always with Fay's convulsed face, +and clinging hands, always with the Bishop's scathing words of +dismissal. Their horrible injustice rankled in his mind, their +abominable cruelty to himself revolted him. Hideous crimes had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> been +committed against him, but <i>he</i> had done no evil, unless to love and to +trust were evil. Why then was he to be thus thrust into the wrong, thus +condemned unheard, cast forth with scorn because he had not obediently +fallen in with the Bishop's preposterous demand on him to condone +everything? <i>It was not to be expected of him.</i></p> + +<p>Suddenly the faces of the others watching him after Fay's confession +rose before him, the Bishop's, Magdalen's, Michael's. He saw that they +had not expected it of him either—not even Michael. Only in Fay's +up-raised eyes as she held him by the knees had there been one instant's +anguished hope. Only in hers. And that had been quickly extinguished. +<i>He had extinguished it himself.</i></p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The little clouds turned to trembling flame. The whole sky flushed and +then paled. A thread of fire showed upon the horizon. It widened. It +drew into an arch. The sun rose swiftly, a sudden ball of living fire; +and in a moment the smallest shrub upon the down, the grazing horses, +the huddled sheep, were casting gigantic shadows across the whole world.</p> + +<p>A faint sound of wheels was growing clearer and nearer.</p> + +<p>Wentworth saw a dog-cart coming towards him along the great white road. +As he looked it pulled up and then stopped. A man got out and came +towards him. The raw sunlight caught only his face and shoulders. He +seemed to wade towards him waist deep through a grey sea.</p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth again!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lord Lossiemouth's heavy tired face showed sharp and white in the garish +light.</p> + +<p>"I have been looking everywhere for you," he said, not ungently. "I +waited half the night at Barford, and then went on to Saundersfoot +station, and then to Wrigley. Your servants thought you might possibly +have gone there. But you had not been seen there. Magdalen sent me to +tell you you must go back to the Palace. Your brother is very ill. He +had an attack of hæmorrhage apparently just after you and he parted in +the hall. I promised her not to go back without you. Shall we drive +on?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2> + +<p class="center"> +Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss.<span class="smcap">—Goethe.</span></p> + + + +<p>Michael was dying. All night Magdalen and the Bishop, with nurse and +doctor, fought for his life, vainly strove to stem the stream of blood +with which his life was ebbing away.</p> + +<p>He had been found by Lord Lossiemouth and a servant lying unconscious at +the foot of the staircase in the hall. He had been carried into a room +on the ground floor. Everything had been done, but without avail. +Michael was dying, suffocating in anguish, threshing his life out +through the awful hours, in wild delirium.</p> + +<p>He was in prison once more, beating against the bars of his narrow +window looking out over the lagoon. His hoarse strangled voice spoke +unceasingly. His hands plucked at his wrists, and then dropped exhausted +beneath the weight of the chains which dragged him down.</p> + +<p>Magdalen would fain have spared Fay the ordeal of that vigil. But the +Bishop was inexorable. He bade her remain. And shrunk away in a corner, +shivering to her very soul, Fay listened hour by hour to the wild feeble +voice of her victim, back once more in the cell where he had been so +silent, where the walls had kept his counsel so well. She saw +something—at last—of what he had endured for her, of what he had made +so light.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p> + +<p>At last the paroxysm passed. Michael pushed back the walls with his +hands, and then suddenly gave up the struggle.</p> + +<p>"They are closing in on me," he said. "I cannot keep them back any +longer."</p> + +<p>The contest ceased all in a moment. He lay back motionless with +half-closed eyes, his face blue against the white pillows. The blood had +ceased at last to flow from his colourless lips. Death was very near.</p> + +<p>He knew no one. Not the Bishop, not Magdalen who kept watch beside him, +listening ever for Wentworth's step outside.</p> + +<p>In the dawn Michael's spirit made as if to depart, but it seemed as if +it could not gain permission.</p> + +<p>The light grew.</p> + +<p>And with the light the laboured breathing became easier. He stirred +feebly, and whispered incoherently from time to time. He was still in +his cell. Wentworth's name, the Italian doctor's, rose to his lips. +Then, after a pause, he said suddenly:</p> + +<p>"The Duke is dead. She will come now."</p> + +<p>There was a long silence. He was waiting, listening.</p> + +<p>The Bishop and Magdalen held their breath. Fay knew at last what it is +to fail another. She had failed Michael. Wentworth had failed her.</p> + +<p>"Fay!" Michael said, "come soon."</p> + +<p>She had to bear it, the waiting, the faltered anguish, the suspense, the +faint reiterated call to deaf ears.</p> + +<p>The Bishop got up from his knees beside Michael, and motioned Fay to +take his place. She went timidly to the low couch and knelt down by it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Speak to him," said the Bishop sternly.</p> + +<p>"Michael!" she said.</p> + +<p>He knew her. All other voices had gone from him, but hers he knew. All +other faces had faded from him, but hers he knew. He looked full at her. +Love stronger than death shone in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Fay," he said in an awed voice—"at last."</p> + +<p>She had come to release him, after the Duke's death, as he knew she +would.</p> + +<p>She leaned her white cheek a moment against his in speechless +self-abasement.</p> + +<p>He whispered to her.</p> + +<p>"Have I served you?"</p> + +<p>She whispered back, "Yes."</p> + +<p>He whispered again, "Do you still love me?" The words were quite +inaudible.</p> + +<p>Again she said, "Yes."</p> + +<p>Again a movement of the lips, but no sound.</p> + +<p>He looked at her with radiant questioning eyes.</p> + +<p>Again she murmured, "Yes."</p> + +<p>It had to be like that. He had always known that this moment had to +come. Had he not foreseen it in some forgotten dream?</p> + +<p>A great trembling laid hold on Michael, and then a stillness of +exceeding joy.</p> + +<p>In the silence the cathedral bells chimed out suddenly for early +service. The sound of the bells came faintly to him as across wide +water, the river of death widening as it nears the sea. It was all part +of his dream. The bells of Venice were rejoicing with him, in this his +blessed hour.</p> + +<p>He was freed at last, free as he had never been, free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> as the seagull +seen through the bars that could no longer keep him back. Useless bars, +why had he let them hold him so long? He was out and away, sailing over +the sheening water in a boat with an orange sail; in a boat like a +butterfly with spread wings; sailing away, past the floating islands, +past that pale beautiful grief of sea lavender—he laughed to see it +shine so beautiful—sailing away into a pearly morning, under a luminous +sky.</p> + +<p>The prison was far away now. Left behind. There was a great knocking at +its gates, hurried steps upon the stairs, and a voice crying urgently +through the bars.</p> + +<p>But he could not stay to listen. He was too far away to hear. The voice +was to him but like the thin harsh cry of the sea-mew wheeling near, +blended in with the marvel of his freedom. He took no heed of it. He was +afloat on the great sea-faring tide. Far away before him, but nearer, +nearer, and yet nearer, the sea gleamed in trembling ecstasy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"He does not know me. He does not hear me," said Wentworth, on his knees +beside Michael, raising a wild, desperate face to Magdalen. Was +Michael's last look of deadly hatred to remain with him through life?</p> + +<p>"Speak to him again, Fay," said Magdalen. "Tell him Wentworth is here."</p> + +<p>Fay was still kneeling on the other side. The two lovers' eyes met +across the man they had murdered.</p> + +<p>"Michael," the tremulous voice whispered.</p> + +<p>"Louder," said Wentworth hoarsely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Michael," said Fay again.</p> + +<p>But Michael's face was set. He was sunk in a great rest, breathing deep +and slow, deeper and slower yet, his long arms faintly rising and +falling with each breath.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Fay. For God's sake make him hear," said Wentworth with a cry.</p> + +<p>The Bishop and Magdalen standing apart looked at each other.</p> + +<p>"He has forgiven her, though he does not know it," he said below his +breath.</p> + +<p>Fay stooped down. She raised Michael in her arms, and laid his head on +her breast, turning his fading face to his brother.</p> + +<p>"Michael," she whispered into his ear, with a passion which would have +cloven death itself. "Come back, come back and say one word to +Wentworth."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Very near the sea now. Very near the great peace and light. This was the +real life at last. All the rest had been a vain shadow, a prison where +he had dwelt a little while, not seeing that this great all-surrounding +water, which had seemed to hem him in, was but a highway of light.</p> + +<p>Who were these two with him in the boat? Who but the two he loved best! +Who but Fay and Wentworth! They were all floating on together in +exceeding joy. They were very near him. He felt them one on each side, +but the light was so great that he could not see them. His head was on +Fay's breast. His hand was in Wentworth's hand. It was all as in dim +dreams he had longed for it to be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fay's voice reached him, pressed close to his ear, like the sound of the +sea, held in its tiniest shell.</p> + +<p>He opened his eyes and his brother's white face came to him for a +moment, like sea foam, blown in from the sea of love to which he was +going, part of the sea.</p> + +<p>"Wenty!" he said, and smiled at him.</p> + +<p>And like blown foam upon a breaking wave, the face passed.</p> + +<p>And like the whisper in the shell under the hush of the surge, the voice +passed.</p> + +<p>The shadow which we call life—passed.</p> + +<p class="center"><strong>THE END</strong></p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + +***** This file should be named 18834-h.htm or 18834-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/3/18834/ + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Prisoners + Fast Bound In Misery And Iron + +Author: Mary Cholmondeley + +Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook #18834] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + + + + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE IT +CONTAINED ... THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"] + + + + +PRISONERS + +FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON + +By + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY + +_Author of_ + +"Red Pottage" + + +"But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail." + +--JULIAN OF NORWICH. + + +DODD, MEAD & COMPANY +NEW YORK MCMVI + +Copyright, 1905, 1906, by + +COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY + +Copyright, 1906, by + +MARY CHOLMONDELEY + +_Published, September, 1906_ + + + + +To +My Brother +Reginald + + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"Her eyes turned towards it mechanically +because it contained ... the man of +whom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_ + +"A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ +words" _Page_ 36 + +"'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden +passion" " 46 + +"'You are all blinder one than the other, that +it's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80 + +"If Fay had come in then he would have killed +her, done her to death with the chains he +had worn so patiently for her sake" " 146 + +"Fay noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders +were" " 184 + + + + +CHAPTER I + + Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you, + And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; + You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due, + Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth. + + --ARTHUR C. LEGGE. + + +Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at +Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little +compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome. + +How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to be +represented by so stupendous a name! + +She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards it +mechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precincts +the man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking. + +It was easy to see that Fay--the Duchess of Colle Alto--was an +Englishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name. + +She had the look of perfect though not robust health, the reflection +over her whole being of a childhood spent much in the open air. She was +twenty-three, but her sweet fair face, with its delicate irregular +features, was immature, childish. It gave no impression of experience, +or thought, or of having met life. She was obviously not of those who +criticise or judge themselves. In how many faces we see the conflict, or +the remains of conflict with a dual nature. Fay, as she was called by +her family, seemed all of a piece with herself. Her unharassed +countenance showed it, especially when, as at this moment, she looked +harassed. Anxiety was evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon her +smooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyes +were her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid, +limpid gaze, in which no guile existed, any more than steadfastness, any +more than unselfishness, any more than courage. + +Fay had come into the world anxious to please. She had never shown any +particular wish to give pleasure. If she had been missed out of her +somewhat oppressed and struggling home when she married, it is probable +that the sense of her absence was tinged by relief. + +She had never intended to marry the Duke of Colle Alto. It is difficult +to say why that sedate distinguished personage married her. + +Fay's face had a very sweet and endearing promise in it which drew men's +eyes after her. I don't know what it meant, and they did not know +either, but they instinctively lessened the distance between themselves +and it. A very thin string will tow a very heavy body if there is no +resistance, and the pace is slow. The duke looked at Fay, who was at +that moment being taken out for her first season by her grandmother, +Lady Bellairs. Fay tried to please him, as was her wont with all except +men with beards. She liked to have him in attendance. Her violet eyes +lighted up with genuine pleasure when he came to see her. + +It is perhaps difficult for the legions of women who do not please +easily, and for the handful whose interests lie outside themselves, and +who are not desirous of pleasing indiscriminately, it is difficult for +either to realise the passionate desire to please which possesses and +saps the life of some of their sisters. Admiration with them is not a +luxury, any more than a hot-water bottle is a luxury to the aged, or a +foot rest to a gouty foot. It is a necessity of life. After a becoming +interval, the interstices of which had been filled with flowers, the +duke proposed to Lady Bellairs for Fay's hand. Fay did not wish to marry +him. He was not in the least her ideal. Neither did she wish to remain +unmarried, neither did she wish to part with her grave, distinguished +suitor who was an ornament to herself. And she was distinctly averse to +living any longer in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in a +Hampshire down. Poor women have only too frequently to deal with these +complicated situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds are +seldom in perfect sympathy. + +Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared for +her, and some had cared much. These last had as a rule torn themselves +away from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind, +and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her little +gilt-edged notes. But the duke did not break away. He had selected her, +she pleased him, he desired to marry an Englishwoman. He had the +approval of Lady Bellairs. + +The day came when Fay was suddenly and adroitly confronted with the fact +that she must marry him, or lose him. + +Many confirmed bachelors who openly regret that they have never come +across a woman to whom they cared to tie themselves for life might be +in a position to descant on the inability of wives to enter into their +husbands' inmost feelings, if only they--the bachelors--had known on a +past occasion how to act with sudden promptitude on the top of patience. + +The duke played the waiting game, and then hit hard. He had coolly +allowed himself to be trifled with, until the moment arrived when it did +not suit him to be trifled with any longer. + +The marriage had not proved a marked success, nor an entire failure. The +duke was an irreproachable husband, but, like many men who marry when +they are no longer young, he aged suddenly after marriage. He quickly +became bald and stout. His tact except in these two particulars remained +flawless. He never allowed his deep chagrin to appear when, three years +after his marriage, he still remained without a son to continue his +historic name. + +He was polite to his wife at all times, mildly sarcastic as to her +extravagance. Fay was not exorbitantly extravagant; but then the duke +was not exorbitantly rich. One of Fay's arts, as unconscious as that of +a kitten, was to imply past unhappiness, spoken of with a cheerful +resignation which greatly endeared her to others--and to herself. The +duke had understood that she had not had a very happy home, and he had +honestly endeavoured to make her new home happy. In the early days of +his marriage he made many small experiments in the hope of pleasing the +pretty creature who had thrown in her lot with his. Possibly also there +may have been other subtle, patient attempts to win somewhat from her of +another nature. Possibly there may have been veiled disappointments, +and noiseless retreats under cover of night. + +However these things may have been, after the first year Fay made the +discovery that she was unhappily married. The duke was kind, in kindness +he never failed; but he was easily jealous--at least she thought so; and +he appeared quite unable to see in their true light her amicable little +flirtations with his delightful compatriots. After one or two annoying +incidents, in which the compatriots had shown several distinctly +un-English characteristics, the duke became, in his wife's eyes, +tiresome, strict, a burden. Perhaps, also, she felt the Englishwoman's +surprise at the inadequate belief in a woman's power of guarding her own +virtue, which remains in some nations an hereditary masculine instinct. +She felt that she could take care of herself, which was, in reality, +just what she could not do, as her imperturbable, watchful husband was +well aware. + +But was he aware of the subject of her thoughts at this moment? It was +more than probable that he was. But Fay had not the faintest suspicion +that he had guessed anything. + +One of her many charms was a certain youthful innocence of mind, which +imputed no evil to others, which never suspected that others would +impute it to her. Her husband was wearisome. He looked coldly on her if +she smiled on young men, and she had to smile at them when they smiled +at her. But, she reasoned, of course all the time he really knew that he +could trust her entirely. There was no harm in Fay's nature, no venom, +there were no dark places, no strong passions, with their awful +possibilities for good and evil. She had already given much pain in her +short life, but inadvertently. She was of that large class of whom it +may truly be said when evil comes, that they are more sinned against +than sinning. They always somehow gravitate into the places where people +_are_ sinned against, just as some people never attend a cricket-match +without receiving a ball on their persons. + +And now trouble had come upon her. She had at last fallen in love. I +would not venture to assert that she had fallen in very deep, that the +"breakers of the boundless deep" had engulfed her. Some of us make +shipwreck in a teacup tempest, and when our serenity is restored--there +is nothing calmer than a teacup after its storm--our experience serves, +after a decent interval, as an agreeable fringe to our confidential +conversation. + +Anyhow, Fay had fallen in love. I feel bound to add that for some time +before that event happened life had become intolerably dull. The advent +to Rome of her distant connection, Michael Carstairs, had been at this +juncture a source of delight to her. She had, before her marriage, +flirted with him a very little--not as much as she could have wished; +but Lady Bellairs, who was fond of him, had promptly intervened, and the +young man had disappeared into his examinations. That was four years +ago. + +In reality Fay had half-forgotten him; but when she saw him suddenly, +pale, handsome, distinguished, across a ballroom in Rome, and, after a +moment's uncertainty, realised who he was, she felt the same pleasurable +surprise, soft as the fall of dew, which pervades the feminine heart +when, in looking into an unused drawer, it inadvertently haps upon a +length of new ribbon, bought, carefully put away, and forgotten. + +Fay went gently up to Michael, conscious of her beauty and her wonderful +jewels, and held out her hand with a little deprecating smile. + +"And so we meet again at last," she said. + +He turned red and white. + +"At last," he said with difficulty. + +She looked more closely at him. The dreamy, poetic face had changed +during those four years. She became dimly aware that he had not only +grown from a youth into a man, but that some other transformation had +been painfully wrought in him. + +Instinctively her beaming face became grave to match his. She was slow +to see what others were feeling, but quick to reflect their mood. She +sighed gently, vaguely stirred, in spite of herself, by something--she +knew not what--in her companion's face. + +"It is four years since I saw you," she said. + +And from her lowered voice it seemed as if her life were rooted in +memory alone. + +"Four years," said Michael, who, promising young diplomat as he was, +appeared only able to repeat parrot-wise her last words after her. + +A pause. + +"Do you know my husband?" + +"I do not." + +"May I introduce him to you?" + +Fay made a little sign, and the duke approached, superb, decorated, +dignified, with the polished pallor as if the skin were a little too +tight, which is the Charybdis of many who have avoided the Scylla of +wrinkles. + +The elder Italian and the grave, fair, young Englishman bowed to each +other, were made known to each other. + +That night as the duke drove home with his wife he said to her in his +admirable English: + +"Your young cousin is an enthusiast, a dreamer, a sensitive, what your +Tennyson calls a Sir Galahad. In Italy we make of such men a priest, a +cardinal. He is not an _homme d'affaires_. It was not well to put him +into diplomacy. One may make a religion of art. One may even for a time +make a religion of a woman. But of the English diplomacy one does not +make a religion." + +Fay lay awake that night. From a disused pigeon-hole in her mind she +drew out and unfolded to its short length that attractive remnant, that +half-forgotten episode of her teens. She remembered everything--I mean +everything she wished to remember. Michael's face had recalled it all, +those exquisite days which he had taken so much more seriously than she +had, the sudden ruthless intervention of Lady Bellairs, the end of the +daydream. Fay, whose attention had been adroitly diverted to other +channels, had never wondered how he took their separation at the time. +Now that she saw him again she was aware that he had taken it--to heart. + +During that sleepless night Fay persuaded herself that Michael had not +been alone in his suffering. She also had felt the parting with equal +poignancy. + +They met again a few days later by chance in an old cloistered, deserted +garden. How often she had walked in that garden as she was doing now +with English friends! His presence gave the place its true significance. +They met as those who have between them the bond of a common sorrow. + +"And what have you been doing all these four years?" she asked him, as +they wandered somewhat apart. + +"I have been working." + +"You never came to say good-bye before you went to that place in Germany +to study." + +"I was told I had better not come." + +"I suppose grandmamma told you that." + +"She did, most kindly and wisely." + +A pause. + +She was leaning in the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb of +carved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defaced +inscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defying +death, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying to +wake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress kept +its own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her white +gossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than in memory. +She seemed at one with this wonderful, passionate southern spring, which +trembled between rapture and anguish. The red roses and the white irises +were everywhere. Even the unkept grass in which her light feet were set +was wild with white daisies. + +"Do you remember our last walk on the down that day in spring?" she said +suddenly. + +She had forgotten it until last night. + +"I remember it." + +"It was May then. It is May again now." + +He did not answer. The roses left off calling to the dead, and suddenly +enfolded the two young grave creatures leaning against the tomb, in a +gust of hot perfume. + +"Do you remember," Fay's voice was tremulous, "how you gave me a bit of +pink may?" + +"I remember." + +"I was looking at it yesterday. It is not very pink now." + +It was true. In all shallow meanings, and when she had not had time to +get her mind into a tangle, Fay was perfectly truthful. She had +yesterday been turning over the contents of a little cedar box in which +she kept her childish possessions, and she had found in an envelope a +brown unsightly ghost of what had once been a may-blossom on a Hampshire +down. She had remembered the vivid sunshine, the wheeling seagull, the +soft south wind blowing in from the sea. Michael had kissed her under +the thin dappled shade of the flowering tree, and she had kissed him +back. + +Michael's eyes turned for a long moment to the yellow weather-stained +arches of the cloister, and then he looked full at Fay with a certain +peculiar detached glance which had first made her endeavour to attract +him. There is a look in a man's face which women like Fay cannot endure, +because it means independence of them. + +"I thought," he said, with the grave simplicity which apparently was +unchangeable in him whatever else might change, "that it was only I who +remembered. It has always been a comfort to me that any unhappiness +which my want of forethought, my--my culpable selfishness may have +caused, was borne by myself alone." + +"I was unhappy too," she said, speaking as simply as he. She looked up +at him suddenly as she said it. There was a wet glint in her deep violet +eyes. She believed absolutely at that moment that she had been as +unhappy as he for four years. There was no suspicion in her mind that +she was not genuine. Only the sincere ever doubt their sincerity. Fay +never doubted hers. She felt what she said, and the sweet eyes turned on +Michael had the transparent fixity of a child's. + +They walked unsteadily back to the others and spoke no more to each +other that day. Conscience pricked Fay that night. + +"Leave him alone," it said. "You have both suffered. Let the dead past +bury its dead." + +Fay's conscience was a wonderfully adaptable one with a tendency to +poetic quotation. It showed considerable tact in adopting her point of +view. Nevertheless from that generally fallacious standpoint it often +gave her quite respectable advice. "Leave him alone," said the +hoodwinked monitor. "You are married and Andrea is easily jealous. +Michael is sensitive, and has been deeply in love with you. Don't stir +him up to fall in love with you again. _Leave him alone._" + +The young British matron waxed indignant. Was she, Fay, the kind of +woman to forget her duty to her husband? Was Michael the kind of man to +make love to a married woman? Such an idea was preposterous, unjust to +both of them. And people would begin to talk at once if she and her +cousin (Michael was only a distant connection) were studiously to avoid +each other, if they could not exchange a few words simply like old +friends. No one had suggested an attitude of rigid avoidance; but +throughout life Fay had always convinced herself of the advisability of +a certain wished-for course by conjuring up, only to discard it, the +extreme and most obviously senseless opposite of that course--as the +only alternative. + +She imagined her husband saying: "Why won't you ask Mr. Carstairs to +dinner? He is your cousin and he is charming. What can the reason be +that you so earnestly refuse to meet him?" And then Andrea, who always +"got ideas into his head," would begin to suspect that there had been +"something" between them. + +_No. No._ It would be far wiser to meet naturally now and then, and to +treat Michael like an old friend. Fay had a somewhat muffled conception +of what an old friend might be. After deep thought she came to the +conclusion that it was her duty to ask Michael frequently to the house. +When Fay once recognised a duty she performed it without delay. + +She met with an unexpected obstacle in the way of its adequate +performance. The obstacle was Michael. + +The young man came once, and then again after an interval of several +months, but apparently nothing would induce him to frequent the house. + +Fay did not recognise her boyish eager lover in the grave sedate man, +old of his age, who had replaced him. His dignified and quite +unobtrusive resistance, which had not indifference at its core, added an +intense, a feverish, interest to Fay's life. She saw that he still cared +for her, and that he did not intend to wound himself a second time. He +had had enough. She put out all her little transparent arts during the +months that followed. The duke watched. + +She had implied to her husband with a smile that she had not been very +happy at home. She implied to Michael with a smile that it was not the +duke's fault, but that she was not very happy in her married life, that +he did not care much about her, and that they had but few tastes in +common. Each lived their own life on amicable terms, but somewhat apart +from each other. She owned that she had hoped for something rather +different in marriage. She had, it seemed, started life with a very +exalted ideal of married life, which the duke's + + coarse thumb + And finger failed to plumb. + +Michael remained outwardly obdurate, but inwardly he weakened. His +tender adoration and respect for Fay, wounded and mutilated though they +had been, had nevertheless survived what in many minds must have proved +their death-blow. He still believed implicitly all she said. + +But to him her marriage was the impassable barrier, a barrier as +enfranchisable as the brown earth on a coffin lid. + +After many months Fay at last vaguely realised his attitude towards her. +She told herself that she respected it, that it was just what she +wished, was in fact the result of her own tactfully expressed wishes. +She seemed to remember things she had said which would have led him to +behave just as he had done. And then she turned heaven and earth to +regain her personal ascendency over him. She never would have regained +it if an accident had not befallen her. She fell in love with him during +the process. + +The day came, an evil day for Michael, when he could no longer doubt it, +when he was not permitted to remain in doubt. Who shall say what waves +of boundless devotion, what passionate impulses of protection, of +compassion, of intense longing to shield her from the fire which had +devastated his own youth, passed in succession over him as he looked at +the delicate little creature who was to him the only real woman in the +world--all the rest were counterfeits--and who now, as he believed, +loved him as he had long loved her. + +Michael was one of the few men who bear through life the common +masculine burden of a profound ignorance of women, coupled with an +undeviating loyalty towards them. He supposed she was suffering as he +had suffered, that it was with her now beside the fountain, under the +ilexes of her Italian garden, as it had been with him during these five +intolerable years. + +How Fay wept! What a passion of tears, till her small flower-like face +was bereft of all beauty, of everything except a hideous contraction of +grief! + +He stood near her, not touching her, in anguish far deeper than hers. At +last he took her clenched hand in his. + +"Do not grieve so," he said brokenly. "It is not our fault. It is +greater than either of us. It has come upon us against our wills. We +have both struggled. You don't know how I have struggled, Fay, day and +night since I came to Rome. But I have been in fault. I ought never to +have come, for I knew you were living near Rome. But I did not know it +had touched you, and for myself I had hoped--I thought--that it was +past--in as far as it could pass--that I was accustomed to it. Listen, +Fay, and do not cry so bitterly. I will leave Rome at once. I will not +see you again. My poor darling, we have come to a hard place in life, +but we can do the only thing left to us--our duty." + +Fay's heart contracted, and she suddenly ceased sobbing. She had never +thought of this horrible possibility that he would leave her. + +She drew the hand that clasped hers to her lips and held it tightly +against her breast. + +"Don't leave me," she stammered, trembling from head to foot, from sheer +terror at the thought; "I will be good. I will do what is right. We are +not like other people. We can trust each other. But I can't live without +seeing you sometimes, I could not bear it." + +He withdrew his hand. They looked wildly into each other's eyes. His +convulsed face paled and paled. Even as he stood before her she knew she +was losing him, that something was tearing him from her. It was as +certain that he was going from her as if she were standing by his +deathbed. + +He kissed her suddenly. + +"I shall not come back," he said. And the next moment he was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + Nous passons notre vie a nous forger des chaines, et a + nous plaindre de les porter.--VALTOUR. + + +For a long time Fay had stood on her balcony looking out towards Rome, +while the remembrance of the last few months pressed in upon her. + +It was a week since she had seen Michael, since he had said, "I shall +not come back." + +And in the meanwhile she had heard that he had resigned his appointment, +and was leaving Rome at once. She had never imagined that he would act +so quickly, with such determination. She had vaguely supposed that he +would send in his resignation, and then remain on. In novels in a +situation like theirs the man never really went away, or if he did he +came back. Fay knew very little of Michael, but nevertheless she +instinctively felt and quailed before the conviction that he really was +leaving her for ever, that he would reconstruct a life for himself +somewhere in which she could not reach him, in which she would have no +part or lot. He might suffer during the process, but he would do it. His +yea was yea, and his nay, nay. She should see him no more. Some day, not +for a long time perhaps, but some day, she should hear of his marriage. + +Suddenly, without a moment's warning, her own life rose up before her, +distorted, horrible, unendurable. The ilexes, solemn in the sunset, +showed like foul shapes of disgust and nausea. The quiet Campagna with +its distant faintly outlined Sabine hills was rotten to the core. + +The duke passed across a glade at a little distance, and, looking up, +smiled gravely at her, with a slight courteous gesture of his brown +hand. + +She smiled mechanically in response and shrank back into her room. Her +husband had suddenly become a thing to shudder at, repulsive as a +reptile, intolerable. Her life with him, without Michael, stretched +before her like a loathsome disease, a leprosy, which in the +interminable years would gradually eat her away, a death by inches. + +The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probably +seldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws which +light the faggots round it. + +The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowing +whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough. + +"I cannot live without him," she sobbed to herself. "This is not just a +common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life! +It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have +been! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on. What is reputation +worth, the world's opinion of me?--_nothing_." + +It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worth +to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed with +love. + +To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and to +the worldly as the only real life, the only path. But if we disbelieve +in it, and framing our lives on other lines become voluntarily +bedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we--when that in which we +have not believed comes to pass--can we suddenly rise and follow Love up +his mountain passes? We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds. +We even go feverishly a little way with him. But unless we have learnt +the beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seem +to turn giddy, and lose our footing. Certain precipices there are where +only the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are the +piled bones of many passionate pilgrims. + +Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh, +to be added to that putrefying heap? But can we blame anyone, be they +who they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergo +a real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it? + +Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt to +meet it. It was not to be expected that the attempt would be quite wise +or quite sincere either. Still it was the best she could do. She would +sacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one would +ever speak to her again, but she did not care. + +Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat which +the duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She should +never wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was a +unique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now! They had served to +pass the time in the sort of waking dream in which she had lived till +Michael came. But she was awake now. She looked at herself in the glass +long and fixedly. Yes, she was beautiful. How dreadful it must be for +plain women when they loved! They must know that men could not really +care for them. They might, of course, respect and esteem them, and wish +in a lukewarm way to marry them, but they could never really love them. +She, Fay, carried with her the talisman. + +A horrible doubt seized her, just when she was becoming calm. Supposing +Michael would not! Oh! but he _would_ if he cared as she did. The +sacrifice was all on the woman's side. No one thought much the worse of +men when they did these things. And Michael was so good, so honourable +that he would certainly never desert her. They would become legal +husband and wife directly Andrea divorced her. + +From underneath these matted commonplaces, Fay's muffled conscience +strove to reach her with its weak voice. + +"Stop, stop!" it said. "You will injure him. You will tie a noose round +his neck. You will spoil his life. And Andrea! He has been kind in a +way. And your marriage vows! And your own people at home! And Magdalen, +the sister who loves you. Remember her! Stop, stop! Let Michael go. You +were obliged to relinquish him once. Let him go again now." + +Fay believed she went through a second conflict. Perhaps there lurked at +the back of her mind the image of Michael's set face--set away from her; +and that image helped her at last to say to herself, "Yes. It is right. +I will let him go." + +But did she really mean it? For while she said over and over again, +"Yes, yes; we must part," she decided that it was necessary to see him +just once again, to bid him a last farewell, to strengthen him to live +without her. She could not reason it out, but she knew that it was +absolutely essential to the welfare of both that they should see each +other just once more before they parted--_for ever_. The parting no +longer loomed so awful in her mind if there was to be a meeting before +it took place. She almost forgot it directly her mind could find a +staying point on the thought of that one last sacred interview, of all +she should say, of all they would both feel. + +But how to see him! He had said he would not come back. He left Rome in +a few days. She should see him officially on Thursday, when he was in +attendance on his chief. But what was the use of that? He would hardly +exchange a word with her. She might decide to see _him_ alone; but what +if he refused to see _her_? Instinctively Fay knew that he would so +refuse. + +"We must part." Just so. But how to hold him? How to draw him to her +just once more? That was the crux. + +In novels if a woman needs the help of the chivalrous man ever kneeling +in the background, she sends him a ring. Fay looked earnestly at her +rings. But Michael might not understand if she sent him one, and if the +duke intercepted it he would certainly entirely misconstrue the +situation. + +Fay sat down at her writing-table, and got out her note-paper. Truth +compels me to state that it was of blue linen, that it had a little gilt +coronet on it, and that it was scented. + +She thought a long time. At least she bit the little silver owl at the +end of her pen for a long time. She tore up several sheets. At last she +wrote in her large, slanting, dashing handwriting: + + "_I know that we must part. You are right and I wish it too. It is + all like a terrible dream, and what will the awakening be?_" (Fay + did not quite know what she meant by this, but it impressed her + deeply as she wrote it, and a tear dropped on "the awakening" and + made it look like "reckoning." She was not of those, however, who + having once written one word ever think it can be mistaken for + another; and really reckoning did quite as well as awakening.) + "_But I must see you once before you go. I have something of urgent + importance to say to you._" (It was not clear to Fay what the + matter of importance was. But has not everyone in love laboured + daily under a burden as big as Christian's, of subjects which + demand instant discussion, or the bearer may fall into a state of + melancholia? Fay was convinced as she wrote that there was + something she ached to say to him: and also the point was to say + something that would bring him.) "_Don't fail me. You have never + failed me yet. You left me before when it was right we should part. + Did I try to keep you then? Did I say one word to hold you back?_" + (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a + new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She + realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not + faltered then.) "_I did not falter then. I will not do so now, + though this time is harder than the first._" (It certainly was.) + "_You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. + I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others_ + _have gone come back through the gardens. The door by the fountain + will be unlocked, and come up the balcony steps to my sitting-room. + The balcony window will be open. You know that I should not ask you + to do this unless it was urgent. Will you fail me at the last? For + we shall never meet again, Michael!_" + +Fay closed the note, directed it, pinned it into the lace of her inmost +vest--the wife of an Italian distrusts pockets and postal +arrangements--and then wept her heart out, her vain, selfish little +heart, which for the first time in her life was not wholly vain, nor +wholly selfish. Perhaps it was not her fault if she was cruel. It takes +many steadfast years, many prayers, many acts of humble service before +we may hope to reach the place where we are content to bear alone the +brunt of that pang, and to guard the one we love even from ourselves. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + There will no man do for your sake, I think, + What I would have done for the least word said. + I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, + Broken it up for your daily bread. + + --A. C. SWINBURNE. + + +A witty bishop was once heard to remark that one of the difficulties of +his social life lay in the fact that all women of forty were exactly +alike, and it was impossible to recall their individual label, to which +archdeacon, or canon, or form of spinster good works, they belonged. It +would be dangerous, irreverent, to pry further into the recesses of the +episcopal, or even of the suffragan, mind. There are snowy peaks where +we lay helpers should fear to tread. But it may be stated, without +laying ourselves open to a suspicion of wishing to undermine the Church, +that when the woman of forty in her turn acidly announces, as she not +infrequently does, that all young men seem to her exactly alike, she is +in a parlous condition. + +Yet many women had said that Michael was exactly like every other young +man. And to all except the very few who knew him well he certainly did +appear to be--not an individual at all--but only an indistinguished unit +of a vast army. + +His obvious good looks were like the good looks of others. He looked +well bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class as it is +rare in another. He had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, +square in the shoulders, and thin in the flank; he had the clear +weather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and the +self-effacing manner, which we associate with myriads of well-born, +machine-trained, perfectly groomed, expensively educated, uneducated +Englishmen. Our public schools turn them out by the thousand. The "lost +legion" is made up of them. The unburied bones of the pioneers of new +colonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never never +country," under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; they +fall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen and +craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. +They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from +them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which +they never showed in the business of cricket and football. + +They are essentially not of the stuff of which those dull persons, the +thinkers, the politicians, the educationalists, are made. No profession +knows them except the army. They have no opinions worth hearing. Only +the women who are to marry them listen to them. They are sometimes +squeezed into Parliament and are borne with there like children. About +one in a hundred of them can earn his own living, and then it is as a +land agent. + +They make adorable country squires, and picturesque, simple-minded, +painstaking men of rank. They know by a sort of hereditary instinct how +to deal with a labouring man, and a horse, and how to break in a dog. +They give themselves no airs. We have _millions_ of men like this, and +it is doubtful whether the nation finds much use for them, except at +coronations, where they look beautiful; or on county councils, where +they can hold an opinion without the preliminary fatigue of forming it; +and on the bloodstained fringes of our empire, where they serenely meet +their dreadful deaths. + +In the ranks of that vast army I descry Michael, and I wonder what it is +in him that makes me able to descry him at all. He is like thousands of +other men. In what is he unlike? + +I think it must be something in his expression. Of many ugly men it has +been said with truth that one never observes their ugliness. Something +in the character redeems it. With Michael's undeniable good looks it was +the same. One did not notice them. They were not admired, except, +possibly, for the first moment, or across a room. His rather +insignificant grey eyes were the only thing one remembered him by, the +only part of him which seemed to represent him. + +It was as if out of the narrow window of a fortress _our friend_ for a +moment looked out; that "friend of our infinite dreams" who in dreams, +but, alas! never by day, comes softly to us across the white fields of +youth; who, later on, in dreams but never by day, overtakes us with +unbearable happiness in his hand in which to steep our exhaustion on the +hillside; who when our hair is grey comes to us still in dreams but +never by day, down the darkening valley, to tell us that our worn out +romantic hopes are but the alphabet of his language. + +Such a look there was in Michael's eyes, and what it meant who shall +say? Once and again at long intervals we pass in the thoroughfare of +life young faces which have the same expression, as if they saw beyond, +as if they looked past their own youth across to an immortal youth, from +their own life to an unquenchable, upwelling spring of life. When +Michael spoke, which was little, his words verged on the commonplace. He +explained the obvious with modest directness. He had thought out and +made his own a small selection of platitudes. It is at first a shock to +some of us when we discover that a beautiful spiritual nature is linked +with a tranquil commonplace mind and narrow abilities. + +When Michael's eyes rested on anything his still glance seemed to pass +through it, into its essence. An inscrutable Fate had willed that his +eyes should not rest on any woman save Fay. + +Was her little hand to rend his illusions from him; or did he perhaps +see her as she was, as her husband, her shrewd old grandmother, her +sister even, had never seen her? Fay had revealed to Michael that of +which many men who write glibly of passion die in ignorance, the wonder +and awe of love, clothed in a woman's form, walking the earth. And in a +reverent and grateful loyalty Michael would have laid down his life for +her, as gladly as Dante would have done for "his lady." But Michael +would have laid down his in silence, as one casts off a glove. He had +never read the "New Life." It is improbable that it would have made any +impression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or books +or poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He was +unconsciously by nature that which others of the artistic temperament +consciously are in a lesser degree, and are doomed to try to express. +Michael never wanted to express anything, had no impulse of +self-revelation, no interest in his own mental experiences. + +While Fay was turning over her little _bric-a-brac_ assortment of +feelings, her toy renunciations, her imitation convictions, Michael was +slowly making the great renunciation without even taking himself into +his confidence. To go away. To see her no more. This was death by +inches. As he sat hour after hour in his little room behind the Embassy +it seemed to him as if, by some frightful exertion of his will, he were +wading with incredible slowness out to sea, over endless flats in +inch-deep water, which after an interminable journey would be deep +enough to drown him at last. + +The nausea and horror of this slow death were upon him. Nevertheless, he +meant to move towards it. And where Michael's eye was fixed there his +foot followed. He was not of those who rend themselves by violent +conflict. If he had ever been asked to give his reason for any action of +his life, from the greatest to the smallest, he would have looked at the +questioner in mild surprise, and would have said: "It was the only thing +to do." + +To him vacillation and doubt were unknown. A certain wisdom could never +be his, for he saw no alternatives. He never balanced two courses of +action against each other. + +"There were no two ways about it," he said to his godfather, the Bishop +of Lostford, respecting a decision where there were several +alternatives, which he had endeavoured to set before Michael with +impartiality. But Michael saw only one course, and took it. + +And now again he only saw one course, and he meant to take it. He +sickened under it, but his mind was made up. Fay's letter which duly +reached him only made him suffer. It did not alter his determination to +go. Certainly, he would see her again, if she desired it so intensely, +and had something vitally important to tell him, though he disliked the +suggestion of a clandestine meeting. Still it was Fay's suggestion, and +Fay could do no wrong. But he knew that nothing she could do or say, +nothing new that she could spring upon him would have power to shake his +decision to leave Rome on Friday. _It was the only thing to do._ + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + L'on fait plus souvent des trahisons par faiblesse que + par un dessein forme de trahir.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. + + +Fay's evening-party was a success. Her parties generally were. It was a +small gathering, for as it was May but few of the residents had come +down to the villas. Some of the guests had motored out from Rome. My +impression is that Fay enjoyed the evening. She certainly enjoyed the +brilliancy which excitement had momentarily added to her beauty. + +All the time she was saying to herself, "If people only knew. What a +contrast between what these people think and what I really am. Perhaps +this is the last time I shall have a party here. Perhaps I shall not be +here to-morrow. Perhaps Michael will insist on taking me away with him, +from this death in life, this hell on earth." + +What large imposing words! How well they sounded! Yes, in a way Fay was +enjoying herself. + +Often during the evening she saw the grave, kindly eyes of the duke upon +her. Once he came up to her, and paid her a little exquisite compliment. +Her disgust and hatred of him were immediately forgotten. She smiled +back at him. She did not love him of course. A man like that did not +know what love was. But Fay had never yet felt harshly towards any man +who admired her. The husband who did not understand her watched her with +something of the indulgent, protecting expression which we see on the +face of the owner of an enchanting puppy, which is ready to gallop on +india rubber legs after any pair of boots which appears on its low +horizon. + + * * * * * + +The guests had ebbed away by degrees. Lord John Alington, a tall, bald, +boring Englishman, and one or two others, remained behind, arranging +some expedition with the duke. + +Michael's chief had long since gone. Michael did not depart with him, +but took his leave a few moments later. Michael's departure from Rome +the following day on urgent affairs was generally known. The duke had +watched him bid Fay a mechanical farewell, and had then expressed an +urbane regret at his departure. The thin, pinched face of the young man +appealed to the elder one. The duke had liked him from the first. + +"It is time he went," he said to himself as he watched Michael leave the +room. As Michael left it Fay's excitement dropped from her, and she +became conscious of an enormous fatigue. A few minutes later she dragged +herself up the great pictured staircase to her little boudoir +overlooking the garden, and sank down exhausted on a couch. Her pretty +Italian maid was waiting for her in the adjoining bedroom, and came to +her, and began to unfasten her jewels. + +Fay dismissed her for the night, saying she was not going to bed yet. +She often stayed up late reading. She was of those who say that they +have no time for reading in the day, and who like to look up (or rather, +to say afterwards they looked up) to find the solemn moon peering in at +them. + +To-night there was no solemn or otherwise disposed moon. + +Fay's heart suddenly began to beat so wildly that it seemed as if she +would suffocate. What violent emotion was this which was flooding her, +sweeping away all landmarks, covering, as by one great inrolling tidal +wave, all the familiar country of her heart? Whither was she being swept +in the midst of this overwhelming roaring torrent? Out to sea? To some +swift destruction? Where? Where? + +She clutched the arm of the sofa and trembled. She had known so many +small emotions. What was this? And like a second wave on the top of the +first a sea of recklessness broke over and engulfed her. _What next?_ +She did not know. She did not care. Michael, his face and hand. These +were the only realities. In another moment she should see him, feel him, +hold him, never, never let him go again. + +In the intense stillness a whisper came up through the orange blossom +below her balcony: + +"Fay." + +She was on the balcony in a moment. The scent of the orange blossom had +become alive and confused everything. + +"Come up," she said almost inaudibly. + +"I cannot." + +"You must. I must speak to you." + +"Come down here then. I am not coming up." + +She ran down, and felt rather than saw Michael's presence at the foot of +the little stair. + +He was breathing hard. He did not move towards her. + +"You sent for me, so I came," he said. "Tell me quickly what I can do +for you, how I can serve you. I cannot remain here more than a moment. I +endanger your safety as it is." + +It was all so different from what she had expected, from what she had +pictured to herself. He was so determined and stern; and it had never +struck her as possible that he would not come up to her room, that the +interview would be so short. + +"I can't speak here," she said, angry tears smarting in her eyes. + +"You can and must. Tell me quickly, dearest, why you sent for me. You +said it was all-important. I am here, I will do your bidding, if you +will only say what it is." + +"Take me with you," she gasped inaudibly. + +She had not meant to say that. She was merely the mouthpiece of +something vast, of some blind destructive force that was rending her. +She swayed against the railings, clinging to them with both hands. + +Even as she spoke her voiceless whisper was drowned in a sound but very +little louder. There was a distant stir, a movement as of waking bees in +the house. + +He had not heard her. He was listening intently. + +"Go back instantly and shut the window," he said, and in a moment she +felt he was gone. + +She crept feebly up the stairs to her room and sank down again on the +couch, broken, half dead. + +"I shall see him no more. I shall see him no more," she said to herself, +twisting her hands. What a travesty, what a mockery that one hurried +moment had been! What a parting that was no parting! He had no heart. +He did not really love her. + +Through her stupor she felt rather than heard a movement in the house. +She stole out of her room to the head of the grand staircase. Nearly all +the lights had been put out. Close to a lamp in the saloon below, the +duke and Lord John were standing, looking at a map. "The Grotta Ferrata +road is the best," the duke was saying. And as he spoke a servant came +in quickly, and whispered to the duke, who left the saloon with him. + +Fay fled back to her own room. Something was happening. But what? Could +it have any connection with herself and Michael? No, that seemed +impossible. And Michael must by now have left the gardens, by the +unlocked door by which he had come in. + +Fay drew the reading lamp nearer to her, and opened the book of +devotions which Magdalen, her far off sister in England, had sent her. +Her eyes wandered over the page, her mind taking no heed. + +"_For it is the most pain that the soul may have, to turn from God any +time by sin._" + +There certainly was a sort of subdued stir in the house. A nameless fear +was invading Fay's heart. The book shook in her hand. What _could_ be +happening? And if it was, as it must be, something quite apart from her +and Michael, what did it matter, why be afraid? + +"_For sin is vile, and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to +no pain which is not sin. And to me was showed no harder hell than +sin._" + +A low tap came at the window. Fay started violently, and the book +dropped on the floor. + +The tap was repeated. She went to the window, and saw Michael's face +through the glass. + +She opened the glass door, and he came in. His clothes were smeared and +torn, and there was blood upon his hand. + +"Something has happened," he said. "I don't know what it is, but the +garden is surrounded, and there is someone watching at the door I came +in at. I have tried all the other ways. I have tried to climb the wall, +but there was glass at the top. I can't get out. And they are searching +the gardens with lanterns." + +Even as he spoke they saw lights moving among the ilexes. + +"They can't know," she said faintly. + +"It does not seem possible. They are probably looking for someone else, +but I can't be found here at this hour without raising suspicion. Is +there any way out through the house from here?" + +"Only down the grand staircase." + +"I must risk it. Show me the way." + +They went together down the almost dark corridor. Fay's heart sickened +at the thought that a belated servant might see them. But all was quiet. +At the head of the staircase they both peered over the balustrade. At +its foot in a narrow circle of light stood the duke and Lord John, and a +man with a tri-coloured sash. Even as they looked, the three turned and +began slowly to mount the staircase. + +Fay and Michael were back in her boudoir in a moment. + +"There is a way out here," he said, indicating the door into her +bedroom. + +"It leads into my bedroom, and then through to Andrea's rooms. There is +no passage, and he has a dog in his room. It would bark." + +"I must go back to the garden again," he said, and instantly moved to +the window. Both saw two _carabinieri_ standing with a lantern at the +foot of the balcony steps. + +"If you go down now," said Fay hoarsely, "my reputation goes with you." + +He looked at her. + +It was as if his whole life were focussed on one burning point; how to +save her from suspicion. If he could have shrivelled into ashes at her +feet he would have done it. She saw her frightful predicament, and +almost hated him. + +The animal panic of being trapped caught them both simultaneously. He +overcame it instantly, while she shook helplessly as in a palsy. + +He went swiftly back to the door leading to the staircase, and glanced +through it. + +"They are coming along the corridor," he said. "They will certainly come +in here." + +"Stand behind the screen," she gasped. "I will say no one has been here, +and they will pass through into the other room. As soon as they have +left the room go quickly out by the staircase." + +He looked round him once, and then walked behind a tall screen of +Italian leather which stood at the head of a divan. + +Fay took up her book from the floor, but her numb fingers refused to +hold it. She put it on the edge of the table near her, under the lamp, +hid her shaking hands in the folds of her long white chiffon gown, and +fixed her eyes upon the page. + +The words of the dead saint swam before her eyes: + +"_Yea, He loveth us now as well while we are here, as He shall do while +we are there afore His blessed face. But for failing of love on our +part, therefore is all our travail._" + +There were subdued footsteps outside, a tap, the duke's voice. + +"May I come in?" + +"Come in," she said, but she heard no words. + +She made a superhuman effort. + +"Come in," she said again, and this time to her relief she heard the +words distinctly. + +The duke entered and held the door half closed. + +"I feared to disturb you, my child," he said, "but it is unavoidable +that I disturb you. It is a relief to find that you are not yet in bed +and asleep. A very grave, a very sad event has happened which +necessitates the presence of the police commissioner. Calm yourself, my +Francesca, and my good friend the _delegato_ will explain." + +The official in the sash came in. Lord John stood in the doorway. + +"Duchess," said the official, "I grieve to say that one of your guests +of this evening, the Marchese di Maltagliala, has been assassinated in +the garden, or possibly in the road, and his dead body was dragged into +the garden afterwards. He was found just inside the east garden door, +which by some mischance had been left unlocked." + +A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ words. + +[Illustration: "A DEATHLIKE SILENCE FOLLOWED THE DELEGATO'S WORDS"] + +Fay turned her bloodless face towards him, and her eyes never left +him. She felt Michael listening behind the screen. + +"There was hardly an instant," continued the official, with a touch of +professional pride, "before the alarm was given. By a fortunate chance I +myself happened to be near. The garden was instantly surrounded. It is +being searched now. It seems hardly possible that the assassin can have +escaped. I entreat your pardon for intruding this painful subject on the +sensitive mind of a lady, and breaking in on your privacy." + +"I should think he has escaped by now," said Fay hoarsely. + +"It is possible, but improbable," said the official. Then he turned to +the duke. "This is, I understand from you, the only way into the house +from the garden?" + +"The only way that might possibly still be open," said the duke. "The +doors on the ground floor are both locked, as we have seen." + +"We greatly feared," continued the duke, turning to his wife, "that the +murderer if he were still in the garden, finding it was being searched, +might terrify you by rushing in here." + +"No one has been in here," said Fay automatically. + +"Have you been in this room ever since you left the saloon?" said her +husband. + +"Yes. I have been reading here ever since." + +"Then it is impossible that anyone should have escaped into the house +through this room," said the duke. "The duchess must have seen him. It +is no longer necessary to search the house." + +The _delegato_ hesitated. He opened the glass door and spoke to the men +with the lantern. + +"They are convinced that it is not possible he is concealed in the +garden," he said. "Perhaps if the duchess were deeply engaged in study +he might have serpentinely glided through into the next room without her +perceiving him. It is, I understand, the duchess's private apartment. It +might be as well--where does the duchess's apartment lead into?" + +"Into my rooms," said the duke, "and my dog is there. He would have +given the alarm long ago if any stranger had passed through my room. If +he is silent no one has been near him." + +There was a pause. + +Fay learned what suspense means. + +The _delegato_ twirled his moustaches. + +He was evidently reluctant to give up the remotest chance, and yet +reluctant to inconvenience the duke further. + +"It is just possible," he said, "that the assassin may have taken refuge +in here before the duchess came back to her apartment. My duties are +grave, duchess. Have I your permission?" + +Fay bowed. + +The duke, still urbane, but evidently finding the situation unduly +prolonged, led the way into Fay's bedroom. + +This story would never have been written if Lord John had not remained +standing in the doorway. + +Did Michael know he was there? He had not so far spoken, or given any +sign of his presence. + +"Won't you go into my room, Lord John, and help in the capture," she +said distinctly; and as she spoke she was aware that she was only just +in time. + +But Lord John would not go in, thanks. Lord John preferred to advance +heavily in her direction, and to sit down by her on the couch, telling +her not to look so terrified, that he would take care of her. + +She stared wildly at him, livid and helpless. + +A door was softly opened, and was instantly followed by the furious +barking of a dog. + +"Go and help them," said Fay to Lord John. + +But Lord John did not move. Like all bores he was conscious of his own +attractive personality. He only settled his eyeglass more firmly in his +pale eye. + +"You never spoke to me all evening," he said, with jocular emphasis. +"What have I done to deserve such severity?" + +In another moment the duke and the official returned, followed by +Sancho, a large Bridlington terrier, still bristling and snarling at the +official. + +Fay called the dog to her, and held it forcibly, pretending to caress +it. + +"No one has gone by that way," said the _delegato_ to the duke. "The dog +proves that." + +"Sancho proves it," said the duke gravely. + +As he spoke he paused as if suddenly arrested. His eyes were fixed on a +small Florentine mirror which hung over Fay's writing-table in the angle +of the wall. The duke's face changed, as a man's face might change, who, +conscious of no enemy, feels himself stabbed from behind in the dark. +Then he came forward, and said with a firm voice: + +"We will now go once more into the gardens. Lord John, you will +accompany us." + +Lord John got heavily to his feet. + +"Take Sancho with you," said Fay, holding the dog with difficulty, who +was obviously excited and suspicious, its mobile nostrils working, its +eyes glued to the screen. + +The duke opened the glass door, and Sancho, his attention turned, rushed +out into the night, barking furiously. + +"You need have no further fear," said the duke to Fay, looking into her +eyes. "The assassin has certainly escaped." + +"No doubt," said Fay. + +"Unless he is hiding behind the screen all the time," said Lord John, +with his customary facetiousness. "It is about the only place in the +room he could hide in, except of course the wastepaper basket." + +The _delegato_, who was not apparently a man who quickly seized the +humorous side of a remark, at once stepped back from the window, and +glanced at the wastepaper basket. + +"I may as well look behind the screen," he said, and went towards it. + +But before he could reach it the screen moved, and Michael came out from +behind it. + +The four people in the room gazed at him spell-bound, speechless; Lord +John reeled against the wall. The duke alone retained his +self-possession. + +Michael advanced into the middle of the room, and for a moment his eyes +met Fay's. Who shall say what he read in their terror-stricken depths? + +Then he turned to the duke and said: + +"I ask pardon of you, duke, and of the duchess, my cousin, for the +inconvenience I have caused you. I confess to the murder of the Marchese +di Maltagliala, and sought refuge in the garden. When the garden was +surrounded I sought refuge here. I did not tell the duchess what I had +done, but I implored her to let me take shelter here, and to promise not +to give me up. She ought at once to have given me up. She yielded to the +dictates of humanity and suffered me to hide in this room. Duchess, I +thank you for your noble, your self-sacrificing but unavailing desire to +shield a guilty man." + +Michael went up to her, took her cold hand and kissed it. Then he turned +again to the duke. + +"I offer you my apologies for this intrusion," he said, and the two men +bowed to each other. + +"And now, signor," he said in Italian to the amazed official, "I am at +your service." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser.--VAUVENARGUES. + + +Michael was imprisoned for the night in a cell attached to the Court of +Mandamento, and the next day was sent to Rome to await his trial at the +_assise_. + +Early on the second day after he reached Rome the duke came to him. The +two men looked fixedly at each other. They exchanged no form of +greeting. + +The duke made a little sign with his hand, and the warder withdrew +outside the cell door, which he left ajar. + +Then the duke sat down by Michael. + +"I should have come yesterday," he said in English, "but it took time to +gain permission, and also"--he nodded towards the door--"to arrange." + +"For God's sake give me details," said Michael. + +The duke gave them in a low voice. He described in a careful sequence +the exact position of the dead body, the wound, caused by stabbing in +the back, the strong inference that the murdered man had been attacked +in the road, and then dragged just inside the Colle Alto garden door. + +"I don't see any reason why he should have gone outside the garden," +said Michael. + +"Neither do I. But the garden door was unlocked. It had been locked as +usual, my gardener swears, and the key left in the lock on the inside. +Who then opened it, if for some reason the marchese did not open it +himself?" + +Michael did not answer. + +"I saw the body before it was moved," continued the duke. "It was still +warm. I incline to think the marchese was murdered actually inside the +garden, and that he fell on his face where he stood, and was dragged +behind the hydrangeas. But the _delegato_ thought differently. You will +remember, Carstairs, that the dead man had been dragged by the feet." + +"Did I put him on the right side or the left of the door as you go in?" + +"On the left." + +"On his face?" + +"Yes." + +There was a pause. + +"You had no quarrel with the marchese, I presume?" said the duke +significantly. + +"On the contrary," said Michael; "it is not known, but I had." + +"Just so. Just so. About a woman?" + +Michael winced. + +"About a horse," he said. + +"No," said the duke, with decision. "Think again. Your memory does not +serve you. It was about a woman. Was it not a dancing-girl?" + +"I am not like that," said Michael, colouring. + +"It is of no account what you are like, or what you are not like. What +matters is that which is quickly believed. A quarrel about a woman is +always believed, especially by women who think all turns on them. Were +you not in Paris at Easter?" + +"I was." + +"Was not the marchese in Paris at Easter?" + +"He was. I saw him once at the Opera with the old Duke of Castelfranco." + +"Just so. A quarrel about a dancing-girl at Paris at Easter. That was +how it was." + +"You are right," said Michael, regaining his composure with an effort. +"I owed him a grudge. You will be careful to mention this to no one?" + +"I will mention it only to one or two women on whom I can rely," said +the duke; "and to them only in the strictest confidence." + +Michael nodded. + +Silence fell between them, and he wondered why the duke did not go. The +warder shifted his feet in the passage. + +Presently the duke began to speak in a low, even voice. + +"I owe you an apology," he said. "I saw you standing behind the screen, +reflected in a little mirror, and for one moment I thought you had done +me a great injury. It was only for a moment. I regained myself quickly. +I would have saved you if I could. But I owe you an apology for a +suspicion unworthy of either of us." + +"It was natural," said Michael. He was greatly drawn to this man. + +"I may in some matters be deceived," continued the duke, "for in my time +I have deceived others, and have not been found out. I don't know why +you were in my wife's rooms that night. Nevertheless, I clearly know two +things: one, that you did not murder the marchese, and the other, that +there was nothing wrong between you and my wife. With you her honour was +safe. You and I are combining now to guard only her reputation before +the world." + +Michael did not answer. He nodded again. + +"At the price," continued the duke, "probably of your best years." + +"I am content to pay the price," said Michael. "It was the only thing to +do." Then he coloured like a girl, and raised his eyes to the duke's. "I +went to her that night to say good-bye," he said. "That was why the +garden door was unlocked. I love her. I have loved her for years." + +It seemed as if everything between the two men had become transparent. + +"I know it," said the duke. "She also, the duchess, is in love with +you." + +Michael drew back perceptibly. His manner changed. + +"A little--not much," continued the duke. "I watched her, when you gave +up yourself. She could have saved you. She could save you still--by a +word. But she will not speak it. She appeared to love me a little once. +I was not deceived. I knew. She loves you a little now. Why do you +deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has a +permanent and deep affection--for her very charming self." + +The words fell into the silence of the bare room. Michael's thin hands, +tightly clenched, shook a little. + +The duke bent towards him. + +"Is she worth it?" he said, with sudden passion. + +No answer. Michael hid his face in his hands. + +"Is she worth it?" said the duke again. + +Michael looked up suddenly at the duke, and the elder man winced at the +expression in his face. He looked through the duke, through his veiled +despair and disillusion, beyond him. + +"Yes, she is worth it," he said. "You do not understand her because you +only love her in part. I meant to serve her by leaving Rome, but now I +can't leave it. What I can do for her I will. It is no sacrifice--I am +glad to do it--to have the chance. I have always wished--to serve +her--to put my hands under her feet." + +The sudden radiance in Michael's face passed. He looked down +embarrassed, annoyed with himself. + +"There remains then but one other person to be considered," said the +duke, looking closely at him. "The beautiful heroine, the young lover, +these are now accommodated. All is _en regle_. But that dull elderly +person who takes the _role_ of husband on these occasions! Is there not +a husband somewhere? What of him? Will he indeed fold his arms as on the +stage? Will he indeed stand by as serenely as you suppose and suffer an +innocent man to make this sacrifice for the sake of his--honour?" + +"He will, only because he must," said Michael, catching his breath. "I +had thought of that. He can do nothing. Have I not accused myself? And +his honour is also hers. They stand and fall together." + +[Illustration: "'IS SHE WORTH IT?' HE SAID WITH SUDDEN PASSION"] + +"They stand and fall together," said the duke slowly. "Yes, that is +true. And he is old. He is finished. He is the head of a great house. +His honour is perhaps the only thing that still means anything to +him. Nevertheless, it is strange to me that you think he would consent +to keep it at so great a cost, the cost perhaps of twenty years. That +were impossible.... He could not permit _that_. But--one little year--at +most. That perhaps his conscience might permit. One little year! You are +young. Supposing he has within him," he laid his hand on his heart, +"that of which his wife does not know, which means that his release is +_sure_. Do you understand? Supposing it must come soon--very soon--her +release--and yours. Perhaps then----" There was a long pause. "Perhaps +then his conscience might suffer him to keep silence." + +Michael's hand made a slight movement. The duke took it in his, and held +it firmly. + +"Listen," he said at last. "Once when I was young, twenty years ago, I +loved. I too would fain have served a woman, would have put my hands +under her feet. There is always one such a woman in life, but only one. +She was to me the world. But I could only trouble her life. She was +married. She had children. I knew I ought to go. I meant to go. She +prayed me to go. I promised her to go--nevertheless I stayed. And at +last--inasmuch as she loved me very much--I broke up her home, her life, +her honour, she was separated from her children. She lost all, and then +when all was gone she died. The only thing which I could keep from her +was poverty, which would have been nothing to her. She never reproached +me. There is no reproach in love. But--she died in disgrace, and alone. +From the first to the last it was her white hands under my feet. That +was how I served the one woman I have deeply loved, the one creature +who deeply loved me." The duke's voice had become almost inaudible. "You +have done better than I," he said. + +Then he kissed Michael on the forehead, and went out. + +They never met again. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + The year slid like a corpse afloat.--D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +And how did it fare with Fay during the days that followed Michael's +arrest? + +Much sympathy was felt for her. Lord John, wallowing in the delicious +novelty of finding eager listeners, went about extolling her courage and +unselfishness to the skies. Her conduct was considered perfectly natural +and womanly. No man condemned her for trying to shield her cousin from +the consequences of his crime. Women said they would have done the same, +and envied her her romantic situation. + +And Fay, shut up in her darkened room in her romantic situation--she who +adored romantic situations--what were Fay's thoughts? + +There is a travail of soul which toils with hard crying up the dark +valley of decision, and brings forth in anguish the life entrusted to +it. Perhaps it is the great renunciation. Perhaps it is only the loyal +inevitable deed which is struggling to come forth, to be allowed to live +for our healing and comfort. + +But there is another travail of soul, barren, unavailing, which flings +itself down, and tosses in impotent misery from side to side, from mood +to mood, as in a sickly trance. + +Such was Fay's. + +Her decision not to speak had been made in the moment when she had let +Michael accuse himself, and she kept silence. But that she did not know. +She thought it was still to make. + +"I must speak. I must speak," she said to herself all through the +endless day after Michael's arrest, all through the endless night, until +the dawn came up behind the ilexes, the tranquil dawn that knew all, and +found her shuddering and wild-eyed. + +"I must speak. I cannot let Michael suffer for me, even to save my +reputation." + +_Her reputation!_ How little she had cared for it twenty-four hours ago, +when passion clutched the reins! + +But now---- The public shame of it--the divorce which in her eyes must +ensue--Andrea! Her courteous, sedate, inexorable husband, whose will she +could not bend, whom she could not cajole, whose mind was a closed book +to her; a book which had lain by her hand for three years, which she had +never had the curiosity to open!--Fay feared her husband, as we all fear +what we do not understand. He would divorce her--and then---- And +Magdalen at home--and---- + +A flood of suffocating emotion swept over her, full of ugly swimming and +crawling reptiles, and invertebrate horrors, the inevitable scavengers +of the sea of selfish passion. + +Fay shrank back for very life. She could not pass through that flood and +live. Nevertheless she felt herself pushed towards it. + +"But I have no choice. I _must_ speak. He is innocent. He is doing this +to shield me because he loves me. But I also love him, far, far more +than he loves me, and I will prove it." + +Fay went in imagination through a fearful and melodramatic scene, in +which she revealed everything before a public tribunal. She saw her +husband's face darken against her, her lover's lighten as she saved him. +She saw her slender figure standing alone, bearing the whole shock, +serene, unshaken. The vision moved her to tears. + +Was it a prophetic vision? + +It was quite light now, and she crept to her husband's room. She had not +seen him during the previous day. He had been out the whole of it. She +felt drawn towards him by calamity, by the loneliness of her misery. + +The duke was not asleep. He was lying in bed with his hands clasped +behind his head. His sallow face, worn by a sleepless night, and perhaps +by a wounding memory, was turned towards the light, and the new day +dealt harshly with it. There were heavy lines under the eyes. The eyes +looked steadily in front of him, plunged deep in a past which had +something of the irrevocable tenderness of the dawn in it, the holy +reflection of an inalienable love. + +He did not stir as his wife came in. His eyes only moved, resting upon +her for a moment, focussing her with difficulty, as if withdrawn from +something at a great distance, and then they turned once more to the +window. + +A pale primrose light had risen above the blue tangled mist of ilexes +and olives. The cypresses stood half-veiled in mist, half-sharply clear +against the stainless pallor of the upper sky. + +"I am so miserable, Andrea." + +He did not speak. + +"I cannot sleep." + +Still no answer. + +"I am convinced that Michael is innocent." + +"It goes without saying." + +"Then they can't convict him, can they?" + +"They will convict him," said the duke, and for a moment he bent his +eyes upon her. "Has he not accused himself?" + +"They won't--hang him?" + +The duke shrugged his shoulders. He did not think fit to enlighten his +wife's ignorance of the fact that in Italy there is no capital +punishment. + +"But if he has not done it, and we know he has not," faltered Fay. + +"He is perhaps shielding someone," said the duke, "the real murderer." + +"I don't see how that could be." + +"He may have his reasons. The real murderer is perhaps a friend--or +a--woman. Your cousin is a romantic. It is always better for a romantic +if he had not been born. But generally a female millstone is in +readiness to tie itself round him, and cast him into the sea. The world +is not fitted to him. It is to egotistic persons like you and me, my +Francesca, to whom the world is most admirably adapted." + +"I don't see how the murderer could be a woman. Women don't murder men +on the high road." + +"No, not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty is +the high road! But I have known, not once nor twice, women to murder men +very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die. I am much +older than you, but you will perhaps also live to see a woman do this, +Francesca. And now retire to your room, and let me counsel you to take +some rest. Your beauty needs it." + +She burst into tears. + +"How little you care!" she said between her sobs, "how heartless you +are! I will never believe they will convict him. He is innocent, and his +innocence will come to light." + +"I think the light will not be suffered to fall upon it," said the duke. + +Afterwards, years afterwards, Fay remembered that conversation with +wonder that its significance had escaped her. But at the time she could +see nothing, feel nothing except her own anguish. + +She left her husband's room. There was no help or sympathy in him. She +went back to her own room and flung herself face downwards on her bed. +Let no one think she did not suffer. + +A faint ray of comfort presently came to her at the thought that +Michael's innocence might after all come to light. It might be proved in +spite of himself. + +She would pray incessantly that the real murderer might give himself up, +or that suspicion should fall on him, and he should be dragged to +justice. And then, if--_after all_--Michael were convicted and his life +endangered, then she _must_ speak. But--not till then. Not now when all +might yet go well without her confession.... And it was not as if she +were guilty of unfaithfulness. She had not done anything wrong beyond +imprudence. Yes, she had certainly been imprudent; that she saw. But she +had done nothing _wrong_. It could not be right to confess to what in +public opinion amounted to unfaithfulness on her part, and dishonourable +conduct on his, when it was not so. They were both innocent. It would be +telling a lie to let anyone think either of them could be guilty of such +a sordid crime. It looked sordid now. Why should she drag down his name +with hers into the mud--unless it were absolutely necessary.... And she +must remember how distressed Michael would be if she said a word, if she +flung her good name from her, which he had risked all to save. Some +semblance of calm returned to her, as she thus reached the only +conclusion which the bias of her mind would permit. The stream ran +docilely in the little groove cut out for it. + +During the days and weeks that followed Fay shut herself up, and prayed +incessantly for Michael. + +She prayed all through the interminable interval before the trial. + +"If it goes against him, I will speak," she said. + +Yet all the time Michael who loved her knew that she would not speak. +Her husband who could have loved her, and who watched her struggle with +compassion, knew that she would not speak. Only Fay who did not know +herself believed that she would speak. + + * * * * * + +The day came when the duke gravely informed her that Michael was found +guilty of murder. + +Fay's prayers it seemed had not availed. She prayed no more. There was +no help in God. Probably there was no God to pray to. Her sister +Magdalen seemed to think there was. But how could she tell? Besides, +Magdalen had such a calm temperament, and nothing had ever happened to +make her unhappy, or to shake her faith. It was different for Magdalen. + +Evidently there was no justice anywhere, only a blind chance. "The truth +will out," Fay had said to herself over and over again. She had tried to +have faith. But the truth had not come out. She was being pushed, pushed +over the edge of the precipice. Oh, why had Michael fallen in love with +her when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgust +those early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time of +primroses. It had brought her to _this_--to this horrible place of tears +and shame and shuddering--to these wretched days and hideous nights. Oh, +why, why, had he loved her! Why had she let herself love him! + +Suddenly she said to herself, "They may reprieve him yet. If his +sentence is not commuted to imprisonment I will speak, so help me God I +will." + +It could never be known whether she would have kept that oath, for the +next day she heard that Michael had been sentenced to fifteen years' +imprisonment. Why had Andrea been so cruel as to let her imagine for a +whole horrible night that Michael's would be a death sentence, when in +Italy it seemed there was no capital punishment as in England? It was +just like Andrea to torture her needlessly! When the sentence reached +her Fay drew breath. The horrible catastrophe had been averted. To a man +of Michael's temperament the living grave to which he was consigned was +infinitely worse than death. But what was Michael's temperament to Fay? +She shut her eyes to the cell of an Italian prison. Michael would live, +and in time the truth would come to light, and he would be released. + +She impressed this conviction with tears on his half-brother Wentworth +Maine, the kind, silent elder brother, Michael's greatest friend, who +had come out to Italy to be near him, and who heard sentence given +against him with a set face, and an unshaken belief in his innocence. +Even to Wentworth Michael had said nothing, could be induced to say no +word. He confessed to the murder. That was all. + +Wentworth, who had never seen Fay before, as she had married just before +he came to live at his uncle's place in Hampshire near Fay's home, saw +the marks of grief in her lovely face, and was unconsciously drawn +towards her. He was shy as only men can be; but he almost forgot it in +her sympathetic presence. She came into his isolated, secluded life at +the moment when the barriers of his instinctive timidity and apathy were +broken down by his first real trouble. And he was grateful to her for +having done her best to save Michael. + +"I shall never forget that," he said, when he came to bid her good-bye. +"There are very few women who would have had the courage and +unselfishness to act as you did." + +Fay winced and paled, and he took his leave, bearing away with him a +grave admiration for this delicate, sensitive creature, so full of +tender compassion for him and Michael. + +He made no attempt to see her again when he returned to Italy some +months later to visit Michael in prison. To visit Fay on that occasion +would have taken him somewhat out of his way, and Wentworth never went +out of his way, not out of principle, but because such a course never +occurred to him. He would have liked to see her, in order to tell her +about Michael's condition, and also to deliver in person a message which +Michael had sent to Fay by him. But when he realised that a detour would +be necessary in order to accomplish this, he wrote to Fay to tell her +with deep regret that it was impossible for him to see her, gave her +Michael's message, and returned to England by the way he came. +Nevertheless, he often thought of her, for she was inextricably +associated with the unspeakable trouble of his life, his brother's +living death. + +When all was over, and the last sod had--so to speak--been cast upon +that living grave, Fay tried to take up her life again. But she could +not. She had lost heart. She dared not be alone. She shunned society. At +her earnest request her sister Magdalen came out to her for a time, from +the home in England, into which she was wedged so tightly. But even +Magdalen's calm presence brought no calm with it, and the deepening +friendship between her sister and her husband only irritated Fay. +Everything irritated Fay. She was ill at ease, restless, feebly +sarcastic, impatient. + +There is a peace which passes understanding, and there is an unpeace +which passes understanding also. Fay did not know, would not know, why +she was so troubled, so weary of life, so destitute of comfort. + +Had she met the great opportunity of her life, the turning point, and +missed it? I do not think so. It was not for her. + + * * * * * + +A year later the duke died. + +He made a dignified exit. An attack of vertigo to which he was liable +came on when he was on horseback. He was thrown and dragged, and only +survived a few days as by a miracle. His wife, who had seen little of +him during the last year, saw still less of him during the days of his +short illness. But when the end was close at hand he sent for her, and +asked her to remain in a distant recess of his room during the painful +hours. + +"It will be a happier memory for you," he said gently to her between the +paroxysms of suffering, "to think that you were there." + +And so propped high in a great carved bedstead in the octagonal room +where the Colle Altos were born, and where, when they could choose, they +died, the duke lay awaiting the end. + +He had received extreme unction. The chanting choir had gone. The priest +had closed his pale fingers upon the crucifix, when he desired to be +left alone with his wife. + +She drew near timidly and stood beside his bed. + +He bent his tranquil, kindly eyes upon her. + +"Good-bye, my Francesca," he said. "May God and his angels protect you, +and give you peace." + +A belated compunction seized her. + +"I wish I had been a better wife to you, Andrea," she said brokenly, +laying her hand on his. + +He made the ghost of a courteous, deprecating gesture, and raised her +hand to his lips. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes and his +hand fell out of hers. + +Through the open window came a sudden waft of hot carnations, a long +drawn breath of the rapturous Italian spring. + +It reached the duke. He stirred slightly, and opened his eyes once more. +Once more they fell on Fay, and it seemed to her as if with the last +touch of his cold lips upon her hand their relation of husband and wife +had ceased. Even at that moment she realised with a sinking sense of +impotence how slight her hold on him from first to last had been. +Clearly he had already forgotten it, passed beyond it, would never +remember it again. + +"It is spring," he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and for +a moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sun +shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year +he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you keep your +cousin Michael in prison?" + +And thereupon the duke closed his eyes on this world, and went upon his +way. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + A bachelor's an unfinished thing ... He wants somebody to listen to + his talk.--EDEN PHILLPOTTS. + + +Reader, do you know Barford, in Hampshire? If you don't, I can tell you +how to get to it. You take train from Victoria, and you get out at +Saundersfoot. There is nothing at Saundersfoot, except a wilderness of +lodgings and a tin station and a high wind. It need not detain an active +mind beyond the necessary moment of enquiring by which road it may be +most quickly left. I cannot tell you who Saunders was, nor why the +watering-place was called after his foot. But if you walk steadily away +from it for five miles inland, along the white chalky road between the +downs, you will arrive at the little village of Barford. + +There is only one road, so you cannot miss your way. Little twisty lanes +fretted with sheep-tracks drop down into it now and then from the +broad-shouldered downs on either side, but take no notice of them. If +you persevere, you will in due course see the village of Barford lying +in front of you, which, at a little distance, looks as if it had been +carelessly swept into a crease between the downs, while a few cottages +and houses on the hillside seem to have adhered to the ground, and +remained stuck where they were when the sweeping took place. + +After you have passed the pond and the post office, and before you reach +the school, you will see a lodge, and an old Italian iron gateway, +flanked by a set of white wooden knobs planted in the ground on either +side, held together by chains. The white knobs are apparently there in +order to upset carriages as they drive in or out. But very few carriages +have driven in or out during the last two years, except those of the +owner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine. Wentworth, since he inherited +the place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhat +secluded life. But during the last two years, ever since his +half-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy, +Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of his +neighbours. He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as a +magistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin, +refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of long +tracts of solitary unhappiness. And the habit of solitude was growing on +him. + +The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny low +rooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere of +ancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of the +place as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon its +surface. The patch, however, adroitly copied, is seen to be an +innovation. + +The old house, which had known so much, had sheltered so much, had kept +counsel so long, seemed to resent the artificial peace that its present +owner had somewhat laboriously constructed round himself, within its +mellow, ivied walls. + +There is a fictitious tranquillity which is always on the verge of being +broken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential, +velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of +the inharmonious or jarring elements which pervade daily life. + +Such an imitation peace, coy as a fickle mistress, Wentworth cherished. +Was it worth all the trouble he took to preserve it, when the real thing +lay at his very door? + +On this February morning, as he sat looking out across the down, white +in the pale sunshine, the current of his life ran low. He had returned +the night before from one of his periodical journeys to Italy to visit +Michael in his cell. He was tired with the clang and hurry of the long +journey, depressed almost to despair by the renewed realisation of his +brother's fate. Two years--close on two years, had Michael been in +prison. + +In Wentworth's faithful heart that wound never healed. To-day it bled +afresh. He bit his lip, and his face quivered. + + * * * * * + +Wentworth was not as handsome as Michael, but, nevertheless, he was +distinctly good to look at, and the half-brothers, in spite of the +fifteen years' difference between their ages, bore a certain superficial +resemblance to each other. Wentworth was of middle height, lightly and +leanly built, with a high bridge on a rather thin nose, and with narrow, +clean grey eyes under light eyelashes. He looked as if he had been made +up of different shades of one colour. His light brown hair had a little +grey in it, his delicately cut face and nervous hands were both tanned, +by persistent exposure to all kinds of weather, to nearly the same +shade of indeterminate brown as his hair. + +You could not look at Wentworth without seeing that he was a man who had +never even glanced at the ignoble side of life, for whose fastidious, +sensitive nature sensual lures had no attraction, a man who could not +lie, who could not stoop, whose mind was as clean as his hand, and, for +an Englishman, that is saying a good deal. He was manly in a physical +sense. He rode straight, he shot well. He could endure bodily strain +with indifference, though he was not robustly built. He was sane, +even-tempered, liable to petty resentments, mildly and resolutely +selfish, except where Michael was concerned, a conscientious and just +master--at least, just in intention--a patient and respectful son where +patience and respect had not been easy. + +The strain of scholar and student in him was about evenly mixed with +that of the country gentleman. The result was a certain innate sense of +superiority which he was not in the least aware that he showed. He had +no idea that he was considered "fine," and "thinking a good deal of +himself," by the more bucolic of his country neighbours. No one could +say that Wentworth was childlike, but perhaps he was a little childish. +He certainly had a _naif_ and unshakable belief that the impressions he +had formed as to his own character were shared by others. He supposed it +was recognised by his neighbours that they had a thinker in their midst, +and always tacitly occupied the ground which he imagined had been +conceded to him on that account. + +His mother, a beautiful, foolish, whimsical, hard-riding heiress, the +last of a long line, had married the youngest son--the one brilliant, +cultivated member--of a family as ancient, as uneducated, and as prosaic +as her own. Wentworth was the result of that union. His father had died +before his talents were fully recognised: that is to say, just when it +was beginning to be perceived that he was a genius only in his own +class, and that there were hordes of educated men in the middle classes +who could beat him at every point on his own ground, except in carriage +and appearance, and whom no one regarded as specially gifted. Still, in +his own county, among his own friends, and in a society where education +and culture eke out a precarious, interloping existence, and are +regarded with distrustful curiosity, Lord Wilfrid Maine lived and died, +and was mourned as a genius. + +After many years of uneasy, imprudent widowhood, the widow of the great +man had made a disastrous second marriage, and had died at Michael's +birth. + +No one had disputed with Wentworth over the possession of Michael. +Wentworth, a sedate, self-centred young man of three-and-twenty, of +independent means, mainly occupied in transcribing the nullity of his +days in a voluminous diary, had taken charge of him virtually from his +first holidays, during which Michael's father had achieved the somewhat +tedious task of drinking himself to death. Michael's father had +appointed Wentworth as his son's guardian. If it had been a jealous +affection on Wentworth's part, it had also been a deep one. And it had +been returned with a single-hearted devotion on Michael's part which had +gradually knit together the hearts of the older and the younger man, as +it seemed indissolubly. No one had come between them. Once or twice +Wentworth had become uneasy, suspicious of Michael's affection for his +tutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys, +and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few of +these incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case, +judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships he +had not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number was +Michael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael's +boyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. It had come about +during the last year of his great uncle's life at Barford, which was +within a few miles of Priesthope, Fay's home. Michael had spent many +weeks at Barford with the old man, who was devoted to him. Everyone had +expected that he would make Michael his heir, but when he died soon +afterwards, it was found he had left the place, in a will dated many +years back, to Wentworth. If Michael had never mentioned his first +painful contact with life to Wentworth, it was perhaps partly because he +instinctively felt that the confidence would be coldly received, partly +also because Michael was a man of few words, to whom speech had never +taken the shape of relief. + +There had no doubt been wretched moments in Wentworth's devotion to +Michael, but nevertheless it had been the best thing so far in his +somewhat colourless existence, with its hesitating essays in other +directions, its half-hearted withdrawals, its pigeon-holed emotions. He +had not been half-hearted about Michael. It is perhaps natural that we +should love very deeply those who have had the power to release us +momentarily from the airless prison of our own egotism. How often it is +a child's hand which first opens that iron door, and draws us forth into +the sunshine! With Wentworth it had been so. The pure air of the +moorland, the scent of the heather and the sea seem indissolubly mingled +with the remembrance of those whom we have loved. For did we not in +their company walk abroad into a new world, breathe a new air, while +Self, the dingy turnkey, for once slept at his post? + +One of the reasons of his devotion to Michael was that Michael's +character did not apparently or perceptibly alter. He was very much the +same person in his striped convict's blouse as he had been in his Eton +jacket. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had ever realised of what +materials that character consisted. Wentworth was of those who never get +the best out of men and women, who never divine and meet, but only come +into surprised uncomfortable contact with their deeper emotions. +Michael's passion of service for Fay would have been a great shock to +Wentworth had he suspected it. It remained for the duke to perceive the +latent power in Michael, and to be taken instantly into his confidence +on the matter, while Wentworth, unwitting, had remained for life outside +his brother's mind. + +Some men and women are half conscious that they are thus left out, are +companions only of "the outer court" of the lives of others. But +Wentworth never suspected this, partly because he regarded as friendship +a degree of intimacy which most men and all women regard as +acquaintanceship. He did not know there was anything more. Those from +whom others need much, learn perforce, whether they will or no, to what +heights, to what depths human nature can climb and--fall. But Wentworth +was not a person on whom others made large demands. But if his love for +Michael had been his one tangible happiness, it had become now his one +real pain. + +Contrary to all his habits, he sat on, hour after hour, motionless, +inert, watching the cloud shadows pass across the down. He tried to +rouse himself. He told himself that he must settle back into his old +occupations. He must get forward with his history of Sussex, and write +up his diary. He must come to some decision about the allotment scheme +on his property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help Colonel +Bellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of way +across his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. Colonel +Bellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature as +a bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touch +business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and +inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere +presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with +himself struggling in the middle. + +Wentworth must save the old autocrat from putting himself in the wrong, +when he was so plainly in the right. Wentworth must at any rate, if he +could do nothing else this morning, read his letters, which had +accumulated during his short absence. + +Without moving from his chair he turned over, with a groan, the pile of +envelopes waiting for him at his elbow. Invitations, bills, tenants' +complaints, an unexpected dividend. It was all one to him. The Bishop +of Lostford--so his secretary wrote--accepted Wentworth's invitation to +dine and sleep at Barford that night, after holding a confirmation at +Saundersfoot. Wentworth had forgotten he had asked him. Very well, he +must remember to order a room to be got ready. That was all. A +subscription earnestly solicited by the daughter of a neighbouring +clergyman for a parish library. Why could he not be left in peace? Oh! +what was the use of anything--of life, health, money, intellect, if +existence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this, +only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful of +bricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and sense +of being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form of +dissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as you +liked, _if you did not like it?_ Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He +forgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michael +had been free and happy. Not quite, but nearly. Now he attributed the +whole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, to +his distress about his brother's fate. + +That wound, never healed, bled afresh. Who felt for him in his trouble? +Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood? No one. That was the +way of the world. + +Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rose +suddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had met +her walking in the woods near her father's house. She had gone back to +her old home after the duke's death. She, at least, had grieved for him +and Michael with an intensity which he had never forgotten. Even in her +widowed desolation she had remembered Michael, and always asked after +him when Wentworth went over to Priesthope. And Wentworth was often +there, for one reason or another. Michael, too, had asked after her, and +had sent her a message by his brother. Should he go over to-day and +deliver it in person? Among his letters was a scrawling, illegible note, +already several days old, from Colonel Bellairs, Fay's father, about the +right of way. The matter, it seemed, was more urgent than Wentworth had +realised. Any matter pertaining to Colonel Bellairs was always, in the +opinion of the latter, of momentous urgency. + +Colonel Bellairs asked Wentworth to come over to luncheon the first day +he could, and to walk over the debatable ground with him. + +Wentworth looked at his watch, started up and rang the bell, and ordered +his cob Conrad to be brought round at once. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + Le plus grand element des mauvaises actions secretes, des lachetes + inconnues, est peut-etre un honheur incomplet. + + --BALZAC. + + +When Fay, in her panic-stricken widowhood, had fled back to her old home +in Hampshire, she found all very much as she had left it, except that +her father's hair was damply dyed, her sister Magdalen's frankly grey, +and the pigtail of Bessie, the youngest daughter, was now an imposing +bronze coil in the nape of her neck. + +But if little else was radically changed in the old home except the hair +of the family, nevertheless, the whole place had somehow declined and +shrunk in Fay's eyes during the three years of her marriage. The dear +old gabled Tudor house, with its twisted chimneys, looked much the same +from the outside, but within, in spite of its wealth of old pictures and +cabinets and china, it had contracted the dim, melancholy aspect which +is the result of prolonged scarcity of money. Nothing had been spent on +the place for years. Magdalen seemed to have faded together with the +curtains, and the darned carpets, and the bleached chintzes. + +Colonel Bellairs alone, a handsome man of sixty, had remained remarkably +young for his age. The balance, however, was made even by the fact that +those who lived with him grew old before their time. It had been so +with his wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men as +superficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, +as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. But +Colonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapable +of even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy of +all decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggested +arrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "spring +cleaning" could never be mentioned in his presence. The thing itself +could only be achieved by stealth. A month at the seaside for the sake +of the children was a subject that could not be approached. All small +feminine social arrangements, dependent for their accomplishment on the +use of the horses, were mown down like grass. Colonel Bellairs hated +what he called "living by clockwork." + +You may read, if you care to do so, in the faces of many gentle-tempered +and apparently prosperous married women, an enormous fatigue. Wicked, +blood-curdling husbands do not bring this look into women's faces. It is +men like Colonel Bellairs who hold the recipe for calling it into +existence. + +Mrs. Bellairs, a beautiful woman, with high spirits, but not +high-spirited, became more and more silent and apathetic year by year, +yielded more and more and more, yielded at last without expostulation +equally at every point, when she should have yielded and when she should +have stood firm, yielded at last even where her children's health and +well-being were concerned. + +Apathy and health are seldom housemates for long together. Mrs. Bellairs +gradually declined from her chair to her sofa. She made no effort to +live after her youngest daughter was born. She could have done so if she +had wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on any +other subject. There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in it +all the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs. Bellairs exemplified it. "It +is better to sit than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit. It is +better to sleep than to lie. It is better to die than to sleep." + +Fay had been glad enough, as we have seen, to escape from home by +marriage. No such way of escape had apparently presented itself for the +elder sister. As Magdalen and Fay sat together on the terrace in front +of the house, the contrast between the sisters was more marked than the +ten years' difference of age seemed to warrant. + +Magdalen was a tall, thin woman of thirty-five, who looked older than +her age. She had evidently been extremely pretty once. Perhaps she might +even have been young once. But it must have been a long time ago. She +was a faded, distinguished-looking person, with a slight stoop, and a +worn, delicately-featured face, and humorous, tranquil eyes. Her thick +hair was grey. She looked as if she had borne for many years the brunt +of continued ill health, or the ill health of others, as if she had been +obliged to lift heavy weights too young. Perhaps she had. Everything +about her personality seemed fragile except her peace of mind. You could +not look at Magdalen without seeing that she was a happy creature. + +But very few did look at her when Fay was beside her. Fay's beauty had +increased in some ways and diminished in others during the year of her +widowhood. She had become slightly thinner and paler, but not to the +extent when beauty suffers wrong. A very young face can bear a worn +look, and even have its charm enhanced thereby. The mark of suffering on +Fay's childlike face and in her deep violet eyes had brought with it an +expression which might easily be mistaken for spirituality, especially +by those--and they are very many--to whom a pallid and attenuated aspect +are the outward signs of spirituality. + +That she was miserable was obvious. _But why was she so restless?_ +Magdalen had often silently asked herself that question during the past +year. Even Bessie, the youngest sister, had noticed Fay's continual +restlessness and had commented on it, had advised her sister to embark +on a course of reading, and to endeavour to interest herself in work for +others. + +She had also, with the untempered candour of eighteen, suggested to Fay +that she should cease to make a slave of Magdalen. It is hardly +necessary to add that Fay and Bessie did not materially increase the sum +of each other's happiness. + +As Magdalen and Fay were sitting together in the sun the door into the +garden opened, and Bessie stalked slowly towards them across the grass, +in a short cycling skirt. + +"It surely is not necessary to be quite so badly dressed as Bessie," +said Fay with instant irritation. "If she must wear one of those hideous +short skirts, it might at any rate be well cut. I have told her so often +enough." + +Since Bessie had been guilty of the enormity of suggesting a course of +reading, Fay had made many sarcastic comments on Bessie's direful +clothes. + +"I must advise her to take dress more seriously," said Magdalen +absently. She was depressed by a faint misgiving about Bessie. Bessie +was to have lunched to-day with congenial archaeological friends, +intelligent owners of interesting fossils. Nevertheless, when +Wentworth's cob Conrad was seen courteously allowing himself to be +conducted to the stable she instantly decided to lunch at home, and to +visit her friends when they were not expecting her, in the afternoon. +_It could make no difference to them_, she had told Magdalen, who shook +her head over that well-known phrase, which Colonel Bellairs had long +since established as "a household word." Bessie was not to be moved by +Magdalen's disapproval, however. She retired to her chamber, donned a +certain enamel brooch which she only wore on Sundays, and appeared at +luncheon. + +It was not a particularly cheerful meal. Wentworth was silent and +depressed. Colonel Bellairs did not for an instant cease to speak about +the right of way during the whole of luncheon, even when his back was +turned while he was bending over a ham on the sideboard. And the moment +luncheon was over he had marched Wentworth off to the scene of the +dispute. + +Magdalen was vaguely uneasy at the tiny incident of Bessie's change of +plan, and was glad it had escaped Fay's notice. Most things about Bessie +did escape Fay's notice except her clothes. Bessie was not at eighteen +an ingratiating person. No one had ever called her the sunbeam of the +home. She had preserved throughout her solemn childhood and flinty +youth a sort of resentful protest against the attitude of her family at +her advent, namely, that she was not wanted. Her mother had died at her +birth, and for several years afterwards her father had studiously +ignored her presence in the house, not without a sense of melancholy +satisfaction at this proof of his devotion to her mother. + +"No, no. It may be unreasonable. It may be foolish," he was wont to say +to friends who had not accused him of unreasonableness, "but don't ask +me to be fond of that child. I can't look at her without remembering +what her birth cost me." + +Bessie was a fine, strong young woman, with a perfectly impassive +handsome face--no Bellairs could achieve plainness--and the manner of +one who moves among fellow creatures who do not come up to the standard +of conduct which she has selected as the lowest permissible to herself +and others. Bessie had not so far evinced a preference for anyone in her +own family circle, or outside it. Her affections consisted so far of a +distinct dislike of and contempt for her father. She had accorded to Fay +a solemn compassion when first the latter returned to Priesthope. +Indeed, the estrangement between the sisters, brought about by the +suggested course of reading, had been the unfortunate result of a +cogitating pity on Bessie's part for the lamentable want of regulation +of Fay's mind. + +Bessie liked Magdalen, though she disapproved of her manner of life as +weak and illogical. You could not love Bessie any more than you could +love an ironclad. She bore the same resemblance to a woman that an iron +building does to a house. She was not in reality harder than tin or +granite or asphalt, or her father; but it would not be an over-statement +to suggest that she lacked softness. + +She advanced with precision to the bench on which her sisters were +sitting. + +"I am now going to cycle to the Carters'," she said to Magdalen. "I +forgot to mention till this moment that I met Aunt Mary this morning at +the Wind Farm, and that she gave me a letter for father, and said that +she and Aunt Aggie were lunching with the Copes." + +"Poor Copes!" ejaculated Fay. + +"And would both come on here afterwards to an early tea," continued +Bessie, taking no notice of the interruption. "Aunt Mary desired that +you would not have hot scones for tea, as Aunt Aggie is always depressed +after them. She said there was no objection to them cold, and buttered, +but not hot." + +"I shall have tea in my own room then," once more broke in Fay. "I can't +stand Aunt Mary. She is always preaching at me." + +"It is a pity that Fay is disinclined to share the undoubted burden of +entertaining our relatives," said Bessie, addressing herself exclusively +to Magdalen, "as I do not feel able to defer my visit to the Carters any +longer." + +Magdalen struggled hard against a smile, and kept it under. + +"Possibly the aunts are coming over to consult father about a private +matter," she said. "The letter beforehand to prepare his mind looks like +it. So it would be best if you and Fay were not there. The aunts' +affairs generally require the deepest secrecy." + +"And then father lets it all out at dinner before the servants," said +Bessie over her shoulder as she departed. + +When she was out of hearing Fay said with exasperation, "You are not +wise to give way so much to Bessie, Magdalen. She is selfishness itself. +Why did not you insist on her staying and helping with the aunts? She +never considers you." + +Magdalen was silent. + +"I hate sitting here with the house staring at me," said Fay. "I can't +think why you are so fond of this bench. Let us go into the beech +avenue." + +For a long time past Magdalen had noticed that Fay always wanted to be +somewhere she was not. + +They went in silence through the little wood that bounded the gardens, +and passed into the great, bare, grey aisle of the beech avenue. + +In a past generation a wide drive had led through this avenue to the +house. It had been the south approach to Priesthope. But in these +impoverished days, the road, with its sweep of turf on either side, had +been neglected, and was now little more than a mossy cart-rut, with a +fallen tree across it. + +The two sisters sat down on a crooked arm of the fallen tree. + +It was a soft, tranquil afternoon, flooded with meek February sunshine. +Far away between the green-grey trunks of the trees, the sea glinted +like a silver ribbon. Everything was very still, with the stillness set +deep in peace of one who loves and awaits in awe love's next word. The +earth lay in the sunshine, and listened for the whisper of spring. Faint +birdnotes threaded the high windless spaces near the tree-tops. + +"Look!" said Magdalen, "the first crocus." + +What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peering +against the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like a +child's "soft absolving touch," the inflamed, aching, unrest of the +spirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reach +through with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy, +and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us? + +Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner, +absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two large +tears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. She shivered, +and crept a little closer to her sister. She felt alienated from she +knew not what, dreadfully cold and alone in the sunshine, with her cheek +against her sister's shoulder. Though she did not realise it, something +long frost-bound in her mind was yielding, shifting, breaking up. The +first miserable shudder of the thaw was upon her. + +She glanced up at Magdalen, who was looking into the heart of the +crocus, and a sudden anger seized her at the still rapture of her +sister's face. The contrast between her own gnawing misery and +Magdalen's serenity cut her like a knife. What right had Magdalen to be +so happy? Why should she have been exempted from all trouble? What had +she done that anguish could never reach her? Fay's love for Magdalen, +and at this time Magdalen was the only person for whom she had any +affection--had all the violent recoils, the mutinous anger, the sudden +desire to wound on the one side, all the tender patience and grieved +understanding on the other which are the outcome of a real attachment +between a bond woman and a free one. + +The one craved, the other relinquished; the one was consumed with +unrest, the other had reached some inner stronghold of peace. The one +was imprisoned in self, the other was freed, released. The one made +demands, the other was willing to serve. It seems as if only the free +can serve. + +"I am very miserable," said Fay suddenly. She was pushed once more by +the same blind impulse that had taken her to her husband's room the +night after Michael's arrest. + +She used almost the same words. And as the duke had made no answer then, +so Magdalen made none now. She had not lived in the same house with Fay +for nearly a year for nothing. + +Magdalen's silence acted as a goad. + +"You think, and father thinks," continued Fay, her voice shaking, "you +are all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for. +It's not." + +"I know that," said Magdalen. "You never cared much about him. I have +often wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply." + +Fay winced. Magdalen had noticed something, after all. + +"I have sometimes feared,"--continued Magdalen with the deliberation of +one who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the opening +comes, and not to be silent when it does come--"I have sometimes feared +that your heart was locked up in an Italian prison." + +"My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not very +astonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen. "My heart!" she laughed +bitterly. "Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gone +through, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or out +of it? I suppose you mean poor dear Michael. I hate men, and their +selfish, stupid, blundering ways." + +Fay had often alluded to the larger sex _en bloc_ as blunderers since +the night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen. + +"There are two blunderers coming towards us now," said Magdalen, as the +distant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beech +avenue. + +Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief. + +Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind of +forcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family. +He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as a +pruning hook to their selfishness. But he had one great compensating +quality as a father. He never for one moment thought that any man, +however young, visited the house except for the refreshment and solace +of his own society. He never encouraged anyone to come with a view to +becoming acquainted with his daughters. His own problematic re-marriage, +often discussed in all its pros and cons with Magdalen, was the only +possible alliance that ever occupied his thoughts. In this respect he +was an ideal parent in his daughters' eyes, an inhumanly selfish one +according to his two sisters, Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs, at this +moment stepping out towards Priesthope from the north lodge. + +[Illustration: "'YOU ARE ALL BLINDER ONE THAN THE OTHER, THAT IT'S +ANDREA I'M GRIEVING FOR'"] + +Wentworth had almost given up hope of a word with Fay until he saw her +sitting with Magdalen in the avenue. The world would be a much harder +place than it already is for women to live in if men concealed their +feelings. A reverent and assiduous study of the nobler sex leads the +student to believe that they imagine they conceal them. But it is women +who early in life are taught to acquire this art, at any rate when they +are bored. Half the happy married women of our acquaintance would be the +widows of determined suicides if women allowed it to appear when they +were bored as quickly as men do. + +Wentworth had no idea that he was not an impassable barrier of reserve. +He often said of himself: "I am a very reserved man, I know. It is a +fault of character. I regret it, but I can't help it. I have not the art +of chatting about my deepest feelings at five o'clock tea as a man must +do who lays himself out to be popular with women. What I feel it is my +nature to conceal." + +His reserve on this occasion was concentrated in his face, which +remained unmoved. But the lofty impassiveness on which he prided himself +did not reach down to his legs. Those members, which had been dragging +themselves in a sort of feeble semi-paralysis in the wake of the +ruthless Colonel Bellairs, now straightened themselves, and gave signs +of returning energy. Magdalen from a distance noted the change. +Wentworth for the first time was interested in what Colonel Bellairs +was saying. His own voice, which had become almost extinct, revived. +There was also a hint of spring in the air. Not being a person of much +self-knowledge, he mentioned that fact to Colonel Bellairs. + +Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to be +the one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore. + +"I said so half an hour ago," he remarked severely, "when we were +inspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it." + +"You were right all the same," said the younger man. + +What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertain +how many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limply +assured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is that +they are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know how +many infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we should +devour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt with +matters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, the +decadent poet, had said he was "a child of nature," how often, if ever, +the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate at +Salvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it was +true that an Archbishop had ever really said "I am sorry" without an +"if" after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelist +exists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticism +is a lost art. + +"Is the right-of-way dispute progressing?" said Magdalen to her father +as the two men came up and stopped in front of them. + +Colonel Bellairs implied that it would shortly be arranged, as his +intellect was being applied to the subject. + +Wentworth said emphatically, for about the thirtieth time, that the +right of a footpath, or church path across the domain was well +established and could not be set aside; but that whether it was also a +bridle path was the moot point; and whether Colonel Bellairs was +justified in his recent erection of a five-barred stile. + +(I may as well add here, for fear the subject should escape my mind +later on, that at the time of these pages going to press the dispute, +often on the verge of a settlement, had reached a further and acuter +stage, being complicated by Colonel Bellairs' sudden denial even of a +church path, to the legal existence of which he had previously agreed in +writing.) + +Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home. + +"We will walk back to the house with you," said Magdalen, and she led +the way with her father. + +"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary," he said to Magdalen as they +walked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood. +Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that +accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand +it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you." + +"I will tell her." + +Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. She +was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. _On ne peut +s'appuyer que contre ce qui resiste._ Though Colonel Bellairs did not +know it, he was always wanting to _s'appuyer_. He had found in his +daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in +his wife, who had not resisted him. + +"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this +morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is +coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a +moment's peace?" + +Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, +upright hand, marked _Private_, at the top. + +"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage +mine," he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen. + +"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'" + +"Read it. Read it," said Colonel Bellairs irritably. + +Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as +she and her father walked slowly back to the house. + +It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with +Colonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalen +had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two +deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom. + +"Well! well!" said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested than +he wished to appear. "What do you think of it? We noticed in the papers +a week ago that he had succeeded his cousin." + +"Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections." + +"How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch as +light as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor old +Blore." + +"Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen's +joyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service.' That is very well +put, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him that +you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to +invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn +you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you +stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next. +Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leave +the Almighty in charge." + +"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat +surprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I +don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no +visible means of subsistence." + +"And no intention of making any." + +"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by"--(it +had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost +none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall +shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in +introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on +my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house." + +"After forbidding him to come to it?" + +Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper. + +"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this +house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away." + +"Ask him, in that case." + +"You agree that on the whole that would be best." + +"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that it +is a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by her +judgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till she +tried to coerce you into it." + +"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man in +petticoats," said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be here +directly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I _don't_ ask him?... +She will be here directly." + +They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavily +in his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrug +near him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, he +nodded, and she dropped it in. + +"Perhaps, Magdalen," said her father with dignity, "it would be just as +well if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these little +things best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anything +on that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would come +best from _you_, eh?" + +"I think so, father." + +Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye of +one about to drop off into an habitual nap. + +The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where a window is never +opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where +years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its +occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual +soporific charm. + +"Took Mary a long time to write," he said, with a sleepy chuckle, as the +last vestige disappeared of the laboriously constructed missive which +Lady Blore had sat up half the previous night, with gold-rimmed +pince-nez on Roman nose to copy out by her bedroom candle, and had sent +to pave the way before her strong destructive feet. + +The footman came in. + +"Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs are in the drawing-room." + +"Just pull the blinds half-way down before you go," said Colonel +Bellairs to Magdalen, "and remember other people have got letters to +write as well as her, and I'm not to be disturbed on any account." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en prend point de + second.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. + + +The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room. + +When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been +brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small +square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated +oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the +Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what +they called supports to their brother's motherless children. + +They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of those +who lean on them. + +No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary might +perhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency to +push ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposed +to prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortune +to be the object of their good offices. + +She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance--it +could hardly be called a marriage--with a general, distinguished in +India and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "The +Towers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place after +years of half-gratified reluctance on his part and indomitable crude +persistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a long +attachment," and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to the +hilt, that the sterner sex prefer to have their affairs of the heart +arranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once let +loose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour to +escape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputation +of all external interests will detain them within the sacred precincts +of THE HOME. + +Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was no +tactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had only +been the first of the crushing defeats which she had inflicted upon him. +Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severely +tried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up his +sword. + +His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she considered +suitable amusements and occupations. He was told that he took an +interest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province rather +larger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out, +tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, and +hanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes. + +In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly the +same, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman, +with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariably +dressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The Towers +Aunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majestic +gardening the sun was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satin +parasol. + +There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever were +children, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whatever +laws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, +like the phoenix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or a +bugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes. + +Aunt Mary was no doubt one of these. + +Near her, on the edge of her chair, perhaps not so entirely on the edge +of it as at first appeared, sat Aunt Aggie. Aunt Aggie looked as if she +had been coloured by some mistake from a palette prepared to depict a +London fog. + +Her eyes were greyish yellow, like her eyelashes, like her hair,--at +least her front hair,--like her eyebrows, and her complexion. She was +short and stout. She called slender people skeletons. Her gown, which +was invariably of some greyish, drabbish, neutral-tinted material, +always cocked up a little in front to show two large, flat, soft-looking +feet. + +Aunt Aggie began quite narrow at the top. Her forehead was the thin edge +of the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first +indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her +cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave +the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part +of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a +religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back +seat, in the Divine consciousness. + +It would not be fair to Aunt Aggie to omit to mention, especially as she +continually made veiled allusions to the subject herself, that she also +had known the tender passion. There had been an entanglement in her +youth with a High Church archdeacon. But we all know how indefinite, how +inconclusive, how meagre in practical results archidiaconal conferences +are apt to be! After one of them it was discovered that the entanglement +was all on Aunt Aggie's side. The archdeacon remained unenmeshed. Under +severe pressure from Lady Blore, then an indomitable bride of forty, +flushed by recent victory, he even went so far as to say that his only +bride was the Church. It was after this disheartening statement that +Aunt Aggie found herself drawn towards an evangelical and purer form of +religion. The Archdeacon subsequently married, or rather became guilty +of ecclesiastical bigamy. But Aunt Aggie throughout life retained +pessimistic views respecting the celibacy of the clergy. + + * * * * * + +Aunt Mary bestowed a strong businesslike peck, emphasized by contact +with the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggie +greeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Have +you ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to salute +Aunt Aggie's cheek. + +"Where are Fay and Bessie?" enquired Aunt Mary instantly. When the aunts +announced their coming, which was invariably at an hour's notice, they +always expected to find the whole family, including Colonel Bellairs, +waiting indoors to receive them. This expectation was never realised, +but the annoyance that invariably followed had retained through many +years the dew of its youth. + +"Bessie and Fay are out. I am expecting them back every moment." + +"They will probably be later than usual to-day," said Aunt Mary grimly, +with the half-conscious intuition of those whom others avoid. Did she +know that with the exception of Sir John, whose vanity had led him to +take refuge in a _cul-de-sac_, her fellow creatures rushed out by back +doors, threw themselves out of windows, hid behind haystacks, had +letters to write, were ordered by their doctors to rest, whenever she +appeared? Did she know? One thing was certain. Magdalen was one of the +very few persons who had never avoided her, who at times openly sought +her society. And Aunt Mary, though she would have been ashamed to own +it, loved Magdalen. She intended that Magdalen should live with her some +day at the Towers, as an unpaid companion, when Sir John and Aunt Aggie +had entered into peace. + +"And your father," continued Aunt Mary. "Did he get my letter? I intend +to have a serious conversation with him after tea." + +"Father has this moment come in, and he asked me to tell you that he had +business letters which he is obliged to write." + +"I know what _that_ means." + +"Oh! Mary!" interpolated Aunt Aggie eagerly. "You forget that Algernon +always, from the time he was a young man, left his letters to the last +moment. All the Bellairs do." + +The Bellairs had other unique family characteristics, as peculiar to +themselves as their choice of time for grappling with their +correspondence, which Aunt Aggie was never tired of quoting. "Bellairs +are always late for breakfast. It is no kind of use finding fault with +Bessie about it. I was just the same at her age." + +Aunt Aggie went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, +which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner +small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of +existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between +contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could +not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not +appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, +of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird. + +"I intend to see your father after tea," repeated Aunt Mary, taking no +notice of her sister's remark. + +"Father is much worried about the right of way," continued Magdalen. "He +showed me your most kind letter about myself, and----" + +"Showed it to _you_!" said Aunt Mary, becoming purple. "It was not +intended for any eye except your father's." + +"Confidence between a father and his child," began Aunt Aggie, clasping +her stout little hands, and looking eagerly from her sister to her +niece. + +Magdalen went on tranquilly. "It only told me what I knew before, Aunt +Mary, that you have my welfare at heart. Father said that he thought it +would be best if you and I talked the matter over. I agreed with him. +It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be for +the first time." + +It would not indeed! + +"Aggie," said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your way +here to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom and +investigate them." + +"I think they are kept locked," said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed to +stay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a love +affair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach the +subject. + +"They are unlocked," said Aunt Mary with decision. + +Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bitten +bun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed her +sister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage at +Saundersfoot to relations in need of sea air. + +An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's fine +countenance. + +"Magdalen," she said at once, "in the presence of that weak +sentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as it +is your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myself +whether anything has transpired about Everard Constable--Lord +Lossiemouth, as I suppose he now is." + +"Nothing," said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. If +she was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power of +concealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She +seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that +animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their +environment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its +head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there +than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental +features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had +adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obvious +that she had almost nothing in common except her name. + +Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her the +discussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violently +mismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affection +had a little scent, but it was set round with thorns. + +"He has behaved disgracefully," she said, looking with anger and +disappointment at her niece's faded face. + +"We have discussed that before," said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as you +know, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and better +forgotten." + +"He was poor then. No one ever thought he would succeed with two lives +between. But it is different now that he is wealthy and in a position to +marry." + +"He has never been in a position to marry me," said Magdalen, "because +he never cared enough for me to make an effort on my behalf. That was +not his fault. He mistook a romantic admiration for love, and naturally +found it would not work. How could it? It was not necessary to turn +heaven and earth to gain me. But it _was_ necessary to turn a few small +stones. He could not turn them." + +"Well, at any rate, he asked you, and you accepted him." + +"A hundred years ago." + +"And you have waited for him ever since." + +"Not at all. I am not waiting for him or for anyone." + +"You would have married Mr. Grenfell if it had not been for Everard." + +"Perhaps I should have married Everard if it had not been for Everard," +said Magdalen. + +It seemed as if nothing could shake her dispassionate view of the +matter. + +"Your feelings were certainly engaged, Magdalen. There is no use in +denying that." + +"Have I ever denied it?" + +Aunt Mary was silent for a moment, but her under lip was ominously +thrust out. She was not thinking of what Magdalen had said. If she had +ever listened to the remarks of others when they differed from her, she +would not have become Lady Blore. She was only silent because she was +rallying her forces. + +"A woman's hands become talons when they try to hold on to a man when he +wants to get away," said Magdalen gently. + +Aunt Mary turned on her niece an opaque eye that saw nothing beyond the +owner's views. + +"Something ought to be done," she said with emphasis. "After all, your +father dismissed him. I shall advise your father to write to him, and if +he does not--I shall write to him myself." + +"I hope you will not do that," said Magdalen. "Do you remember what a +subject for gossip it was at the time? When father became angry with +Everard he told everyone, and it became a sort of loud turmoil. The +servants knew, the parish knew, the whole county knew that I had had a +disappointment. I have remained ever since in the eyes of the neighbours +a sort of blighted creature, a victim of the heartlessness of man. A new +edition of that old story now that my hair is grey would be, I think, a +little out of place. I had hoped----" + +The door was suddenly thrown open, and Bessie marched into the room with +Aunt Aggie hanging nervously at her heels. + +"I came back as quickly as I could from the Carters' in order not to +miss you," said Bessie to Aunt Mary in her stentorian voice, and she +presented a glowing rose cheek to be kissed. + +Magdalen shot a grateful glance at her sister, and the conversation +became general. + +After the aunts had departed, Bessie said to Magdalen on their way +upstairs to dress, "I found when I reached the Carters' that they had +gone out with Professor Ridgway to see the Roman camp. Only old Mrs. +Carter was at home, and she was rather chilly, and said they had +expected me to luncheon. They had had a little party to meet the +Professor. I saw that my conduct called for an apology. I made one." + +"I am glad of that." + +"I see now that it would have been wiser to have gone over for luncheon +as arranged. I also thought how selfish it was of Fay not to help you +with the aunts. And then I perceived that there were not two pins to +choose between us, as I had been just as bad myself, so I hurried back +as quickly as I could." + +"I was most grateful to you when I saw you come in. And Aunt Mary was +pleased too. She never shows it much; but she was." + +"It is of secondary importance whether she was pleased or not. My object +in returning was twofold: to help you, and also for the sake of my own +character. I begin to see that unless I am careful I shall become as +selfish as father." + +Magdalen did not answer. + +"The aunts never do things like other people," continued Bessie. "I +found Aunt Aggie standing, eating a bun, just outside the drawing-room +door. She was quite flurried when I came up, and said she wanted to see +my fossils, but would rather look at them another day." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + La vie est un instrument dont on commence toujours par jouer faux. + + +Wentworth and Fay did not follow Colonel Bellairs and Magdalen back to +the house. When they reached the end of the avenue they turned back +silently by mutual consent, and retraced their steps down it. + +Presently they reached the trunk of the tree where Fay had been sitting +with Magdalen. + +Fay sank down upon it once more, white and exhausted. He sat down at a +little distance from her. + +"How is Michael?" she said at last, twisting her ungloved hands +together. + +"I came to tell you about him; I only got back last night. I knew you +would wish to hear." + +"How is he?" + +"He has been ill. He has had double pneumonia. It started with +haemorrhage, and some of the blood got into the lungs, and caused +pneumonia. He is better now, nearly well, in fact. The prison doctor +seemed a sensible man, and he spoke as if he were interested in Michael. +From what he said I gathered that he did not think Michael would survive +another winter there. The prison[1] stands in a sort of marsh. It is a +very good place to prevent prisoners escaping, but not a good place for +them to keep alive in. The doctor is pressing to have Michael moved. He +thinks he might do better at the 'colonia agricola,' where the labour is +more agricultural; or that even work in the iron mines of Portoferriao +would try his constitution less than the swamp where he now is." + +[Footnote 1: The prison described has no counterpart in real life.] + +"Was he still in chains?" + +"No. And the doctor said there was some talk of abolishing them +altogether. If not, he will be obliged to go back to them now he is +better. He is looking forward to the sea lavender coming out. He says +the place is beautiful beyond words when it is in flower: whole tracts +and tracts of grey lilac blossom in the shallows, and hordes of wild +birds. He asked me to tell you that you were to think of him as living +in fairyland." + +Fay winced as if struck. + +"You gave him my message?" she stammered. + +"Of course I did. And he said I was to tell you not to grieve for him, +for he was well and happy." + +"Happy!" echoed Fay. + +"Yes, happy. He said he had committed a great sin, but that he hoped and +believed that he was now expiating it, and that it would be forgiven." + +"I am absolutely certain," said Fay in a suffocated voice, "that Michael +did not murder the Marchese di Maltagliala." + +"That is impossible," said Wentworth. + +"Then what great sin can he be expiating?" + +Even as Fay asked the question she knew the answer. Michael believed he +was expiating the sin of loving another man's wife. In his mind that was +probably on a par with the murder he had not committed. + +"I asked him that," said Wentworth, "but he would not say. He would only +repeat that his punishment was just." + +Two large tears ran down Fay's cheeks. + +"It is unjust, unjust, unjust!" she gasped. "Why does God allow these +dreadful things?" + +There was a long silence. + +For a time Wentworth had forgotten Fay. He saw again the great yellow +building standing in a waste of waters. He saw again the thin, +prematurely aged face of his brother, the shaved head, the coarse, +striped convict dress, the arid light from the narrow barred window. He +saw again Michael's grave smile, and heard the tranquil voice, "This +place is beautiful in autumn. Mind you come next when the sea lavender +is out." + +The remembrance of that meeting cut sharper than the actual pain of it +at the moment. He had gone through with it with a sort of stolid +endurance, letting Michael see but a tithe of what he felt. But the +remembrance was anguish unalloyed. For a time he could neither speak nor +see. + +A yellow butterfly that had waked too soon floated towards them on a +wavering trial trip. Close at hand a snowdrop drooped "its serious +head." The butterfly knew its own, and lit on the meek, nunlike flower, +opening and shutting its new wings in the pallid sunshine. It had +perhaps dreamed, as it lay in its chrysalis, "that life had been more +sweet." Was this chill sunshine that could not quicken his wings, was +this grim desert that held no goal for butterfly feet, was this one +snowdrop--_all_? Was this indeed the summer of his dreams, in the sure +and certain hope of which he had spun his cocoon, and laid him down in +faith? + +Fay looked at it in anguish not less than Wentworth's, whose dimmed eyes +saw it not at all. She never watched a poised butterfly open and shut +its wings without thinking of Michael. The flight of a seagull across +the down cut her like a lash. He had been free once. He who so loved the +down, the sea, the floating cloud, had been free once. + +When Wentworth had winked his steady grey eyes back to their normal +state, he looked furtively at Fay. She was weeping silently. He had seen +Fay in tears before, but never without emotion. With a somewhat halting +utterance he told her of certain small alleviations of Michael's lot. +The permission, urgently asked, had at last been granted that English +books might be sent him from time to time. The lonely, aching smart of +Wentworth's morning hours was vaguely soothed and comforted by Fay's +gentle presence. + +She appeared to listen to him, but in reality she heard nothing. She sat +looking straight in front of her, a tear slipping from time to time down +her white cheek. Except on one or two occasions Fay had that rarest +charm of looking beautiful in tears. She became paler than ever, never +red and disfigured and convulsed, with the prosaic cold in the head that +accompanies the emotions of less fortunate women. + +"How old is Michael?" she asked suddenly in the midst of a painstaking +account of certain leniencies as to diet, certain macaronis and soups +which the doctor had insisted on for Michael. + +"He is twenty-seven." + +"And how long has he been in prison?" + +"Nearly two years." + +"And he has thirteen more," said Fay, looking at Wentworth with wide +eyes blank with horror. + +"No," said Wentworth, his voice shaking a little. "No, Michael will not +live long in that swamp, not many years, I think." + +"But they will move him to a better climate." + +"He does not want to be moved. I should not, either, in his case." + +Fay's hands fell to her sides. + +"When my mother died," said Wentworth, "I promised her to be good to +Michael. There was no need for me to promise to be good to him. I always +liked him better than anyone else. I taught him to ride and to shoot. He +got his gun up sharp from the first. It's easy to do things for anyone +you like. But what is hard is when the time comes"--Wentworth stopped, +and then went on--"when the time comes that you can't do anything more +for the person you care for most." + +Silence. + +The yellow butterfly was still feebly trying to open and shut his wings. +The low sun had abandoned him to the encroaching frost, and was touching +the bare overarching branches to palest gold, "so subtly fair, so +gorgeous dim"; so far beyond the reach of tiny wings. + +"I don't think," said Wentworth, "I would stick at anything. I don't +know of anything I would not do, anything I would not give up, to get +him back his freedom. But it's no use, I can do nothing for him." + +"Oh! Why does not the real murderer confess?" said Fay with a sob, +wringing her hands. "How can he go on, year after year, letting an +innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his +horrible crime?" + +That mysterious murderer occupied a large place in Fay's thoughts. She +hated him with a deadly hatred. He was responsible for everything. That +one crooked channel of thought that persistently turned aside all blame +onto an unknown offender, had at last given a certain crookedness, a +sort of twist, to the whole subject in Fay's mind. + +"I begged Michael again for the twentieth time to tell me anything that +could act as a clue to discovering the real criminal," said Wentworth. +"I told him I would spend my last shilling in bringing him to justice, +but he only shook his head. I told him that some of his friends felt +certain that he knew who the murderer was, and was shielding him. He +shook his head again. He would not tell me anything the first day I went +to him after he was arrested. And still, after two years in prison, he +will not speak. Michael will never say anything." + +The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waning +afternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frosty +breath was stirring the dead leaves. The butterfly had closed his wings +for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. A +tiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death. + +Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her. + +"I must go in," she said. + +They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods +from the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them +above the gathering sea mist. + +They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the +consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which +had drawn them together. + +"I will come again soon, if I may," he said diffidently, "unless seeing +me reminds you of painful things." His voice had lowered itself +involuntarily. + +"I like to see you," said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from +him like a shadow among the shadows. + +The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any +possible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, +which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them. + +He pondered over them as he rode home. + +How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been +a happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss +was still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had shown +towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to +shield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her +sorrowing compassion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she had +shown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds! + +Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women he +was aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, +mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest +owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and +treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by +sudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow. + +But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above the +ordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level of +pettiness and vanity, by her simplicity and nobility and capacity for +devotion--_could such a woman love a second time?_ + +The thirst to be loved, to be the object of an exquisite tenderness, +what man has not, consciously or unconsciously longed for that? What +woman has not had her dream of giving that and more, full measure, +running over? + +To find favour in a woman's eyes a man need only do his stupid bungling +best. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had a best of any kind in him +to do. + +At twenty-five he would not have risked as much for love as even +cautious men of robuster fibre will still ruefully but determinedly risk +in the forties. And now at forty he would risk almost nothing. + +Where Michael was concerned Wentworth's love had reached the strength +where it could act, indefatigably, if need be. Michael had been so far +the only creature who could move his brother's egotism beyond the +refinements of bedridden sentiment. + +It was as well for Fay that she did not realise, and absolutely +essential for Wentworth that he did not realise either, that in spite of +an undoubted natural attraction towards her he would have seen no more +of her unless she had come within easy reach. + +A common trouble had drawn them towards each other. A common interest, a +common joy or sorrow, a house within easy distance--these are some of +the match makers between the invalids of life, who are not strong enough +to want anything very much, or to work for what they want. For them +favourable circumstance is everything. + +Wentworth could ride four and a half miles down a picturesque lane to +see Fay. But he could not have taken a journey by rail. + +A few years before Wentworth met Fay he had been tepidly interested in +the youthful sister of one of his college friends and contemporaries, an +Oxford Don at whose house he stayed every year. The sister kept house +for her brother. It was the usual easy commonplace combination of +circumstances that has towed lazy men into marriage since the +institution was first formed. He saw her without any effort on his part. +He arrived at a kind of knowledge of her. He found her to be what he +liked. She was sympathetic, refined, shy, cultivated, unselfish, and of +a wild rose prettiness. After a time he kept up, mainly on her account, +a regular intercourse with the brother, who was becoming rather prosy, +as was Wentworth himself. Presently the brother married, and the sister +ceased to live with him. + +Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure. He +found his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, the +friend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizures +of increasing frequency. The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund. But +it never entered his mind to enquire into the whereabouts of the sister, +and to continue his acquaintance with her independently. If he had +continued to meet her regularly he would almost certainly have married +her. She on her side seemed well disposed towards him. As it was he +never saw her again. He gradually ceased to think of her, except on +summer evenings, as a charming possibility which Fate had sternly +removed, as one lost to him for ever. He wrote a little poem about her, +beginning, "Where are you now?" (She was at Kensington all the time.) +Wentworth never published his verses. He said there was no room for a +new poet who did not advertise himself. There had been room for one of +his college friends, but that had been a case of log rolling. + +I do not know whether it was a fortunate or an unfortunate fate that had +prevented the gay little lady of the pink cheeks from being at that +moment installed at Barford as the wife of a poet who scorned publicity. + +If Wentworth had been riding home to his wife on that February evening +he would not have taken unconsciously another of the many steps which +entailed so many more, by saying to himself, thinking of Fay: + +"Could a woman like that love a second time?" + +Then he hastened his speed as he remembered that his old friend the +Bishop of Lostford had by this time arrived at Barford. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + If you feel no love, sit still; occupy yourself with things, + with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. + + --TOLSTOY. + + +In Wentworth's youth he had been attracted towards many, besides the +Bishop, among the bolder and less conventional of his contemporaries. +Their fire, their energies, their enthusiasm, warmed his somewhat +under-vitalized nature. He regarded himself as one of them, and his +refinement and distinction drew the robuster spirits towards himself. +But gradually, as time went on, these energies and enthusiasm took form, +and, alas! took forms which he had not expected--he never expected +anything--and from which his mind instinctively recoiled. He had +supposed that energy was energy. He had not realised that it was life in +embryo, that might develop, not always on lines of beauty, into a new +policy, or a great discovery, or a passion, or a vocation. He hated +transformations, new births, all change. His friends at first rallied +him unmercifully, then lost patience, and finally fell from him, one by +one. Some openly left him, the more good-natured among them forgot him, +and if by chance they found themselves in his society, hurried back with +affectionate cordiality to reminiscences of school and college life, +long-passed milestones before the parting of the ways. + +The Bishop when he plunged into his work also for a time lost sight of +Wentworth, but when he was appointed to the See of Lostford, within +five miles of Barford, the two men resumed, at first with alacrity, +something of the old intercourse. + +Wentworth had an element of faithfulness in him which enabled him to +take up a friendship after a long interval, but it was on one condition, +namely that the friend had remained _plante la_ where he had been left. +If in the meanwhile the friend had moved, the friendship flagged. + +It was soon apparent that the Bishop had not by any means remained +_plante la_, and the friendship quickly drooped. It would long since +have died a natural death if it had not been kept alive by the Bishop +himself, a man of robust affections and strong compassions, without a +moment to spend on small resentments. After Michael's imprisonment he +had redoubled his efforts to keep in touch with Wentworth, and the great +grief of the latter, silently and nobly endured, had been a bond between +the two men which even a miserable incident which must have severed most +friendships had served to loosen, not to break. + +The Bishop had in truth arrived at Barford, and was now sitting +apparently unoccupied by the library fire. To be unoccupied even for an +instant except during recuperative sleep was so unusual with the Bishop, +so unprecedented, that his daughter would have been terrified could she +have seen him at that moment. He had only parted from her and her +husband at mid-day, yet it was a sudden thought suggested by his visit +to them which was now holding him motionless by the fire, his lean +person bulging with unanswered letters. + +The Bishop was a small ugly man of fifty, unconventional to the core, +the younger son of a duke, and a clergyman by personal conviction. He +had been born in a hurry, and had remained in a hurry ever since. He had +neither great administrative capacities, nor profound scholarship, but +what powers he had were eked out by a stupendous energy. His Archbishop +said that he believed that the Bishop's chaplains died like flies, and +that he merely threw their dead bodies into the Loss, which flowed +beneath his palace windows, without even a burial service. His chaplains +and secretaries certainly worked themselves to the bone for him. They +could have told tales against him, but they never did. For it was a +strain to serve the Bishop, to get his robes thrown over him at the +right--I mean the last--second, to thrust him ruthlessly into his +carriage just in time to catch the tail ends of departing trains--he +generally travelled with the guard. His admirable life had been spent in +a ceaseless whirl. He had never had time to marry. He had hurried to the +altar when he was an eager curate with a pretty young bride who was a +stranger to him, whom his mother had chosen for him. During the years +that followed what little he saw of her at odd moments he liked. After +ten years of what he believed to be married life she died, leaving one +child; tactful to the last, pretty to the last, having made no claim +from first to last, kissing his hand, and thanking him for his love, and +for the beautiful years they had spent together. + +His friends said that he bore her loss with heroism, but in reality he +missed her but little. Her death occurred just after he had become an +ardent suffragan. His daughter grew up in a few minutes, and quickly +took her mother's place. She was her mother over again in character and +appearance. His wife had lived in his house for ten years, his daughter +for twenty. By dint of time he learned to know her as he had never known +her mother. At twenty she married his chaplain. + +The chaplain was a tall, stooping, fleckless, flawless, mannerless, +joyless personage, middle-aged at twenty-eight, with a voice like a +gong, with a metallic mind constructed of thought-tight compartments, +devoted body and soul to the Church, an able and indefatigable worker, +smelted from the choice ore of that great middle class from which, as we +know, all good things come. That he was a future ornament, or at any +rate an iron girder of the Church was sufficiently obvious. + +The Bishop saw his worth, and ruefully endured him until the chaplain, +in the most suitable language, desired to become his son-in-law, and +that at the most inconceivably awkward moment, namely, just when the +Bishop had presented him with a living. The marriage had to be. The +daughter wished it with an intensity that amazed her father. And +gradually the Bishop discovered that he detested his paragon of a +son-in-law. But why? It was not jealousy. He really was a paragon, not a +sham. To the Bishop it seemed, and with truth, that any other woman +would have done as well as his daughter, that her husband neither +understood her nor wished to understand her, that he accepted ruthlessly +without knowing that he accepted it, her selfless devotion, that he used +her as a cushion to make his rare moments of leisure more restful, that +her love was not even a source of happiness to him, only a solace. And +she, extraordinary to behold, was radiantly content. + +"_Just like her mother over again_," the Bishop had wrathfully said to +himself as he drove away from his daughter's door. And at that moment a +slide was drawn back from his mind, and he saw that the marriage was a +replica of his own, except in so far that his son-in-law, greatly +assisted by circumstances, had actually taken a little trouble to +arrange his marriage for himself, while the Bishop's--what there was of +it--had been done for him by his mother. + +Till this morning he had believed his marriage to have been an ideally +happy one, that he had felt all that man can feel; and he had been +inclined to treat as womanish the desperate desolation of men who had +after all only suffered the same bereavement as he had himself, and +which he had quickly overcome. He saw now that he had missed happiness +exactly as his son-in-law was missing it. The same thing had befallen +them both. Love could do there no mighty works because of their +unbelief. When he remembered his wife's face he realised that her joy +had been something beyond his ken. He had not shared it. He had not +known love, even when it had drawn very nigh unto him. + +As he waited motionless for Wentworth to come in, his strong, intrepid +mind worked. The Bishop at fifty went to school to a new thought. It was +that power of going to school at fifty to a new thought which had made +his Archbishop, who loved him, give him the See of Lostford, to the +amazement of the demurer clergy who were scandalised by his +unconventionality, and his fearful baldness of speech. They could only +account for the appointment by the fact that he was the son of a duke. +It was that power which made the Bishop seem a much younger man than +Wentworth, who was in reality ten years his junior. The Bishop was still +a learner. He still moved with vigour mentally. Wentworth, on the +contrary, had arrived--not at any place in particular, but at the spot +where he intended to remain. His ideas, and some of them had been rather +good ones at twenty-five, had suffered from their sedentary existence. +They had become rather stout. He called them progressive because in the +course of years he had perceived in them a slight glacier-like movement. +To others they appeared fixed. + +Wentworth's attitude towards life, of which he was so fond of speaking, +was perhaps rather like that of a shrimper who, in ankle-deep water, +watches the heavily freighted whale boats come towering in. He does not +quite know why he, of all men, with his special equipment for the +purpose, and his expert handling of the net, does not also catch whales. +That they seldom swim in two-inch water does not occur to him. At last +he does not think there are any whales. He has exploded that fallacy. +For, in a moment of adventurous enthusiasm, counting not the cost, did +he not once wade recklessly up to his very shoulders in deep water: _and +there were no whales_,--only pinching crabs. Crabs were the one real +danger, the largest denizens of the boundless main, whatever his former +playmates the whalers might affirm. + +When the shrimper and the whaler had dined together, and the Bishop had +heard with affectionate sympathy the little there was to hear +respecting Michael, and the conversation tended towards more general +topics, the radical antagonism between the two friends' minds threatened +every moment to make itself felt. + +The Bishop tried politics somewhat tentatively, on which they had +sympathised in college days, but it seemed they had widely diverged +since. Wentworth, though he frequently asserted that no one enjoyed more +than he "the clashing of opposite opinions," seemed nevertheless only +able to welcome with cordiality a mild disagreement, just sufficiently +defined to prove stimulating to the expression of his own views. A wide +divergence from them he met with a chilly silence. He did so now. The +Bishop looked at his neat ankle, and changed the subject. + +"Have you seen or heard anything of Everard Constable since he came into +his kingdom, such a very unexpected kingdom, too?" + +"No. I fancy he is still abroad. But I can't say that for some time past +I have found Constable's aims in life very sympathetic. His unceasing +struggle after literary fame appears to me somewhat undignified." + +"Oh! come. Give the devil his due. Constable can write." + +"Of course, of course. That is just what I am saying. But he and I +differ too widely in our outlook on life to remain really intimate. He +cares for the big things, ambition, popularity, a prominent position, +luxury. He will enjoy being a personage, and having wealth at his +command. For my part, I am afraid I care infinitely more for the small +things of life, love, friendship, sympathy." + +"The _small_ things! Good Lord!" said the Bishop, and his jaw dropped. +He also dropped the subject. + +"I ran up against Grenfell last week," he continued immediately. "Do you +see _him_ now? You and he used to be inseparable at Cambridge." + +Wentworth became frigid. + +Grenfell had accused him at their last meeting of being an old maid, an +accusation which had wounded Wentworth to the quick, and which he had +never forgotten or forgiven. He had not in the least realised that +Grenfell was not alluding to the fact that he happened to be unmarried. + +"I can't say I care to see him now," he said. "He has become entirely +engrossed in his career. A simple life like mine, the life of thought, +no longer interests him. He is naturally drawn to people who are playing +big parts." + +"What nonsense! He is just the same as ever. A little vehement and +fiery, but not as much as he was. They say he will be the next +Chancellor of the Exchequer to a certainty." + +"I daresay he will. He has the art of keeping himself before the public +eye. Being myself so constituted--it is not any virtue in me, only a +constitutional defect--that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficult +for me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, can +bring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above that +kind of thing." + +"So he is. So he is. A blind man can see Grenfell's unworldliness. It +sticks a yard out of him. My dear Wentworth, if energetic elbows were, +as you imply, the key to success, how do you account for the fact that +hundreds of painful persons have triumphantly passed that preliminary +examination who never achieve anything beyond a diploma in the art of +pushing?" + +Wentworth did not answer. + +He firmly believed that in order to attain the things he had not +attained, had never striven for, of which he invariably spoke +disparagingly, but which he secretly and impotently desired, the +co-operation of certain ignoble qualities was essential, sordid allies +whom he would have disdained to use. + +"I don't blame Grenfell," he said at last. "He had his way to make. I +know how blinding the glamour of ambition is, how insidious and +insistent the claims of the world may become. I don't pretend to be +superior to certain temptations if they came in my way. But I happen to +have kept out of their way. That is all." + +"You have certainly kept out of the way of--nearly everything." + +"For my part, I daresay I am hopelessly out of date, but I value beauty +and peace and simplicity higher than a noisy success. But a noisy +success is the one thing that counts nowadays." + +"Does it?" + +"And Grenfell has taken the right steps to gain it. If a man craves for +popularity, if he really thinks the bubble worth striving for, he must +lay himself out for it. If he wants a place he must jostle for it. If he +wants power he must discard scruples. If he wants social success it can +be got--we see it every day--by pandering to the susceptibilities and +seeking the favour of influential persons. Everything has its price. I +don't say that everyone obtains these things who is ready to bid for +them. But some do. Grenfell is among those who have. I don't blame him. +I am not sure that I don't rather envy him." + +The Bishop could respect a conviction. + +"Are you not forgetting Grenfell's character?" he said gently, as one +speaks to a sick man. "Think of him, his nobility, his integrity, his +enthusiasm, his transparent unworldliness which so often in the old days +put us all to shame!" + +"That is just what makes it all so painful to me," said Wentworth, and +there was no possibility of doubting his sincerity. "That contact with +the world can taint even beautiful natures like his. He was my ideal at +one time. I almost worshipped him at Cambridge." + +"I love him still," said the Bishop. "A cat may look at a king, so I +suppose a poor crawler of a bishop may look at a man like Grenfell. +Don't you think, Wentworth, that sometimes a man who succeeds may have +worked as nobly as a man who fails--you always speak so feelingly of +failure, it is one of the many things I like about you. Don't you think +that perhaps sometimes success may be--I don't say it always is--as +high-minded as failure, that a hard-won victory may be as honourable as +defeat, that achievement may _sometimes_ be the result not of chance or +interest, but of unremitting toil? Don't you think you may be +unconsciously cutting yourself adrift from Grenfell's friendship by +attributing his success to unworthy means which a man like him could +never have stooped to?" + +"It is he who has cut himself adrift from me," said Wentworth icily. "I +have not changed." + +"That is just it. A slight change, shall we say expansion on your part, +might have enabled you to"--the Bishop chose his words as carefully as a +doctor counts drops into a medicine glass--"to keep pace with him?" + +"I do not regard friendship as a race or a combat of wits," said +Wentworth. "Friendship is to my mind something sacred. I hope I can +remain Grenfell's friend without believing him to be absolutely +faultless. If he is so unreasonable as to expect that of me, which I +should not for a moment expect of him, why then----" Wentworth shrugged +his shoulders. + +One of the few friends who had not drifted from him looked at him with +somewhat pained affection. + +Why does a life dwelt apart from others tend to destroy first generosity +and then tenderness in man and woman? Why does one so often find a +certain hardness and inhumanity encrusting those who have withdrawn +themselves behind the shutters of their own convenience, or is it, after +all, their own impotence? + +"Has he always been hard and cold by nature?" said the Bishop to +himself, "and is the real man showing himself in middle age, or is his +meagre life starving him?" + +He tried again. + +"You nearly lost my friendship a year ago by attributing a sordid motive +to me, Wentworth." + +Wentworth understood instantly. + +"That is all past and forgotten," he said quickly. "I never think of it. +Have I ever allowed it to make the slightest difference?" + +"No," said the Bishop, looking hard at him, "and for that matter neither +have I. We have never talked the matter out. Let us do so now. I don't +suppose you have forgotten the odium I incurred over the living of +Rambury. It had been held for generations by old men. It had become a +kind of clerical almshouse. When it fell vacant there was of course yet +another elderly cleric----" + +"My uncle," said Wentworth, "a most excellent man." + +"Just so, but in failing health. Rightly or wrongly I was convinced that +it was my duty to give the place a chance by putting there a younger +man, of energy and capacity for hard work. I gave it to my future +son-in-law as you know." + +Wentworth nodded. "Everyone said at the time he was an excellent man," +he said with evident desire to be fair. + +"I daresay, but that is not the point. The point is that I had no idea +that iron traction engine wanted to marry my daughter or anybody's +daughter. The tactless beast got up steam and proposed for her the day +after I had offered him the living. He had never given so much as a +preliminary screech on the subject, never blown a horn to show what his +horrid intentions were--I only hope that if I had known I should still +have had the moral courage to appoint him. The Archbishop assures me I +should--but I doubt it. I was loudly accused of nepotism, of course. +Your uncle, who died soon afterwards, forgave me in the worst of taste +on his deathbed. I had no means of justifying myself. The Archbishop and +Grenfell and a few other old friends believed. _Why were you not among +those old friends, Wentworth?_" + +"I _was_ among them," said Wentworth, meeting the Bishop's sombre eyes. +"You never answered it, so I suppose you never received it, but at the +time I wrote you a long letter assuring you that I for one had not +joined in the cry against you, even though my uncle did. I frankly owned +that, while I regarded the appointment as an ill-considered one, I took +for granted that Mr. Rawlings was suited for the place. I said that I +knew you far too well to suppose even for a moment that you would have +given the post to a man, even if he were your son-in-law, unless he had +been competent to fill it. You never answered the letter, so I suppose +it failed to reach you." + +"I received it," said the Bishop slowly. "I felt it to be an +illuminating document, but it did not seem to call for an answer. It was +in itself a response to a tacit appeal." + +There was a pause, and then he continued cheerfully. "Rawlings has +proved himself dreadfully competent as you prophesied, and Lucy is very +happy in her new home. I came on from there this morning. My son-in-law, +with the admirable promptitude and economy of time which endeared him to +me as my chaplain, had arranged that every moment of my visit should be +utilised; that I should christen their first child, dedicate a +thank-offering in the shape of a lectern, consecrate the new portion of +the churchyard, open a reading-room, and say a few cordial words at a +drawing-room meeting before I left at mid-day. I told him if he went on +like this he would certainly come to grief and be made a bishop some +day. But he only remarked that he was not solicitous of high +preferment. I think you would like Rawlings if you knew him better. You +and he have a certain amount in common. I must own that I am glad that +it is Lucy who has to put up with him and not I. I should think even God +Almighty must find him rather difficult to live with at times. And now, +Wentworth, if I am to be up and away at cock-crow, I must go to bed." + +But the Bishop did not go to bed at once when Wentworth had escorted him +to his room. + +"It was no use," he said to himself. "It was worth trying, but it was no +use. He never saw that he had misjudged me. He met my eye. He has a +straight, clean eye. He is sincere as far as he goes, but how far _does_ +he go? He has never made that first step towards sincerity of doubting +his own sincerity. He mistakes his moods for convictions. He has never +suspected his own motives, or turned them inside out. He suspects those +of others instead. He is like a crab. He moves sideways by nature, and +he thinks that everyone else who moves otherwise is not straightforward, +and that he must make allowances for them. According to his lights he +has behaved generously by me. Has he! Damn him! God forgive me. Well, I +must stick to him, for I believe I am almost the only friend he has left +in the world." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?--D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +Fay did not sleep that night. + +For a long time past, she seemed to have been gradually, inevitably +approaching, dragging reluctant feet towards something horrible, +unendurable. She could not look this veiled horror in the face. She +never attempted to define it to herself. Her one object was to get away +from it. + +It had not sprung into life full grown. It had gradually taken form +after Michael's imprisonment. At first it had been only an uneasy ghost +that could be laid, a spectre across her path that could be avoided; but +since she had come home it had slowly attained gigantic and terrifying +proportions. It loomed before her now as a vague but insistent menace, +from which she could no longer turn away. + +A great change was coming over Fay, but she tacitly resisted it. She did +not understand it, nor realise that the menace came from within her +gates, was of the nature of an insurrection in the citadel of self. We +do not always recognise the voice of the rebel soul when first it begins +to speak hoarsely, unintelligibly, urgently from the dark cell to which +we have relegated it. + +Some of us are so constituted that we can look back at our past and see +it as a gradation of steps, a sort of sequence, and can thus gain a +kind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are even +now striking our feet. + +But poor Fay saw her life only as shattered, meaningless fragments, +confused, mutilated masses without coherence. The masses and the gaps +between them were of the same substance in her eyes. She wandered into +her past as a child might wander among the rubbish heaps of its old home +in ruins. She was vaguely conscious that there had been a design once in +those unsightly mounds, that she had once lived in them. On that remnant +of crazy wall clung a strip of wall-paper which she recognised as the +paper in her own nursery; here a vestige of a staircase that had led to +her mother's room. And as a child will gather up a little frockful of +sticks and fallen remnants, and then drop them when they prove heavy, so +Fay picked up out of her past tiny disjointed odds and ends of ideas and +disquieting recollections, only to cast them aside again as burdensome +and useless. + +The point to which she wandered back most frequently--to stare blankly +at it without comprehension--was her husband's appeal to her on his +deathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. +She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures and +twisted memories towards that particular place. + +She saw again the duke's dying face, and the tender fixity of his eyes. +She could almost hear his difficult waning voice saying: + +"The sun shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. +Since a year he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you +keep your Cousin Michael in prison?" + +_Since a year he does not see them._ + +It was two years now. + +The shock to Fay at the moment those words were spoken had been that her +husband had known all the time. That revelation blotted out all other +thoughts for the time being. It even blotted out all considerations of +her own conduct towards Michael, which it might conceivably have +rendered acute. It made her mind incapable of receiving the impression +that the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make on +it; that surely she would not, after his death, still keep Michael in +his cell. Throughout the early weeks of her widowhood Fay remained as +one stunned. Even Magdalen, who hurried out to her, supposed at first +that she was stunned by grief. + +"Then Andrea knew all the time." That was the constant refrain of her +bewildered, half-paralysed mind. + +Gradually in the quiet monotonous life at Priesthope the question made +itself felt. "_How did he know?_" + +That question was never answered by Fay, deeply though she pondered over +it. It remained a mystery to her all of her life. She recalled little +scraps of his conversation, tiny incidents which might have shown her +that he knew. But she had noticed nothing at the time. Her cheek burned +when she recalled his tranquil, sarcastic voice. + +"Not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty, is +the high road! But I have known, not once, nor twice, women to murder +men very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die." + +When first she remembered those words of her dead husband, a horrible +revulsion of feeling against him seized her. She had been vaguely +miserable and remorseful at his death until those words, so tranquilly +spoken in a primrose dawn, came back to her. + +Then she was suddenly glad he was dead, gone for ever. She almost hated +him once more. It was dreadful to live with people whom she did not +understand, who knew things they kept secret, whose minds and thoughts +and motives were incomprehensible to her, who believed horrible untrue +things of her. It had been a fixed idea with Fay during her husband's +lifetime that he believed horrible untrue things about her. But what +they were she would have found it difficult to say. + +Fay's was not a suspicious nature in its normal state, but most persons +of feeble judgment become suspicious when life becomes difficult. They +cannot judge, and consequently cannot trust. Fay had never learnt even +so much of her husband as that she might have trusted him entirely. Now +that he was gone without betraying her, the knowledge that he had known +her secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with a +flood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyal +he had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fear +and anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part of +the doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know when +it has been generously and humanely dealt with. + +When Fay had somewhat recovered from the shock of her husband's dying +speech she had turned with all her might to Magdalen, had cast herself +upon her, clung to her in a sort of desperation. Magdalen at any rate +believed in her. + +For many months after she came to Priesthope, her mind remained in a +kind of stupor, and it seemed at first as if she were regaining a sort +of calm, caught as it were from Magdalen's presence. + +But gradually miserable brooding memories returned, and it seemed at +last as if something in Magdalen's gentle serenity irritated instead of +soothing Fay as heretofore. Was Magdalen a sort of unconscious ally of +that fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words of +Magdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any rate +something stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrink +from Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moody +intervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at the +housekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later she +would be humbly and hysterically affectionate once more, asking to be +forgiven for her waywardness. She could not live without the comfort of +Magdalen's tenderness. And at times she could not live with it. Magdalen +preserved an unmoved front. She ignored her sister's petulance and +spasmodic fault-finding. She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill, +but what that ill was she did not know. She kept the way open for Fay's +sudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited. + +Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow +to take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a +rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up +the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led +her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should +touch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that +she lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the natural +instincts of animals. + +Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months at +Priesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to her +life by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent. +His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partially +blurred, persistently pushed aside--the memory of Michael in prison. The +figure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other figure in its +cell. + +But now the remembrance of Michael, continually stirred up by poor +Wentworth, with his set, bereaved face, was never suffered to sleep. +With every week of her life it seemed to Fay some new pain came. + +Magdalen could not comfort her. Magdalen, who was so fond of Michael. + +_If Magdalen knew!_ + +_Magdalen must never, never know._ She could not live without Magdalen. +Magdalen was not like Andrea in that. She at any rate was concealing +nothing, could know nothing. Now that Andrea was dead, only one living +person beside herself _knew_--Michael. Fay was unconsciously growing to +hate the thought of that one other person, to turn with horror from the +remembrance of Michael: his sufferings, his patient life in death +filled her with nausea, disgust. Her vehement selfish passion for him +had been smothered by the hideous debris which had been cast upon it. + +She had never loved him, as the duke well knew, and now the shivering +remembrance of him, constantly renewed by Wentworth, had become like a +poignard in a wound that would not heal. Wentworth had to-day yet again +unconsciously turned the dagger in the wound, and her whole being +sickened and shuddered. Oh! if she could only tear out that sharp-bladed +remembrance and cast it from her, then in time the aching wound in her +life might heal, and she might become happy and well and at peace once +more;--at peace like Magdalen. An envious anger flared up in her mind +against Magdalen's calm and happy face. + +Oh, if poor Michael could only die! He wanted to die. If only he could +die and release her. _Release her from what?_ + +From her duty to speak and set him free? Those were the words which she +never permitted the rebel voice within to say. Still, they were there, +silenced for the time, but always waiting to be said. Their gagged +whisper reached her in spite of herself. + +Oh! if only Michael were dead and out of his suffering, then she would +never be tortured by them any more. Then, too, her husband's words would +lose their poisoned point, and she could thrust them forth from her mind +for ever. + +"Francesca, how much longer will you keep your cousin Michael in +prison?" + +Oh! Cruel, cruel Andrea, vindictive to the very gates of death. + +Down the empty, whispering gallery of ghostly fears in which her life +crouched, Michael's voice spoke to her also. She could hear his grave, +low tones. "Think of me as in fairy-land." + +That tender, compassionate message had a barbed point which pierced +deeper even than the duke's words. + +Her lover and her husband seemed to have conspired together to revenge +themselves upon her. + +Fay leaned her pretty head against the window-sill and sobbed +convulsively. + +Poor little soul in prison, weeping behind the bars of her cell, that +only her own hands could open! + +Were not Fay and Michael both prisoners, fast bound: she in misery, he +only in iron. + +The door opened gently and Magdalen came in in a long white wrapper, +with a candle in her hand. + +She put down the candle and came towards Fay. She did not speak. Her +face quivered a little. She bent over the huddled figure in the window +seat, and with a great tenderness drew it into her arms. For a moment +Fay yielded to the comfort of the close encircling arms, and leaned her +head against Magdalen's breast. + +Then she wrenched herself free, and pushed her sister violently from +her. + +"Why do you come creeping in like that?" she said fiercely. "You only +come to spy upon me." + +Magdalen did not speak. She had withdrawn a pace, and stood looking at +her sister, her face as white as her night-gown. + +Fay turned her tear-drenched face to the window and looked fixedly out. +There was a faint movement in the room. When she looked round Magdalen +was gone. + +Fay, worn with two years of partially eluded suffering, restless with +pain, often sick at heart, was at last nearing the last ditch:--but she +had not reached it yet. + +Many more useless tears, many more nights of anguish, many more days of +sullen despair still lay between her and that last refuge. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + Il n'y a point de passe vide ou pauvre, il n'y a point + d'evenements miserables, il n'y a que des evenements + miserablement accueillis.--MAETERLINCK. + + +Magdalen went back to her own room, and set down her candle on the +dressing-table with a hand that trembled a little. + +"I ought not to have gone," she said half aloud, "and yet--I knew she +was awake and in trouble. And she nearly spoke to me to-day. I +thought--perhaps at last--the time had come like it did with Mother. But +I was wrong. I ought not to have gone." + +The large room which had been her mother's, the elder Fay's, seemed +to-night crowded with ghostly memories: awakened by the thought of the +younger Fay sobbing in the room at the end of the passage. + +In this room, in that bed, the elder Fay had died eighteen years ago. + +How like the mother the child had become who had been named after her. + +Magdalen saw again in memory the poor pretty apathetic mother who had +taken so long to die; a grey-haired Fay, timid as the present Fay, +unwise, inconsequent, blind as Fay, feebly unselfish, as alas! Fay was +not. + +There is in human nature a forlorn impulse, to which Mrs. Bellairs had +yielded, to speak at last when the great silence draws near, of the +things that have long cankered the heart, to lay upon others part of +the unbearable burden of life just when death is about to remove move +it. Mrs. Bellairs had always groped feebly in heavy manacles through +life, in a sort of twilight, but her approaching freedom seemed towards +the last to throw a light, faint and intermittent but still a light, on +much that had lain confused and inexplicable in her mind. Many whispered +confidences were poured into Magdalen's ears during those last weeks, +faltered disjointed revelations, which cut deep into the sensitive +stricken heart of the young girl, cutting possibly also new channels for +all her after life to flow through. + +Did the mother realise the needless anguish she inflicted on the spirit +of the grave, silent girl of seventeen. Perhaps she was too near the +great change to judge any longer--not that she had ever judged--what was +wise or unwise, what was large or small. Trivial poisoned incidents and +the deep wounds of life, petty unreasonable annoyances and acute +memories were all jumbled together. She had never sorted them, and now +she had ceased to know which was which. The feeble departing spirit +wandered aimlessly among them. + +"You must stand up to your father, Magdalen, when I'm gone. I never +could. I was too much in love with him at first, and later on when I +tried he had got the habit of my yielding to him, and it made a +continual wretchedness if I opposed him. He always thought I did not +love him if I did not consent to everything he wished, or if I did not +think him right whatever he did. I did try to stand up about the +children, but at last I gave up that too. I was not fit to have +children, if I sacrificed their wellbeing to his caprice and his whim, +but that was what I did. I have been a poor mother, and an unfaithful +friend, and an unjust mistress. Women like me have no business to +marry.... + +"You don't remember Annie, do you? She was second housemaid, the best +servant I ever had. She was engaged to William, the footman with the +curly hair. He is butler now at Barford. She cared for him dreadfully, +poor soul. But your father could not bear her because she had a squint, +and he never gave me any peace till I parted with her. I did part with +her--and I got her a good place--but--I spoilt her marriage. It did not +take much spoiling perhaps, for after she was gone he soon began to walk +with the kitchen maid, but--she had been kind to me. So good once when I +was ill, and my maid was ill. She did everything for me. I have often +cried about that at night since." + + * * * * * + +"Mother always used to tell me and I never believed it, but it is +true--men are children and it is no good thinking them different. They +never grow up. I don't know if there are any grown up men anywhere. I +suppose there must be--but I have never met one. I don't know any Prime +Ministers or Archbishops, but I expect they are just the same as your +father in home life." + + * * * * * + +"I daresay your father will be sorry when I'm gone. People like your +father are always very fond of someone who is dead, who has no longer +any claim upon them: a mother or a sister, whom they did not take much +trouble about when they were alive. + +"Of course I am going to die first, but I sometimes used to think if +your father died before me and if he were allowed to come back after +death--such things do happen--I had a friend who saw a ghost +once--whether he would be as vexed then at any little change as he is +now. You know, Magdalen, it has always been a cross to me that the +writing-table in my sitting-room is away from the light. My eyes were +never strong. I moved it near the window when I first came here, but +your father was annoyed and had it put back where it is now, because his +mother always had it there. But I really could not see to write there. +And I have often thought if he came back after he was dead whether he +would mind if he found I had moved it nearer the window." + + * * * * * + +"The Bishop of Elvaston married us. I daresay you don't remember him, my +dear. He died a few years later. He had a wart on his chin and he once +shook hands with baby's feet. But he was good. He told me I must +sacrifice all to love. But what has been the use of all my sacrifices, +first of myself and then of others? Your father has not been the happier +or the better for it, but the worse. I have let him do so many cruel +little things for which others have suffered. It was not exactly that he +did not see what he was doing. He would not see. Some people are like +that. They won't look, and they become dreadfully angry if they are +asked to look. I gave it up at last. Oh, my poor husband! I knew I had +failed everybody else, but at any rate not him. But I see now,"--the +weak voice broke--"I see now that I have failed him, too. We ought +never to have married. Love is not any guide to happiness. Remember +that, Magdalen. We were both weak. He was weak and domineering. I was +weak and yielding. I don't know which is the worst." + +As the shadows deepened all the tacit unforgiveness of a weak, +down-trodden nature which has been vanquished by life whispered from the +brink of the grave. + +"I have never been loved. I have given everything, and I have had +nothing back. Nothing. Nothing. Don't marry, Magdalen. Men are all like +that. Lots of women say the same. They take everything and they give +nothing. It is our own fault. We rear them to it from their cradles. +From their schooldays we teach them that everything is to give way to +them, beginning with the sisters. With men it is Take, Take, Take, until +we have nothing left to give. I went bankrupt years ago. There is +nothing left in me. I _have_ nothing and I _am_ nothing. I'm not dying +now. I have been dead for years." + + * * * * * + +"You say I am going to be at peace, Magdalen, but how do you know? I +daresay I'm not. I daresay I am going to hell, but if I do I don't care. +I don't care where I go so long as it is somewhere where there aren't +any more husbands, and housekeeping, and home, weary, weary home, and +complaints about food. I don't want ever to see anything again that I +have known here. I am so tired of everything. I am tired to death." + + * * * * * + +Poor mother and poor daughter. + +Who shall say what Magdalen's thoughts were as she supported her +mother's feeble steps down to the grave. Perhaps she learned at +seventeen what most of us only learn late, so late, when life is half +over. + +Bitterness, humiliation, the passionate despair of the heart which has +given all and has received nothing,--these belong not to the armed band +of Love's pilgrims, though they dog his caravan across the desert. + +These are only the vultures and jackal prowlers in Love's wake, ready to +pounce on the faint hearted pilgrim who through weakness falls into the +rear, where fang and talon lie in wait to swoop down and rend him. + +If we adventure to be one of Love's pilgrims we must needs be long +suffering and meek, if we are to win safe with him across the desert, +and see at last his holy city. + + * * * * * + +Tears welled up into Magdalen's eyes as one piteous scene after another +came back to her, enacted in this very room. + +Poor little mother, who had seemed to Magdalen then so old and forlorn, +who, when she died, had only been a year or two older than Magdalen +herself was now. + +And poor little wavering life sobbing in the room at the end of the +passage over some mysterious trouble. + +The elder Fay lived on in the younger Fay. Was she also to be vanquished +by life, to become gradually embittered and resentful? There seemed to +be nothing in her lot to make her so. What was it, what could it be that +was casting a blight over Fay's life? + +How to help her, how to release her from the self-imposed fetters in +which her mother had lived and--died. + +Just as some persons have the power of making something new out of +refuse--paper out of rags--so Magdalen seemed to have the power of +cherishing and transforming the weaker, meaner elements of the +characters with which she came in contact. Certain qualities in those we +are inclined to love daunt us. Insincerity, callousness, selfishness, +treachery in its more refined aspects, these are apt to arouse at first +incredulity and at last scorn in us. But they aroused neither in +Magdalen. She saw them with clearness, and dealt tenderly with them. + +What others discarded as worthless, she valued. To push aside the feeble +and intermittent affection of a closed and self-centred nature, +believing it is giving its best, what is that but to push aside a poor +man's little offering. Many years ago Magdalen had accepted not without +tears, one such offering from a very poor man indeed. + +Loving-kindness, tenderness, have their warped, stunted shoots as well +as their free-growing, stately blossoms. It is the same marvellous, +fragrant life struggling to come forth through generous or barren soil. +There are some thin, dwarfed, almost scentless flowers of love and +friendship, of which we can discern the faint fragrance only when we are +on our knees. But some of us have conscientious scruples about kneeling +down except at shrines. Magdalen had not. + +She knew that Fay cared but little for her in reality. But she also knew +that she did care a little. Fay had turned to her many times, and had +repulsed and forgotten her not a few times. + +Magdalen had a good memory. + +"When she really wants me she will turn to me again," she said +tranquilly to herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + Toute passion a son chemin de croix. + + +And Michael? + +What of him during these two endless years? + +What did he think about during his first year in prison: what was the +first waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradual +discovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside his +window to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn, +how did he bear them? + +His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. The +egoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his. +He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not +thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did +he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he +accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through +the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against +him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one, +minister to him in his great need? + +Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was suffering +voluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept hold +of the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot what +he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emerged +from behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that moment +in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love. + +Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love for +him was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that +realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before +the trial, that she would not speak. + +Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his +love for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He saw +that she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that she +was not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice which +would have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he saw +that. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she might +make it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had to +be gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she _did_ love him +in her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a _small_ +sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into a +smaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too much +distress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that if +a slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she would +indubitably have made it. + +After a year in prison the news tardily reached Michael through his +friend, the doctor, that the duke was dead. + +The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive. +He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to each +other. + +But now, _now_, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to her +to do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have to +endure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which her +delicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that made +all the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. A +little courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a small +sacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other had +been too much to expect. _But this_---- + +Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, and +sobbed for joy. + +Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. He +knew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength. + +Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death of +his friend had brought him. + +Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy ever +rose and rose afresh within him. + +Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving for +her was no longer a sin. + +It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a +floating gossamer tangle of sound across the water. + +Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him. + +He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of his +narrow window. + +How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice! + +He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each with +its little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boats +from Chioggia, floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in the +pearl haze of the lagoon. + +How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyes +from them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into the +man in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him, +and break him upon its wheel. + +He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at him +like a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air; +free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under a +luminous sky. + +He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleaming +islands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an orange sail. + +For Fay would come to him. The one woman in the world of counterfeits +would come to him, and set him free. She would take him in her arms at +last, and lay her cool healing touch upon his aching life. And he would +lean his forehead against her breast, and his long apprenticeship to +love would be over. It seemed to Michael that she was here already, her +soft cheek against his. + +He pressed his face to the stone wall, and whispered as to her: + +"Fay, have I served you?" + +He almost heard her tremulous whisper, "Yes." + +"Do you still love me?" + +"Yes." + +"We may love each other now." + +Again Fay's voice very low. "Yes." + +It had to be like that. This moment was only a faint foreshadowing of +that unendurable joy, which inevitably had to come. + +A great trembling laid hold on Michael. He could not stand. He fell on +his knees, but he could not kneel. He stretched himself face downwards +on his pallet. But it was not low enough. He flung himself on the floor +of his cell, but it was not low enough. A grave would hardly have been +low enough. The resisting stone floor had to do instead. + +And through the waves of awe and rapture that swept over him came +faintly down to him, as from some dim world left behind, the bells of +Venice, and the thin cry of the sea-mew rejoicing with him. + +Can we call a life sad which has had in it one such blessed hour? + +Luminous day followed luminous day, and the nights also were full of +light. His work was nothing to him. The increasing heat was nothing to +him. His chains were nothing to him. + +But at last when the weeks drew into a month, two months, a chill doubt +took up its abode with him. It was resolutely cast out. But it returned. +It was fought against with desperation. It was scorned as want of faith. +Michael's strength waned with each conflict. But it always returned. At +last it became to him like a mysterious figure, always present with him. + +"Fay," he whispered over and over again through the endless burning +nights of summer. "Dear one, come soon." + +There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn. + +The shadow deepened. + +A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael. + +What could have happened? + +Was she ill? + +Was she dead? + +He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still. + +Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known what +it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn +into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the +unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns +into a forest tree,--for a word which does not come. + + * * * * * + +Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of the +duke--Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall--he received a +letter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year. + +He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all the +time that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust. + +With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each +other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the +retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had +married his chaplain--a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been able +to resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridges +had done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. But +he did not care to shoot without Michael. + +He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence. + +"Your cousin, the Duchess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthope +for good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally. +At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rather +more cheerful as time passes on." + +The letter fell out of Michael's hand. + +"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._" + +Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh. + +Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was he +who had laughed. + +"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._" + +He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behind +him,--during which the time had passed on. He saw them pieced together +into a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in the +midst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him, +under a blinding sun. + +That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. He +had touched the goal. + +She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; not +lately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke's +death, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as the +sick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italy +for good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must have +made up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake. +She had decided to leave him to his fate. + +She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief over +its rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to love +him--he felt still her hands holding his hands against her breast--had +never loved him. She did not know what love was. + +She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last. + +There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at +its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot +love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later +that shudder has to come. + +Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. +We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can +teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. +Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, +tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us +and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking +and faithful God? + +Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us? + +The duke's words came back to Michael. + +"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for +whom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charming +self." + +He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days. + +Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He +broke his teeth against his chains. + +If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with +the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake. + +[Illustration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE +HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"] + +And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild +outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake +a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, +and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilite des + femmes? Qui sait jusq'ou peut aller l'inconstance de ce + sable mouvant?--ALFRED DE MUSSET. + + +The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold. + +Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate too +narrow for him? + +After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with the +walls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep or +eat. He was absorbed in one idea. + +Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, +rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive +feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by +reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he +learned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled up +against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage. + +He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind of +pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes he +got up, and pushed them back with his hands. + +The sun had shifted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a few +minutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. He +looked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him. + +He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything. + +The doctor came to see him, and looked closely at him, and spoke kindly +to him. He was interested in the young Englishman, and, like several of +the warders, was convinced of his innocence. + +Michael took no notice of him, barely answered his questions. He was +impatient of any interruption. + +He was absorbed in one thought. + +He had loved Fay for a long time. How long was it? Five years? Ten +years? Owing to his peculiar fate love had usurped in Michael's life too +large a place, the place which it holds in a woman's life, but which is +unnatural in a man's. He did not know it, but he had travelled a long +way on the road towards an entire oblivion of Fay when he came to Rome. +But the one great precaution against her he had not taken. He had not +replaced her, and "Only that which is replaced is destroyed." He had +grown accustomed to loving her. + +In these days he went over, slowly, minutely, every step of his long +acquaintanceship with her, from the first day, when he was nineteen and +she was seventeen, to the last evening six years later, when he had +kissed the cold hand that could have saved him, and did not. + +Old people, wise old learned people, smoke-dried Dons and genial bishops +sitting in their dignified studies, had spoken with guarded frankness to +him in his youth on the temptations of life. They had told him that +love, save when it was sanctified by marriage, was only a physical +passion, a temporary madness, a fever which all men who were men +underwent, but to which a man of principle did not succumb, and which if +vigorously suppressed soon passed away. + +Why had it not been so with him? He had never had to contend with the +coarse forms of temptation of which his elders had spoken, as if they +were an integral part of his youth. + +Why, then, had he loved this pretty, false, selfish woman so long? Why +had he allowed himself to be drawn back into her toils after he had +known she was false? Why was he more weak, more credulous, more +infatuated than other men? + +The duke had actually been her husband, had actually possessed that +wonderful creature, and yet he, under the glamour of her personal +presence, which it made Michael gasp to think of, he, the duke, had not +been deceived. + +Why had he, Michael, been deceived? + +He remembered the exhortations of his tepid-minded, painlessly married +tutor at Oxford, who read the vilest French novels as a duty, and took a +walk with his wife on fine afternoons; and whose cryptic warnings on the +empire of the passions would have made a baboon blush. + +Michael laughed suddenly as he recalled the mild old-maidish face. What +was the old prig talking about? What did he know, dried up and +shrivelled like a bit of seaweed between the leaves of a folio. + +Everyone had told him wrong. + +Why had they decried this awful power, why had they so confused it with +sensual indulgence that he had had to disentangle it for himself? Why +had they not warned him, on the contrary, that the love of woman was a +living death, a pitfall from which there was no escape, from the depths +of which you might stare at the sky till you starved to death, as he was +doing now. + +With all their warnings they had not warned him, these grave men, these +instructors of youth, who had never known any world except their little +world of books, who ranged women into two camps, one in which they held +a docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, +mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of his +demure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgar +temptresses, on a level with the wine cup and the gambling table. + +Why had he allowed himself to be duped and hoodwinked by his elders and +by his own shyness, into chastity? They had entreated him to believe it +was the only happy life. _It was not._ To be faithful to his future +wife. Ha! Ha! That was the beginning of the trap, the white sand neatly +raked over the hidden gin. + +If he had only lived like other men! If he had only listened to the +worst among them, if he had only torn the veil early from every limb of +that draped female figure, that iron maiden, if he had only seen it in +its horror of nudity, with its sharp nails for eyes, and its jagged +knives where the bosom should be, he should not be pressed to death in +its embrace now. + +He had been deceived, betrayed, fooled. That was why he was shut up. He +had believed in a woman, had believed that the cobra's bite was only a +wasp's sting. Good Lord, what an imbecile! He was insane of course, +raving mad. And he had been here eighteen months and only saw the joke +now. + +Michael laughed again, shouted with laughter. + +The sun was setting again. It was always setting now. It set in the +mornings as well. The red thong of light was on the wall again. Blood +red! He rocked to and fro shaking with laughter. + +The doctor and a warder came in. It was just like them. They were always +coming in when they were not wanted. + +He pointed at the bar of light, stumbled to it, and tried to tear it +from the wall. It had been there long enough. Too long. And as he tore +at it with hands dyed crimson, something that was pressing upon him +lightened suddenly, and the blood gushed forth from his mouth, flooding +the sun-stained wall. + +"I have put out that damned sunset at last," he said to himself as he +fell. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + So we must keep apart, + You there, I here, + With just the door ajar + That oceans are, + And prayer, + And that pale sustenance + Despair! + + --EMILY DICKENSON. + + +It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice +of his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness that +Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did +not lavish on him. + +Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and +closed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearer +together. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift +when the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was +aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Days +passed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything. + + * * * * * + +He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor had +been in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made him +drink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. +How clear everything was becoming. He raised his hand to his head. He +had not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at his +wasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these marks +on the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he had +forgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he should +know numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, and +held it close to his eyes. + +These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. And +here over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deep +sore once. + +_When?_ + +If only he could remember! + +The mist in his mind cleared a little. + +_Those bruises were made by chains._ + +A deadly faintness came over him. + + * * * * * + +Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back into +his feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what he +had done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a long +time, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious, +crouching in the back of his mind. + +The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, and +he shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want to +have the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest to +please the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. The +doctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in the +early autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicate +grey lilac. + +"I remember," said Michael, whitening. + +It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the flowering +and the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon his +brain. + +"A hundred years it is lilac," he said, "and a hundred thousand years it +is a purple brown." + +The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, +looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gently +and took it away. + +Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which he +should see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the very +edge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's last +desertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark. + + * * * * * + +A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterflies +this time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind, +and he feared for his brain. He was too weak to read. He might perhaps +like to look at pictures. + +The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immense +butterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay, +but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee. + +Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it had +been looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender. + +Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousands +once in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he had +been abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in the +sunshine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like an +army of fairies. + +How heavy the book was on his knee. + +He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor +would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when +he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf. + +Were there English butterflies here as well? + +Yes. Here was a sheet of them. + +He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common +enough in the south of England. + +He looked idly at it. + +And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal +screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop. + +He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly like +that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening +and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed +how beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards +it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, +and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed +over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its +wings, one by one, because they were so pretty. + +He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and +almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly +thing with struggling legs. + +The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain. + +"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand." + +And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look +into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had +put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had +cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But +nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had done +it on purpose to that other poor creature of God. _She did not +understand._ + +Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came +back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's +face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he +had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with +her pretty hand. + +Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she +would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now +at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more +deeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of grief +came, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted had +been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt. + +An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in all +the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid +heart. + +Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light! + +Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the +death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always +enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place. + +A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It +shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child +against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love +that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, +and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had +strength from her to wander away from her--back into her arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + And no more turn aside and brood + Upon Love's bitter mystery. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + +It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the +embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties +have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is +callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell +in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that +was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in +the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the +ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand. +Old age ceases to understand. + +But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond +youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and +gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their +zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. +Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind +them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the +world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, +call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might +wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they +are looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only +be loved and served. They cannot love--as yet. They exact love and miss +it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, +frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyse +it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is +nothing to be got out of it after all. + +They seem inhuman because they are not human--as yet. They seem +variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's +body and brain must so seem. They are not sane--as yet. + +And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth +and beauty and tenderness may not come forth--as yet. + +We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them +now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like +half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes. + +Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived +unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days +that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was +supported by the illusion--was it an illusion--that it was Fay really +who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her +place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, +unless he helped her through. + +He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well +enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once +more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his, that +they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh? + +When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it +was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go--at +last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's. + +His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its +exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was + a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the + easiest.--EDITH WHARTON. + + +On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awake +listening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distance +away from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorb +her, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for so +many years past. + +Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearing +wind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listen +intently. + +Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the passage +to Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none that +could be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over the +groaning old house. + +She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over the +dim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay. + +Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out her +arms. + +Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly: + +"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?" + +Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms. + +Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost as +much as Fay. + +Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane. +Within, another storm had broken in a passion of tears. + +Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing. + +"I was coming to you, Magdalen,--I was trying to come--and I couldn't--I +had pushed you away when you came before--and I thought perhaps you +would push _me_ away--no--no--I didn't, but I said to myself you would. +I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the same +because--because,"--Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into a +strangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more." + +"Tell me about it." + +But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself face +downwards on the bed. + +"I can't," she gasped. "I must and I can't. I must and I can't." + +Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that the +breaking moment had come and she waited. + +She waited a long time. + +The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself. + +At last Fay sat up. + +Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, she +blew the dim embers to a glow. + +Fay watched her. + +Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes +fixed upon it. + +"I have done something very wicked," said Fay in a hollow voice from the +bed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me +that you will never tell anybody?" + +"I promise," said Magdalen after a moment. + +"Swear it." + +"I swear." + +Fay made several false starts and then said: + +"I was very unhappy with Andrea." + +Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red. + +"He never cared for me," continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and +kneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who +does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too +selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know +anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me." + +Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passage +she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful +weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to +love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in +silence then so she listened in silence now. + +"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully +disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real +confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, +those whom God has joined together. Andrea never seemed to remember +that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to +care for him, and--he brought it on himself--I'm not excusing myself, +Magdalen--I see now that I was to blame too--I ended by caring for +someone else--someone who _did_ love me, who always had since we were +boy and girl together." + +"Not Michael!" + +"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It +never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. +I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared +at last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me." + +Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so +far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her +confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking +the whole truth and nothing but the truth. + +"Of course he found it out at last and--and we agreed to part. We +decided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to say +good-bye. Was it _very_ wrong of me to let him come once,--just once?" + +"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not +he leave Rome?" + +"He was arrested the same night," faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to him +in the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they were +looking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out. +And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hid +behind the screen in my room. And then--you know the rest--the police +came in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to the +murder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing to +do to save my reputation, and he did it." + +"And what did you say?" + +"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak." + +"And later on when you were not too faint?" + +"I never said anything later on either." Fay's voice had become almost +inaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess." + +"But when he did not confess?" + +"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that he +might still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen." + +There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures in +Magdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefully +safeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in the +process. + +At last she said, "Did Andrea _know_ that Michael was innocent of the +murder?" + +"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he said +something cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence for +certain, had known it from the first." + +"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do you +suppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight, +after he had ostensibly left the house?" + +Fay stared at her sister aghast. + +"I never thought of that," she said. + +"What _can_ Andrea have thought of that?" + +"Andrea was very secretive," faltered Fay. "You never could tell what he +was thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. Roman +Catholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of the +wife." + +There was another silence. + +Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given +time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents +that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken +refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, but +they don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse to +weigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quickly +confused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all they +remember that upholds their own view of the situation and--discard the +rest. + +Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could only +restate her own view of her husband's character. + +Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others if +they had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waited +a moment, and then said: + +"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment between +yourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had not +guessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew it +_then_--for certain. _For certain_, Fay. Remember that is settled. There +was no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if you +bar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea is +concerned. Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect for +Michael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which would +have ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did not +understand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me he +acted towards you with great nobility and delicacy." + +Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husband +must not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have any +fixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the whole +tightly wedged fabric in position. + +"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed," she +said. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the least +hint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison." + +"Perhaps he hoped--hoped against hope--that----" Magdalen did not finish +her sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them, +and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, she +went on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without a +word to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I see +now that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italian +hereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such a +height as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicions +he might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael if +he had not followed a very noble instinct, that of entire trust in you +both in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Dear Fay, the +proof was overwhelming." + +Fay was silent. + +"Just as we all believed in Michael's innocence of the murder, so Andrea +believed in your innocence of a crime even greater, never faltered in +his belief, and went to his grave without a word of doubt. Oh! Fay, Fay, +do you suppose there are many men like that?" + +And Magdalen, who so seldom wept, suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps the +thought forced itself through her mind, "If only once long ago I had met +with one little shred of such tender faith!" + +"Andrea was better than I thought," Fay faltered. The admission made her +uneasy. She wished he had not been better, that her previous view of him +had not been disturbed. + +Magdalen's tears passed quickly. She glanced again at Fay through a veil +of them, looking earnestly for something she did not find. + +"And Michael," she went on gently. "Dear, dear Michael. He gave himself +for you, spent in one moment, not counting the cost, his life, his +future, his good name--for your sake. And he goes on day by day, month +by month, year in year out, enduring a living death without a word--for +your sake. How long has Michael been in prison?" + +"Two years." Fay's voice was almost inaudible. + +"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But if +his strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was any +man since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and your +lover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish and +could not love. I have heard many women say the same. But _you_! How can +_you_ say such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love and +serve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever find +anything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material of +men's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to have +stood between two such men who must have crushed you between them if +either of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentary +selfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and--where would +_you_ have been?" + +"No one knows how good Michael is better than I do," said Fay, "but what +you don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been for _me_. +He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. +No, I don't _think_ it, I _know_ it. He can't have suffered as much as I +have." + +Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a +tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always +tender. + +"You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain +things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the +loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years? +What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!" + +Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's +knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone +to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she +loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but +had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a +more prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able +to tell her sister everything. + +The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of +the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, +when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the +rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. +Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about +ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive +anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines +of our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister +ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up +from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one +whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly +for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our +meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the +world what only Love may safely know concerning us? + +Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless +bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. She +heard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much that +Fay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that it +was misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yet +repentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of our +prisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cells +bolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business of +leaving our cells when only misery urges us forth. I think that +Magdalen's heart must have sunk many times, but whenever Fay looked up +she met the same tender, benignant look bent down upon her. + +"Oh! why didn't I tell you before?" she said at last. "I always wanted +to, but I thought--at least I felt--I see I did you an injustice--I +thought you might press me to--to----" + +"_To confess_," said Magdalen, her low voice piercing to Fay's very +soul. + +"Y-yes, at least to say something to a policeman or someone, so that +Michael might be let out. I was afraid if I told you you would never +give me any peace till Michael was released." + +"Have you _had_ any peace since he was put into prison?" + +Fay shook her head. + +"Make your mind easy, Fay, I shall never urge you to"--Magdalen +hesitated--"to go against your conscience." + +"What would you have done in my place?" said Fay hastily. + +"I should have had to speak." + +"You are better than me, Magdalen, more religious. You always have +been." + +"I should have had to speak, not because I am better or worse than you, +but simply because I could not have endured the misery of silence. It +would have broken me in two. And if I had not had the courage to speak +in Andrea's lifetime, I would have spoken directly he was dead, and have +released Michael and married him. You have not told me why you did not +do that." + +"I never thought of it. I somehow regarded it as all finished. And I +have never even _thought_ of marrying Michael or anyone when I was left +a widow. I was much too miserable. I had had enough of being married." + +There was a difficult silence. + +"I should never have a moment's peace if--if I _did_ speak," said Fay at +last. + +"Yes, you would," said Magdalen with sudden intensity. "That is where +peace lies." + +Fay raised herself to her knees and looked into Magdalen's eyes. The +dawn had come up long ago, and in its austere light Magdalen's face +showed very sharp and white in a certain tender fixity and compassion. +She had seen that look once before in her husband's dying eyes. Now that +she was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood it +for the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might be +given peace! + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + There is no wild wind in his soul, + No strength of flood or fire; + He knows no force beyond control, + He feels no deep desire. + + He knows no altitudes above, + No passions elevate; + All is but mockery of love, + And mimicry of hate. + + --EDGAR VINE HALL. + + +The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library at +Barford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down lay +Priesthope, where Fay was. + +He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulated +existence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade him +only in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid his +purpling beeches. + +Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those mornings +sacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagant +surmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards a +thing or person--in what he called his point of view--than in the thing +viewed. + +He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with his +feelings about her than with herself. It was these which were now +engrossing him. + +For some time past he had been working underground--digging out the +foundations--and as a rule invisible as a mole within them--of a tedious +courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is +much more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was not +to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously +diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large +battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon +themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. He +had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance +meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed +by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves +across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine +violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex; +and that when he met the _right_ woman she would set to work like the +others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be +conveniently arrived at. + +But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent +grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain +turn which affairs might one day take. + +At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one +of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further +masculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, +almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings +under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. He +was aware--at least, he told himself that he was aware--that +extraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how he +reconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. The +chance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions, +and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with much _naif_ +dignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other old +friend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposed +but earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grappling +with the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was of +estrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning and +found he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at the +correct moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by the +comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He +shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with +himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the +meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild +emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a +little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was +delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse. + +I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the verge +of being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails from +the abyss by a certain _naivete_ and uprightness of character. The +Bishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact that +dolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond of +him. + +Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was still unconsciously +meditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancing +furtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary, +self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman, +however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining him +with her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by looking +back. + +Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he did +propose he would be accepted--she in short must commit herself--and +then--after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still--at any +rate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of Pilgrim +Road. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would be +an entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "short +cut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of his +return journey from Lostford. + +It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down Pilgrim +Road feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth was +breathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking in +the vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossy +track dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on the +boles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze of +myriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. There +was a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself. + +At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on a +fallen tree near the track. + +For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he should +ride past, just taking off his hat. But he had ridden past in life, +just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. He +almost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismounted +and walked up to Fay, bridle in hand. + +"What good fortune to meet you," he said. "I so seldom come this way." + +This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than its +obvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yet +anyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at a +foot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right and +left, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with the +actual facts. The moral is--morals cluster like bees round certain +individuals--that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men like +Wentworth. + +"I often used to come here," said Fay, "but not of late. I came to get +some palm." + +She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds on +them covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and he +looked at them with grave attention. + +The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, +suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek head +slightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut. + +"Conrad," said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us." + +Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig. + +Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in his +strong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, +though of doubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfect +rendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphere +of exquisite manners. + +Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then came +back and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. He +had somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of something +striking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much. + +A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to a +choice of subject. + +From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise of +mouse talk, intermittent, _affaire_, accompanied by sudden rustlings and +dartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride and +bridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy of +life in a new soft silken coat! + +Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from time +to time. + +"I am forced to the conclusion," said Wentworth at last, "that even in +these early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says." + +"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?" + +"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have not +our morbid craving for a listener." + +"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking about +themselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement of +his on the subject would be considered final. + +"No doubt," he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling more +like a cavalier than ever. + +Then he actually noticed how pale she was. + +"You look tired," he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept you +awake." + +"Yes," she said, and hung her head. + +Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at her +more closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy with +recent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means than +those of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feeling +new to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawing +him on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in reality +been thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. The +elaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for this +and that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day, +toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for some +unknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night. + +He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never +considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously +about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman +of the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart. + +He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, no +surprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was really +nothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to go +forward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anything +before. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and it +passed away again, leaving a great tranquillity behind, together with a +mounting sense of personal power. + +If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he did +not mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching him +through her presence like music through a reed. He had never understood +it till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistaking +the reed for music! + +Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain things +exceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only to +whisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which we +sometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands? + +The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworth +had believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but a +reiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he might +be ready when the time came. + +"The primroses will soon be out," he said as if it were a secret. + +"Very soon," she said, though they were out already. Fay always assented +to what was said. + +"I must be going," she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If I +sit here any longer I shall never get home at all." + +"Let me take you home on Conrad." + +Fay hesitated. + +"I am frightened of horses." + +"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse. +And I will lead him." + +Fay still hesitated. + +He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. She +was tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope. + +Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition for +anything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came. + +Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small dangling +foot into a stirrup shortened to meet it. + +She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timidity +was reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walking +beside her, with his hand on the rein. + +The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part. + +Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mind +wandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them very +often. + +Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with his +mind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay to +indicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point of +view on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly have +lowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her with +childish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope that +he did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of entering +swiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his own +freedom from ambition, his devotion--unlike other men--to the _small_ +things of life, love, friendship, etc.: we know the rest. Wentworth had +been struck by that sentence when he first said it to the Bishop, and +he repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a more +sympathetic listener than the Bishop. + +I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mouse +said. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightly +Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of his +brown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak of +vanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the _debris_ +of last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admired +her. _He_ did not know anything uncomfortable about her--_as Magdalen +did_. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a person +who thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well he +talked! What a wide-minded, generous man! + +The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it was +reached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, +stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One of +Fay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men felt +instinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. +She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. She +was in reality much stronger than many of her taller, more +robust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if they +required assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousy +of Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always well +enough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwart +figure warded off from her the sympathy to which her severe cramps +undoubtedly entitled her. + +"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising that +the good hour was over. + +Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to her +cheek. + +Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is a +favourite walk of yours?" + +"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon." + +"I have to pass that way, too, most days," he said. "It is a short cut +to Lostford." + +He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldom +used that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticed +the contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on with +because she never compared what anyone said one day with what they said +the next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keener +minds had had to fight against in dealing with him. + +For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense of +regret and loss. + +Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen who +was so good, and so safe, such a comforter--_but who knew_. Fay shrank +back instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs to +her own room, and had tea there. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: "FAY NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW LIGHTLY WENTWORTH +WALKED, HOW SQUARE HIS SHOULDERS WERE"] + +Wentworth rode home feeling younger that he had done for years. What is +thirty-nine? No age for a thin man. (He was in reality nearly +forty-one.) He was pleased with himself. How quaintly amusing he had +been about the mouse. He regretted, not for the first time, that he +did not write novels, for little incidents like that, which the +conventional mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving, +would intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he had +rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her--he +did not know exactly what--but something larger than to-day. Any fool, +any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. He +would like to do something which another person could _not_ do, +something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time place +him in a magnanimous light. + +We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness to +the one we love. We need not trouble ourselves to seek for such an +occasion, for though many things fail us in this life the opportunity so +to act has never yet failed to arrive, and has never arrived alone, +always hand in hand with some prosaic hideously difficult circumstance, +which, if we are of an artistic temperament, may appear to us too ugly. + +Wentworth had never wished to do anything for the gay little lady who, a +few years ago, had crossed his path. The principal subject of his +cogitations about her had been whether she would be able to adapt +herself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided wayward +nature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on the +contrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag on +his soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelings +for her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind of +compassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in it +the possibility of growth, of some expansion. And what other feeling in +Wentworth's clean, well-regulated, sterilized mind had shown any power +of growth? + +The worst of growth is that a small acorn does not grow into a large +acorn as logical persons expect. It ought to, but it does not. It grows +instead into something quite unrecognisable from its small beginnings, +something for which, perhaps, beyond a certain stage, there is no +room,--not even a manger. + +Those who love must discard much. Wentworth had not yet felt the need of +discarding anything, and he had not the smallest intention of doing so. +He intended instead to make a small ornamental addition, a sort of +portico, to his life. His mind had got itself made up this afternoon, +and he contemplated the proposed addition with some complacency as +already made. + +There is, I believe, a method of planting an acorn in a bottle, +productive of the happiest results--for those who love small results. +You only give the acorn a little water every day,--no soil of course. +The poor thing will push up a thin twig of stem through the bottle neck, +and in time will unfold a few real oak leaves. Men like Wentworth would +always prefer the acorn to remain an acorn, but if it shews signs of +growth, some of them are wise enough, take alarm early enough, to +squeeze it quickly down a bottle neck before it has expanded too much to +resist the passage. + +Had Fate in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, or +would she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his own +convenience a great possibility? + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + Look through a keyhole, and your eye will be sore. + + +During the weeks which followed Fay's confession Magdalen became aware +that she watched her, and aware also that she avoided her, was never +alone with her if she could help it. + +At this time Fay began to do many small kindnesses, and to talk much of +the importance of work for others, of the duty of taking an interest in +our fellow creatures. This was a new departure. She had not so far +evinced the faintest interest in the dull routine of home duties which +are of the nature of kindnesses, and had often reproached Magdalen for +spending herself in them. To play halma with zest all the evening with a +parent who must always win, to read the papers to him by the hour, not +while he listened, but while he slept--Fay scorned these humble efforts +of Magdalen's. She shewed no disposition to emulate them; but she did +shew a feverish tendency towards isolated acts of benevolence outside +the home life, which precluded any claim upon her by arousing a hope of +their continuance, which tied her to nothing. Fay began to send boxes of +primroses to hospitals, to knit stockings for orphans, to fatigue +herself with enormous walks over the downs with illustrated papers for +the Saundersfoot work-house. + +It was inevitable at this juncture that she should feel some shocked +surprise at the supineness of those around her. Her altruistic efforts +were practically single-handed. She had hoped that when she inaugurated +them, Magdalen at any rate would have followed suit, would have worked +cheerfully under her direction. But Magdalen, whose serene cheerfulness +had flagged of late, fell painfully below her sister's expectation. Fay +came to the conclusion that it was more lack of imagination than +callousness on her sister's part which held her back. + +Many careworn souls besides Fay have discovered that the irritable +exhaustion, the continual ache of egotism can be temporarily relieved by +taking an inexpensive interest in others. The remedy is cheap and +efficacious, and it is a patent. Like Elliman applied to a rheumatic +shoulder it really does do good--I mean to the owner of the shoulder. +And you can stop rubbing the moment you are relieved. Perhaps these +external remedies are indispensable to the comfort of those who dwell by +choice, like Fay, in low-lying swampy districts, and have no thought of +moving to higher ground. + +Magdalen knew these signs, and sometimes her heart sank. + +Was Fay unconsciously turning aside to busy herself over little things +that were not required of her, in order to shut her eyes to the one +thing needful--a great act of reparation? + +If Fay was watching Magdalen, someone else was watching Fay. Bessie's +round, hard, staring eyes were upon her, and if Bessie did anything she +did it to some purpose. + +One afternoon in the middle of April Bessie came into Magdalen's sitting +room and sat down with an air of concentration. + +"I have reason to be deeply ashamed of myself," she said. "I _am_ +ashamed of myself. If I tell you about it it is not in order that you +may weakly condone and gloss over my conduct." + +Magdalen reflected that Bessie had inherited her father's graceful way +of approaching a difficulty by finding a preliminary fault in his +listener. + +Bessie shut her handsome mouth firmly for a moment, and then opened it +with determination. + +"I thought that whatever faults I had I was at any rate a lady, but I +find I am not. I discovered something by the merest chance a short time +ago, and since then, for the last fortnight I have been acting in a +dishonourable and vulgar manner, in short, spying upon another person." + +"That must have made you miserable." + +"It has. I am miserable. But I deserve that. I did not come to talk +about that. The point is this----" + +"Bessie, I don't want to hear what you evidently ought not to know." + +"Yes, you must, because someone else needs your advice." + +"We won't trouble our minds about the someone else." + +Bessie had, however, inherited another characteristic trait of her +father's. She could ignore when she chose. She chose now. + +"I may as well put you in possession of the facts," she continued. "A +few weeks ago I was coming home by Pilgrim Road. I was not hurrying +because I was struck, as I always am struck--I don't suppose I am +peculiar in this--by the first appearance of spring. Pilgrim Road is a +sheltered place. Spring always comes early there." + +"It does." + +"I will even add that I was recalling to myself verses of poetry +connected with the time of year, when I saw a couple in front of me. +They were walking very slowly with their backs towards me, taking +earnestly together. They were Fay and Wentworth." + +Magdalen made no movement, but her face, always pale, became suddenly +ashen grey. + +If Fay were seriously attracted by Wentworth would she ever confess, +ever release Michael! + +"There was no harm in their walking together," she said tremulously. + +"There was one harm in it," retorted Bessie. "It made me so angry that I +did not know how to live. They did not see me, and I struck up into the +wood, and I had to stay an hour by myself holding on to a little tree, +before I could trust myself to come home." + +"It does not help matters to be angry, Bessie. I was angry once for two +years. I said at the time like Jonah that I did well, but I see now that +I might have done better." + +"I don't particularly care what helps matters and what does not. I now +come to my own disgraceful conduct. I have spied upon Fay steadily for +the last fortnight. She is so silly she never even thinks she is +watched. And she meets Wentworth in Pilgrim Road nearly every afternoon. +I once waylaid her as if by accident, on her way home, and asked her +where she had been, and she said she had been on her way to Arleigh +wood, but had not got so far, as she was too tired. Too tired! She had +been walking up and down with Wentworth for over an hour. I timed them. +She never meant to go to Arleigh wood. And when they said Good-bye, +he--he kissed her hand. Since Fay has come back to live here I have +gradually formed the meanest opinion of her. She is not truthful. She is +not sincere. She is absolutely selfish. I was inclined to be sorry for +her at first, but I soon saw through her. She did not really care for +Andrea. She only pretended. Everything she does is a kind of pretty +pretence. She does not really care for Wentworth. She is only leading +him on for her own amusement." + +"I think it is much more likely that she is drifting towards marriage +with him without being fully aware of what she is doing. But women like +you and me are not in the same position towards men as Fay is. +Consequently it is very difficult for us to judge her fairly." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"You and I are not attractive to men. Fay is. You saw Wentworth kiss her +hand. You naturally infer, but you are probably wrong, that Fay had been +leading him on, as you call it." + +"It will take a good deal to disabuse me of that at any rate. I believe +my own eyes." + +"I should not if I were you. If anyone kissed your hand or mine it would +not only be an epoch in our lives, but also the sign manual of some +ponderous attachment which you, my dear, would carefully weigh, and +approximately value. But do you suppose for one moment that Fay +attaches any importance to such an everyday occurrence!" + +"I see what you are driving at, that Fay is not responsible for her +actions. But she is. She must know when she does things or lets them be +done, that will make others suffer." + +"If you could look into Fay's heart, Bessie, you would find that Fay is +suffering herself and attributing her pain to others. As long as we do +that, as long as we hold the stick by the wrong end, we must inflict +pain in some form or other. Fay is not happy. You cannot look at her +without seeing it." + +"I would not mind so much if it were not for Wentworth," said Bessie +with dreadful courage. "I know it is partly jealousy, but it is not only +jealousy. There are a few crumbs of unselfishness in it. I thought at +first--I reasoned it out with myself and it appeared a logical +conclusion--that father was the ostensible but not the real object of +Wentworth's frequent visits. I took a great interest in his +conversation; it is so lucid, so well informed, so illuminative. I do +not read novels as a rule, but I dipped into a few, studying the love +scenes, and the preliminary approaches to love scenes in order to aid my +inexperience at this juncture. I am sorry to say I fell into the error +that he might possibly reciprocate the growing interest I felt in him, +in spite of the great disparity in age. It was a mistake. I have +suffered for it." + +The two roses of Bessie's cheeks bloomed on as unflinchingly as ever. + +Magdalen's eyes were fixed on her own hands. + +"You would not have suited each other if he had cared for you," she said +after a moment, "for you would not have done him justice when you got to +know him better, any more than you do Fay justice now that you _do_ know +her better. Wentworth is made of words, just as other men are made of +flesh and blood. How would you have kept any respect for him when you +had become tired of words? You are too straightforward, too +sledge-hammer to understand a character like his." + +"In that case Fay ought to suit him," said Bessie grimly. "No one, not +even you, can call her straightforward. But I begin to think, Magdalen, +that you actually wish for the marriage." + +"I had never thought of it as possible on her side until a few minutes +ago, when what you said took me by surprise. Of course I had noticed the +attraction on his side, but it appeared to me he was irresolute and +timid, and it is better to ignore the faint emotions of half-hearted +people. They come to no good. If you repel them they are mortally +offended and withdraw, and if you welcome them they are terrified and +withdraw." + +"I don't think Wentworth intends withdrawing." + +"No. These meetings look as if he had unconsciously drifted with the +current till the rowing back would be somewhat arduous." There was a +moment's silence, in which Magdalen recalled certain lofty sentiments +which Wentworth had aired with suspicious frequency of late. She knew +that when he talked of his consciousness of guidance by a Higher Power +in the important decisions of his life he always meant following the +line of least resistance. In this case the line of least resistance +_might_ tend towards marriage. + +"It never struck me as possible till now," she said aloud, "that Fay +would think seriously of him." + +"I don't suppose she is. She is only keeping her hand in. Don't you +remember how cruel she was to that poor Mr. Bell." + +"I am convinced that she is not keeping her hand in." + +"Then you actually favour the idea of a marriage." Bessie got up and +stalked slowly to the door. "You will help it on?" she said over her +shoulder. + +"No." Magdalen's voice shook a little. "I will do nothing to help it, or +to hinder it." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul-- + No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, + But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. + + --D. G. ROSSETTI. + + +If Fay's progress through life could have been drawn with a pencil it +would have resembled the ups and downs, like the teeth of a saw, of a +fever chart. + +To Magdalen it appeared as if Fay could undergo the same feelings with +the same impotent results of remorse or depression a hundred times. They +seemed to find her the same and leave her the same. But nevertheless she +did move, imperceptibly, unconsciously--no, not quite unconsciously. The +sense--common to all weak natures--not of being guided, but of being +pushed was upon her. + +Once again she tried to extricate herself from the pressure of some +mysterious current. There seemed no refuge left in Magdalen. There +seemed very few comfortable people left in the world, to whom a +miserable woman might turn. Only Wentworth. _He did not know._ + +Perhaps Fay would never have turned to him if she had not first confided +in and then shrunk from Magdalen. For the second time in her life she +longed feverishly to get away from home, the home to which only a year +ago she had been so glad to hurry back, when she had been so restlessly +anxious to get away from Italy. Wentworth was beginning to look like a +means of escape. The duke had at one time worn that aspect. Later on +Michael had looked extremely like it for a moment. Now Wentworth was +assuming that aspect in a more solid manner than either of his +predecessors. She was slipping into love with him, half unconsciously, +half with _malice prepense_. She told herself continually that she did +not want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea of +marriage. + +But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflection +of these inward communings. And why did she conceal from Magdalen her +now constant meetings with him? + +Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimate +knowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to work +out quite smoothly. + +Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay's +demeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to his +intentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm. (How he had set +her mind at rest on that occasion he knew best.) It seemed this +exquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance to +respond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances. +He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, on +the theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to how +he, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to feminine +charm; how he, the determined celibate--Wentworth always called himself +a celibate--had been taken captive after all. To judge by the letters +which Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially one +to Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellect +that he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex to +have remained a bachelor--a celibate, I mean--so long. + +We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves. In the composition of +these imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy. + + * * * * * + +In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the +postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in +London hospitals. + +Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and over +again. They were a kind of anodyne. + +On a blowing afternoon in the middle of April she made her way across +the down with her basket to a distant hazel coppice to which she had not +been as yet. + +A fever of unrest possessed her. She had thought when she confessed to +Magdalen that her misery had reached its lowest depths. But it had not +been so. Her wretchedness, momentarily relieved, had since gone a step +deeper, that was all. She had endeavoured to allay her thirst with a cup +of salt water, which had only increased it to the point of agony. + +As she walked a bare tree stretched out its naked arms to waylay her. It +was the very tree under which Michael and she had kissed each other, six +spring-tides ago. She recognised it suddenly, and turned her eyes away, +as if a corpse were hanging in chains from one of its branches. Her +averted eyes fell upon a seagull wheeling against the blue, the +incarnation of freedom and the joy of life. She turned away her eyes +again and hurried on, looking neither to right nor left. + +A light wind went with her, drawing her like a "kind constraining hand." + +She stumbled across the bare shoulder of the down to the wood below. + +Magdalen came by the same way soon afterwards, but not to gather +primroses. Magdalen usually so serene was becoming daily more troubled. +The thought of Michael in prison ground her to the earth. Fay's obvious +wayward misery, which yet seemed to bring her no nearer to repentance, +preyed upon her. She was crushed beneath her own promise of secrecy. +Every day as it passed seemed to cast yet another stone on the heap +under which she lay. + +Could she dare to keep that promise? How much longer could she dare to +keep it? And yet if she broke it, what would breaking it avail? +Certainly not Michael's release. No creature would believe her +unsupported word. She had not even been in Italy at the time. She would +only appear to be mad. The utmost she might achieve would be to cast a +malignant shadow over her sister. Even if Fay herself confessed the +difficulties of obtaining Michael's release after this lapse of time +would be very great. Unless the confession came from her they would be +insuperable. + +As Magdalen walked her strong heart quailed within her. Long ago in her +passionate youth she had met anguish and had vanquished it alone. But +how to bear the burden of another's sin without sharing the sin? How to +help Fay and Michael? Fay had indeed cast her burden upon her. She knew +not how to endure it, she who had endured so much. + +She reached the wood, and entered one of the many aimless paths that +wandered through it. The uneven ground sloped downwards to the south, +and through the manifold branches of the undergrowth of budding hazels +the sea lay deeply blue, far away. The primroses were everywhere among +the trees. A winding side path beckoned to her. She walked a few steps +along it, and came suddenly upon a clearing in the coppice. + +She stood still, dazed. + +The primroses had taken it for their own, had laid tender hold upon that +little space, cleared and forgotten in the heart of the wood. + +Young shoots of hazel and ash pricked up here and there from ivy-grown +stumps, moss gleamed where it could, through the flood of primroses. The +wild green of the mercury, holding its strong shield to the sun, the +violets, and the virgin white of the anemones were drowned in the uneven +waves and billows and shallows of that sea of primroses. They who come +in meekness year by year to roadside hedgerow and homely meadow had come +in power. The meek had inherited the earth. + +The light wind impotently came, and vainly went. Overhead a lark sang +and sang in the blue. But none heeded them. The wind and the song were +but a shadow and an echo. They that are the very core of spring hung +forgotten on her garments' fringe. All the passion of the world was +gathered into the still, upturned faces of the primroses, glowing with a +pale light from within. All the love that ever had been, or could be, +all rapture of aspiration and service and self-surrender were mirrored +there. + + * * * * * + +Magdalen wept for Fay, as once in bygone years she had wept for Everard: +as perhaps some woman of Palestine may have wept when Jesus of Nazareth +passed by, speaking as never man spake, and her lover went with him a +little way and then turned back. + + * * * * * + +"There is no sorrow," said the primroses. "There is neither sorrow nor +sin. You are of one blood with us. You have come through into light, as +we have done, and those others are coming, too. There is no sorrow, only +a little pressure through the brown earth. There is no sin, only a +little waking and stirring in the dark. Why then grieve, oh little +faith! They are all waking and coming. For the Hand that made us made +them. The Whisper that waked us, wakes them. The Sun that draws us, +draws them. The Sun will have us come." + + * * * * * + +Fay had already passed by that way, had picked a few primroses, and had +gone on. _Was she never to be at peace again?_ Was she never to know +what it is to lie down in peace at night, never to know what it is to be +without fear. Her whole soul yearned for peace, as the sick man yearns +for sleep. Andrea had prayed that she might find peace. Magdalen had +told her where peace lay. But all that she had found was despair. + +On her way homewards she came again upon the clearing and stopped short. +The place seemed to have undergone some subtle change. A tall figure +was standing motionless in it. The face was turned away, but Fay +recognised it instantly. As she came close Magdalen turned. For a moment +Fay saw that she did not recognise her, that she was withdrawn into a +great peace and light. + +Then recognition dawned in Magdalen's eyes and with it came a look of +tenderness unspeakable. + +"Fay," she said in a great compassion. "How much longer will you torture +yourself and Michael? How much longer will you keep him in prison?" + +Fay was transfixed. + +Those were the same words that Andrea had said on his deathbed. Those +words were alive, though he was dead. Never to any living creature, not +even to Magdalen, had she repeated them. Yet Magdalen was saying them. +She could not withstand them any longer. The very stones would shriek +them out next. + +She fell at Magdalen's feet with a cry. + +"I will speak," she gasped in mortal terror. "I will speak." And she +clung for very life to her sister's knees, and hid her face in her +gown. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + To-day unbind the captive, + So only are ye unbound. + + --EMERSON. + + +The following afternoon saw Magdalen and Fay driving together to +Lostford, to consult the Bishop as to what steps it would be advisable +to take in the matter of Michael's release. Magdalen felt it would be +well-nigh impossible to go direct to Wentworth, even if he had been at +Barford. But he had been summoned to London the day before on urgent +business. And with Fay even a day's delay might mean a change of mind. +It was essential to act at once. + +But to Magdalen's surprise Fay did not try to draw back. When the +carriage came to the door she got into it. She assented to everything, +was ready to do anything Magdalen told her. She was like one stunned. +She had at last closed with the inevitable. She had found it too strong +for her. + +Did Fay realise how frightfully she had complicated her position by her +own folly? She lay back in her corner of the brougham with her eyes +shut, pallid, silent. Magdalen held her hand, and spoke encouragingly +from time to time. + +You had to be constantly holding Fay's hand, or kissing her, or taking +her in your arms if you were to make her feel that you loved her. The +one light austere touch, the long grave look, that between reserved and +sympathetic natures goes deeper than any caress, were nothing to Fay. + +It was a long drive to Lostford, and to-day it seemed interminable. + +The lonely chalk road seemed to stretch forever across the down. Now and +then a few heavily-matted, fatigued-looking sheep, hustled by +able-bodied lambs, got in the way. The postman, horn on shoulder, passed +them on his way to Priesthope with the papers. + +Once a man on a horse cantered past across the grass at some distance. +Magdalen recognised Wentworth on Conrad. She saw him turn into the +bridle path that led to Priesthope. He had then just returned from +London. + +"He is on his way to see Fay," said Magdalen to herself, "and he is +actually in a hurry. How interested he must be in the ardour of his own +emotions at this moment. He will have a delightful ride, and he can +analyse his feelings of disappointment at not seeing her, on his way +home to tea." + +Magdalen glanced at Fay, but she still lay back with closed eyes. She +had not seen that passing figure. + +Magdalen's mind followed Wentworth. + +"Does she realise the complications that must almost certainly ensue +with Wentworth directly her confession is made? + +"Will her first step towards a truer life, her first action of +reparation estrange him from her?" + + * * * * * + +The Bishop was pacing up and down in the library at Lostford, waiting +for Magdalen and Fay, when the servant brought in the day's papers. He +took them up instantly with the alertness of a man who can only make +time for necessary things by seizing every spare moment. + +"Oh! you two wicked women," he said as he opened the _Times_. "Why are +you late? Why are you late?" + +They were only five minutes late. + +His swift eye travelled from column to column. Suddenly his attention +was arrested. He became absorbed. Then he laid down the paper, and said +below his breath "Thank God." + +At that moment Magdalen and Fay were announced. + +For a second it seemed as if the Bishop had forgotten them. Then he +recollected and went forward to meet them. He knew that only a matter of +supreme urgency could have made Magdalen word her telegram as she had +worded it, and when he caught sight of Fay's face he realised that she +was in jeopardy. + +All other preoccupations fell from him instantly. He welcomed them +gravely, almost in silence. + +The sisters sat down close together on a sofa. Fay's trembling hand put +up her long black veil, and then sought Magdalen's hand, which was ready +for it. + +There was a short silence. Magdalen looked earnestly at her sister. + +Fay's face became suddenly convulsed. + +"Fay is in great trouble," said Magdalen. "She has come to tell you +about it. She has suffered very much." + +"I can see that," said the Bishop. + +"I wish to confess," said Fay in a smothered voice. + +"That is a true instinct," said the Bishop. "God puts it into our hearts +to confess when we are unhappy so that we may be comforted. When we come +to see that we have done less well than we might have done--then we need +comfort." + +Fay looked from him to Magdalen with wide, hardly human eyes, like some +tiny trapped animal between two executioners. + +The Bishop's heart contracted. + +Poor, poor little thing! + +"Would you like to see me alone, my child?" he said, seeing a faint +trembling like that of a butterfly beginning in her. "All you say to me +will be under the seal of confession. It will never pass my lips." + +It was Magdalen's turn to become pale. + +"Shall I go?" she said, looking fixedly at her sister. + +"Yes," said Fay, her eyes on the floor. + +Magdalen went slowly to the door, feeling her way as if half blind. + +"Come back," shrieked Fay suddenly. "Magdalen, come back. I shall never +say it all, I shall keep back part unless you are there to hold me to +it. Come back. Come back." + +Magdalen returned and sat down. The Bishop watched them both in silence. + +"I have confessed once, already," said Fay in a low hurried voice, +"under the promise of silence. Magdalen promised not to say, and I told +her everything, weeks ago. I thought I should feel better then, but it +wasn't any good. It only made it worse." + +"It is often like that," said the Bishop. "We try to do something right +but not in the best way, and just the fact of trying shows us there is +a better way--only harder, so hard we don't know how to bring ourselves +to it. Isn't that what you feel?" + +"Yes." + +"But there is no rest, no peace till we come to it." + +"No," whispered Fay. "Never any rest." + +"That is God's Hand drawing you," said the Bishop, his mind seeming to +embrace and support Fay's tottering soul. "There are things He wants +done, which He needs us to do for Him, which perhaps only we can do for +Him. At first we don't understand that, and we are so ignorant and +foolish that we resist the pressure of His Hand. Then we suffer." + +Fay shivered. + +"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, the +only real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. And +it is no manner of use to resist Him, for God is stronger than we are, +and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, +ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don't understand that He can't +do without us, and that we can't do without Him. And at last, when we +feel God's need of us, then it becomes possible"--the Bishop paused--"to +say the difficult word, to do the difficult deed." + +Did she understand? Who shall say! Sometimes it seems as if no actual +word reaches us that Love would fain say to our unrest and misery. But +our troubled hearts are nevertheless conscious by some other channel, +some medium more subtle than thought and speech, that Love and Peace +have drawn very near to us. It is only reflected dimly through dear +human faces that some of us can catch a glimpse of "the light that +lighteth every man that cometh into the world." + +The small tortured face relaxed between the two calm ones. The sunny +room was quite still. Fear shrank to a shadow. + +Suddenly the fire drew itself together with a little encouraging sound. + +Fay started slightly, looked at it, and began to speak rapidly in a low +clear voice. + +As Magdalen listened she prayed with intensity that Fay might really +tell the Bishop the whole story, as she had told it to herself, that +stormy night in March, half a life-time ago. + +The little voice went on and on. It faltered, sank, and then struggled +up again. One point after another was reached in safety, was passed. +Nothing that Fay had already admitted was left out. Gradually, as +Magdalen listened, a faint shame laid hold of her. Her whole life had +for the time centred in one passionate overwhelming desire that Fay +should make to the Bishop as full a confession as she had made to +herself. Now she realised that Fay was saying even more than she had +done on that occasion, was excusing herself less, was blaming others +less. + +Fay herself saw no discrepancy between her first and second account of +the tragedy. But then she never did see discrepancies. Her mind had +shifted a little towards the subject, that was all. This mysterious +unconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who had +felt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm had +had no effect on Fay's mind. She had never seen till now a vestige of +an effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that was +all. + +Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, if +made to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regenerating +repentance is entirely powerless with a different class of mind. But +although an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being, +and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless the +weaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortable +appeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressing +to its _amour propre_ than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay had +retained in her mind Magdalen's vivid description of the love her +husband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon the +remembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weeks +when she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrance +had worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towards +her husband, drawing her towards compassion on Michael. + +Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who had +blamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them no +longer. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the real +murderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so far +aroused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind. + +Fay had passed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen's +anxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardily +seen, only partially realised, had helped her at last. + +The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent forward, his eyes on +the floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fay +reached Michael's arrest, but he quickly recovered himself. + +The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end. +The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison. + +"I have kept him there two years," said Fay, and was silent. + +How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband's dying words. What +passionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them. +Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resist +them, and the sting had gone clean out of them. + +"Two years," said the Bishop. "Two years. Fast bound in misery and iron. +You in misery and he only in iron. You two poor children." + +His strong face worked, and for a moment he shaded it with his hand. + +Then he looked keenly at Fay. + +"And you have come to me to ask me to advise you how to set Michael and +yourself free?" + +"Yes," whispered Fay. + +"It was time to come." + +There was a short silence. + +"And you understand, my dear, dear child, that you can only rescue +Michael by taking heavy blame upon yourself, blame first of all for +having a clandestine meeting with him, and then blame for letting him +sacrifice himself for your good name, and lastly blame for keeping an +innocent man in prison so long." + +Fay shook like a leaf. + +The Bishop took her lifeless hands in his, and held them. He made her +meet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a glint +of tears in them. + +"You are willing to bear the cross, and endure the shame?" he said. + +Two large tears gathered in Fay's wide eyes, and rolled down her +bloodless cheeks. + +You could not look at her, and think that the poor thing was willing to +endure anything, capable of enduring anything. + +The Bishop looked at her, through her. + +"Or would you rather go home and wait in misery a little longer, and +keep him in his cell a little longer: another week--another +month--another _year_! You know best how much longer you can wait." + +Silence. + +"And Michael can wait, too." + +"Michael must come out," said Fay, with a sob. "He was always good to +me." + +"Thank God," said the Bishop, and he rose abruptly and went to the +window. + +Magdalen and Fay did not move. They leaned a little closer together. +Fay's timid eyes sought her sister's like those of a child which has +repeated its lesson, and looks to its teacher to see if it has done +well. + +Magdalen kissed her on the eyes. + +"I have said everything, haven't I?" + +"Everything." + +"I wish I was dead." + +Magdalen had no voice to answer with. + +The Bishop came back, and sat down opposite them. + +"Fay," he said, "as long as you live you will be thankful that you came +to me to-day, that you were willing to make atonement by this great act +of reparation. The comfort of that remembrance will sink deep into your +troubled heart, and will heal its wounds. But the sacrifice is not to be +exacted of you. I had to ask if you were willing to make it. But there +is no longer any necessity for you to make it. Do you understand?" + +The Bishop spoke slowly. The two women looked at him with dilated eyes. + +"Is Michael dead?" said Magdalen. + +"No. Michael is, I believe, well. The murderer of the Marchese di +Maltagliala has confessed. It is in to-day's papers. The Marchese was +murdered by his wife. It was quite sudden and unpremeditated, the work +of an instant of terror. She has made a full confession on her deathbed. +It exonerates Michael entirely. She implores his forgiveness for her +long silence." + +The Bishop's last words reached Fay from a great distance. The room with +its many books, and the tall mullioned window with the bare elm branches +across it, were all turning gently together in a spreading dimness. The +only thing that remained fixed was Magdalen's shoulder, and even that +shook a little. Fay leaned her face against it, and let all the rest go. +The window with its tree quivered for a moment across the dark and then +flickered out. The consciousness of tender hands and voices lingered a +moment longer and then vanished too. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + All the heavy days are over.--W. B. YEATS. + + +It was very late when Magdalen and Fay reached home. + +Bessie was on the lookout for them, and met them in the hall. + +"Wentworth has been here," she said. "He arrived about an hour after you +had started. As you were both out he asked to see me. He was greatly +excited. He had come to tell us that Michael's innocence has suddenly +been proved. He goes to Italy to-morrow. He said he would call here on +his way to the station a little before eleven, to tell you both about +it." + +And punctually at a few minutes to eleven Wentworth appeared, and was +ushered into the little white morning-room where Fay was waiting for +him. + +The room was full of sunshine. The soft air came gently in, bringing +with it a breath of primroses. + +Delight was in the room, tremulous, shining in Fay's eyes. Delight was +in the whole atmosphere. An enormous boundless relief overflowed +everything. + +Wentworth was excited, softened, swept out of himself. + +He held her soft hand in his. He tried to speak, but he could not. His +eyes filled with tears. He was ashamed. + +And when he looked up he saw Fay's eyes were wet, too. His heart went +out to her. She was rejoicing with him. He pulled himself together, and +told her what little he knew; not much more than the bare facts +contained in the papers. It was now known by the Marchesa's confession +that the murder took place inside the Colle Alto gardens. Everyone, +including the police, had believed that the murder took place in the +road, and that the assassin took advantage of the accident of the garden +door being unlocked to drag the body into the garden, and hide it there. +But the Marchesa stated that she stabbed her husband in the garden +suddenly without premeditation, but with intent to kill him, because of +his determination to marry their seventeen year old daughter to a friend +of his, a _roue_, the old Duke of Castelfranco, who drank himself to +death soon afterwards. + +The Marchesa stated that she dragged the body behind a shrub, walked +back through the garden to the house with the front of her gown covered +with blood without being noticed, found no attendant in the cloak room, +wrapped herself in a long cloak not belonging to her, told her servants +that the Marchese would follow later, and drove home, partially burned +her gown and the cloak as if by accident, and then awaited events. The +first news she received of her husband's death next morning was +accompanied by the amazing information that Michael had confessed to the +murder. + +The Marchesa in her tardy confession stated that she believed Michael, +who had always shown her great sympathy, must have actually witnessed +the crime, and out of a chivalrous impulse towards her, had immediately +taken the guilt of it upon himself. + +"That accounts for his extraordinary silence," said Wentworth, "not +only to others, but to myself. He never would say a word pro or con, +even when I told him it was no use trying to persuade me he was guilty. +The mystery is cleared up at last. I shall reach Milan to-night, and I +shall see him to-morrow. And I suppose we may be able to start home the +following day. I say these things, but I don't believe them. I can't +believe them. It all seems to me like some wonderful dream. And you are +like a person in a dream, too, as if a fairy wand had passed over you?" + +As he spoke Wentworth suddenly realised that this marvellous, radiant +transformation which he beheld in Fay, which seemed to flow even to the +edges of her lilac gown, was happiness, and that he had never seen her +happy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful, +listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released from +some great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Her +beauty had taken on a new magic. + +There is no joy so rapturous, so perfect as the moment of relief from +pain. There was, perhaps, no creature in the world on this particular +April morning whose happiness approached Fay's. She raised her white +eyelids and smiled at Wentworth. + +His well-conducted heart nudged him suddenly like a vulgar, jocular +friend. + +"Is all your gladness for Michael?" he said boldly. "Have you none to +spare for me?" + +He was in for it. + +"You must forgive me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate," he said, +"but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go." He rose and came +towards her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felt +himself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You have +known for a long time that I love you," he said. "Won't you tell me that +you love me a little, too?" + +A delightful sense of liberty and newness of life were flowing in +regenerating waves over Fay's spirit. + +Wentworth seemed a part of this all-pervading joyousness and freedom. +She made a little half unconscious movement towards him, and in a +moment, that intrepid man, that dauntless athlete of the emotions had +taken her in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the + rest no longer in his power.--JEAN PAUL. + + +The Marchesa's confession made a great and immediate sensation +throughout Italy. Everyone who had known Michael, and a great many who +had not, proclaimed with one consent that his innocence was no news to +them. The possibility that he might be shielding someone had been +discussed at the time of the trial, but had found no shred of +confirmation. + +And now the mystery was solved at last, and in the most romantic manner. +Michael had come out with flying colours. + +To many minds the romance was enhanced by the fact that the Marchesa was +a gentle, middle-aged, grey-haired woman in no way attractive, whose +whole interest in life centred in her daughter. Michael's transcendent +act of chivalry towards the Marchesa, dramatically acknowledged by her +at last upon her deathbed, appealed even to the most unimaginative +natures. He became the hero of the hour. Telegrams of congratulation +poured in from every quarter. Letters snowed in on him. Even before +Wentworth could reach him enthusiastic strangers had tried to force +their way into his cell. Determined young reporters came out in +gondolas, and it was all the warders and the doctor could do to protect +Michael from invasion. + +He sat apparently stunned in his cell, the only person unmoved. Every +servant and warder in that dreary establishment had come to offer him +their congratulations. The other convicts had sent messages. The man in +the next cell, slowly dying of gangrene, had crawled from his pallet to +beat a tattoo on the wall. The doctor was beside himself with joy. + +"You must keep calm," he kept saying in wild excitement. "Your brother +will be here to-morrow morning. I implore you to be calm." + +And he brought Michael his best pipe, and some of his most cherished +tobacco, and a weird suit of black clothes, and urged him to spend the +evening with him in his own sitting-room. + +But Michael shook his head. He had no hatred of his striped blouse. He +was accustomed to it. He said he would prefer to await his brother's +arrival in his cell. He was accustomed to that, too. He felt as if he +could not bear to have everything torn from him at once, as if he should +be lost if all his landmarks were changed. He sat hour by hour, smoking, +and every now and then reading Wentworth's telegram. + +He tried to realise it. He said to himself over and over again: "I am +free. I am going away. Wentworth is coming to take me home." But it was +no good. His mind would not take hold. + +He looked for the twentieth time at Wentworth's telegram. Wentworth was +hurrying towards him at this moment, would be travelling all night, +would reach him in the morning. Dear, dear Wenty, he would be happy +again now. + +Michael groaned. + +"It's no kind of use. I _can't_ believe it." + +He tried to think of Fay. He should see _her_ soon, touch her hand, hear +her voice. Poor little darling! She had not the courage of a mouse. +Perhaps she was a little glad at his release. Yes. No doubt she had been +pleased to hear it. He hoped she would not feel shy of him at seeing him +again. He hoped she would not thank him. + +The door, no longer locked, was suddenly opened, and the head warder +deferentially ushered in a visitor. + +A tall, dark man in a tri-coloured sash came in, and the warder +withdrew. + +The man bowed and looked with fixity at Michael, who stared back at him, +dazed and confused. Where had he seen that face before? + +Ah! _He remembered!_ + +"I perceive that you have not forgotten me," said the Delegato. "It was +I who arrested you. It was to me that you confessed to the murder of the +Marchese di Maltagliala." + +"I remember." + +"I never was able to reach any certainty that you were really guilty," +continued the Delegato. "I was not even convinced that you had had a +quarrel with the Marchese." + +"I had no quarrel with him." + +"I knew that. That you might be shielding someone occurred forcibly to +my mind. _But who?_" + +Michael looked steadily at the official. + +"And there was blood upon your hand and sleeve when you confessed." + +"There was." + +"It was not the Marchese's blood," said the Delegato, drawing a sallow +finger across a blue chin. "It remained a mystery. I will own that it +had not crossed my mind that that fragile and timid lady had killed her +husband, and that as she at last confesses you were shielding her." The +Delegato looked piercingly at Michael. + +Michael was silent. + +"You have always been silent. Is not the moment come to speak?" + +Michael shook his head. + +The Delegato bowed. + +"I came to ask you to discuss the affair openly," he said, "to relieve +my perplexity as a matter of courtesy. But you will not speak. Then I +will speak instead. When first I read the Marchesa's confession it came +into my mind that the Marchesa, who I believe was your friend, might for +some reason, possibly the sentimental devotion of an older woman for a +young man--such things have been--that she _might_ have confessed on her +deathbed to a crime which she had not committed in order to save you +from--_this_"--he touched the wall of the cell. "I doubted that she +really murdered her husband. _But she did._ I sought out the maid who +had been with her when the Marchese died, and she, before the confession +was published, informed me that she had not undressed the Marchesa on +her return from the Colle Alto party. And that next morning part of the +cloak which was not hers, and part of her gown were found to be burnt as +stated in her confession. It was indeed necessary to burn them. The +Marchesa murdered the Marchese." + +There was a long silence. + +"I cannot tell whether you witnessed the crime or not. At first I +thought the blood on your hands and clothes might have come from helping +her to drag the body into the garden. But it was not so. At the time I +attached a great importance to the garden door being unlocked. Too +great. It led me astray. The gardener, in spite of his oath that he had +locked it, had probably left it unlocked. We now know from the Marchesa +that the murder took place within the garden, and the locking and +unlocking of the door was an accident which looked like a clue.... But, +if you witnessed the murder, and wished to retire without raising an +alarm, or denouncing that unhappy lady, I ask myself why did you not +open the garden door from within--the key was in the lock, I saw it--and +pass out on to the high road. Why did you, instead, try so hard to +escape over the wall behind the ilexes that you tore your hands on the +cut glass on the top? I found the place next day. There was blood on it. +When you were struggling to escape over that wall you were not anxious +to take the Marchesa's guilt upon yourself. When you were hiding behind +the screen in the Duchess' apartment you were not--_at that +moment_--very determined to shield the Marchesa from the consequences of +her deed. All Italy is ringing with your quixotic, your chivalrous, your +superb action. _Nevertheless_, if I had quitted the Duchess' apartment, +if my natural and trained acuteness had not made one last effort +respecting the screen, _I do not think you would have followed me into +the garden to denounce yourself_." + +The Delegato paused. + +Michael was quite unmoved. Everything reached him dimly as through a +mist. He partly saw the difficulty in the official's mind, but it did +not interest him. He was cleared. That was enough. + +"In two years much is forgotten," said the Delegato, sententiously, "and +it is, perhaps, I alone who recall the more minute details of the case, +because I was present and my interest was overwhelming. I have not +spoken of this to anyone but yourself. I shall not speak of it again. I +have taken a journey to discuss it with you because I had hoped you +would understand my professional interest in unravelling that which +remains still obscure, a mystery, which is daily becoming to me a +greater mystery than before the Marchesa's confession. You have it in +your power to gratify my natural desire for elucidation by an +explanation which can no longer injure you in any way. You are innocent. +It is proved. But even now you will not speak. You prefer to preserve +your attitude of silence to the end. Good! I will intrude on you no +longer. I offer you my congratulations. I deplore your inevitable +imprisonment. I withdraw." + +The Delegato bowed yet again and went to the door. + +"That of which you will not speak was known to your friend the Duke of +Colle Alto," he said. "_The Duke knew._" + +"The Duke is dead," said Michael. + +"I am aware of that," said the Delegato, frigidly. He bowed for the last +time, and left the cell, gently closing the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + Est-ce donc une monnaie que votre amour, pour qu'il + puisse passer ainsi de main en main jusqu'a la mort? Non, + ce n'est pas meme une monnaie; car la plus mince piece d'or + vaut mieux que vous, et dans quelques mains qu'elle passe + elle garde son effigee.--A. DE MUSSET. + + +Wentworth came in the morning, tremulous, eager, holding Michael by the +shoulders, as he used to do when Michael was a small boy, as he had +never done since. + +The brothers looked long at each other with locked hands, water in their +eyes. + +"Wenty," said Michael at last, with his grave smile. + +And that was all. + +They sat down together in silence on the little bed. Wentworth tried to +speak once or twice, but it was no use. + +"Fay cried with joy at the news," he said at last, looking with shy +hungry love at his brother. "If you could have seen her radiant face. I +never saw any creature so changed, so transfigured." + +A faint flush rose to Michael's face. + +"I know how she grieved over your imprisonment. She is the most +tender-hearted woman in the world. I never knew anyone so sympathetic." +Wentworth hesitated. Then he added tremulously. "My great grief has been +her grief, too. She helped me to bear it." + +"I did not know she had--minded so much," said Michael, almost +inaudibly. + +"You might have guessed it," said Wentworth, "knowing her to be what she +is. She has always been so pale and sad, as if bowed down by trouble. +But directly the news came that you were cleared--I went to see her at +once--if you could only have seen her face, her tears of joy, her +delight." + +"Did she send a message, or a note? Just a line. Perhaps you have a +letter with you." + +"No, she did not write," said Wentworth, self conscious, but beaming. +"There was not time. There was time for nothing. It was all such a rush. +I only saw her on my way to the station. But I know she won't mind my +telling you, Michael--you ought to know first of anyone--it all seems so +wonderful. But I daresay--no, I see you have guessed it--I daresay I +have said things in my letters that showed you it was coming--it was the +grief about you that first drew us together. Fay and I are going to be +married." + +Michael put his hand to his head. + +"Everything has come at once," said Wentworth. "I have you again. And I +have her. I've nothing left to wish for." + + * * * * * + +Michael did not leave the prison in the gondola which had brought +Wentworth, and which was waiting to take them both away. The excitement +of his brother's arrival had proved too great, and he fell from one +fainting fit into another. Wentworth was greatly alarmed, but the doctor +was reassuring and cheerful. He said that Michael had borne the news +with almost unnatural calmness, but that the shock must have been great, +and a breakdown was to be expected. He laughed at Wentworth's anxiety +even while he ministered to Michael, and assured him that no one in his +experience had died of joy. + +But later in the evening when Wentworth, somewhat pacified, had returned +to Venice for the night, the doctor felt yet again for the twentieth +time that the young Englishman baffled him. + +It seemed to him that he was actually relieved when the kind, awkward, +tender elder brother had reluctantly taken his departure, promising to +come back early in the morning. + +"Do not distress yourself, you will be quite well enough to leave +to-morrow," the doctor said to him many times. "I expected this +momentary collapse. It is nothing." + +Michael's eyes dwelt on the kind face and then closed. There was that in +them which the doctor could not fathom. + +He took the food that was pressed on him, and then turned his face to +the wall, and made as if he slept. + +And the walls bent over him, and whispered to him, "Stay with us. We are +not so cruel as the world outside." + +And that night the dying convict in the next cell, nearly as close on +freedom as Michael, heard all through the night a low sound of strangled +anguish that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth +anew, from dark to dawn. + +The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm and +wan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately at +him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + Les caracteres faibles ne montrent de la decision que + quand il s'agit de faire un sottise.--DANIEL DARC. + + +A week or two after the news of Michael's proved innocence had convulsed +Hampshire, and before Michael and Wentworth had returned to Barford, +Aunt Aggie might have been seen on a fine May afternoon walking slowly +towards "The Towers." She had let her cottage at Saundersfoot for an +unusually long period, and was marking time with the Blores. Whatever +Aunt Mary's faults might be she was always ready to help her sister in +this practical manner, when Aunt Aggie was anxious to add to the small, +feebly frittered away income, on which her muddled, impecunious +existence depended. + +In spite of the most pertinent remarks to the contrary from her sister, +Aunt Aggie believed herself to be an unsurpassed manager of restricted +means. She constantly advised young married couples as to the judicious +expenditure of money, and pressed on Magdalen the necessity of +retrenching in exasperating directions, namely, where a minute economy +entailed a colossal inconvenience. + +In her imagination she saw herself continually consulted, depended on, +strenuously implored to give her opinion on matters of the utmost +delicacy, fervently blessed for her powerful spiritual assistance of +souls in jeopardy, and always gracefully attributing the marvellous +results of her intervention to a Higher Power of which she was but the +unworthy channel. + +These imaginary scenes were the unfailing solace of Aunt Aggie's +somewhat colourless life, and the consciousness of them in the +background gave her a certain meek and even patient self-importance, the +basis of which was hidden from Lady Blore. + +Aunt Aggie had also another perennial source of chastened happiness in +recalling the romance of her youth, those halcyon days before the +Archdeacon had been unsuccessfully harpooned and put to flight by Lady +Blore. + +Her clerical love affair perfumed her conversation, as a knife which has +once associated with an onion inevitably reveals, even in estrangement, +that bygone intimacy. + +No one could breathe the word Margate without Aunt Aggie remarking that +she had had a dear friend who had evinced a great partiality for +Margate. Were the clergy mentioned in her presence with the scant +respect with which the ministry and other secular bodies have to put up, +Aunt Aggie vibrated with indignation. _She_ had known men of the highest +talents holding preferment in the Church. + +But in her imagination her affair of the heart had passed beyond +reminiscence. Far from being buried in the past it remained the chief +factor in her life, colouring and shaping the whole of her future. + +Aunt Aggie could at any moment dip into a kind of sequel to that early +history. In the sequel the Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to die; +but, owing to circumstances which Aunt Aggie had not yet thoroughly +worked out, that unhappy lady was first to undergo tortures in some +remote locality, nursed devotedly--poor thing--by Aunt Aggie. The result +of her ministrations was never in doubt from the first. The Archdeacon's +wife was, of course, to succumb, calling down blessings on the devoted +stranger at her bedside, with the enigmatical smile which spoke of some +sacred sorrow. + +Aunt Aggie had shed many delicious tears over that deathbed scene, and +the chastened grief of the saintly Archdeacon, quite overshadowed by his +boundless gratitude to herself. At this crisis his overwhelming +desolation wrung from him--with gross disloyalty to the newly dead--a +few disjointed sentences which revealed only too clearly how unsuited to +him his wife had been, how little she had understood him, how lonely his +wedded life had been. She had evidently been one of those tall thin +maypoles of women who have but little tenderness in them. + +Aunt Aggie, after giving the children a sample of what a real mother +could be, was to retire to her little home at Saundersfoot. Here the +real joy of the situation was to begin. + +After a decent interval the Archdeacon was to be constantly visiting +Saundersfoot, was to be observed visiting Aunt Aggie at Saundersfoot, +singling her out from among the numerous spinsters of that +watering-place to make her the object of reverent attentions. Others +younger and better looking than Aunt Aggie--especially Miss Barnett, the +doctor's sister, who, it was whispered, wore an artificial cushion from +Douglas's under her hair--were to set their caps or cushions at the +dignified Archdeacon, seen pacing the sands. But it was all of no avail. +He had eyes for no one but the gentle, retiring Miss Bellairs. Aunt +Aggie was to become the object of burning jealousy and detraction on the +part of the female--that is to say almost the whole--population of +Saundersfoot. But she herself, while envious calumny raged round her, +went on her way calm and grave as ever. + +But the proposal long warded off could not be parried forever. The +frenzied passion of the Archdeacon was at last not to be restrained. +Aunt Aggie had in her mind a set of proposals, all good, out of which it +became harder and harder as time went on to select one. But her answer +was ever the same, a pained but firm refusal. She was happy in her lot. +She was greatly needed where she was. She did not wish to marry. She was +no longer young. This last reason was an enormous concession to realism +on Aunt Aggie's part. + +Then came the cream of the whole story. The Archdeacon was to pine +secretly. His work was to be neglected. He was to be threatened with a +nervous breakdown. He was to confide his sorrow to the paternal bosom of +his Bishop. When Aunt Aggie was in her normal state it was the Bishop in +whom the Archdeacon was to confide. But sometimes in the evenings after +a glass of cowslip wine, her imagination took a bolder flight. The +Archbishop himself was to be the confidant of the distracted cleric. +This presented no real difficulty after the first moment, for the +Archbishop was in the flower of his age--the Archdeacon's age--and +might easily have been at school with him. Aunt Aggie had once seen +Lambeth from a cab window as she passed over Westminster Bridge. Under +that historic tower she heard the first subject of the King urge his +brother prelate to take heart, promising assistance. + +We will pass over Aunt Aggie's amazed reception of a cordial invitation +to stay at Lambeth, her hesitating acceptance, her arrival, the +magnificent banquet, crowded with ministers and bishops, the fact that +the Archbishop himself singled her out as the object of courtly though +somewhat anxious attentions. And then after dinner Aunt Aggie, in her +plum-coloured satin, was to be unconsciously but skilfully withdrawn +from the glittering throng by the Archbishop. And in his study he was to +make a great, a fervent appeal to her. Aunt Aggie had bought a +photograph of him in order to deaden the shock of this moment. But +nevertheless whenever she reached this point she was always really +frightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask her +with tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify the +labours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfish +predilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powers +of a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowing +colours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spite +of her marvellous self-control to course down her cheek. The eye of an +Archbishop misses nothing. With an ejaculation of profound relief he +beckons to a distant figure which appears in a doorway. The Archdeacon +in his evening gaiters rushes in. Aunt Aggie gives way! + +After this final feat of the imagination Aunt Aggie generally felt so +worn out by emotion that food was absolutely necessary to her. + +On this occasion she sat down quivering on a heap of stones by the +roadside, and drew forth a biscuit which she had secreted at luncheon at +the Vicarage an hour before. It must be owned that she was fond of food, +though not in the same way that most of us are addicted to it. She liked +eating buns out of paper bags at odd moments in the open air, and +nibbling a sponge cake half forgotten and suddenly found in a drawer +with her handkerchiefs. But in justice to her it ought to be added that +she seemed only to care for the kind of provender which yielded the +largest increment in the way of crumbs. + +As she sat and nibbled an uneasy recollection stole across her mind. + +This recollection was becoming more disconcerting day by day. And yet +she had acted for the best. That fact did not insure to her immunity +from blame on the part of that awful personage, her sister Mary. Good +intentions had never yet received their due as extenuating circumstances +in Lady Blore's sweeping judgments. + +If a certain secret chivalrous action of Aunt Aggie's "turned out +wrong," she knew well the intonation in which Lady Blore would ask her +why she had been such a fool. Nevertheless she, Aunt Aggie, had only +done with consummate tact what Mary herself had contemplated doing in +her rough way, and had been persuaded not to do. + +Some weeks ago Aunt Aggie had concocted in secret, recopied about twenty +times, and had finally despatched a letter to Lord Lossiemouth anent +Magdalen. It had been the boldest action of her life. At first, even +after she had seen that she was the only person able to deal adequately +with so delicate a matter, she had feared that she would not have the +strength to perform her mission. But strength had apparently been lent +to her for the occasion. The letter had actually been posted. + +The moment it was irrevocably gone Aunt Aggie fell into a panic. +Supposing it failed in its object, and that Algernon or Mary discovered +what she had done. She could not even face such a possibility. But then, +supposing on the other hand that her missive united two loving, +estranged hearts, and that dear Magdalen owed her happiness--and a +titled happiness--to her. Then Algernon and Mary would be forced to +admit that she had shown a courage and devotion greater than theirs. "We +only talked, you acted," they would both say, and she would thenceforth +be recognised in her true light, as an incomparable counsellor, and a +judicious, far-seeing friend. + +But three weeks had elapsed since Aunt Aggie, stealing out alone, had +dropped that momentous letter into the village post-box. Nothing had +happened. She had not even received an answer. She was becoming +frightened and anxious. _Was he secretly married?_ She wished she had +thought of that possibility before she posted the letter. + +Many simple-minded men of disengaged affections, cheerfully pursuing +their virtuous avocations, would be thunderstruck if they knew the dark +suspicions harboured against them in spinster bosoms, that they are +concealing some discreditable matrimonial secret, which alone can +account for their--well--their _extraordinary_ behaviour in not coming +forward! + +It has actually been said that real life is not always like a novel. +This feebly false assertion was disproved forever in Aunt Aggie's mind +by the sight of a dog-cart coming rapidly toward her from the direction +of Lostford. She glanced indifferently at it as it approached, and then +her pale eyes became glued to it. In the dog-cart sat Everard Constable, +now Lord Lossiemouth. She had not seen him for fifteen years, but +nevertheless she recognised him instantly. There was no doubt it was he: +thickened and coarsened, but still he. He whirled past leaning back in +his seat, looking neither to right nor left. + +Aunt Aggie's heart gave a thump that nearly upset her equilibrium. The +biscuit dropped onto the road, with a general upheaval of crumbs from +all parts of her agitated person. + +Lord Lossiemouth! + +Going in the direction of Priesthope! + +Her letter! + +She nearly swooned with joy and pride. + +Now Mary and Algernon, now everyone would believe in her. + +She raised herself from the heap of stones and with trembling legs +hurried towards "The Towers." She must tell Mary at once. + +She found Lady Blore seated at her writing-table in the drawing-room, +which was choked by the eastern and Japanese impedimenta, the draperies, +the krises, the metal bowls, the ivory boxes, which an Indian career +seems so inevitably to entail. Sir John had brought back crates of the +kind of foreign _bric-a-brac_ cheap imitations of which throng London +shop windows. The little entrance hall was stuffy with skins. Horned +skulls garnished the walls, pleading silently for decent burial. Even +the rugs had once been bears. + +Aunt Mary was bored with her drawing-room, which looked like a stall at +a bazaar, but, to her credit be it said, that she had never made any +change in it, except to remove a brass idol from the writing-table, at +which she was at this moment sitting. + +By one of those sudden instincts which make people like Aunt Aggie the +despair of those with whom they live, she instantaneously conceived the +idea (for no reason except that she was thinking of her own letter) that +her sister was at that moment writing to Lord Lossiemouth. + +She "had a feeling" that this was the case. The feeling became in a +second a rooted conviction. The butler came in, arranged an +uncomfortable Indian table, placed a brass tray with tea things on it +before Lady Blore, and asked if there were any more letters for the +post. Aunt Mary was in the act of giving him one when Aunt Aggie +intervened. + +"Don't," she said in wild agitation, clasping her hands. "Mary, I beg of +you, I conjure you not to post that letter." + +"Why not? I have resolved to give him another chance." + +"Keep it back one post, I implore you. I have a reason." + +Aunt Mary looked attentively at her sister, and took back the letter. +It was not like her to give way. She seemed less overbearing than usual. + +"Well? Why not employ him again?" she said wearily. "The Irish butter is +the cheapest after all. Why do you make such a point of my leaving him." + +Aunt Aggie was entirely nonplussed. A thousand similar experiences had +never lessened the shock of the discrepancy between what she expected +her sister to say, and what she actually said. + +"I thought, I thought," she stammered, "I felt sure that, I see now I +was wrong, but I had a conviction that that letter--you see I knew you +were thinking of writing--was to, was in short to Lord Lossiemouth." + +Aunt Mary's face became magenta colour. + +"To Lord Lossiemouth! Why should you think I was writing to him?" + +"Well, I could not help knowing--don't you remember how you discussed +the subject with me and dear Magdalen some weeks ago?--that the subject +of a judicious and dignified letter was in your mind." + +"I was careful not to mention the subject to Magdalen in your presence. +I see now that you must have listened outside the door." + +Aunt Aggie experienced a second shock. How did Mary always spy out these +things? + +"I can't think," continued Lady Blore, "how you can lower yourself to +eavesdrop in the way you do; and if you must do these underhand actions, +why you don't conceal them better. When you read a private letter of +mine the other day, because I inadvertently left it for a moment on my +writing-table----" + +"You always say you lock up your private letters, you do, indeed, Mary. +_Be_ fair. I could not _tell_ it was private." + +"You would have been wiser not to have alluded next day to its contents. +If you had not done so I might not have known you had read it." + +Aunt Aggie burst into tears. + +"The truth is I am not secretive like you, Mary," she said between her +sobs. "It is as natural to me to be open and trustful with those I love +as it is for you to be the reverse. Whatever I do you think wrong. But +perhaps some day--and that before long--you will be forced to admit----" + +At this moment the drawing-room door opened and Colonel Bellairs came +in. He often came to tea at "The Towers," though the meeting seldom +passed off without a sharp brush with Lady Blore. + +"Draw up that chair, Algernon," said that lady, with grim but instant +cordiality. "The tea will be ready in a moment." + +Colonel Bellairs looked more floridly handsome than usual. He was +evidently in a state of supreme self-satisfaction. + +"Fine day," he said, "for the time of year." + +At this moment a small parchment face, and bent figure leaning on a +stick, might have been seen peering in through the closed windows. Sir +John looked dispassionately at the family group, and shook his head. +Then he hobbled back to his chair under the cedar. Tea was evidently a +meal to be dispensed with this afternoon. + +"I have news for you," said Colonel Bellairs, expanding his chest. + +Lady Blore held the tea-pot suspended. + +"Everard Constable--Lossiemouth, I should say--is at this moment sitting +in the drawing-room at Priesthope, alone with Magdalen." + +Colonel Bellairs was not disappointed in the effect of his words on his +audience. + +Aunt Aggie trembled and looked proudly guilty. Lady Blore put down the +tea-pot suddenly, and said, "Thank God!" + +Aunt Aggie, her mouth open to speak, began to choke. She looked +piteously from her brother to her sister, struggling in vain to +articulate. It was too cruel that she should be bereft of speech at this +supreme moment. + +Lady Blore turned putty pale and magenta colour alternately. A great +relief softened her hard face. There were actually tears in her eyes. +Then she said majestically, but with a tremor in her metallic voice: + +"I am not surprised." + +"It is my doing," shrieked Aunt Aggie, in the strangled squeak in which +we always explain that it is "only a crumb" gone wrong. And she relapsed +into a fresh spasm. + +Lady Blore sternly bade her be silent. Colonel Bellairs was slightly +annoyed. + +"It is no use, Mary, your saying you are not surprised, for you are," he +said judicially, "and really," relapsing into complacency, "so am I in a +way. It is fifteen years since I forbade Everard the house. I fear that +I was unduly harsh. I dismissed him, so it was for me to recall him. Now +that the cat is out of the bag I don't mind telling you that I wrote to +him a few weeks ago." + +"You--wrote--to--him!" said Aunt Mary in great agitation. "Algernon, you +sent me word by Magdalen that you refused to meddle in the matter." + +"I daresay I did. I may not have liked the tone you took about it, Mary. +You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you that +I was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after mature +consideration--I turned the matter over in my mind--I was not the least +influenced by your long-winded epistle--that in fact rather put me off +than otherwise--still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforward +letter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if his +feelings were unchanged--mark that--as I had reason to believe +Magdalen's were--he was at liberty to come to Priesthope and resume +cordial relations with us all. You observe that I only asked him to come +if his feelings were unchanged. _He is there now._" + +It would be impossible to describe the varying emotions which devastated +Lady Blore, as her brother made his announcement. Her hands trembled so +much that she was obliged to give up any pretence of holding her cup. It +chattered against its saucer. + +"When did you write?" she asked at last. + +"About three weeks ago." + +Aunt Mary seemed to make a mental calculation. + +"It is my doing. I wrote a month ago," gasped Aunt Aggie. "Algernon, you +must not take the credit of it. I waited till you and Mary had decided +not to write--you know, Mary, you told Magdalen you would not--and +then--and then--I could not stand by and see that dear child's happiness +slip away for want of one bold word, one brave friend to say for her +what she could not say for herself,--I have seen so many lives wrecked +for want of a sympathetic hand to draw two severed hearts +together,--that I wrote. I wrote a month ago. A week before you did." + +"I might have known you would do some folly," said Colonel Bellairs with +contempt. "I am glad this did not come to my ears earlier, or I should +have been very angry. It was most unsuitable, most undignified, that you +and I should both write. But," it was evidently impossible for him to be +seriously annoyed by anything on this particular afternoon, "all's well +that ends well. We will say no more about it, Aggie. Don't cry. You +can't help being a fool. But don't do anything of that kind, or of any +kind again. I might not be so easy going next time." + +Lady Blore drank down a large cup of tea. Her black silk bosom heaved. +Contrary to all precedent she did not turn on her quaking sister. + +"Where are Fay and Bessie?" she asked. + +"Fay is spending the afternoon with the Carters, and Bessie is out +somewhere, I don't know where. But I saw her start after luncheon." + +"How fortunate! Then you knew he was coming?" + +"Yes. I had a telegram from him this morning saying he was in the +neighbourhood, and would come over this afternoon." + +"Of course you warned Magdalen?" + +"Not I. I knew better than that. She has a cold, so I knew she could not +go out. So directly I had seen him drive up I came off here. I did not +think I was particularly wanted at home. Two is company and three's +none." + +"Oh, Algernon, what tact! Most men would never have thought of that," +said Aunt Aggie. + +"Have another cup, Algernon," said Lady Blore graciously. + +Colonel Bellairs stroked his moustache. He had another cause, a secret +one, for self-complacency. At last, after many rebuffs from charming +women, thirty years his junior, he was engaged to be married. Should he +mention it? Was not this a most propitious moment? Yes? No. Perhaps +better not. Another time! The lady had accepted him some weeks ago, but +had expressed altruistic doubts as to whether she could play a mother's +part to daughters as old as herself, whether in short, much as she +craved for their society, _they_ might not feel happier, more +independent in a separate establishment, however modest. It was on a +sudden impulse of what he called "providing for the girls," that Colonel +Bellairs had written to Lord Lossiemouth. + +The renewal of his engagement to Magdalen would pave the way to Colonel +Bellairs's marriage. He had already decided that Bessie would live with +Magdalen, who would take her out. Fay had her jointure. But he had a not +unfounded fear that his second nuptials would be regarded with profound +disapproval, even with execration, by his sisters. + +Magdalen alone knew about it as yet. She had taken the news, which her +father had feared would crush her to the earth, very tranquilly. She was +a person of more frigid affections than he had supposed. He had already +asked her to break the news to Fay and Bessie. Perhaps it would be +better to let her break it to his sisters too. If he did it himself they +might, at the first moment, say things they might afterwards regret. +Yes, he would leave the announcement to Magdalen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + Our chain on silence clanks. + Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs. + + --GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +Lord Lossiemouth had come into his kingdom. He was rich, but not +vulgarly so. He had a great position, and what his artistic nature +valued even more, the possession of one of the most beautiful places in +England. The Lossiemouth pictures and heirlooms, the historic house with +its wonderful gardens--all these were his. + +He had at first been quite dazed by the magnitude of his good fortune. +When it came to him it found him somewhat sore and angry at a recent +rebuff which had wounded his vanity not a little. But the excitement of +his great change of fortune soon healed what little smart remained. + +A few months before he succeeded, he had fallen in love, not for the +first time by many times, with a woman who seemed to meet his +requirements. She was gentle, submissive, pretty, easily led, refined, +not an heiress, but by no means penniless. + +To his surprise and indignation she had refused him, evidently not +without a certain tepid regret. He discovered that the mother had other +views for her daughter, and that the daughter, though she inclined +towards him, was quite incapable or even desirous of opposing her +mother. She was gentleness and pliability itself. These qualities, so +admirable in domestic life, have a tendency of which he had not thought +before to make their charming owner, if a hitch occurs, subside into +becoming another man's wife. If only women could be adamant until they +reach the altar, and like wax afterwards. + +When everything bitter that could be said at the expense of women had +been ably expressed, Lord Lossiemouth withdrew. A month later, when he +was making an angry walking tour in Hungary, he learned from an English +paper, already many days old, of the two deaths which effected his great +change of fortune. He communicated with his lawyer, arranged to return +by a certain date, and continued his tour for another month. + +On his return he had gone at once to Lossiemouth, which he had visited +occasionally as a poor and peppery and not greatly respected relation. +Business of all kinds instantly engulfed him. He was impatient, +difficult, _distrait_, slightly pleased with himself at showing so +little gratification at his magnificent inheritance. + +On the third day he sorted out the letters which looked like personal +ones, from among a heap of correspondence, the accumulation of many +weeks. + +Quantities of envelopes were torn open, and the contents thrown aside, +begging letters, decently veiled congratulations from "old friends" who +had not so far shown any particular desire to make their friendship a +joy to him. + +Presently he came upon a long, closely written letter of several sheets, +in a slanting hand, which he was about to dismiss as another begging +letter when his eye fell on the signature. Bellows? Bulteel? Buller? +_Bellairs?_ + +Aunt Aggie's signature was quite illegible. It was an arranged squiggle +painfully acquired in youth, which through life had resulted in all +kinds of difficulties with tradespeople, and in continual annoyance and +inconvenience to herself. Letters and parcels were frequently directed +to her as A. Buller, Esq. She could only account for this mistake by the +business-like nature of her style and handwriting. She often told her +friends that, unless people knew her personally, her letters were +generally believed to be a man's. + +It had never struck Aunt Aggie that Lord Lossiemouth might possibly, in +an interval of fifteen years, have forgotten who _A._ Bellows might be. + +But the words "my beloved niece Magdalen" strongly underlined, and the +postmark on the envelope, showed him who A. Bellairs was. He thought he +remembered an old aunt who lived near Priesthope. + +He read the long sentimental effusion and bit his lip. + +Ah, me! Was that half-forgotten, dim-in-the-distance boyish love of his +to be raked up again now! + +He sighed impatiently. Why had Fate parted him and Magdalen? He still +regretted her in a way, when he was depressed or harassed, or disgusted +with the world in general; and he was often depressed and harassed and +disgusted. + +More letters. What business had people to give him the trouble of +reading them? The floor was becoming strewn with his correspondence. The +empty fireplace had become a target for crumpled balls of paper. + +A short one in a large, scrambling, illiterate hand with a signature +that might mean anything. That tall capital, shaped like a ham, was +perhaps a B. + +The letter was written on Priesthope notepaper. "_My daughter +Magdalen._" + +This, then, was from Colonel Bellairs. + +It was not such a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. +When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made his +precarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that Lord +Lossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it in +his mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not had +time. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that sentence he had felt, not +without pride, that it covered the ground of his fifteen years' silence, +and also showed that Lord Lossiemouth's wealth had nothing to do with +his recall. For the letter was a recall. + +"Blundering old idiot," said Lord Lossiemouth, but he had become very +red. + +All kinds of memories were surging up in him; Magdalen's crystal love +for him, her indefinable charm, her gaiety, her humility, her shyness, +her exquisite beauty. + +Life had never brought him anything so marvellous, so enchanting, as +that first draught of April passion. And he had quenched his thirst at +many other cups since then. His lips had been blistered and stained at +poisoned brims. Why had that furious old turkey-cock parted him and +Magdalen! His heart sank for a moment at the remembrance of his first +love. + +But what was the use! The Magdalen he had loved had ceased to exist. The +wand-like figure with its apple-blossom face faded, faded, and in its +place rose up the image of the thin, distinguished-looking grey-haired +woman who had supplanted that marvel. He had met Magdalen accidentally +once or twice in London of late years, and had felt dismayed anger at +the change in her, an offended anger not wholly unlike that with which +he surveyed himself at his tailors', and inspected at unbecoming angles, +through painfully frank mirrors, a thick back and a stout neck and jaw +which cruelly misrepresented his fastidious artistic personality. + +He returned to his letters. + +Three sheets in a firm, upright hand. + +"I do not suppose you remember me," it began, "but I intend to recall +myself to your memory, which I believe to be none of the best. I am the +wife of Sir John Blore, and aunt to Magdalen Bellairs." + +He flung the letter down. But this was intolerable, a persecution. And +what fools they were _all_ to write. Had Magdalen set them on? + +He groaned with sudden self-disgust. What unworthy thought would come to +him next? Of course she knew nothing of this. + +He looked at the date of each letter carefully. Aunt Aggie's according +to her wont had only the day of the week on it, just Tuesday, or it +might be Thursday--but Colonel Bellairs's and Lady Blore's were fully +dated, and about a fortnight apart. Colonel Bellairs had written last. + +Lord Lossiemouth divined that each of the three believed him or herself +to be the only one to tackle the subject. + +How ghastly! What a cruelly good short story it would make for a +magazine! + +Then he read Lady Blore's letter. Apparently it was not pleasant +reading. It seemed to prick somewhat sharply. He winced once or twice, +and spoke angrily to it. + +"My good woman, as if I did not _know_ that! Men are always behaving +heartlessly to women in their opinion. It is the normal male state. It +is an established fact that we are all brutes. Why do you want me to +marry your paragon if you have such a low opinion of me?" + +Still he could not put the letter down. + +"It is possible though improbable," wrote that dauntless woman, "that +your vacillating and selfish character may have improved sufficiently in +the course of years for you to have become aware that you have behaved +disgracefully to a woman, who, if she had had any sense, ought never to +have given you a second thought, who was and still is deeply attached to +you; probably the only person on this earth who has the misfortune to +care two pins about you." + +Lord Lossiemouth tried to feel sarcastic. He tried to laugh. But it was +no use. Lady Blore's arrow had penetrated a joint in his harness. + +After all he need take no notice of any of these monstrous effusions. + +He was disgusted with opening letters. Nevertheless he hurried on. +Perhaps he should find others less intolerable. + +A somewhat formal letter from his cousin the Bishop of Lostford, who had +never been cordial to him since his engagement to Magdalen had been +broken off. The Bishop pointed out certain grave abuses connected with +house property at Lostford, at which the late Lord Lossiemouth had +persistently connived, but which he hoped his successor might enquire +into personally and redress. + +Quantities of other letters were torn open and aimed in balls at the +empty grate. But at last he came to a long one which he read +breathlessly. + +It was from the mother of the girl who had so recently refused him, an +involved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriously +attached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again he +would not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, +nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. +The mother had evidently made her write. + +A very venomous expression settled on Lord Lossiemouth's heavy face. He +suddenly took up a Bradshaw and looked out the trains for Lostford. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + Tard oublie qui bien aime. + + +On this momentous afternoon Magdalen was sitting alone in the +morning-room at Priesthope somewhat oppressed by an oncoming cold. It +had not yet reached the violent and weeping stage. That was for +to-morrow. She, who was generally sympathetically dressed, was +reluctantly enveloped in a wiry red crochet-work shawl which Bessie had +made for her, and had laid resolutely upon her shoulders before she went +out. + +She tried to read, but her eyes ached, and after a time she laid down +her book, and her mind went back, as it had a way of doing--to Fay. + +Fay had told her as "a great secret" that she had accepted Wentworth. +She was so transfigured by happiness, so radiant, so absolutely unlike +her former listless, colourless, carping self that Magdalen could only +suppose that two shocks of joy had come simultaneously, the discovery +that she loved her prim suitor, and the overwhelming relief to her +tortured conscience of Michael's release. + +Wentworth and Michael were still at Venice. Michael, it seemed, had been +prostrated by excitement, and had been too weak to travel immediately. +But they would be at Barford in a few days' time. + +When Magdalen saw Fay entirely absorbed in trying on a succession of new +summer hats, sent for from London in preparation for Wentworth's +return, she asked herself for the twentieth time whether Fay had +entirely forgotten her previous attraction for Michael, or that there +might be some awkwardness in meeting her faithful lover and servant +again, especially as the future wife of his brother. + +Two years had certainly elapsed since that sudden flare-up of disastrous +passion, and in two years much can be forgotten. But after two years +everything may still be remembered, as Magdalen knew well. And she +feared that Michael was among those who remember. + +Magdalen had that day told Fay of her father's intention of marrying +again, but she took almost no notice of the announcement. To use one of +Aunt Aggie's metaphors, the news "seemed to slide off her back like a +duck." + +She only said, "Really! How silly of him!" + +As Magdalen thought of Fay the door opened and Bessie, who was supposed +to have gone for a walk, came in. + +She had a spray of crab-apple blossom in her hand. She held it towards +Magdalen as if it were a bill demanding instant payment. These little +amenities were a new departure on Bessie's part. + +Magdalen's pleasure in the apple blossom seemed to her somewhat +exaggerated, but she made allowances for her, as she had a cold. + +"Are you going out again?" asked Magdalen. + +"No." + +"Then I should like to have a little talk with you. I have something to +tell you." + +Bessie sat down. + +"I am prepared for the announcement you have to make. I have seen it +coming. It is about Fay." + +"No, it is about Father. He has asked me to tell you that he is engaged +to be married." + +"Father!" + +"Yes, it is not given out yet." + +"Father!" + +"It is to a Miss Barnett. You may have seen her. The doctor's sister at +Saundersfoot." + +"I know her by sight, a tall, showy-looking woman of nearly forty, with +amber hair and a powdered nose." + +"Yes." + +"Father has sunk very low," said Bessie, judicially. "He must have been +refused by a lot of others, younger and better-looking, and ladies, to +be reduced to taking her. And fancy anyone in their senses being willing +to take Father, with his gout, and his tendency to drink, and his total +disregard of hygiene. Well, she looks a vulgar pushing woman, but I am +sorry for her. And I must own that I am disappointed that if there was +to be an engagement in our family it should be Father. There is not +likely to be more than one going for a home like ours. It is just like +him to grab it." + +Magdalen tried not to laugh. + +"I've looked round," continued Bessie. "I don't say that at present I +could entertain the thought of marriage myself. I can't just yet, but I +mean to in the future. It's merely a question of time. Marriage is the +higher life. Besides, if one remains unmarried people are apt to think +it is because one can't help it. It would certainly be so in my case. +And I have looked round. There is not a soul in the neighbourhood for +any of us to marry that I can see except Wentworth, who is of course +extremely elderly. Hampshire seems absolutely bare of young men. And if +there are a few sons in some of the houses, they are never accessible. +And the really superior ones like Lord Alresford's only son would never +look at me. It would be waste of time to try. There is positively no +opening in Hampshire unless I marry the curate." + +"That reminds me that he is to call this afternoon about the +boot-and-shoe club. I wish, my dear, in the intervals between your +aspirations towards the higher life, you would go through the accounts +with him. My head is so confused with this cold." + +"I will. And where on earth are you going to live when Father marries +again? Of course, I shall graduate at Cambridge. He won't oppose that +now. Magdalen, why don't you marry, too?" + +"I can't, dear Bessie. No one wants me." + +"May I go on?" + +"No. Please don't." + +"I think I will all the same. Why not marry Lord Lossiemouth after all? +Don't speak. I want to place the situation dispassionately before you. I +have thought it carefully over. You are an extremely attractive woman, +Magdalen. I don't know what it is about you, I fail to analyse it, but +one becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if a +man once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care just +because you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact that +there certainly has been a mutual attachment. I then ask myself----" + +At this moment the door opened and the footman announced "Lord +Lossiemouth." + +The shock to both women was for the moment overwhelming. + +Magdalen recovered herself almost instantaneously and welcomed him with +grave courtesy, but she was unable to articulate. + +He had seen the amazement in the four eyes turned on him as he came in, +and cursed Colonel Bellairs in his heart. Why had not the old idiot +warned Magdalen of his coming? + +He had felt doubtful of his reception. A simulated coldness on +Magdalen's part was, perhaps, to be expected. But for her blank +astonishment he was not prepared. + +"This is Bessie," she said in a shaking voice. + +Bessie! This tall, splendid young woman. Could this be the tiny child of +three who used to sit on his knee, and blow his watch open. + +"I cannot be expected to remember you," said Bessie, advancing a limp +hand. She fixed a round dispassionate eye on his heavy, irritable face, +and found him unpleasant looking. + +He instantly thought her odious. + +And they all three sat down simultaneously as if by a preconcerted +signal. + +"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" asked Magdalen, as a paralysed +silence became imminent. A faint hectic colour burnt in her cheeks. + +Lord Lossiemouth pulled himself together, and came to her assistance. +Together they held back the silence at arm's length. + +Yes, he was staying in the neighbourhood--at Lostford in fact. House +property near the river. Liable to floods. + +Did he mention the word floods? + +Yes. Floods at certain seasons of the year. Time to take measures now +before the autumn, etc. + +Magdalen was glad to hear of some measures being taken. Long needed. + +Yes, culpable neglect. + +A wall? + +Yes, a wall. Certainly a wall. + +Bessie rose, marched to the door, opened it, hit her body against it, +and went out. + +A certain degree of constraint went with her. + +"I had your Father's leave to come," he said after a moment. "I should +not have ventured to do so otherwise." + +"I wish Father had warned me," she said. + +They looked away from each other. Here in this room fifteen years ago +they had parted. Both shivered at the remembrance. + +Then they looked long at each other. + +Magdalen became very pale. She saw as in a glass what was passing +through his mind; and for a moment her heart cried out against those +treacherous deserters, her beauty and her youth, that they should have +fled and left her thus, defenceless and unarmed to endure his cruel +eyes. But she remembered that he had left her before they did. They had +not availed to stay him. They had only slipped away from her in his +wake. And at the time she had hardly noticed their departure, as he was +no longer there to miss them. + +Lord Lossiemouth had come determined to propose to Magdalen, his +determination screwed "to the sticking point" by a deliberately recalled +remembrance of the change the years had wrought in her. He had told +himself he was prepared for that. Nevertheless, now that he was actually +face to face with her, in spite of his regard and respect for her, a +horrid chasm seemed to yawn between them, which only one primitive +emotion can span, an emotion which, like a disused bridge, had fallen +into the gulf years ago. + +And yet how marvellously strong, how immortal it had seemed once--in +this same room with this same woman. It had seemed then as if it could +not break, or fall, or fade. + +It had broken, it had fallen, it had faded. + +As he looked earnestly at her he became aware that though she had been +momentarily distressed a great serenity was habitual to her. The eyes +which now met his had regained their calm. It seemed as if her life had +been steeped in tranquil sunshine, as if the free air of heaven had +penetrated her whole delicate being, and had left its clear fragrance +with her. + +Oh! if only they had been married fifteen years ago! What happiness they +might have given each other. How perfect to have owed it all to each +other. How fond he would still be of her. How tender their mutual regard +would still be. Then his present feeling for her would not be amiss. +They ought to be sitting peacefully together at this moment, not in this +intolerably embarrassing personal relation towards each other, but at +ease with each other, talking over their boy at Eton, and the new pony +for their little daughters. He did not want to _begin_ being married to +her now. + +She knew what he felt. + +"Magdalen," he said, "I am distressed that I have taken you by surprise. +I had hoped that you were prepared to see me. But my coming is not, I +trust, painful to you." + +A pulse fluttered in her cheek. + +"I am glad to see you," she said. "If I did not seem so the first moment +it was only because I was taken aback." + +"A great change has come over my fortunes," he continued, anxious to +give her time, and yet aware that no conversation except on the object +of his visit was really possible. "I am at last in a position to marry." + +"When I heard the news I thought that you would probably marry soon." + +"Our engagement was broken off solely for lack of means," he continued. +Her eyes dropped. "Now that that obstacle is removed I have come to ask +you, to beg you most earnestly to renew it." + +"It is very good of you," she said almost inaudibly. "I appreciate +your--kindness." + +He saw that she was going to refuse him. But he was prepared for that +contingency. It was a natural feminine method of readjusting the balance +between them. He would certainly give her the opportunity. He owed it to +her. Besides, the refusal would not be final. He knew from her relations +that she still loved him. + +"If your feeling towards me is unchanged will you marry me?" + +The door opened, and the footman announced "Mr. Thomson." + +The new curate came slowly into the room, his short-sighted eyes peering +about him, a little faggot of papers girdled by an elastic band, clasped +in his careful hand against his breast. + +Magdalen started violently, and Lord Lossiemouth experienced a furious +exasperation. + +Magdalen mechanically introduced the two men to each other, and they all +three sat down, with the same sudden automatic precision as when Bessie +had been present. + +"The days are beginning to lengthen already," said Mr. Thomson. "I have +noticed it, especially the last few days, and the rooks are +clamourous--very clamourous." + +"It was to be expected," faltered Magdalen. + +"The accounts are, I am glad to say, in perfect order. I am proud to +add, though I fear a statement so unusual may lay me open to a charge of +romancing, that we have a small balance in hand." + +How he had looked forward to saying these words. With what a flash of +surprised delight he had expected this astounding, this gratifying +announcement would be received. + +He paused a moment to let his words sink in--evidently Miss Bellairs had +not heard. + +"Three pounds five and nine," he said. + +"It is wonderful," said Magdalen emphatically. + +"Quite wonderful. I never heard of a boot-and-shoe club which was not +in debt. Have you?" And she turned to Lord Lossiemouth. + +But Lord Lossiemouth's temper was absent. He found the situation +intolerable. He only answered, "Never." + +"Bessie is waiting to hear all about it in the schoolroom," continued +Magdalen. "I have asked her to go over the papers with you. She will be +as surprised and delighted as I am. Shall we go and tell her?" + +And without waiting for an answer she rose and led the way to the +schoolroom, followed by Mr. Thomson. Bessie was sitting alone there, +staring in front of her, paralysed by Lord Lossiemouth's arrival, and +indignant at the possibility that Magdalen might marry that "horrid old +thing," who was not the least like the charming photograph of him in her +sister's album. However, she grasped the situation, and after an +imploring glance from Magdalen, grappled with all her might with the +boot-and-shoe club. + +Magdalen hurriedly tore off the little red shawl and returned to the +morning-room, and closed the door. It was a considerable effort to her +to close it, and by doing so to invite a renewal of Lord Lossiemouth's +offer. But it could not be left open. + +"It was not poor Mr. Thomson's fault," she said, "but I wish I could +have saved you this annoyance." + +He struggled to recover his temper. Her quivering face shewed him that +she was suffering from the miserable accident of the interruption even +more than he was. + +"I was asking you to marry me," he said with courage, but with visible +irritation. "Will you?" + +"I am afraid I cannot." + +"I knew you would say that. I expected it. But I beg you to reconsider +it, that is if--if your feeling for me is still unchanged." + +"It is unchanged." + +"Then why not marry me?" + +"Because you do not care for me." + +"I felt certain you would say that. But I _do_ care for you. Should I be +here if I did not? We are two middle-aged people, Magdalen. The old +raptures and roses would be out of place, but I have always cared for +you. Surely you know that. Have you forgotten the old days?" + +"No." + +"Neither have I. All we have to do is to forget the years between." As +he spoke he felt that the thing could hardly have been better put. + +"I have no wish to forget them." + +He had made a great effort to control his temper, but he found her +unreasonable. His anger got the upper hand. + +"It is one of two things that makes you refuse me. Either you can't +forgive me, and I daresay I don't deserve that you should, I am not +posing as a faultless character--or you have ceased to love me. Which is +it?" + +"I have not ceased to love you," she replied. "Have I not just told you +so? But you would find yourself miserable in the--lop-sided kind of +marriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to make bricks +without straw." + +"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me, +why was I sent for?" he stammered, white with anger. He struck the +table with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if I +was to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately planned +rebuff directly I set foot in the house!" + +"Why were you _sent for_?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your own +accord. _Sent for!_ _Who_ sent for you?" + +She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint. + +"_Who_ sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?" + +He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands. +Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, the +desire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated. +Others could be humiliated as well as himself. + +"Read them," he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood by +the window with his back to her. + +Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's, +Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped the +sweat from her forehead. + +Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw them +creep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring, +their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they to +rend her again? + +She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away. +They could not reach her. They could not touch her. + +She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seen +him stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind his +back, looking out to the sea. + +She went softly to him, and stood beside him. + +"I am more grieved that I can say about these," she said, touching the +letters. "I did not know the poor dears had written. It was good of you +to come back at the call of these unhappy letters. Will you not burn +them, Everard, and forget them? There is a fire waiting for them." + +She put them into his hand. She had not spoken to him by his Christian +name before. His anger sank suddenly. He took them in a shamed silence, +and dropped them into the fire. Magdalen sat down by the hearth, and he +sat down near her. Together they watched them burn. + +"I ought to have burnt them yesterday," he said remorsefully. + +"I am glad you did not. I am so thankful to see you again, and that +these foolish letters brought you. I have often longed to have a talk +with you. + +"It seems unreasonable," continued Magdalen, her clear eyes meeting his, +"but the fact of your asking me to marry you makes it possible for me to +tell you what I have long wished to tell you. I have often thought of +writing it. I did write it once, but I tore it up. It seems as if a +woman _can't_ say certain things to a man till he has said, 'Will you +marry me?' Then it is easy, because then nothing she may say can rouse a +suspicion in his mind that she wants to make him say it." + +"I have proposed to you twice, Magdalen. Is not that enough?" His voice +was very bitter. "I venture to prophesy that you will be safe from my +pestering you with a third offer." + +"I am sure of it. I never dreamed that you would ask me this second +time. I never thought we should meet again except by chance, as we did a +year ago. But I have had you in my mind, and I have often +feared--often--that I was a painful remembrance to you; that when you +thought of me it was with regret that you had perhaps--it is not so easy +to say after all--that you had spoilt my life." + +"I did reproach myself bitterly with having made love to you when you +were so very young and inexperienced, and when I ought to have +remembered that I was not in a position to marry. Your father did rub +that in. As if I could help my poverty." + +"Father is not a reasonable person. You were nearly as young as I was. +Looking back now it seems as if we had both been almost children." + +"It was a great misfortune for both of us," he said, colouring. He had +not felt it great after the first. + +"Not for me," she said. "That is what I have long wished to tell you. It +has been my great good fortune. Not at first--but after a time. I should +never have known love--of that I am sure--unless it had been for you. +You were the only person who could waken it in me. The power to love is +the great gift; to be permitted to know that marvel, to be allowed once +in one's life to touch the infinite. Love opens all the doors. Some +opened in pain, but they did open. I never knew, I never guessed until +long after you had come into my life, and gone away again, how much I +owed to you. Then I began to see, first in gleams, and then plainly. +Your momentary attraction towards me was a tiny spark of the Divine +love, a sort of little lantern leading me home through the dark." + +He stared at her amazed. Her transparency transfixed him. What is +superficial is also often deep in clear natures such as Magdalen's, like +a water lily whose stem goes down a long way. + +"Love releases us from ourselves, our hard proud selves, and makes +everything possible to flow in to us, happiness, peace, joy, gratitude. +I thank God for having let me know you, for having made me love you. I +might have missed it. I see others miss it. I might have gone through +life not knowing. I might have had to bear the burden of life, without +the one thing that makes it easy. I see other people toiling and +moiling, and getting hopeless and miserable and exhausted till my heart +aches for them. After the first I have never toiled, never grieved, +never despaired. I have been sustained always. For there are not two +kinds of love, Everard, but only one. The love of you is the cup of +water, and the love of God is the well it is taken from.... You had +better go now before anyone else comes in, but I want you to remember +when you think of me that I bless and thank you, and am grateful to you. +I have been grateful for years." + +She took his leaden hand in both of hers, and held it for a moment to +her lips. + +Lord Lossiemouth's face was pinched and aged. His hand fell out of +hers. + +Then his face became suddenly convulsed, frightful to behold, like that +of a man being squeezed to death. + +"I never loved you," he said in a fierce, suffocated voice. "I was a +little in love with you, that was all, and that was not much. I soon got +over it." + +"I know," she said. + +"I felt pain for a time. You were very beautiful, and you were the +first. I was the same as you then. But I found other beautiful women. I +took what I could get out of life, and out of women. I rubbed out my +pain that way. It was not your father who parted us, it was myself. I +would not own it, I was always bitter against him, but it was my fault. +I did not mean to work, and tie myself to an office stool: I had the +chance, but I wanted to travel and see the world. It was not lack of +means that parted us. I said a few minutes ago that it had been the only +obstacle to our marriage, and your eyes dropped. You have known better +all the time, but you wouldn't say. All these years I have put it down +to that. But it was _not_. We were parted by lack of love." + +"I know," she said again. + +"On my side." + +"It was not your fault. We can't love to order, or by our own will. It +is a gift." + +"Some of us can't love at all," he said fiercely. "That is about it. We +have not got any room for it if--if it _is_ given us. It could not get a +foothold. It was crowded out. I was often glad afterwards that I did not +tie myself to you. _Glad!_ Do you hear, Magdalen? It left me free to--it +did give me pain when I thought of you. I knew what I had done to you. +I used to tell myself that you gave me up very easily, that you did not +really want me. But I knew in my heart that you did. But it only made me +bitter, and I put the thought away. That time, it is ten years ago; good +God! it is all so long ago, when you nearly died of scarlet fever in +London, I heard of it by chance when you were at your worst, I was +shocked, but I did not really care, for I had long ceased to want you. I +used to visit a certain woman every day in that street, and I once asked +her who the straw was down for, and she said it was for a 'Miss Magdalen +Bellairs.' I was in love with her at the moment, if you can call it +love. I have dragged myself through all kinds of sordid passions +since--we parted." + +Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He looked at her through them. It +seemed as if no wounding word under heaven would be left to say by the +time he had finished. + +"And I did not come back in order to make amends," he went on. "You know +me very little if you think that. I came back solely out of pique. It +was not those absurd letters which brought me, or held me back. It was +another woman. I wanted to pay her out." + +"I thought perhaps it was something like that," said Magdalen. + +"It was a virtuous attachment this time. I am nearly forty. I am getting +grey and stout. Young women have a difficulty in perceiving my +existence. It was high time to settle, and to live on some attractive +woman's money. There are thousands of women who must marry someone. So +why not me? I found the attractive woman. I walked into love with her," +he stammered with anger. "I regarded it as a constitutional. But the +attractive woman, though she liked me a little, weighed the pros and +cons exactly as I had done, and decided not to take her constitutional +in my impecunious company. She refused me when I was poor, and +_now_--now that I am rich--she is willing." + +The harsh voice ceased suddenly. Magdalen looked for a moment at the +savage, self-tortured face, and her heart bled. + +"That is how I have treated you," he said, choking with passion. "Now +you know the truth of me--for the first time. That is the kind of man I +am, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you have +idealised, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years." + +"I have known always the kind of man you were," she said steadily. "I +never idealised you, as you call it. I loved you knowing the worst of +you. Otherwise my love could not have endured through. A foolish +idealism would have perished long ago." + +"And then I come down here, on a sudden despicable impulse, intending to +use you as a weapon to strike her with, not that she is worth striking, +poor feeble pretty toy. And I encouraged myself in a thin streak of +patronising sentiment for you. I wrote a little cursed sonnet in the +train how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets blooming +in autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temper +is aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enough +to try to humiliate you by shewing you those letters, to try to revenge +myself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! On you!" + +She did not speak nor move. Her face was awed, as the face of one who +watches beside the pangs of death or--birth. + +Outside in the amber sunset a thrush piped. + +"Magdalen," he said almost inarticulately, "you have never repulsed me. +Don't repulse me now, for I am very miserable. Don't pour your love into +the sand any more. Give it me instead. I am dying of thirst. Give me to +drink. You can live without me, but I can't live without you. I have +tried--I have tried everything. I am not thinking of you, only of +myself. I am only asking for myself, only impelled towards you by my own +needs. Does not that prove to you that I am at last speaking the truth? +Does not that force you to believe me when I tell you that I want you +more than anything in the world. I have wanted you all my life without +knowing it. I don't want to make amends to you for the past. I want you +yourself, for myself, as my wife. I swear to God if you won't marry me I +will marry no one. You are the only woman I can speak to, the only one +who does not fail, who holds on through thick and thin, the only one who +has ever really wanted me. I daresay I shan't make you happy. I daresay +I shall break your heart. God help me, I daresay I shall put my +convenience before your happiness, my selfish whims before your health. +I have always put myself first. But risk it. Risk it, Magdalen. Take me +back. Love me. For God's sake marry me." + +Each looked into the other's bared soul. + +Something in his desperate face which she had always sought for, which +had always been missing from it--she found. + +"I will," she said. + +They made no movement towards each other. They had reached a spiritual +nearness, a passion of surrender each to each, which touch of hand or +lip could only at that moment have served to lessen. + +"You are not taking me out of pity? You are sure you can still love me a +little?" + +"More than in the early days," she said. "For you have not only come to +me, Everard. You have come to yourself." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + Me, too, with mastering charm + From husks of dead days freeing, + The sun draws up to be warm + And to bloom in this sweet hour. + The stem of all my being + Waited to bear this flower. + + --LAURENCE BINYON. + + +It would be hardly possible to describe the unholy, the unmeasured +rejoicing to which Magdalen's engagement gave rise in her family. It is, +perhaps, enough to say that the twenty years of her cheerful, selfless +devotion to the domestic hearth had never won from her father and her +two aunts anything like the admiring approval which her engagement at +once elicited. The neighbourhood was interested. Lord Lossiemouth was a +brilliant match for anyone (if you left out the man himself). The +announcement read impressively in the _Morning Post_. The neighbours +remembered that there had been a youthful attachment, an early +engagement broken off owing to lack of means. And now it seemed the +moment he was rich he had come flying back to cast his faithful heart +once more at her feet. It was a real romance. Magdalen was considered an +extraordinarily fortunate woman by the whole countryside, but Lord +Lossiemouth was placed on a pedestal. What touching constancy. What +beautiful fidelity. What a contrast to "most men." "Not one man in a +hundred would have acted in that chivalrous manner," was the feminine +verdict of Hampshire. + +A wave of cheap sentiment overflowed the Bellairs family, in which +Colonel Bellairs floated complacently like a piece of loose seaweed, and +in which even Aunt Mary underwent a dignified undulation. + +Bessie alone was unmoved. + +"You said, 'Yes' too soon," she remarked to Magdalen in private. "I +should never have thought you would be so lacking in true dignity. He +goes away for fifteen years and I should not wonder a bit if he had +thought of someone else in the interim for all you know to the +contrary--men are like that--and then he just lounges in and says 'Marry +me,' and you agree in a second. You might at any rate have made him wait +for his answer till after tea. In my opinion you have made yourself +cheap by such precipitate action. He thinks he has only got to ask, and +he can have." + +Magdalen did not answer. + +"I don't understand you," continued the pained monitor. "I have always +had a certain respect for you, Magdalen, and when he came back I +supposed you would give in to him in time if he pressed you without +intermission, and was constant for a considerable period--say a couple +of years; but I never thought it possible you would collapse like this. +I fear you have not taken his character sufficiently into consideration. +If I were in your place I should be afraid that Everard would not allow +my nature free scope, or take an interest in my mental development, and +that the sacrifices which make domestic life tolerable might have to be +all on my side. He is absolutely unworthy of you, and his nose is quite +thick. I daresay you have not remarked it, but I did at once. And in my +opinion he ought for his own good to have been made to _realise_ it. +Even Aunt Mary, though she says she entirely approves of the marriage, +admits that you have shown too much eagerness." + +Fortunately for Magdalen the interest of the neighbours, and even of her +own family, was speedily diverted to another channel by the return of +Wentworth and Michael to Barford. The enthusiastic welcome which Michael +received from all classes, and from distant families who had never +evinced much cordiality to his elder brother, astonished Wentworth, +touched him to the quick. + +"I had no idea we had so many friends," he said repeatedly. + +Michael smiled vaguely and took everything for granted. Wentworth was so +anxious to shield him from fatigue and excitement that at first he was +only too thankful that Michael took everything so quietly. But after a +few days he became uneasy at his brother's inertness of mind and body. A +great doctor, however, explained Michael's state very much as the +Italian doctor had done. He was in an exhausted condition. What was +essential to him was rest. He must not be made to see anyone or do +anything he did not like. + +"Your brother will regain his health entirely," the great man had said, +"if he is left in peace, and nothing happens to overexcite him. He is +worn to a shadow by that accursed prison. Many men in his condition +can't rest. Then they die. He can. He has the temperament that +acquiesces. He will cure himself if he is left alone. Let him lie in +the sun, and give nature a chance." + +In spite of his anxiety Wentworth saw that Michael's bodily strength was +slowly returning. Every afternoon he left him half asleep in the sun, +and rode over to see Fay. Since she had accepted him it had become a +necessity to him to see her every day. + +Wentworth had long been bent to the dust under the pain of Michael's +imprisonment. Fay had been bent with anguish to the dust by the weight +of her own silence which had kept him there. + +And now in the twinkling of an eye they both stood erect, freed. Life +was transfigured for both at the same instant. + +This marvellous moment found them both just when they were deciding +mildly to love each other. It took them and flung them together in a +common overwhelming joy. It almost seemed as if the shock might make a +man of Wentworth. + +Did he half know (he was certainly always tacitly guarding himself +against the assumption of such an idea in the minds of others) that he +had so far been left out, not only from the whirl of life--he had +deliberately withdrawn from that--but from the weft of life itself. The +great loom had not swept him in. It had not appeared to need him. Some +of us seem to hang on the fringe of life, of thought, of love, of +everything. We are not for good or ill interwoven into the stuff, part +of the pattern. + +Wentworth felt young for the first time in his life, happy for the first +time in his life, really energetic for the first time. A certain languid +fatigue which had been with him from boyhood, which had always lain +mournfully on its back waving its legs in the air like a reversed +Battle, had now been jolted right side upper-most, and was using those +legs, not as proofs of the emptiness of the world, but as a means of +locomotion. + +He had at first been enormously raised in his own self-esteem by his +engagement to a young and beautiful woman. He was permanently relieved +from the necessity of accounting to his friends for the fact that he was +still unmarried, reminding them that it was his own fault. Perhaps at +the bottom of his heart a fear lurked, implanted by the brutal Grenfell, +that he was going to be an old maid. That fear was now dispelled. It was +mercifully hidden from Wentworth that Grenfell and the Bishop and most +of his so-called friends would still so regard him even if he were +married. + +But gradually and insensibly the many petty reasons for satisfaction +which his engagement to Fay had given him, and even the delight in being +loved, were overshadowed by a greater presence. + +At first they had never been silent together. Wentworth liked to hear +his own voice, and prosed stolidly on for hours with exquisite enjoyment +and an eye to Fay's education at the same time, about his plans, his +aspirations, his past life (not that he had had one), the hollowness of +society (not that he knew anything about it), a man's need of solitude, +and the solace of a woman's devotion, its softening effect on a life +devoted hitherto, perhaps, too entirely to intellectual pursuits. + +Fay did not listen to him very closely. She felt that his mind soared +beyond her ken. But she was greatly impressed, and repeated little bits +of what he had said to Magdalen afterwards. And she looked at him with +rapt adoration. + +"Wentworth says that consideration in little things is what makes the +happiness of married life," she would announce pontifically. + +"How true!" + +"And he says social life ought to be simplified." + +"Indeed! Does he happen to mention how it is to be done?" + +"He says it ought to be regulated, and that everyone ought to be at +liberty to lead their own life, and not to be expected to attend cricket +matches and garden parties, if you are so constituted that you don't +find pleasure in them. I used to think I liked garden parties, Magdalen, +but I see I don't now. I care more for the big things of life now. Does +Everard ever talk to you like that when you and he are alone?" + +"Never. Never." + +"And Andrea never did, either. Wentworth is simply wonderful. You should +hear him speak about fame being shallow, and how the quiet mind looking +at things truly is everything, and peace not being to be found in the +market place, but in a walk by a stream, and how in his eyes a woman's +love outweighs the idle glitter of a social success. Oh! Magdalen, I'm +beginning to feel I'm not worthy of Wentworth. I've always liked being +admired, so different from him. I did not know there were men so +high-minded as he. He makes me feel very petty beside him. And he is so +humble. He says I must not idealise him, that he does not _wish_ it, for +though he may not be worse or better than I think he is only too +conscious of his many deficiencies. But I can't help it. Who could?" + +And Fay let fall a tear. + +"We needs must love the highest when we see it." + +But the highest some of us can see is the nearest molehill. + +What Michael and the Duke had failed to do for Fay Wentworth was +accomplishing. + +"You are made for each other," said Magdalen, with conviction. "Every +day shows me that you and Wentworth bring out the best in each other. +Perhaps, gradually, you will keep nothing back from each other, tell +each other everything." + +"He tells me everything now," said Fay. "He trusts me entirely." + +"And you?" said Magdalen. "Do you tell him everything?" + + * * * * * + +Wentworth, too, had reached the conviction that he and Fay were made for +each other. He might have starved out the deeper love, the truth and +tenderness of a sincerer nature, if it had been drawn towards him. He +had often imagined himself as being the recipient of the lavished +devotion of a woman beautiful, humble, exquisite and noble, whose truth +was truth itself, and had vaguely wondered why she had not come into his +life. But perhaps if he had met such a woman, and if she had loved him +as he pined to be loved, he would have become suspicious of her, and +would have left her after many vacillations. He did not instinctively +recognise humility and nobility when he met them, because they bore but +slight resemblance to the stiff lay figures which represented those +qualities in his mind. To meet them in reality would have been to him +bewilderment, disappointment, disillusion. + +Fay was not only what he seemed to want, what he had feebly longed for. +She was more than this. Her nature was the complement of his. A lack of +shrewdness, of mental grasp, a certain silliness were absolutely +essential to the maintenance of a lifelong devotion to him. Wentworth +had found the right woman to give him what he wanted. Fay had found the +right man. + +Love, which had been knocking urgently at their doors for so many futile +years, heard at last a movement as of someone stirring within, and a +hand upon the disused latch. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + O Yanna, Adrianna, + They buried me away + In the blue fathoms of the deep, + Beyond the outer bay. + + But in the Yule, O Yanna, + Up from the round dim sea + And reeling dungeons of the fog + I am come back to thee! + + --BLISS CARMAN. + + +Wentworth stood at the open window of the library watching Michael. + +Michael was lying on a deck chair on the terrace playing with a puppy. +His face was losing a certain grey drawn look which it had worn since he +had left prison. He looked more like himself since his hair had time to +grow. Wentworth felt that he ought to be reassured about him, but a +vague anxiety harassed him. + +Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the puppy fell asleep. Michael +made a movement to reach it, but it was just beyond his grasp. + +In an instant Wentworth was beside him, lifting the sleeping mass of +sleek fat on to Michael's knee. Michael's long hands made a little crib +for it. + +"He will sleep now for a bit," he said contentedly. + +"Do _you_ sleep better?" said Wentworth. He had not forgotten those +first nights at Venice when Michael's feeble step had dragged itself to +and fro in the next room half the night. + +"I sleep like a top. I'm asleep half the time." + +"You are much better the last few days." + +"Oh! I'm all right." + +"All Hampshire has been to call. I knew you would be bored, so I did not +let them disturb you." + +"Thanks." + +"Is there anyone you would like to see?" + +"No one that I know of." + +"No one at _all_?" + +Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth. + +"I should like very much to see--presently--if it could be done----" + +"Yes," said Wentworth eagerly. "Of _course_ it can be done, my dear boy. +You would like to see?" + +"Doctor Filippi," said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "He +was so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all the +time. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for his +holiday. He generally takes it in June. And--let me see--it's May now, +isn't it?" + +Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousy +was of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of the +two emotions was jealousy. + +"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present," he said coldly. +"I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose at +your wish a week ago." + +"Y-yes." + +"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his own +friends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be putting +him to expense." + +Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer. + +Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, +callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed--egotism revolted +Wentworth--that he would _never_ ask to see Wentworth's future wife, the +woman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michael +himself. + +"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devoted +friend of yours, whom you might like to see again." + +Wentworth spoke with deliberation. + +"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense," said Michael +in a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had not +left the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had not +penetrated to it. + +Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part of +the sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurred +faculties. + +"An old friend of mine," he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?" + +"Fay," said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fay +_entirely_? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Her +great goodness to you? And what she is to _me_!" + +"No," said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Her goodness to me. How she +tried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget." + +"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning. +You need not see Magdalen unless you like." + +"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as if +I had heard someone say so." + +"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, +ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not +care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. +But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart +from the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank that +it is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its way +of looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered her +superficial. But I never thought her mercenary--till now. But Fay----" + +"I will see her, too," said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thought +of Fay as--as--but my mind gets so confused--as at a great distance, +quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away in +England. Left Italy for good." + +"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told you +so over and over again. I go and see her every day." + +"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can go +by Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as time +passes on." + +Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctor +had most solemnly assured him that his mind was only muffled and +deadened by his physical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworth +as if his brother's brain were softening. + +He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont to +grip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-blooded +shadow; was this all that was left of his brother? + +A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protective +tenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother's +emaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coarse labour, and +scarred and discoloured at the wrist. + +"Get well, Michael," he said huskily. + +Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily. + +Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the grass, +and Wentworth took back his hand instantly. + +"The Duchess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library." + +"Are you quite sure that you _really_ wish to see them--that it will not +tire you?" said Wentworth. + +"Quite sure." + +"I will bring them out." + +"No. Send one at a time. Fay first." + +Michael lay back and closed his eyes. + + * * * * * + +On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, +Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, she +had got over that, but with something more like fear. + +The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by its +appearance of brittleness. To Magdalen Fay's present joy seemed like a +bit of Venetian glass on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child's +elbow. + +It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand the +_insouciance_ which looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative. +The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay's +spirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem to +disturb her growing love for him. + +Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. The +whortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of pale +golden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines. + +Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of this +underfoot forest. + +Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank a +spray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it. + +"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest with +eggs in it," she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds, +Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. I +shall hurt it unless I'm careful." + +She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmering +whortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly still +clinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it the +butterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, +opening and shutting its wings. + +It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen's +heart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose to +her lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. What +use, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deaf +ears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace? + +The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We may +not look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes. + +As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the tree +trunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon between +the blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed from +the sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that it +is laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears an +overflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant, +perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first spring +tide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now in +that little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked but +yesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bitter +tides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now that +at last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, the +seeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tide +of white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presently +inundate her heart. + +Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals from +without--all would go well. + + * * * * * + +At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminent +Fay's _insouciance_ began, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs of +collapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford. + +"Come out with me," she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at her +sister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for a +few minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely and +resolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had been +obliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair. + +Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, but +Michael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, however +light, that has trodden on our heart. + +The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes. + +Fay was standing before him. + +And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. She +looked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the last +verge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. +She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquil +steady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, of +the Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And his +hands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was going +to look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fay +experienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking in +long, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearly +fallen over a dead body. + +The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him without +a word, shrinking, transfixed. + +He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, +that he might keep suffering from her. Fay's self torture, her +protracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it were +anew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during the +heedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock of +Michael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggard +lines of remorse and despair. + +He had not been able to shield her from pain after all. + +"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered." + +"No one knows what it has been," she said hoarsely, sinking into a +chair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. +I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it." + +"You will never have to bear it again," he said with compassion. "It is +over and done with. You are going to be happy now." + +"You have suffered too," she said, reddening. + +"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you had +felt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have." + +"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. +"Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?" + +The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?" +But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, +but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, +that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, +feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. The +excuses, the lies, these shadows of the mind will vanish the moment +Love lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, their +semblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark. + +Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spirit +was alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could not +follow. + +"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?" +said Fay again, wounded to the quick. + +She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another long +look passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast at +being so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full of +compassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the parting +between two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception that +they have never met. + +"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free," he said tranquilly, +smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant she +looks!" + +When Magdalen and Fay had departed, and Wentworth had seen them to the +carriage, he came back and sat down by Michael. + +"Not over-tired?" he said, smiling self-consciously, and poking holes in +the turf with his stick. + +"Not in the least." + +"She was looking a little pale to-day." It was obvious that he wished to +talk about Fay. + +"She is more beautiful than ever," said Michael, willing to give his +brother a leg-up. + +"Isn't she!" said the affianced lover expansively. "But it isn't her +beauty I love most, it is her _character_. She is so feminine, so +receptive, so appreciative of the deeper side of life, so absolutely +devoted. Her heart has been awakened for the first time, Michael. She +has, I feel sure, never been loved before as I loved her." + +"I imagine not." + +"I can't believe she ever cared for the Duke. I saw him once, and he +gave me the impression of a very cold-blooded individual." + +"I don't think he was cold-blooded." + +"Evidently not the kind of man capable of drawing the best out of a +woman like Fay." + +"Perhaps not." + +The man who felt himself capable of this feat prodded a daisy and then +went on: + +"You used to see a good deal of them in Rome before--while you were +_attache_ there. Did you gather that it was a happy marriage, a true +union?" + +"Not very happy." + +"I daresay he was selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the crux +in married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shall +find my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object to +guard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculine +impulse to shield and protect is very strongly developed in me." + +"It is sometimes difficult to guard people," said Michael half to +himself. + +"I hope some day," Wentworth went on shyly, colouring under his tan, +"your turn may come, that you may meet the right woman, and feel as I do +now. It will be a revelation to you. I am afraid it may seem exaggerated +in a person like myself, who am essentially a man's man. (This was a +favourite illusion of Wentworth's.) But some day you will understand, +and you will find as I have done that love is not just slothfully +accepting a woman's slavish devotion." + +"Indeed!" + +"No, Michael, believe me, it is something far greater. It is living not +only for self, but as for her sake. To take trouble to win the smile of +one we love, to gladly forego one's momentary pleasures, one's +convenience, in order to serve her. That is the best reward of life." + +Michael's eyes filled with tears. He felt a hundred years older than +Wentworth at that moment. A tender pained compassion welled up within +him. And with it came a new protective comprehension of the man beside +him who had cherished him from his childhood onwards. + +He put out his hand and gripped Wentworth's. + +"God bless you, Wenty," he said. + +And for a moment they who were so far apart seemed very near together. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + She sees no tears, + Or any tone + Of thy deep groan + She hears: + Nor does she mind + Or think on't now + That ever thou + Wast kind. + + --HERRICK. + + +It quickly became plain to Magdalen that Fay's peace of mind had been +shaken by her interview with Michael. She had vouchsafed no word +concerning it on her way home. But in the days that followed she +appeared ill at ease, and a vague and increasing unrest seemed to +possess her. Magdalen doubted whether she had as yet asked herself what +it was that was disturbing her tranquillity. But it was at any rate +obvious that she shrank from seeing Michael again, and that she was at +times dejected in Wentworth's presence. + +Wentworth perceived the change in her, and attributed it to a most +natural and pardonable jealousy of Michael to which, while he made the +fullest allowance for it, he had no inclination to yield. + +Michael had for a moment seemed to take more interest in life after +Fay's visit, and although he had quickly relapsed into apathy Wentworth +told himself that he was anxious to foster this nascent interest by +another meeting between him and Fay. At the same time he desired to +rehearse the part of central figure poised between two great devotions +which was to be his agreeable _role_ in the future. For Michael would of +course live with them after his marriage with Fay. And if there were any +ebullitions of jealousy between Fay and Michael--Wentworth dwelt with +complacency on the possibility--he felt competent to deal with them with +tact and magnanimity, reassuring each in turn as to their equal share in +his affections. + +Michael at any rate showed no disinclination to meet Fay again, and even +evinced something verging on a desire to see Magdalen. And presently +Wentworth arranged to drive him over to luncheon at Priesthope. +Throughout life he had always liked to settle, even in the most trivial +matters, what Michael should do, with whom he should associate. The +situation was not new, nor was there any novelty in Michael's +pliability. + +But when the day came Wentworth arrived without his brother, and +evidently out of temper. Magdalen asked if Michael were less well, and +was curtly assured that he was steadily improving. The luncheon dragged +through somehow as under a cloud. Colonel Bellairs was fortunately +absent on a visit to Miss Barnett at Saundersfoot. His absence was the +only silver lining to the cloud. Fay hardly spoke. Magdalen was thankful +that her prickly Lord Lossiemouth had departed the day before. + +After luncheon, when they were sitting on the terrace over their coffee, +Bessie left them, and Magdalen was about to do the same, when Wentworth +said suddenly: + +"I left Michael with the Bishop of Lostford. That is why he is not here +now. The Bishop is inducting the new Rector of Wrigley this afternoon, +and he sent a wire this morning--he is always doing things at the last +moment--he never considers others--to say that he would call at Barford +on his way to see Michael. Michael is his godson, and he has always been +fond of him. I left them together." + +Magdalen and Fay sipped their coffee in silence. + +"Michael had been as inert and apathetic as usual," continued Wentworth +sullenly, "until the Bishop appeared. The Bishop took him off into the +garden, though I said I did not like his going out so soon after +dressing--he was only just up--and it was perfectly plain they did not +want me. I believe that was why they went out. I was of no account. The +Bishop has always been like that, your friend one day, and oblivious of +you the next. But he and Michael seemed to have a great deal to say to +each other. I watched them from the library walking up and down. Michael +can walk quite well when he wants to. Then when the victoria came +round--I thought he would find that less fatiguing than the dogcart--I +went to tell him that it was time to start, but he only stared vaguely +at me, and the Bishop took his arm and said that you must excuse him for +this once, as he did not mean to let him go at that moment. So I came +away without him." + +"There will be many more opportunities of seeing us, and one must clutch +what few chances one can of seeing the Bishop," said Magdalen. + +"When I went to warn Michael that the carriage was there," continued +Wentworth, "he did not see me till I was quite near--there was a bush +between--and I could not help hearing him say, 'That was half an hour +before I was arrested.'" + +There was an uneasy silence. + +"It seems," said Wentworth with exceeding bitterness, "that I have not +Michael's confidence. The Bishop has it, but I, his only brother. Oh, +no. He can talk to the Bishop about his imprisonment, but to me--not a +word, not a single word. At first when we were together at Venice I +asked him quietly about it once or twice. I asked him why he had never +said a word to _me_ about it at the time, why he had not confided to me +at any rate that he was shielding the Marchesa, but I soon saw that the +subject distressed him. He always became confused, and he never would +reply. Once, since we were back at Barford, when he seemed clearer, I +asked him most earnestly to tell me one thing, whether he actually +witnessed the murder of the Marchese by his wife, as she supposed, and +what had first put it into his head to take the blame on himself. But it +seemed that any allusion to the subject exhausted and worried him. I +said to him at last: 'Do you still hate talking of it as much as ever?' +And he said 'yes.' I could understand that, and from that day to this I +never alluded to it again. But though he won't say a word to me, it +seems he can to others." + +The miserable jealousy in Wentworth's face touched Magdalen. + +"He knew you had strained every nerve to save him," said Wentworth, +turning to Fay. "Has he ever shown his gratitude for what you tried to +do for him?" + +"N-no," stammered Fay. + +"His imprisonment has changed his nature, that is what it is. He went in +alive, and he has come out dead. He has ceased to care for anything or +anyone. He has been killed by inches. He was so affectionate as a boy. I +was father and mother to him. He used to trot after me like a little +dog. And if anyone had his whole confidence I had. I was everything to +him. My one fear of marrying has always been that he might feel pained +at seeing another person first with me." (Wentworth had never had this +altruistic misgiving, but he stated it with conviction.) "But now he is +not the same. I suppose he still has some affection for me. He shows it +sometimes by a kind of effort. He seemed to wake up a bit after you came +over, Fay. I think he had a sort of glimpse from things I said to him of +what love can be, and just for a moment he was more like his old self, +and appeared to enter into my feelings. But he soon sank back again. As +often as not he seems to shrink from any real conversation. We sometimes +sit whole evenings together without speaking. He does not really want me +any more, or anyone. He talked at first a little about the Italian +doctor, but he never mentions him now. And as for my marriage, as for +being distressed by my caring for someone else," resentfully, "he is +absolutely indifferent. You would think that Fay and I, the two people +of all others who have done most for him, who have grieved most over +him, who have shown him most affection, were nothing to him." + +There was a ghastly silence. + +"I don't blame him," said Wentworth with something nearer passion than +he had ever experienced before, in which even his petty jealousy was +momentarily extinguished. "At least, I can't look at him and remain +angry with him. It breaks my heart to see him like this, so callous, so +regardless of all I have suffered on his account. I don't blame him. He +is not himself. His brain is weakened by his poor body. No. The person I +do blame is that accursed woman who allowed him to suffer for her, who +skulked behind him for two endless years, who let him sacrifice his life +for hers, who never had the courage to say the word, and take her crime +upon herself, and get him out of his living grave." + +Fay became cold as death in the May sunshine. What ghost was this which +was taking form before her? What voice was this, how could it be +Wentworth's voice, which was saying at last aloud with passion what that +other accusing voice within had so hoarsely, so persistently whispered +from its cell, during the long years? Her brain reeled. + +"The Marchesa did repent," said Magdalen. + +Wentworth laughed harshly. + +"Oh, yes. On her deathbed, in order to save her soul. She wanted to be +right with the next world. But how could she go on, year in year out, +letting him burn and freeze alternately in that vile cell? She must have +known, someone must have told her, what his life was like. How well I +remember, Fay, your saying: 'Why does not the real murderer confess? How +can he go on letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, +bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?' How little we both knew. +I always supposed the assassin was a man, a common criminal of the +lowest order. Yet it seems there are women in the world, educated, +refined women, who can remorselessly pinch a man's life out of him with +their white hands. The Marchesa has murdered two people, first her +husband, and then my boy, my foolish, quixotic, generous Michael. May +God forgive her! I never will!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + + Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir. + + --A. DE MUSSET. + + +In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signs +of reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and with +fatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But his +languid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His face +took on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly saw +something with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a look +sometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, when +an echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they once +lived, which they have well nigh forgotten. + +Michael's body, which had so far profited by the inertness of his +faculties, resented the change, and gave unmistakable signs of +relinquishing the slight degree of strength it had regained. + +Wentworth became suddenly frantically anxious once more, and in a moment +the wrongs on which he was brooding were forgotten. He decided to go to +London the same day under the guise of business, and to consult the +great doctor privately about Michael, perhaps arrange to bring him back +with him. + +"I wish you would drive oftener," he said to Michael before he left. +"It's much better for you than walking up and down. Why not, if you feel +inclined, as you will be alone all day, drive over to Priesthope this +afternoon. I said you would come the first day you could. It's only four +miles, just an easy little drive." + +An indefinable change passed over Michael's vacant face at the mention +of Priesthope. His eyes became fixed. He looked gravely at his brother, +as if the latter had solved some difficult problem. + +"It's a good idea," he said slowly. "I ought to have gone before, +but----" + +"The Bishop stopped you most inconsiderately last time." + +"Did he? I don't remember being stopped. Oh! yes, yes, I do. But if I +_had_ gone that day---- But anyhow I will go to-day." + + * * * * * + +Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending to +read, when Michael was announced. + +When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessness +and semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she looked +ill, and as if she had not slept. + +"I ought to have come before," he said mechanically, making a great +mental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, +but----" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what he +intended to say. + +"The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you," said +Fay drearily. Every word that Wentworth had said that afternoon was +still echoing discordantly in her brain. + +"That's it. The Bishop," said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had a +long talk"--his mind was clearing rapidly--"how you meant to save me." + +"Yes, I meant to do it," said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. +"But the Marchesa, the same day--it was in the papers." + +"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that you +had been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, +and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not aware +you--had thought of it." + +"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear me +a grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And--oh, Michael, +you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you--you +_could_, you know--to stop my marrying Wentworth?" + +Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn. + +"When first we met again, that second time in Italy," he said gently, +"do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses all +over it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. Then +I had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had not +forgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were another +man's wife. Now that we meet again--_the position is the same_." + +Fay looked at Michael. + +The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguish +that day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw him +first as a lad, which she had _twice_ extinguished, was in his eyes +again. There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been when +they leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of something +exceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked through +her, beyond her. + +"And yet the position is not quite the same," he said tranquilly, "for +then you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are to +marry a man you--Oh! Fay, you _do_ care for Wentworth, don't you?" + +"I would not have kept _him_ in prison for a day," she said, and hid her +face in her hands. + +If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her +with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her +agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill +to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her +heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for +her, for Michael possibly, but not for her. + +"Wentworth is worth caring for," said Michael. "Not worth caring for in +part, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring for +_altogether_. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyone +in the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop his +marrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid of +his marriage with you being stopped." + +Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him. + +"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keen +about. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He has +always waited to see whether things will come to him of themselves, and +then if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking them +away, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while all +the time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip away +from him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and over +again. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself out +for any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people _do_; he +has no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishop +stand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworth +has no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. The +Bishop said we must remember that, and that if--anything happened to +shake his--his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, it +would be cruelly hard on him." + +"Why should anything happen," said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?" + +"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since--since +the Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't know +what, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupid +and muddle-headed since I've been in--in _Italy_ that I _can't_ remember +what I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is in +absolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks such +odd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. He +often tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, +all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes I +think if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it out +of me. Has he asked you any leading questions?" + +"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done for +you in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him a +lie, for it was a lie except in the actual words." + +"Aren't you afraid," said Michael gently, "that it may not be the only +one, that perhaps there may be some more?" + +There was a long pause. + +"I think Wentworth will find out some day," he went on. "I'm _sure_ he +will. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from a +great pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him." + +Fay turned her quivering face towards him. + +"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm so +thankful it was _you_, and not him." + +"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked with +your own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs--to +_himself_." + +In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things about +the man she loved. + +"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let me +stay--in Italy." + +"I'd give anything I have," she said with a sob; "I'd give both my +hands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinks +so much of, I'd give anything if only I had not--done that, if I could +only undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't done +it, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. And +then the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what I was doing. +But since you came back I've _seen_; since I loved Wentworth I've +_seen_--what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got in +the way, and left you to die." + +He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguished +realisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her through +love for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawn +her, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his. + +"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out for +his sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while you +were shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I only +tried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of it +any longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself--till now. I see +now that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentle +and loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael. +You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael, _must +Wentworth pay too_?" + +Michael looked at her with compassion. "I am afraid he must. But do not +let him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in your +power to save him part of the--the expense. Let him pay the lesser price +instead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out." + +Silence. + +"It is the only thing to do, Fay." + +No answer. + +"I am afraid you do not love him after all," said the inexorable voice. + +Again silence. + +Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenched +hands between both of his. + +"Love him a little more," he said. "Take the risk and tell him +everything--while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgive +me if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enough +to risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because you +found the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, +because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me," Michael's voice shook, +"it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed." +His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. You +wouldn't if you--if you knew what it was like." + + * * * * * + +Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face on +the sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretched +arms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucified +anew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or of +fear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death. + +Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, to +pierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so late +but come at last, to help her in her sore need? + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + His own thought drove him like a goad.--TENNYSON. + + +"Now," said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustled +down here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. I +calculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that's +worrying you?" + +Michael did not answer. + +The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly. + +"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We are +all in the same steam launch." + +"I don't want anything, thanks." + +"In love?" + +"No." + +"Quite sure? I have always observed that people who are in love are +desperately offended at the bare supposition that such a thing is +possible. Things might be arranged, you know. Young women aren't +intended by nature to live single any more than you are. Would a few +weeks in London meet the case? The season's just beginning. No theatres, +of course, and no late hours. Your brother here seems made of money, +though he will soon be ruined if he goes on sending for me. For I always +charge double if I'm sent for unnecessarily. Come, sir, what _do_ you +want?" + +"I don't know," said Michael, half amused. He was still exhausted by his +expedition to Priesthope of the previous day. "I don't want anything, +thanks. I'm--all right." + +"What do you say to a change?" + +"I had not thought of that," said Michael with a flicker of interest. +"Now you mention it--yes. That's the very thing. I should like--a +change." + +Wentworth came forward at once. + +"Norway?" he said eagerly, "or Switzerland. We must be guided by you, +doctor. Or a yacht? You used to be fond of yachting, Michael. We will go +anywhere you like." + +Michael's face fell. + +The doctor leaned back and examined his finger tips. He had seen what he +wanted. + +"The yacht won't do," he said with decision. "And Norway's out of the +question. Much too far. In fact, there's only one place that will do." + +"Where is that?" said Wentworth. + +"I don't know yet. Where is it, Mr. Carstairs?" + +"I should like," said Michael, colouring painfully, for he knew he was +going to hurt Wentworth, "I should like to go to Lostford; not for long, +just for a little bit." + +"Lostford!" exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. "Lostford, down in that hole. +Oh! no." + +"Well, and why not Lostford?" said the doctor with asperity. "Mr. +Carstairs shows his sense. He is not up to a long journey. Quite near. +Interesting cathedral. Cultivated society. I should have suggested +Lostford myself if he had not." + +"I will ride over and take rooms at the 'Prince Consort' to-day," said +Wentworth meekly. + +"You will do no such thing. Are you taking leave of your senses. Your +brother is not fit to stay in a rackety hotel." + +"The Bishop has asked me," said Michael faintly, "to spend a week or two +with him whenever I like. I believe--it's very quiet there." + +"The Bishop!" said Wentworth. "It would be far from quiet at the Palace. +Worse than an hotel. The Bishop lives in a perpetual turmoil." + +Then he suddenly stopped short, and became very red. Michael preferred +the Bishop to himself. + +"It's a good idea," said the doctor. "I know the Bishop. Splendid man. +The best of company." He got up with decision. "My orders are, Mr. +Carstairs, that you proceed to Lostford without delay. How far is it? +Six miles. Go to-morrow." Then he turned to Wentworth. "You will go over +and see him in a week's time, and report to me." + +"You think him worse," said Wentworth nervously to the doctor in the +hall. + +"No," said the doctor emphatically, watching his motor sliding to the +door, "but he is not better. He is anxious about something, and he can't +afford to be anxious. He is not in a fit state to have a finger ache +with impunity." + +"He has nothing to be anxious about," said Wentworth. "And if he had a +trouble I should be the first to hear of it. I have his entire +confidence--at least, I had till lately. I must own he has become very +changed of late. Of course, I never appear to notice it, but----" + +"Quite right. Quite right. I wish others were as sagacious as you are. +Let him go to Lostford for a week or two--and get you off his nerves," +the doctor added to himself as the motor shot down the beech avenue. + + * * * * * + +A few days later Wentworth was sitting idly watching the stream of +Piccadilly from the windows of his club. The same day that Michael had +gone to Lostford he had discovered that he had business in London. He +would have found it difficult to say what his business there was. But +one of Wentworth's many theories about himself was that he was a very +busy man. He had so constantly given "urgent business" as a reason for +evading uncongenial social engagements that he had finished by believing +himself to be overwhelmed with arduous affairs. So he went to London, +and visited a publisher anent his forthcoming history of Sussex, and +dined with a man whom he met at Lord's, whom he had not seen for years, +and wrote daily to Fay, expressing ardent but vague hopes that he might +be able to "get away" from London by the end of the week. + +He was in no hurry to return. + +A vague fear of something grievously amiss with Michael, he knew not +what; an unformulated anxiety weighed upon him. And he was jealous. +Jealousy had brought him up to London. He was not going to remain +deserted at Barford. Jealousy was keeping him there now. He had seen +that Michael was glad to get away from him, that he had caught at the +doctor's suggestion of a change. His sullen heart was very sore about +Michael. Why did he _want_ to leave him? Where would he meet anyone more +devoted to him than himself? What could any man do for another that he +had not done for Michael? Was it true then, after all, what he had so +often heard was the fate of men of deep affections like himself, that +they give all, and are given nothing in return. + +A sudden exclamation made him look up. + +"Why, Maine, is it you?" + +A tall, bald man was holding out his hand to him. For a moment Wentworth +did not recognise him. Then he remembered him. Lord John Alington. + +He shook hands with tepid civility, but Lord John always mistook a +pained recognition for an enthusiastic welcome. He drew up a chair at +once. + +"Now this is what I call luck," he said, his red face beaming. "And so +your brother is freed at last. Only heard the news when I landed from +Norway a week ago. I congratulate you with my whole heart. I never was +so glad about anything before." And Lord John sawed Wentworth's limp +hand up and down. + +"I was present, you know," he went on. "Made a great impression on me. +Sobered me for a long time I can tell you. I saw Carstairs come forward +and give himself up. Never had such a shock in my life." + +"I remember now you were there." + +"Rather. And I was dead certain from the first that he had never done +it. I always said so. And now at last the mystery is cleared up. And I +was proved right. He hadn't. But fancy shielding that old Marchesa with +her long teeth. Why, she was forty if she was a day. Who would ever have +thought of it!" + +"No one did," said Wentworth. + +"_I_ didn't. I may tell you frankly that I did _not_. The Marchesa! I +knew her. But it never so much as crossed my mind that she had massacred +her old hubby. 'Good God! The Marchesa!' Those were my exact words when +I heard a week ago. Is Carstairs in London? I should like just to shake +him by the hand." + +"He is not in town. He is still feeling the effects of his +imprisonment." + +"I should like to have seen him. It was my fault he was found you know. +I said 'Perhaps he's behind the screen.' Dreadfully sorry. Wish I +hadn't. Only my fun. Never thought he was there, or anyone. I've never +forgotten his coming out from behind the screen. But what I want to know +is," Lord John tapped Wentworth on the arm with his eyeglass, and +lowered his voice confidentially, "_why he ever went behind it_. That's +what has been puzzling me ever since I read the Marchesa's confession. +If he wanted to shield her, why the deuce did he hide at all? Why not +strike a noble attitude bang in the middle of the room--from the first?" + +Wentworth looked at him astonished. The vague suspicion of the last +weeks that Michael was concealing something from him was taking shape at +last. + +There was no doubt that Lord John had got hold of a listener. + +"No, no, Maine. When Carstairs was hiding behind the screen he was not +dying with anxiety to take the Marchesa's crime on his white +shoulders--not at that moment. That explanation don't wash. I believe I +know a better one." + +Wentworth became very red. + +"The Duchess's maid! Did you ever see her? No, evidently not. You've no +time for looking at young maids. Taken up with contemplating an old +maid in the glass. You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiest +little baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an iron +virtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't think +why. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints like +you. _I'm_ not, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? The +Marchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. +Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about the +house after everyone else had gone just for the same reason that I +was--to get a word with that little hussy?" + +At that moment a tall, middle-aged man came into the room, and Lord +John's roving eye fell upon him. He sprang to his feet. + +"Lossiemouth," he said, seizing the latter's unwilling hand. "Why, +you're the very man I wanted to see. Congratulations, my dear chap. All +my heart. Ship come in, and ancestral halls, and going to be married +too, all in one fell swoop. Know Miss Bellairs a little. Jumped with her +in the same skipping rope in childhood's happy hours, danced with her at +her first ball. Madly in love with her. Never seen her since." + +Wentworth escaped. + +The chamber of his soul had been long in readiness, swept and garnished +for the restless spirit that had returned to it--not alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + Est-il indispensable, qu'on s'eleve a un point d'ou le + devoir n'apparaisse plus comme un choix de nos sentiments + les plus nobles, mais comme une silencieuse necessite de + toute notre nature. + + +The following afternoon Fay was sitting in the little morning-room at +Priesthope, trying to write a letter, a long, long letter. Wentworth's +last note to her, just arrived by the second post, was open before her, +telling her that he could not return for two days. And then the door +opened gently and he was before her. + +She turned a white, miserable face towards the door. Then as she +suddenly recognised him the colour rushed to her face, and she flew to +him with a cry and locked him in her arms, kissing his shoulder, his +coat, his hands. + +He was thunderstruck. Could a few days' absence so profoundly move these +delicate, emotional creatures, whom an all-wise Providence had made +almost too susceptible to masculine charm! He had never seen Fay like +this. But then, he had never seen anything like anything. She withdrew +herself suddenly, and stood a little apart, her face and neck one +carnation of soft shame. + +"But you are in London," she said, her lip quivering, her eyes falling +before his. "I have your own word for it that you are still in London." +And she pointed at his letter. "I was not expecting to see you." + +A joy so great that it was akin to pain laid its awakening hand on him. + +"I am glad you were not expecting me," he said, in a voice that he +hardly recognised as his own. "I'm thankful." + +And he drew her back into his arms more moved than he had ever been. + +Yes. He was loved. He loved and was loved. He had not known the world +contained anything as great as this. He had always thought that life at +its best was a solitary thing, that passion was a momentary madness with +which he did not care to tamper, that celibacy was a cheap price to pay +for his independence. But he and this woman were one. This was rest and +peace and joy and freedom. This was what he had always wanted, without +knowing he wanted it. One of the many barriers between them went down. +He thought it was the only one. + +They sat a long time in silence, his head against her breast. Her face +had become pinched and sharp, the lovely colour had faded. All its +beauty and youth had gone out of it. Her terrified eyes stared at the +wall. + +"Speak! Speak now," said the inner voice. "You were too late last time. +Speak now." + + * * * * * + +"I am very miserable, Fay," in a whisper against her cheek. + +Her arms tightened round him. + +"Not so miserable now I am with you, but----" + +It seemed to Fay that she was holding to her breast the point of the +sword that was to stab her to death. + +He raised his head, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. Twice +she had seen tears in those narrow grey eyes before: once when he had +talked to her of Michael in prison, and once when Michael was +exonerated. + +They had drawn a little apart. + +"When I came here I had not meant to tell you anything about it, I had +decided not to, but--Fay, I can't believe it, I haven't slept all night, +I have known for two days, I only found it out by the merest accident +that that has happened which I never thought could happen, something +impossible." Wentworth's lip quivered. "Michael has deceived me, not by +mistake, not just for a moment, but systematically, purposely--for +years." + +There was anger as well as pain in his voice. + +"It was about the murder of the Marchese," he said hoarsely, "but I +don't care what it was about. That is not the point. He has deceived me +for reasons of his own. I don't know what they were. And I am afraid, my +darling, he has not stopped there. I am afraid he has deceived you too. +I am afraid he hoodwinked you when he persuaded you to let him hide in +your room. Why did he hide if he wanted to shield the Marchesa? Don't +you see that there was no sense in his hiding, though I never thought of +it till--lately? I always believed in him implicitly, as you have done. +I thought him just the kind of person who _would_ sacrifice himself for +a woman. I can understand doing it. It appeals to a nature like mine. I +was deeply hurt by his reserve about it, since he came home, but I never +thought, it never struck me for one single second that it concealed +anything discreditable." + +"It does not," said Fay suddenly. + +"My dearest, I am afraid there is no doubt it _does_. What was Michael +doing in the garden at that time of night. You forget that. I am the +last person in the world to think him capable of anything disgraceful, +but I can't resist the conclusion that he was waiting--Oh! Fay, your +ears ought not to be polluted by such things--was waiting about in the +garden because he was attracted by someone in the house." + +He felt her hand quiver in his. + +How womanly she was, how pure. How could any man have had the heart to +throw dust in those innocent eyes. He kissed the cold hand reverently. + +"I hate to speak of such a thing to you, and it somehow seems out of the +question when I think of Michael's character. I had brought him up so +carefully. I had impressed on him my own high code of morals from the +first. And yet--and yet--I am afraid, dearest, that Michael must have +been hanging about to have a word with--don't start so, why do you +tremble?--with your maid." + +There was a moment's silence. Fay shook her head. She was unable to +articulate. + +"Then why was he there? You must have been very much surprised and +alarmed at his coming to your room so late. And unless he had given you +some reason, you would not have tried to hide him. We always come back +to that. Fay, why _did_ Michael hide?" + +Fay struggled to speak. Her white lips moved, but no sound came forth. + +"You and the Duke tried to save him from being discovered. We all know +that. The Duke told me so himself." + +Another silence. Fay's face became convulsed. + +"You are no diplomatist, Fay, thank God. I see very well, my darling, +that you know more than you will say. It is plain to me that in the +goodness of your soul you are trying to shield Michael--_for the second +time_." + +He kissed her on the forehead and rose to go. + +"Stop!" said Fay, almost inarticulately. "It isn't the second time. I +didn't shield him last time. I let him slide. But I will now ... I want +to tell you ... I must tell you ... Michael has been here, he came when +you were away in London. And he has begged me,--Oh, Wentworth, he has +implored me to--tell you everything." + +Wentworth became very red. His face hardened. + +"_He_ has begged you to tell me! He has gone behind my back and tried to +depute you to do it, to plead his cause for him. He has not even the +courage to come to me himself. No, Fay, I am going. It is no use +imploring me to stay. I'm not going to listen to you making excuses for +him. I don't blame you, but you ought not to have agreed to do it. +Whatever I ought to know I must hear from Michael himself. I shall go +over and see him to-morrow morning. Even you, dearest, must not come +between--Michael and me." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + Aimer quelqu'un, c'est a la fois lui oter le droit, et lui + donner la puissance de nous faire souffrir. + + +The following morning the Bishop and Michael were sitting in the library +at Lostford Palace. The Bishop was reading a letter, while Michael +watched him, sunk in an arm-chair. + +Presently the Bishop thrust out his under lip, and gave back the letter +to Michael. + +"Wentworth has dipped his pen in gall instead of in his inkpot," he +said. "For real quality and strength give me the venom of a virtuous +person. The ordinary sinner can't compete with him. Evil doers are out +of the running in this world as well as in the next. I often tell them +so. That is why I took orders. What do you suppose Wentworth suspects +when he says Alington has suggested a discreditable reason for your +being in the di Collo Alto villa that night, and that he is not going to +allow you to skulk behind a woman any longer? He will be here directly +to extort what he is pleased to call 'the truth.' What are you going to +say?" + +"I don't know," said Michael. "That is the worst of me. I never know." + +The Bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. + +"I see one thing," continued Michael, "and that is that it's all +important that he should not break with Fay." + +"That will be his first step--if he knows the truth." + +"I am afraid it will, and yet--that's the pity of it, she will last +longer than I shall, and he does like her--a little--which is a great +deal for him. You don't believe it, but he really does. And he'll want +her more than ever--when I'm gone." + +The Bishop looked keenly at his godson. + +Michael had never before alluded to his precarious hold on life. It was +obvious that he was only considering it now in its bearings on +Wentworth's future. + +"Can a man who has grown grey looking at himself in the glass, and +recording his own microscopic experiences in a diary, can such a man +_forgive_?" said the Bishop. "Forgiveness is tough work. It needs +knowledge of human nature. It needs humility. I forgave somebody once +long ago. And it nearly was the death of me. I've never been the same +man since." + +"Wentworth will have his chance," said Michael. "It's about all we can +do for him." + +"We all know he says he can, but then he says such a lot of things. He +dares to say he loves his fellow men. But I've never yet found that +assertion coincide with any real _working_ regard for them. There are +certain things which those who care for others never say, and that is +one of them. The egoist on the contrary is always asserting of himself +what he ought in common decency to leave others to say of him,--only +they never do. Wentworth actually told me not so long ago that he was +intent on the service of others. I told him it was for those others to +mention that interesting fact, and that nobody had lied about him to +that extent so far in my diocese." + +"He always says that there is perfect confidence between us," said +Michael. "I've heard him say so ever since I can remember, and I've +heard him tell people that I always brought him my boyish troubles. But +I never did, even as a boy, even when I got into a scrape at Eton. My +tutor stood by me in that. Wentworth never could endure him. He said he +was such a snob. But snob or not, he was a firm friend to me. And I +never told him even at the first of my love for Fay. I somehow could +not. You simply can't tell Wentworth things. But he has got it into his +head that I always have, and that this is the first time I have kept +anything from him. If I had only Fay's leave to tell him! It is the only +thing to do." + +The door opened, and to the astonishment of both men, Fay and Magdalen +came in. Fay looked as exhausted, as hopeless, as she had done three +months ago when Magdalen had brought her to make her confession to the +Bishop in this very room. + +She evidently remembered it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him and +said, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Do +you think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy on +me again, like He did before?" + +"Do you mean by God having mercy, that Wentworth will still marry you if +he knows the truth?" + +She did not answer. That was of course what she meant. + +She looked from one to the other of her three friends with a mute +imploring gaze. Their eyes fell before hers. + +"I have not slept all night," she said to the Bishop. "Magdalen stayed +with me. And we came quite early because I had to come. Wentworth must +be told. It isn't because Magdalen says so. She hasn't said so, though I +know she felt he ought to be told from the first. And it isn't because +he's sure to find out. And oh! Michael, it isn't for your sake, to put +you right with him. It ought to be, but it isn't. But I can't let him +kiss me any more, and not say. It makes a kind of pain I can't bear. It +has been getting worse and worse ever since Michael came back, only I +did not know what it was at first, and yesterday----" she stopped short, +shuddering. "He came to see me yesterday," she said in a strangled +voice. "He was so dear and good, so wonderful. There never was anyone +like him. It is in my heart that he will forgive me. And he trusts me +entirely. I can't deceive him any more." + +The eyes of Michael and Magdalen met in a kind of shame. Those two who +had loved her as no one else had loved her, who had understood her as no +one else had understood her, saw that they had misjudged her. They had +judged her by her actions, identified her with them. And all the time +the little trembling "pilgrim soul" in her was shrinking from the pain +of those very actions, was growing imperceptibly apart from them, was +beginning to regard them with horror, not because they had caused +suffering to others, but because they had ended by inflicting anguish +upon herself. The red-hot iron of our selfishness with which we brand +others becomes in time hot at both ends. We don't know at first what it +is that is hurting us, why it burns us. But our blistered hands, cling +as they will, must needs drop it at last. Fay's cruel little white hand +had let go. + +Michael took it in his and kissed it. + +"Wentworth is coming here this morning," said the Bishop gently. "He may +arrive at any moment. Stay here and speak to him. And ask him to forgive +you, Fay. You need his forgiveness." + +"I don't know how to tell him," gasped Fay. "I tried yesterday, and I +couldn't." + +"Let me tell him," said Michael, and as he spoke, the door opened once +more, and Wentworth was announced. + +He had got ready what he meant to say. The venomous sentences which he +had concocted during a sleepless night were all in order in his mind. + +Who shall say what grovelling suspicions, what sordid conjectures, had +blocked his inflamed mind as he drove swiftly across the downs in the +still June morning? He meant to extort an explanation from his brother, +to have the whole subject out with him once for all. He should not be +suffered to make Fay his accomplice for another hour. His tepid spirit +burned within him when he thought of Michael's behaviour to Fay. He said +to himself that he could forgive that least of all. + +He had expected to find Michael alone, or possibly the Bishop only with +him, the Bishop who _knew_. He was disconcerted at finding Fay and +Magdalen there before him. + +A horrible suspicion that Magdalen also knew darted across his mind. + +It was obvious to him that he had broken up a conference, a conspiracy. +His bitter face darkened still more. + +"I don't know what you are all plotting about so early in the morning," +he said. "I must apologise for interrupting you. I seem to be always in +the way now-a-days. People are always whispering behind my back. But I +have come over to see Michael. I want a few plain words with him without +delay, and I intend to have them." + +"That is well," said the Bishop, "because you are about to have them. We +were speaking of you when you came in." + +"I wish to see Michael alone," said Wentworth, stung by the Bishop's +instant admission of being in his brother's confidence. + +He looked only at Michael, who, his eyes on the ground, was leaning +white as death against the mantelpiece. + +"Do you wish us to go, Michael?" said the Bishop. + +"I wish you all to stay," he said, raising his eyes for a moment. His +hand shook so violently that he knocked over a little ornament on the +mantelpiece, and it fell with a crash into the fireplace. His voice +shook, too, but his eyes were steady. His great physical weakness, +poignantly apparent though it was, seemed a thing apart from him, like a +cloak which he might discard at any moment. + +"I cannot say all I have to say before others," said Wentworth fiercely, +"even if they are all his confederates in trying to keep me in the dark, +all, that is, except Fay. We know by experience that she can shield a +man who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know by +experience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes." + +"You have been kept in the dark," said the Bishop with compassion; "you +have not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive." + +In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense of +impending calamity. He looked again at Michael. + +Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembled +impotently. + +Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depths +to see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by the +first sight of him in his convict's blouse. + +"I always trusted you," he said with a groan, putting up his hand so as +to shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secret +you're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't _that_ I mind. It is +that--whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have kept +it from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely, +Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you should +treat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend." + +No one spoke. + +"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It's +rather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, what +I've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well know +for these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of your +own accord, what you have been persuaded to by this--this"--Wentworth +looked at the Bishop--"this outsider, this middle man." + +A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middle +man." + +"You have got to hear," said Michael, and the trembling left him. + +He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand on +the mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalen +for the first time saw a likeness between them. + +"I have kept things from you. You are right there," said Michael, +speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceived +you till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years before +that, I fell in love." + +Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment for +Michael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims. +He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightly +attracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if there +had been any attraction he should have been the first to know of it. Yet +the incredible truth was being thrust at him that Michael had struggled +through his first love without drawing upon the deep wells of +Wentworth's knowledge. + +"The woman I fell in love with was Fay. She was seventeen. I was +nineteen." + +The room went round with Wentworth. + +"Fay," he said, in blank astonishment, "Fay!" Then a glare of light +broke in on him. + +"Then it was she," he stammered, "not her maid, as that brute Alington +said--it was she--she herself that----" + +"It was her I went to see the night I was arrested. I was deeply in love +with her." + +Michael paused a moment, and then added gently, "She never cared for +me. I did not see that clearly at the time, because I was blinded by my +own passion. I have seen it since." + +Wentworth made no movement. + +"I decided to leave Rome. Fay wrote to me that I ought to go. I went to +say good-bye to her in the garden the night the Marchese was murdered. +While I was in the garden, the murder was discovered and the place was +surrounded, and I could not get away. I hid in Fay's boudoir. The Duke +came in and explained to Fay what had happened. It was the first I knew +of it. Then, when they searched the house and I saw that I must be +discovered in another moment, I came out and gave myself up as the +murderer, because I could not be found hiding in Fay's rooms at night. +It was the only thing to do." + +Fay took a long breath. What a simple explanation it seemed after all. +Why had she been so terrified? Wentworth could not blame her seriously +now. + +"I never tried to shield the Marchesa," Michael went on. "That was her +own idea. I only wanted to shield Fay from being--misconstrued. The Duke +understood. He saw me hiding behind the screen, and tried to save me. He +told me so next day. The Duke was good to me from first to last." + +Wentworth turned a fierce, livid face towards his brother. + +"Have I really got at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? The +Duke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at your +romantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion, +that part of the story is not quite so well thought out as the rest, +though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he saw +you behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no need +of an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forced +your love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it, +wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then--_then_--yes, I begin +to see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies--then when by an evil +chance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of your +being discovered, then you persuaded her, the innocent, inexperienced +creature whom you would have wronged if you could--you worked upon her +feelings, you made her into your accomplice, you persuaded her to hide +you.... You mean cur!... You only sneaked out of your hole when escape +was absolutely impossible. And so the truth, or some garbled part of it, +is choked out of you at last. No wonder you were silent all these years. +No wonder you would not speak. No wonder you let your poor dupe of a +brother break his heart over your silence. Credulous fool that I have +been from first to last. So help me God, I will never speak to you +again." + +The violent, stammering voice ceased at last. + +Fay shivered from head to foot, and looked at her lover. + +Both men had forgotten her. Their eyes never left each other. +Wentworth's fierce face was turned with deadly hatred upon his brother. +Michael met his eye, but he did not speak. + +There was death in the air. + +Suddenly as in a glass she saw that Michael was saving her again, was +sacrificing himself for a second time at enormous cost, the cost of his +brother's love. + +"Michael!" said Fay with a sob, "Michael, I can't bear it. You are +trying to save me again, but I can't bear to be saved any more. I have +had enough of being saved. I won't be saved. It hurts too much. I won't +let you do it a second time. I have had enough of being silent when I +ought to speak, I have had enough of hiding things, and pretending, and +being frightened." + +Fay saw at last that the truth was her only refuge from that unendurable +horror which was getting up out of its grave again. She fled to it for +very life, and flung herself upon it. + +She took Michael's hand, and turning to Wentworth began to speak +rapidly, with a clearness and directness which amazed Magdalen and the +Bishop. + +It all came out, the naked truth; her loveless marriage, the great +kindness of her husband towards her, her determination bred of idleness +and vanity to enslave Michael anew when he came to Rome, his resistance, +his decision to leave Italy, her inveigling him under plea of urgency to +come to the garden at night, his refusal to enter the house, her frantic +desire to keep him, his determination to part from her. + +There was no doubt in the minds of those who listened in awed silence +that here was the whole truth at last. + +Fay looked full at Wentworth and then said: "He asked me why I had sent +for him, what it was that he could do for me. And I said--I said--'Take +me with you.'" + +"No," said Michael, wincing as under a lash, "No, you did not. Fay, you +never said that." + +"You did not hear it, but I said it." + +Michael staggered against the mantelpiece. + +Wentworth had not moved. His face had become frightful, distorted. + +"I am a wicked woman, Wentworth," said Fay. "I tried to make him in love +with me. I tried to tempt him. I could make him love me, but not do +wrong. And then I let him take the blame when he was trapped. I had +trapped him there first. He did not want to come. I forced him to come. +I let him spoil his life to save my wretched good name. He is right when +he told you just now that I never loved him. The love was all on his +side. He gave it all. I took it all, and I went on taking it. It was I +who kept him in prison quite as much as the Marchesa. It was I who let +him burn and freeze in his cell. A word from me would have got him out." + +Wentworth laughed suddenly, a horrible, discordant laugh. + +They had rotted down before his eyes to loathsome unrecognisable +corpses--the man and the woman he had loved. + +Fay looked wildly at him. + +"But you are good," she said faintly. "You won't, Wentworth, you won't +cast me off like--like I did Michael." + +He did not look at her. + +He took up his gloves and straightened the fingers as his custom was. + +"There is no longer anything which need detain me here," he said to the +Bishop, and he moved towards the door. + +"Nothing except the woman whose fate is in your hands," said the Bishop +gently. "What of her? She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden. +Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You can +repay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity even +greater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you? +Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves you +and is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crush +her if you will. But will you?" + +"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees. + +His face was as flint, as he looked down at her, and tried to push away +her hands. + +"Let him go, my child," said the Bishop sternly, and he took Fay's +hands, and held them. "It is no use trying to keep a man who does not +love you. Go, Wentworth. You are right. There is nothing to keep you +here. In this room there are two people, one of whom has sinned and has +repented, and both of whom love you and have spoken the truth to you. +But there is no love and truth in you to rise up and meet theirs. You do +not know what love and truth are, even when you see them very close. You +had better go." + +"I will go," said Wentworth, his eyes blazing. And he went out and shut +the door behind him. + +Fay's hands slipped out of the Bishop's, her head fell forward, and she +sank down on the floor. The Bishop and Magdalen bent over her. + +Michael looked a moment at her, and swiftly left the room. He overtook +Wentworth in the hall, groping blindly for his hat. + +"Come in here," said Michael, "I want a word with you," and he half +pushed Wentworth into a room leading out of the hall. It was a dreary +little airless apartment with a broken blind, intended for a +waiting-room but fallen into disuse, and only partially furnished, the +corners piled with great tin boxes containing episcopal correspondence. + +Michael closed the door. + +"Wentworth," he said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand. +Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were +acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He +seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting words towards +himself. + +"I see one thing," said Wentworth, "and that is that I'm not inclined to +marry your cast-off mistress." + +Michael closed with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen the +lightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, +airless little room with its broken blind. + +Wentworth knew Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands had +him by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay had +knitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers. +But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knew +he was trying to throw him, and break his back. + +Wentworth fought for his life, but he was over-matched. The awful, +murderous hands were feeling for his neck again, the sobbing breath was +on his face, the glaring eyes staring into his. The hands closed on his +throat once more, squeezing his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes out of +his head. He made a last frightful struggle to wrench the hands away. +But they remained clutched into his flesh, choking his life out of him. +There was a thin, guttural, sawing noise mixed in with the sobbing. Then +all in a moment the sobbing ceased, he felt the hands relax, and then an +avalanche of darkness crashed down on him, and buried him beneath it. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + That game of consequences to which we all sit down, the + hanger-back not least.--R. L. STEVENSON. + + +Down, very deep down. Buried in an abyss of darkness, shrouded tightly +in a nameless horror that pressed on eyes and breath and hands and +limbs. + +At last a faint sound reached Wentworth. Far away in some other world a +clock struck. His numbed faculties apprehended the sound, and then +forgot it when it ceased. + +At last he felt himself stir. He found himself staring at a glimmer of +light. He could not look at it, and he could not look away from it. What +was it? It had something to do with him. It grew more distinct. It was a +window with a broken blind. + +Someone close at hand began to tremble. Wentworth sat up suddenly and +found it was himself. He was alone, lying crumpled up against the wall +where he had been flung down. He knew where he was. He saw the piles of +tin boxes. He remembered. + +He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after +wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried +to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. +For a long time he did not move. + +At last the clock struck again. + +He staggered to his feet as if he had been called, and looked with +intentness at a fallen book and upset inkstand. There was a quill pen +balancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the cane +bottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table. +He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, and +then got hold of it, and put it on. There was a little glass over the +mantelpiece. A ghastly face with a torn collar was watching him +furtively through it. He turned fiercely on the spy and found the face +was his own. He turned up his coat and buttoned it. Then he went to the +half-open door and looked out. + +His ear caught a faint sound. Otherwise the house was very still. + +A maid servant on her knees with her back to him was washing the white +stone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant, +also with her back to him, was watching her. + +"Then it is early morning," he said. And he walked out of the room, and +out of the house, through the wide open doors. A fine rain was falling, +but he did not notice it. He passed out through the gates and found +himself in the road. He stopped unconsciously, not knowing what to do +next. + +A fly dawdling back to the town from the station, passed him, and pulled +up, as he hesitated. + +"Station, sir?" said the driver. + +"No, Barford," said Wentworth, and he got in. The fly with its faded +cushions and musty atmosphere seemed a kind of refuge. He breathed more +freely when he was enclosed in it. + +As in the garden of Eden desolation often first makes itself felt as a +realisation of nakedness. We must creep away. We must hide. We have no +protection, no covering. + +Wentworth cowered in the fly. He passed without recognising them all the +old familiar landmarks, the twisting white road that branched off to +Priesthope, the dew ponds, the half hidden, lonely farms. He was in a +strange country. + +He looked with momentary curiosity at a weather-worn sign post which +pointed forlornly where four roads met. It was falling to pieces with +age, but yet it must have been put up there since the morning. He had +never seen it before. He shouted to the driver that he had taken the +wrong road. The man pointed with his whip to where, a mile away, the +smoke of Barford rose among its trees. The landscape suddenly slid into +familiar lines again. He recognised it, and sank back, confused and +exhausted. The effort of speaking had hurt his throat horribly. Was he +going mad? How could his throat hurt him like this--if it wasn't--if +Michael had not---- + +He thrust thought from him. He would wait till he got home, till his own +roof was safely over him, the familiar walls round him. + +This was his gate. Here was his own door, with his butler looking +somewhat surprised, standing on the steps. + +He found himself getting out, and giving orders. He listened to himself +telling the servant to pay the fly and to send word by it to his +dog-cart to return home. Of course he had gone to Lostford in the +dog-cart. He had forgotten that. + +Then he heard his own voice ordering a whiskey and soda to be brought +to him in the library. And he walked there. + +The afternoon post had arrived with the newspapers and he took up a +paper. But it was printed in some language unknown to him, though he +recognised some of the letters. + +How long had he been gone, an hour, a day, a year? + +He looked at the clock. + +Half-past two. But this great shock with which the air was still rocking +might have stopped it. He put his ear to it. Strange! It was going. And +it always stopped so easily, even if the housemaid dusted it. + +Was it half-past two in the afternoon or in the night? + +There was a band of sunshine across the floor and outside the gardens +and the downs were steeped in it. + +Perhaps it was day. + +The butler brought in a tray, and placed it near him. + +"Have you had luncheon, sir?" + +Wentworth thought a moment, and then said "yes." + +"And will Mr. Michael return to-day, sir?" + +Wentworth remembered some old, old prehistoric arrangement by which +Michael was to have come back with him to Barford this afternoon. + +"No," he said, the room suddenly darkening till the sunshine on the +floor was barely visible. "No. He is not coming back." + +The man hesitated a moment, and then left the room. + +Wentworth groped for the flagon of whiskey, poured out a quantity, and +drank it raw. Then he waited for the nightmare to lift. + +His mind cleared gradually. His scattered faculties came sneaking back +like defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disaster +and one only to tell. He must needs believe them. + +_Michael had tried to kill him._ Whatever else shifted that remained +true. + +Wentworth bowed his stiffening head upon his hands, and the sweat ran +down his face. + +Michael had tried to kill him, and had all but succeeded. Oh! if only he +had quite succeeded. If only his life had not come back to him! He had +died and died hard in that little room. And yet here he was still alive +and in agony. + +Michael first. That thought was torture. Then Fay. That thought was +torture. The woman he had so worshipped, on whom he had lavished a +wealth of love, far greater than most men have it in them to bestow, had +deceived him, had been willing to be his brother's mistress. + +Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitly +distrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gauged +life and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had he +made an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worse +than the rest. + +What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. What +was Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like other +women, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man like +other men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once his +passions were aroused. It was an old story, as old as the hills, that +men and women betray each other. It was as old as the psalms of David. + +Pah! what a fool he was to allow his heart to be wrung by what was only +the ordinary vulgar experience of those who were so silly as to mix +themselves up with their fellow creatures. + +He had only himself to thank. + +Well, at any rate, he was free now. He was awake now. He was not going +to put his hand in the fire a second time. + +He was going abroad immediately. He would start to-morrow morning. In +the meanwhile, he would go and see somebody, call somewhere, be in high +spirits somewhere with others. They (they were Fay and Michael) would +hear of that afterwards, would see how little he cared. + +He seized up his hat and went out. But when he had walked a few hundred +yards he sank down exhausted on a wooden seat in the alder coppice +overhanging the house, and remained there. The baby pheasants crept in +and out, all round him. Their little houses, each with an anxious +step-mother in it, were set at regular intervals along the grassy path. +Only yesterday he had walked along that path with the keeper, and had +thought that in the autumn he and Michael would be shooting together +once more. + +They would never shoot together again. + + * * * * * + +As the dusk fell he heard a sound of wheels. His dog-cart returning from +Lostford, no doubt. It did not turn into the court-yard, but came on up +to the house. Wentworth peered down through the leaves. + +It was the Bishop's dog-cart. He recognised the groom who drove it. To +his amazement he saw Lord Lossiemouth get out. After some parley he went +into the house. + +Why should he have come? + +Oh! of course, how dense he was. He had been sent over on an embassy by +Magdalen and the Bishop. They wanted to hush up the fight, and bring +about a reconciliation between him and Fay. He should be told Fay was +making herself ill with crying. His magnanimity would be appealed to by +that pompous prig. Well, he had had his journey for nothing. Wentworth +saw his servants looking for him, and hid himself in the coppice. + +A couple of hours later he left the wood, and went down the steep path +to the gardens. It was nearly dark now. Lights twinkled in the house. +The lamp in the library laid a pale finger of light upon the lawn, +through the open glass doors. + +Wentworth went up to it, and then as he was about to enter, shrank back +astonished. + +Lord Lossiemouth was sitting there with his back to the window. +Wentworth stood a long time looking at him. He was evidently waiting for +him to come in. He sat stolidly on as if he were glued to his chair, +smoking one cigarette after another. + +At last he got up. Surely he would go now. He walked to the bookshelves +that lined the walls, inspected the books, selected one, and settled +himself with a voluminous sigh in his arm-chair once more. + +Wentworth stole away across the grass as noiselessly as he had come, and +disappeared in the darkness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + Age by age, + The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard + For its old, heavy, dull, and shapeless ease. + + --W. B. YEATS. + + +Wentworth never knew how he spent the night, if indeed that interminable +tract in which time stopped could have been one night. It was longer +than all the rest of his life put together. In later years, in peaceful +later years, confused memories came to him of things that he must have +seen then, but of which he took no heed at the time; of seeing the +breath of animals like steam close to the ground; of stumbling suddenly +under a hedgerow on a huddled, sleeping figure with a white face, which +struggled up unclean in the clean moonlight, and menaced him in a foul +atmosphere of rags. + +And once, many years later, when he was taking an unfamiliar short cut +across the downs, he came upon a little pool in an old chalk pit, and +recognised it. He had never seen it by day, but he knew it. He had +wandered to it on a night of moon and mist, and had seen a fox bring +down her cubs to drink just where that twisted alder branch made an arch +over the water. + +Wentworth sat by that chalk pit on the down utterly spent in body and +mind hour after hour, till the moon, which had been tangled in the alder +stooped to the violet west with one great star to bear her company. Who +shall say through what interminable labyrinths, through what sloughs, +across what deserts, his tortured mind had dragged itself all night? The +sun had gone down upon his wrath. The moon had gone down upon his wrath. + +The land was grey. The spectral horses moving slowly in the misty fields +were grey. A streak of palest saffron light showed where the dim earth +and dim sky met. + +A remembrance came to him of a summer dawn such as this, years and years +ago, when Michael had been dangerously ill, and how his whole soul had +spent itself in one passionate supplication that he might not be taken +from him. + + * * * * * + +A tender green transparent as the light seen through a leaf in May was +welling up the sky. Two tiny clouds floated in it like rafts of rose +colour upon a sea of glass. + + * * * * * + +A deep and bitter sense of injustice was growing within him with the +growing light. + +A hundred times during the night he had recalled in cold anger every +word of that final scene in the library, his own speech, his own +actions, his great wrongs, his unendurable pain. + +And yet again it returned upon him, always with Fay's convulsed face, +and clinging hands, always with the Bishop's scathing words of +dismissal. Their horrible injustice rankled in his mind, their +abominable cruelty to himself revolted him. Hideous crimes had been +committed against him, but _he_ had done no evil, unless to love and to +trust were evil. Why then was he to be thus thrust into the wrong, thus +condemned unheard, cast forth with scorn because he had not obediently +fallen in with the Bishop's preposterous demand on him to condone +everything? _It was not to be expected of him._ + +Suddenly the faces of the others watching him after Fay's confession +rose before him, the Bishop's, Magdalen's, Michael's. He saw that they +had not expected it of him either--not even Michael. Only in Fay's +up-raised eyes as she held him by the knees had there been one instant's +anguished hope. Only in hers. And that had been quickly extinguished. +_He had extinguished it himself._ + + * * * * * + +The little clouds turned to trembling flame. The whole sky flushed and +then paled. A thread of fire showed upon the horizon. It widened. It +drew into an arch. The sun rose swiftly, a sudden ball of living fire; +and in a moment the smallest shrub upon the down, the grazing horses, +the huddled sheep, were casting gigantic shadows across the whole world. + +A faint sound of wheels was growing clearer and nearer. + +Wentworth saw a dog-cart coming towards him along the great white road. +As he looked it pulled up and then stopped. A man got out and came +towards him. The raw sunlight caught only his face and shoulders. He +seemed to wade towards him waist deep through a grey sea. + +Lord Lossiemouth again! + +Lord Lossiemouth's heavy tired face showed sharp and white in the garish +light. + +"I have been looking everywhere for you," he said, not ungently. "I +waited half the night at Barford, and then went on to Saundersfoot +station, and then to Wrigley. Your servants thought you might possibly +have gone there. But you had not been seen there. Magdalen sent me to +tell you you must go back to the Palace. Your brother is very ill. He +had an attack of haemorrhage apparently just after you and he parted in +the hall. I promised her not to go back without you. Shall we drive +on?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + Alles vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichniss.--GOETHE. + + +Michael was dying. All night Magdalen and the Bishop, with nurse and +doctor, fought for his life, vainly strove to stem the stream of blood +with which his life was ebbing away. + +He had been found by Lord Lossiemouth and a servant lying unconscious at +the foot of the staircase in the hall. He had been carried into a room +on the ground floor. Everything had been done, but without avail. +Michael was dying, suffocating in anguish, threshing his life out +through the awful hours, in wild delirium. + +He was in prison once more, beating against the bars of his narrow +window looking out over the lagoon. His hoarse strangled voice spoke +unceasingly. His hands plucked at his wrists, and then dropped exhausted +beneath the weight of the chains which dragged him down. + +Magdalen would fain have spared Fay the ordeal of that vigil. But the +Bishop was inexorable. He bade her remain. And shrunk away in a corner, +shivering to her very soul, Fay listened hour by hour to the wild feeble +voice of her victim, back once more in the cell where he had been so +silent, where the walls had kept his counsel so well. She saw +something--at last--of what he had endured for her, of what he had made +so light. + +At last the paroxysm passed. Michael pushed back the walls with his +hands, and then suddenly gave up the struggle. + +"They are closing in on me," he said. "I cannot keep them back any +longer." + +The contest ceased all in a moment. He lay back motionless with +half-closed eyes, his face blue against the white pillows. The blood had +ceased at last to flow from his colourless lips. Death was very near. + +He knew no one. Not the Bishop, not Magdalen who kept watch beside him, +listening ever for Wentworth's step outside. + +In the dawn Michael's spirit made as if to depart, but it seemed as if +it could not gain permission. + +The light grew. + +And with the light the laboured breathing became easier. He stirred +feebly, and whispered incoherently from time to time. He was still in +his cell. Wentworth's name, the Italian doctor's, rose to his lips. +Then, after a pause, he said suddenly: + +"The Duke is dead. She will come now." + +There was a long silence. He was waiting, listening. + +The Bishop and Magdalen held their breath. Fay knew at last what it is +to fail another. She had failed Michael. Wentworth had failed her. + +"Fay!" Michael said, "come soon." + +She had to bear it, the waiting, the faltered anguish, the suspense, the +faint reiterated call to deaf ears. + +The Bishop got up from his knees beside Michael, and motioned Fay to +take his place. She went timidly to the low couch and knelt down by it. + +"Speak to him," said the Bishop sternly. + +"Michael!" she said. + +He knew her. All other voices had gone from him, but hers he knew. All +other faces had faded from him, but hers he knew. He looked full at her. +Love stronger than death shone in his eyes. + +"Fay," he said in an awed voice--"at last." + +She had come to release him, after the Duke's death, as he knew she +would. + +She leaned her white cheek a moment against his in speechless +self-abasement. + +He whispered to her. + +"Have I served you?" + +She whispered back, "Yes." + +He whispered again, "Do you still love me?" The words were quite +inaudible. + +Again she said, "Yes." + +Again a movement of the lips, but no sound. + +He looked at her with radiant questioning eyes. + +Again she murmured, "Yes." + +It had to be like that. He had always known that this moment had to +come. Had he not foreseen it in some forgotten dream? + +A great trembling laid hold on Michael, and then a stillness of +exceeding joy. + +In the silence the cathedral bells chimed out suddenly for early +service. The sound of the bells came faintly to him as across wide +water, the river of death widening as it nears the sea. It was all part +of his dream. The bells of Venice were rejoicing with him, in this his +blessed hour. + +He was freed at last, free as he had never been, free as the seagull +seen through the bars that could no longer keep him back. Useless bars, +why had he let them hold him so long? He was out and away, sailing over +the sheening water in a boat with an orange sail; in a boat like a +butterfly with spread wings; sailing away, past the floating islands, +past that pale beautiful grief of sea lavender--he laughed to see it +shine so beautiful--sailing away into a pearly morning, under a luminous +sky. + +The prison was far away now. Left behind. There was a great knocking at +its gates, hurried steps upon the stairs, and a voice crying urgently +through the bars. + +But he could not stay to listen. He was too far away to hear. The voice +was to him but like the thin harsh cry of the sea-mew wheeling near, +blended in with the marvel of his freedom. He took no heed of it. He was +afloat on the great sea-faring tide. Far away before him, but nearer, +nearer, and yet nearer, the sea gleamed in trembling ecstasy. + + * * * * * + +"He does not know me. He does not hear me," said Wentworth, on his knees +beside Michael, raising a wild, desperate face to Magdalen. Was +Michael's last look of deadly hatred to remain with him through life? + +"Speak to him again, Fay," said Magdalen. "Tell him Wentworth is here." + +Fay was still kneeling on the other side. The two lovers' eyes met +across the man they had murdered. + +"Michael," the tremulous voice whispered. + +"Louder," said Wentworth hoarsely. + +"Michael," said Fay again. + +But Michael's face was set. He was sunk in a great rest, breathing deep +and slow, deeper and slower yet, his long arms faintly rising and +falling with each breath. + +"Oh, Fay. For God's sake make him hear," said Wentworth with a cry. + +The Bishop and Magdalen standing apart looked at each other. + +"He has forgiven her, though he does not know it," he said below his +breath. + +Fay stooped down. She raised Michael in her arms, and laid his head on +her breast, turning his fading face to his brother. + +"Michael," she whispered into his ear, with a passion which would have +cloven death itself. "Come back, come back and say one word to +Wentworth." + + * * * * * + +Very near the sea now. Very near the great peace and light. This was the +real life at last. All the rest had been a vain shadow, a prison where +he had dwelt a little while, not seeing that this great all-surrounding +water, which had seemed to hem him in, was but a highway of light. + +Who were these two with him in the boat? Who but the two he loved best! +Who but Fay and Wentworth! They were all floating on together in +exceeding joy. They were very near him. He felt them one on each side, +but the light was so great that he could not see them. His head was on +Fay's breast. His hand was in Wentworth's hand. It was all as in dim +dreams he had longed for it to be. + +Fay's voice reached him, pressed close to his ear, like the sound of the +sea, held in its tiniest shell. + +He opened his eyes and his brother's white face came to him for a +moment, like sea foam, blown in from the sea of love to which he was +going, part of the sea. + +"Wenty!" he said, and smiled at him. + +And like blown foam upon a breaking wave, the face passed. + +And like the whisper in the shell under the hush of the surge, the voice +passed. + +The shadow which we call life--passed. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prisoners, by Mary Cholmondeley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISONERS *** + +***** This file should be named 18834.txt or 18834.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/3/18834/ + +Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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